The Myōan shakuhachi player Eric Genpū Strong inviter me to Winnipeg. I am grateful for him to want to use time and effort to apply for a grant and organising all the events and hosting me in his home. Eric and Jessica were great hosts and I enjoyed it very much.

I did one lecture about the shakuhachi at the Japanese Cultural Association of Manitoba. It is always so nice todo lektures. I love talking about the shakuhachi.

I also did – in collaboration with Eric – 2 workshops where many tried to play the shakuhachi for the first time. We had around 20 people who joined the workshops. It was great. Also great to be teaching together with Eric.

I have never had such a large audience for a solo concert. There were 110 people, which is amazing. Such a great interest and curiousity to hear something different. Eric joined me playing Choshi in unison and then the Myōan version of Shika no Tone. The rest were both Myōan and Zensabo honkyoku and new compositions. I enjoyed very much playing in Winnipeg. I really hope I can go there again.

Canada was also nice to visit. The first day I was there, Eric and I did a 30 km Bicycle tour around. It was nice and warm and the trees were turning yellow.

As a surprise, I met an ethnomgsicologie Colleague Matthew, whom I had not et since the ICTM conference in Kazakhstan in 2015. So I met Matthew and his wife Yok and his daughters Rosa and Leah. Wonderful family. I really really enjoyed seeing them agaain.

We had a 24-hour shakuhachi gathering. In the beginning we played 108 robuki and then again 12-hour later at the mid-way point we did that again. After the first robuki, the chief editor of Hogaku Journal did a talk. The rest of the time we had more 134 people playing 10 minutes of music each. When we were most people we were 107 persons online and we were around 50 when we were fewest. It was a very special 24 hours. It was organised by Sakai Seian Genshin, the kansu of Myōan-ji Temple and myself. Sakai Seian Genshin stayed up all 24 hours. So did I. I didn’t think I would. But I couldn’t just walk away. I felt I would miss out. I loved every minute of the 24 hours. What a community we have. I can’t believe we managed to gatter 134 people who were willing to participate. Let’s meet again next year!

During the tour, we did 9 events within 10 days in Denmark and southern Sweden: Concerts for a normal paying audience, workshops and concert/workshops for children, families, university students etc. We had a wonderful but intense time. It was also hard work, I did all the driving and also the organising. But it was fun. I learned a lot because ensemble music with koto and shamisen is not what I have been trainee in. I was also happy to combine my knowledge from being an ethnomusicologist and explain about Japanese music and music history while the koto players were tuning. To our biggest performance at Koncertkirken in Copenhagen, the Japanese ambassador Uyama Hideki and his wife attended the concert with the second secretary Onodera Rika. That was a great honour. The Japanese Embassy’s Facebook page showed:
https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.phphref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fjapanindenmark%2Fposts%2Fpfbid0ZmGJD9M7ZSBNJnZEJfj8PBj8AtMtR5sCc9WcQ5K632WrABSRSSqgZELNQDNDgoDvl&show_text=true&width=500
and on their webpage it looked like this:
https://www.dk.emb-japan.go.jp/itpr_ja/11_000001_00454.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawGAnaFleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHTw_c06GaQXelqTf5wjVHkaDtd7pWtOp8OSjrHRqH1QPtzSE7DhkCzQd4A_aem_nzCKu_vv30BnsjK93Tw-tw

The sankyoku ensemble:

With the Ambassador couple Uyama:

Me playing solo: