My First Practice

Today was my first wadaiko practice at the Miyamoto Studio! After filling out an information sheet and getting our membership card things, we went up to the classroom. There were only about 6 people. I'll be honest, it was scary and intimidating. Tosha sensei goes through everyone individually and critiques. There are a lot of bad habits I have that I need to fix if I want to play properly. I use my wrist too much and not enough of the rest of my arm, my elbow sticks out, I need to lock my wrist then relax it, ect. Hopefully I'm not so slow that he thinks I'm a lost cause. (Everyone else besides me and Tom must have been coming to practices for a long time since they played through a piece at the end.) I don't feel very confident about the way I play now, but I since I have a lot of problems to fix, I think I'll improve a lot as long as I stick with it and try hard. I think it's more frustrating because it's in Japanese. So first I have to understand what he's saying, which sometimes I don't, but I don't want to say, "I don't understand you" because I don't want to make him more angry. (I'm making him sound really scary, and he kind of is, but he's not a mean person, he's just a strict teacher.) Anyway, we'll see how this goes. I should be able to handle once a week for an hour and a half. Even though it's short, it's intense.