Having nothing better to do, my sibling and I headed over to IFEMA to spend a few hours in the Japan Weekend convention of “Japanese culture and other stuff”. It took place in Madrid over the weekend, and I had read that there were a couple of Japanese musical numbers that looked interesting.

Aside from the two mini-concerts, there was nothing fixed on our schedule. I saw the stand of a teashop called Punto de Té (Tea Point). It looked like a really nice place – judging by the prices. They offered small Japanese matcha “workshops”, and I signed us up for one of them. Matcha [抹茶] is my favourite type of tea, after all – especially freshly made. It comes from the plant Camellia sinensis, which is kept in the shade for the last four ways before harvest so it produces extra theanine and caffeine. The leaves are trimmed, dried and finely ground into a powder.

The workshop was not really a tea ceremony, more like a mock-up, but we were able to whisk our bowl (chawan [茶碗]) of matcha using a real chasen [茶筅], a sort of bamboo brush that is used to dissolve the tea powder in the boiling water until it makes foam – the best part. I am not an expert, but the tea was really good, and my sibling enjoyed the experience. We decided that we would come back to buy some stuff when we were about to leave as we did not want to be carrying around stuff all day. Fortunately for the shop, when we came back the had sold almost everything!

Afterwards, we watched a kendo exhibit for a while. It was not a competition or anything, but those people were living the fights. That was cool. I don’t know one thing about kendo, but they did look like they were having fun, while at the same time taking everything very seriously.

One of the mini-concerts I wanted to watch was that of Kuni-Ken. Older brother Kuniaki and younger brother Kenji play “shamisen rock”, mixing classical sounds with modern tunes. Their instrument of choice is the shamisen [三味線], a three-string guitar or lute played with a pick. It is not the first time I’ve seen shamisen applied to rock or other modern rhythms – Kennichi Yoshida does something similar.

The concert started a bit late and to our astonishment, people wanted to watch sitting down! My sibling and I were on the first row, and we got yelled and poked at until we crouched down. I am getting too old for these events, really. Kuni-Ken came on stage with masks from their Zero to One promotional video. They played a few cover songs, and some original ones. The last song was a cover of City Hunter’s theme Get Wild.

The concert lasted around 30 minutes, and afterwards we headed off to the meet and greet area. Kuni-Ken had a problem as they could not open the suitcase they had brought their merchandise in, and in the end they had to rip it open. We bought some CDs and they were kind enough to sign them – even doodle. They also gave us a sticker and took a photograph with us.

Later, we stopped at Japanese drummer-turned-rapper AKKOGORILLA’s concert, a young woman who tries to defy a stereotypes of how “good girls” – and especially Japanese girls – are supposed to behave. She chose her name during her drumming times because she learnt that gorillas communicate using rhythm. Her songs invoke themes of feminism, LGBT+ and gender ideas.

She has a very particular style and moves as if she had batteries or something. She bounced and jumped on and off stage and never seemed to catch a break. She totally blind-sided the organisation by going into the crowd and pulling people up to dance with her. She was not close to us, but I got some cool pictures.

AKKOGORILLA calls her own style #GRRRLISM. She’s bouncy and vibrant on stage and she invites the listener to bounce along her catchy tunes. She sings a lot in English. The concert was again only 30 minutes though. Her songs included Yoyu and GRRRLISM, in which she clearly expresses “my body, my choice” – because she apparently commits the deadly sin of not shaving, and people seem to have opinions about that.

After the concert, I hoped to get a signed CD – I liked her more than I thought. Unfortunately, she had not brought any music, so we got her Zine signed instead. I also got a photograph.

Before leaving, we went to check the tea shop, but they had sold out everything we wanted. They offered to restock for the next day, but I was coming down with a migraine – the yellow lights at IFEMA are horrible. I also think I’m getting too old and cranky to hang out with the younger crowd though. In the end, I don’t care much about the shops – having credit cards, I don’t need a physical stand at a convention to buy stuff, and I avoid bootleg merchandise… Going to this kind of places for short live music displays… is starting not to cut it.