Updates: taiko and sushi...

If you've made a trip or two to my blog before, you probably know I am a member of Arashi Daiko, a taiko or Japanese drumming group here in Montreal. This is a huge part of my life and that of JF (my husband) as well; I've been playing for 10 years now and he's been playing for 13 years, and it's how we met - but that's a whole other story that I'll share another time!

This is when we were in Japan last year, filming a documentary on our taiko group, part of a television series on world music and musicians in Québec; here I'm trying to incorporate Fujimoto's san's (Yoshikazu Fujimoto is Kodo's most senior performer and the most incredible all-around artist/performer) comments and instructions into my playing while trying to calm my nerves and not make a total boob of myself. JF watches and prepares to receive comments on his playing. Photo by Melanie Taylor (thanks for taking all those shots, Melanie!).

Arashi Daiko is also going to be on tv this Saturday evening, LIVE! Yikes!!! The documentary I mentioned was on the air a few months ago, and led to this other tv show finding us, and contacting us to be on their musical variety show called Belle et Bum (kind of a quirky way of saying "Beauty and the Beast"). Very exciting, although going "live" is pretty scary. And if anyone is going to take a tumble off the edge of the stage or have something stuck on their face when a camera zooms in, it'll be me. I'm serious.

On a crafty note, staying within the realm of Japanese inspiration, here is a new sushi platter I started making this summer, but that I didn't show you all yet. It features a temaki, or hand-roll, those cone-shaped sushi packed to the brim with sushi rice and your favourite fillings - this one has fresh sake (salmon) and its loving partner, ripe avocado. A couple of nigiri and maki complete the meal, with the ever-present wasabi (horseradish paste) and shoga (ginger). I just sold the last one in my Etsy shop for this batch, but don't worry, I'll be making more shortly!

Whaddya think?