All right. I promise: This is it. This is the last stupid tl;dr taiko picspam of the semester. Yesterday was Drum Night at OSU, hosted by their 24 Seasons Malaysian Drumming Group (who are mindblowing. Mindblowing.), and it was a huge deal and hundreds of people came to see it and WE DIDN'T FUCK UP. WE DIDN'T FUCK UP. 8'DDDD And there were millions of pictures taken by people far more talented at picture-taking than I am (thank God), so here is a picspam. Last one. I swear. No more practices or performances after this. I'm done.
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But this does not go under a cut. I am the shime on the left. AND I DIDN'T FUCK UP.
Okay, let's get the preliminaries out of the way: Here is our setup in EPIC LANDSCAPE PICTURE FORM. AW YEAH.
Now we can get to the important part: THE BIG DRUM. Look at that drum. Look at it. They made that. Starting with scraping the fat and hair from the cowhide. The head is just a little below eye level standing next to it; observe that she is standing on a bucket just to play it. The overtones of it shook the rafters of that theater.
RAAAAAAAAAWR I'M A LION. It was the cutest lion. It danced and pranced around on its hind legs and lolloped and flapped its ears to bless the ceremony.
From their signature "Drunken Drum" piece, the premise of which appeared to be "Play the drums like you are trying to overcome intoxication, but still play better than Arashi by a lot."
LOOK AT YOUR DRUM.
NOW LOOK AT ME.
NOW BACK AT YOUR DRUM.
NOW BACK AT ME.
YOUR DRUM IS NOW A TAIKO RAINBOW. (no srsly note that it is whitest on the right and darkest on the left. this was intentional. |D)
This is saved on my computer under the file name "shorterbucketlist".
"UM THANKS FOR LETTING US PLAY GUYS. WE'LL JUST BE TAKING THIS HOME." (yeah, us and what army, it took six of them just to move it [they have a special marching chant for this purpose] and a U-Haul truck to get it to the storage place.)
Let the expression on Vicki's face at the end of Seiha speak for how all of us felt when the applause started.
In short: I find it highly appropriate that "Seiha" means "to conquer."
I also find it highly appropriate that "Arashi," besides meaning "storm," is also the Japanese Internet equivalent of "spam" or "troll." MASA?