Hand in hand, Step by step

After the church concert, I was feeling as if I had been dreaming. People praised my voice and my performance. I felt like I was Sarah Brightman! But the night before I came back to Japan...Frank said to me at the supper table “Sayaka, You are a very good singer, but I think you should add new songs to your program next time. It was the third concert for you and you repeated the same songs in the same way. People would be bored next time.” Some people went against and told me they didn’t think so and “unchanged” was absolutely suitable for this kind of culture exchange concert. But I thought Frank was right. If I were him I would be bored with my songs, too.

After I came back to Japan, I had busy days as usual. Nothing special but calm. One day, about three months after the concerts, Junko messaged me and said that she was planning “Japan-day”. She told me that a man contacted Junko and her friend Gunter, one of the representatives of the Japan German association of Aachen very familiar with Japanese culture. The man who called was a manager of the historical social place and wanted to have an international event like “Spanish Night”. So his proposal was “Could you do some event like Japanese Night?” I can easily imagine that Junko said something like “Japanese NIGHT? Are you kidding? We can do ‘Japan DAY!’” Her plan was an all-day-event including such workshops as Origami, Ikebana, Igo, how to wrap by Froshiki, Tea ceremony, and the history of Kanji, along with exhibitions of many traditional Japanese ceramics, Katana, and Ukiyo-e pictures, demonstrations of Kyu-do, Iai-do, Wadaiko, Japanese traditional drum. "You are going to sing Kimigayo at the opening because everything you did has led us here!” she added.

Now My biggest theme was how to change my performance. Actually, I didn’t have any idea. But one day, my friend Rusa posted on her facebook that she had always been interested in performing in Europe. We once performed together. She likes writing big pieces in live performance. I called out to her to join our event. Her answer was “Yes!!” Junko recommend three old German popular songs. I practiced them both in German and Japanese. “Wenn der weisse flieder wieder bluht” is very popular in Japan but the flower changed from “flieder” to “violet” in the Japanese version. Gunter smiled when he knew I would sing this song. He said “Good! When I was a child, all my family loved this song. ” “Lili Maleen” was also famous in Japan but Junko and I were concerned that if German people would remember the war easily, it would not be suitable for the event. But Gunter told us “It is a beautiful song. You don’t need to worry about that.” The third song we chose was “Das gibts nur ein mal” It is one of the favorite songs of Junko’s father who was passed away. It means Japanese men on his generation was very familier with Germany in their young days.