Nancy and I joined another drum group, this one for the madaru (mahdal) and djembe, North Indian/Nepalese and African drums respectively.

We met our sensei through Ikeda-san, our translator at taiko. She told us about this little coffee shop in Togano called Third Eye, which sells great incense and good coffee (for Japan).

Nancy and I had noticed the shop before - on the drive from Sakawa to Susaki - and had always wanted to stop in, if only because Third Eye is based out of a traditional Japanese home. Outside: unfinished cedar siding and thick tiled roofing; inside: raised tatami rooms, deep wooden flooring, and a high, dark ceiling. Kind of like Chiiori house.

When we finally did drop by, it was the warmest place we'd found all winter. We stayed for a couple of hours doing Christmas cards, and had a short chat with owner. We returned a couple times, and found out about the madaru/djembe lessons. They invited us into the back room for a short practice session.

The madaru is a two-sided hand drum. One side has a high tone, the other side has a lower tone. You can make an open sound by hitting the drum as normal, a closed sound by covering the head as you hit it with your hand, an even bigger closed sound if you cover both heads at the same time, and a percussion sound if you whack the body of the drum.

The djembe is a one-sided hand drum. It has three basic sounds. Bass comes from hitting the middle of the head with your flattened hand, tenor comes from hitting the edge of the head with your fingers and a whack sound comes from slapping your hand onto the edge of the head. There are variations depending on how hard you hit the drum.

The really great part of this new lesson is that we get to sing, too. We are learning two Japanese folk songs and Stand by Me. It's tricky singing (especially in Japanese) and playing at the same time.

Even better is that there are actually living breathing young people taking the lesson. It's all guys except Nancy, and everyone is under 30. They all surf, too. So we might make some proper friends our own age (finally!), instead of the usual senior citizen "English conversation" groupies we normally hang out with.