Day 1... making music

Well, here goes the starting of a new "newsletter"... let's see if I can keep this one up regularly.

My girlfriend Mel gave me a sanshin (Okinawan banjo) as an early birthday present... how cool is that? So today I bought the music book of "Omototakeo 2" by popular Okinawan band Begin. This is a cool CD which contains the hit song "Shimanchu nu Takara" (popular with us Nova teachers at karaoke) and the Okinawan beer anthem, "Ojii jiman no Orion biiru".

Once I get the notation symbols (chinese characters) and the fretless positions worked out, I should be ready to go! And while I wait, there are guitar chords on the lyric page (written in hiragana, so I can read that). On the sanshin notation page, the lyrics are a mix of kanji (chinese-style characters) and hiragana (Japanese syllables). Now I can learn the song fully and not have to be silent at karaoke when the lyrics are written in kanji I don't know!