Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Hi everybody,

Well, I´m glad to be party of this forum, seems to me a much better way for dealing with the great number and complexity of Shaku-topics around.

Regarding my own experience, I started playing Shakuhachi by chance. My girlfirend´s parents (now my wife) asked me what I wanted for a wedding present; being them Japanese I thought I wanted something from their own culture, traditional to include a sense of timelessness (not interested on new things with programmed obsolescence) and as I´m interested in music I thought a musical instrument would be perfect. After discarding Shamisen (I play guitar so it was the most logical alternative) due to my girfriend´s accusations of bulkiness I suggested "What about Shakuhachi?"

But I didn't want to ask for something I was not going to use, so after being warned of the hardship of the instrument I decided to start studying it before making a decision. I bought a cheap student Shakuhachi from my master (Mike Coaxall, what a wonderful master and person!) and started a race against time (I was in London and was moving back to Spain -i.e. no master). I didn´t manage to learn a lot, but just enough to completely fall in love with this amazing instrument, which challenges every bit of my being: body, mind and spirit.

Cannot find so much time to practice though, which worries me inmensely (specially after hearing stories about hours of daily practice for a decade to get some decent level), but I´m happy when I play and I guess that´s what it´s all about.

Looking forward for those topics

Salud!

Alex