(Click here to go to the PRC Main page.)
Today Vivian Lee came to observe our class. Vivian is a Physical Therapist and taiko player who instructs at the Los Angeles Taiko Institute. Vivian (along with ManMan who will be visiting next week) is working with Sydney Shiroyama, the OT who helped San Jose Taiko start our PD program. LATI is planning to start a program as well, which we think is so awesome.
For today’s check-ins we shared some interesting podcasts, webinars or radio programs:
(Vivian) TED radio hour
(Sarah) Podcast: “When Life Gives You Parkinson’s” / Book: “Ending Parkinson’s”
(Cathy) Book: “I Contain Multitudes”
(Pat) Podcast: Science Friday
(Lane) Another plug for SJT’s Obon @ Home performance
(Marlene) NPR: “The Moth Radio Hour” and “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me”
(Franco) Podcast/TV: Songland
(Yurika): MasterClass: David Sedaris, Robin Roberts
Theresa - sorry we forgot to get yours!
COUNTING
We went over counting up to 8 in Japanese today. Typically when Romanized (put into English letters) it would be written like this:
Ichi
Ni
San
Shi
Go
Roku
Shichi
Hachi
We also wrote it out in “sort of” phonetic if it helps… (Some people may emphasize the last vowel more or less. E.g. “roku” as opposed to “rok”. We don’t usually use the alternate 4 & 7 in taiko as in the video.)
itch / itchy
knee
sun
she
go
roak / roku
sheech / sheechee
haach / hachee
The Pat-Cathy Drill
Franco led us through a drill which had some free movement to it. Based on the movements that Pat and Cathy were doing, it became the Pat-Cathy drill.
Isolation Drill
We went over the “Isolation Drill” - this is a drill that several taiko groups, including the SJT performing company will do a version of from time to time as a way to check on technique and evenness between and right and left hands. It’s based on this sequence: 8-8-8-8 / 4-4-4-4 / 2-2-2-2 / alternate for 8
Here is a video from the PRC Activities page with the drill on it.
In this version, the sticking is mirrored, but feel free to explore starting with your non-dominant hand as a level up.
Happy Practicing!
ONE LAST THING…
Sydney sent me a pdf version of the article that she and Barbara (from our class) wrote for the World Parkinson’s Congress’s official blog, called “Flow vs Freeze” which is about the PD program at San Jose Taiko. It’s interesting to note that our program is one of the first of its kind, however, as Franco mentioned it is our hope that it will not be the only one. We hope other groups will do this work, learn more about it and make it even more accessible and beneficial for those with PD. Thanks Sydney and Barbara! (See some of the work that Sydney is doing now at https://www.taiko-in.com/.)
