Twas the Night Before Christmas

After spending our morning and afternoon in Nara, we took a JR train to Uji to start our Christmas Eve celebrating. One of my English tutoring students owns a cafe/ryokan on the Uji River and she was having a special Christmas Eve party. The festivities included dinner, a delicious dessert, coffee and a rock concert.

The main band was comprised of three 8th graders. I was impressed by their musicality. I'm pretty sure that most of the Battle of the Bands hopefuls that I went to high school with couldn't play guitar or bass as well as these guys already do. And, most of the songs they played were all classic rock songs in English! The video clip shows them performing I Can't Explain by The Who. (Many thanks to Jimmy Peterson for identifying the song for me!)

The second band was two even younger (and more nervous) fellows who also did very well. But, later sets were solos performed by the main guitar/vocalist from the first band, or songs performed together with his 1st grade brother and their "Real Rock Star" Dad. What a talented family! You haven't celebrated Christmas Eve the right way until you've enjoyed a six year rocking out on the vocals to Sweet Home Chicago.

But, the most impressive part of the evening was that the bands made their stage banter bilingual for our benefit. I'm sure that I couldn't sing and improvise in Japanese when I was six or thirteen! In fact, I still can't. :) They also sang Silent Night and asked us to join in. Sugoi desu ne!

Many thanks to Hifumi for such a fun night! Much Christmas merriment was enjoyed by all!