japanese hippies

hippies do exist in japan! and by that i mean i met a bunch of cool people at the jazz festival in okazaki. we did some drumming on the street, then again in a park the next night. hiroki the didg guy told us about that park, and how every monday night people meet to play music, swing some poi, and generally have a good old fashioned tree-hugging time. it was indeed a good time. only downside is that there's no light to teach them hacky sack.


here's hiroki and me. he's a crazy dude. playing the didg is his full time job. amazing. he insists on calling me 'j' because saying 'jesse' is difficult for the japanese tongue. could it be that i end up with a nickname that sticks, even one so relatively unoriginal as 'j'?



here we have hiroki, yoshi, and myself rocking out. hiroki is your wandering music man - always has all sorts of instruments with him (including a japanese style jew's harp, claves, and the flute i'm lost in below, called a 'shinobue')