Contact Admin. In fact, people carry lighters onto the plane as well. We grabbed a quick breakfast at the airport and dropped our things off at our hotel after a VERY crowded bus ride to the district we were staying. The initial feeling I got just from riding through the city was that it was an area that had stopped growing and was now just surviving.
I gathered as we continued that this was one of the busiest areas in the country during certain festivals. Aomori is a prefecture filled with rich history and replete with festivals and monuments to a time in the past.
As we arrived at the hotel, I was surprised to see many foreigners. There were mostly guys, but also several girls. We hopped into a cab to go meet at the house of Susumu Yamagami , who is a famous Shamisen player in Japan. His particular style is called Tsugaru-jamisen, which is a faster varying-beat style of playing.
We arrived down the block from his house, and he rounded the corner of the street energetically and waved us towards where he was with a smile that could melt a Tasmanian devil. We headed his way and entered his house. Yamagami-san had a traditional style Japanese home with tatami mats and sliding doors.
He also had an area dedicated to ancestor worship where there was incense lit and portraits of lost loved ones hanging above. He had different instruments strewn about and he had brought out his whole collection from what it looked like. He immediately pulled out two shamisens and gave one to me to attempt to play.
