Rendezvous With Enka

posted in: Japan Trip 2012 | 0

Remember this adventure from my Japan Trip blog?

That was almost three months ago, when Andrew and I explored Ueno and a small specialty shop located under the railroad tracks that sells Enka recordings. We are both big fans of Enka, a musical style often described as “Japanese Blues,” so we had been looking forward to finding this Enka shop for a long time. In fact, we planned our day in Ueno around a visit to this shop.

While at the Enka shop, we took pictures of ourselves with the proprietors and they took photos of us. At the time, I wondered if those photographs would ever end up on the shop’s wall of friends and visitors. Well, wonder no more…

Now. almost three months later, “Begin Japanology” host Peter Barakan explores Enka and visits this very Enka store in Ueno! As he interviews the shop owner, look to the background and you can briefly see the photograph of Andrew and me, Andrew under his cowboy hat and me to his right, although we were mostly cropped out of the video.

So, now we have come full circle: from watching NHK programs that inspire us to explore Japan, to photographing Japan and being photographed in Japan, to finally having photographs of us appear in an NHK program. And wow, I’m flattered that the owner of this Enka store posted the photo of us on his wall so prominently!