I went to see Toko Furuuchi’s live show at Blue Not Nagoya on November 8th. It was my first time seeing her perform in person. She had come to Nagoya for her show so many times, but I’d never had the chance to go.
There’s actually a big difference between knowing that your favorite artists’ shows are coming up and just wondering if you’d like to go, and actually get up and buy tickets and get out of the house.
As for my case, the last concert I saw before Peabo Bryson’s a week before this show was probably Toshinobu Kubota’s or Seiko Matsuda’s in Nagoya or some older famous singers’ in Tokyo more than a few years ago. Ever since then, I’d been pretty lazy when it comes to going to a concert, but I’ve finally decided to be a concertgoer from now on.
Life is short.
If not now, then when?
The first show I saw then was Peabo Bryson’s I wrote about here, and Toko’s show was the second. I went there with my 2nd daughter who loved her. At first I was a big fan of hers, and my daughter began to borrow some of my collection CDs which made her a big fan as well. She’s 25 years younger than me (I gave birth to her when I was 25 years but I tend to assume that she’s my younger sister lol ), and it’s no wonder we have totally different tastes in music. However, as to Toko’s music, we have a good chemistry, and we always listen to her music while driving which makes us both feel really happy and relaxed.
My daughter and I arrived the music club (Blue Note Nagoya), and ordered something to eat for us, and wait for the show to begin. It was my daughter’s first time being there while it was my 2nd, which made me feel a bit superior to her (which didn’t matter much, either, though lol)
We were having our own meal while waiting. Mine was beef steak sandwich which cost a little bit more expensive than the club house sandwich I’d eaten at Peabo Bryson’s show. I ordered it even though it was a little more costly because the club house sandwich was very good, but I wanted to try something different. I thought beef steak would make the sandwich special, but too bad I was a bit mistaken. It turned out to be a bad choice for the occasion as it was not as easy to eat since the steak that was between the sliced bread was a bit too chewy. Besides, two other people who sat at our table which had four seats were a couple, a beautiful, stylish-type of young woman and a cool, handsome-looking-type of young man.
A perfect couple acting cozy sitting right in front of us sharing the same table with us who couldn’t help but keep feeling them out of a small corner of our eyes!
It made us (me, at least) quite comfortable especially when trying to eat something that was as difficult as the steak sandwich with those slices of steak that were chewy to bite in it. I really wished I’d ordered the same club sandwich while struggling with it …. I’m afraid I was a bit too self-conscious, since they must have been totally oblivious to people in front of them (I mean us) and lost in their own world.!!
Anyway, forget about the sandwich now.
We waited for some time, and finally Toko appeared on the stage. I couldn’t believe she was there. It thrilled me. Then I heard someone saying
“That’s real Toko!”
I couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t believe my eyes, either.
She was wearing a black-and-white striped long feminine dress, and large gorgeous earrings which made her look the most beautiful woman in the world. The real-life Toko somehow didn’t look as slim as various images of her I’d had through CD jackets, magazine articles, DVD and so on, but I was sure it made her look even more attractive as a mother of her little boy. (She got married six years ago at 40, and gave birth to her first child two years later.)
It was an acoustic concert consisting only of the piano that she played and the guitar. She played a lot of the songs that were from her new album released right before the concert. She played a lot of older songs which reminded me of the past, too.
She said during the show that she didn’t make songs for the last six years. She had no idea if she could ever do it again. However, once she sat in front of the piano to create a song, she soon remembered the feeling of everything and the pleasure that she thought she’d forgotten while she was at something else which led her in life in order to complete her new album. Hearing this, I was sure she was no doubt a born artist after all. (Actually, she not only has a great sense of many many things, but is also an excellent English speaker. I was surprised to hear her speaking in one of her DVDs where she had a concert in the US. I was really impressed! As they say ”
God doesn’t give two gifts”, but she has both! She’s just amazing!)
We only had the tickets for her first stage. Since it was very good, it made us want to watch her second stage not knowing if they had the same set list for the two stages. (I asked the staff about it, but they weren’t sure.) Since I was also curious to find it out, I bought two tickets for us.
We had to get out of the place after the first show which led us to stop by a nearby convenience store to get something to bite while killing some time until the club opened the place for the second stage. I saw a lot of foreign travelers (probably mainly from China or Taiwan) at the convenience store which made me realize how cosmopolitan Japan has been becoming. It even made me feel as if we were in some Asian countries.
The second stage started, and the set list turned out to be exactly the same as the one for the fist stage. The only difference was what she was talking about. I felt, by hearing the she talked, that she looked a bit tired at the second stage. In one of her songs, while she was playing the intro, she made a mistake and did it all over again. It was totally unexpected which made her chuckle which also made her look charming, which thus also gave the audience a relaxing laugh.
Both of her shows were great. I was glad that I watched the two shows as watching more than one show allowed me to experience more firsthand. For one thing, it enabled me to compare the difference and know how the artists could do, such as the songs they played, and what they talked, and so on. By watching the two stages, it made me feel as if I knew everything about her (although I know it’s impossible.) Until then, I believed that watching more than two shows could be utterly a waste of money. I thought “What’s the used of watching the same content more than twice?” But I was wrong. I’ve been there, and now I firmly believe that it’s worth doing. I can’t explain this very well, but you’ll get a lot more than you’d imagine.
As I said at the very beginning of this blog, there is a big difference between just meditating if you could go to see a concert and actually making it happen.
In my case, watching Peabo Bryson’s show and two of Toko Furuuchi’s in such a short period of time (a week) did cause me to feel something which could change my way of life. I couldn’t have felt this way, if I hadn’t watch them back to back.
OK, I’m going to talk about what is changing my way of life in my next blog.
Well, it was an awesome show, and I’ll come to see her again the next time she comes to Nagoya!!
The moral of today’s story:
Move, rather than ponder. Then you can get more than what you imagine.
ako's English Diary 