Bauhaus

 Up at  8:30 or 9 or so. Early for me. Ken had called me at 7 last night, "Hey I'm coming over, see you in 10" he had to pick up a high voltage power supply he was going to sell to the company he works for. He came over and dropped off some boxes and then picked out a HV supply from the many we have around here and put it on the desk here and tested it, and I found tools and a DMM and handed them to him, and he determined that it would work once he cleaned it up and undid a modification someone at one of the national labs had done to it. 

I had to pack some things before they went "overdue" and one was a big motor on a stand that took some special packing. 

So I went to bed not long after midnight, maybe 1, maybe 2 ... 

I woke up early enough that if I jumped right to it, I could do the 9AM ride to the post office I'd been hoping to accomplish, but I did some thinking and realized if tomorrow's a rain day, I should pack this other big thing too, some car diagnostic gadget in one of those big protective cases so I could pretty much drop it into any box that would fit. So I packed that baby up, and it'll be a "Bauhaus" load. What I mean by this is, the smaller big box will go into the bed of the bike trailer and the bigger one on top, where it will hang over the trailer rails, looking like a Bauhaus building. 

The trial is going on, on the radio. This is pure Nazi stuff. Hitler had the "stabbed in the back" big lie, and the 'Dump has the lie that the election was stolen, I mean, along with the Democrats being space aliens who eat babies and so on. 

I cooked up some eggs and ate, and loaded up my "Bauhaus" load, and rode for the post office around 11. It was really nice out, very sunny but the wind was cool. All the things I took were FedEx packages so I only had to go as far as FedEx. I dropped them off, picked up some bubble wrap on the way back, and was back here at a quarter after 12. 

I started out again, this time for downtown. I had two packages that go to the post office and since tomorrow's a rain day I didn't want to delay sending them until Friday so I took them to the old post office downtown. The next place to go was Wal-Mart, I decided. I wanted to get cellophane tape and a few other things. So I rode down there and locked the bike by Big-5, and went in. No tape. They had witch hazel and surprisingly, pint bottles of rubbing alcohol. But the checkout was very confused and the lines like 30 shoppers long. "OK!" I said and put my stuff in a random place and walked out. Sheesh! 

The next stop was the Amazon hub, where I picked up bubble mailers and the shakuhachi I'd bought on Amazon, which was in a long box. I opened the long box to find the shakuhachi comes in a long wooden box, covered with fabric with two latches. On the top it says JIM Johnson Music. I was able to carry it in one of the bike bags but it stuck out a lot so I had to stand on a curb to get on or off the bike. Well, I'll go to Nijiya and buy stuff and try to figure out how to carry it and all the stuff. 

So I went over to Nijiya and got sake and a beer and a bento and a few odds and ends. The stuff I got took two bags, and as I was apportioning stuff to various compartments etc on the bike, I had an idea. I put a shopping back over each end of the box so they met in the middle, and tied the handles to each other on each side. That created a handle and I could carry the shakuhachi in its box just fine. 

I got back here and I'd left the radio on so I returned to the sound of the trial. I had my bento and beer while listening maybe not to something like the Nuremburg Trials but the trial about and attempted coup that, if it had succeeded, would have led to events that necessitate something like the Nuremburg Trials. 

Done eating, I had a long software update to do, so I decided to open up the shakuhachi box and see what I've gotten myself into. I've been hearing nothing but horror about Ebay and Amazon flutes, and had seen pictures of an absolutely awful Etsy one. So I was thinking I'd take a look and it would be Meh at best and maybe just plain bad, and I'd put it back in the box and return it. I was thinking the best shot for me would be to order (another) Shakuhachi Yuu from Mejiro in Japan which would come with one of the shakuhachi books I want, which would run what this one cost. 

So I was not expecting much for $200-odd. But wow. The box is nice, even the latches are nice, the shakuhachi, in the box which is lined, is in its own little sleeve of flannel like pyjamas, and has a neat little leather cap for the mouthpiece. And a little letter certifying that it's been tested and tuned and all that, with a little dodgy English but a hanko stamp and a scribbled signature from "Jim Johnson" himself, apparently. 

The shakuhachi itself is ... beautiful. It's thick, the root-end is lovely, the bamboo looks well-cured, the red lacquer inside is almost perfect (looks like a few rough places near the bell) and it has very nicely done wire(?0 bindings all along. The finger holes and utaguchi very well crafted. I'm impressed! I had a blow and wow, it's easier to blow than a PVC shakuhachi and certainly seems nicer than a Yuu. I don't think I've played shakuhachi for a couple of years and I could do the whole first octave right off. Keep in mind this is an instrument many can't make a sound on for weeks when they start. And when I last played one, a couple years ago, I only did the most basic exercises and blew lots of Ro but that was it. So I thought it would be almost the same trouble as I'd had starting out but not with this one. So I feel like I've really lucked out.

So I think this is going to work out fine for me. My impression is, it will be a fine instrument for at least my first year if not two.