The reason why I started playing the guitar.

When I was in the first year of Junior high, 12 years old, my uncle gave me a fishing rod.

It was long 6 part de-constructable throwing rod.

It was so long that I was able to throw the weight 70 meters.

My father passed away by coal mine accident when I was 7 years old.

My uncle treated me well, maybe because he had two daughters and no son.

He taught me his hobbies, Japanese archery and fishing.

One day I went to the Onga river to fish with several friends.

Maybe we only caught small eels.

At evening one of my friends suggested that we can catch bigger fish at night.

But we couldn't.

We returned home around 9 pm.

Our parents had gathered at the police office, and in a slight chaos because their children didn't return from fishing.

When my mother found me, she began to break my rod.

I was dumbfound to find my usually serene mother scold me aggressively.

So I just stood there watching my mother break my rod.

However she couldn't break the handle part, it was too big.

That part had the reel.

I had connected the string from the reel to the top of the rod, and wound it up tightly then it made a sound when I plucked it.

I discovered that when I held down the string and plucked, the note changed.

I could play the scale.

I played different tunes by ear.

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One day when I returning home I found a old guitar hanging in front of a pawn shop.

I didn't think My mother could buy it for me.

After my father died my mother worked as a mine company dormitory keeper.

Of course she made little money.

But I never experienced the poverty.

Perhaps it was because she worked hard and made the effort to provide for us, I and my sister, and not making us feel poor.

Though I knew it was difficult, I asked her to buy the guitar.

She bought it without a word.

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There was a textbook, Koga 30 day learn the guitar yourself, that came with the guitar.

It was my first textbook.

But I didn't have the skill to study something systematically in that time.

So I played just for fun.

The guitar was classical model.

But it has steel strings instead of nylon strings.

The strength of steel strings was too strong for classical guitar neck.

So it began to bend and several month later it broke.

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When I was in the third grade of college, next door in my dormitory, lived a 5th grade student.

He was a member of the guitar club.

I listened to him practice.

I thought that his tune was played by two people or more because of its many sounds.

One day his door was opened, and I realized that the tune was being played by one person.

Suddenly all I wanted was to play the tune, The Memory of Alhambra.

I went to the music store and bought a 7000yen guitar with a 10 month installment loan.

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Still now, 40 years later, the guitar is in my storeroom.

The Memory of Alhambra is the tune that I perform for my new guitar students.

2003.3.19

Japanese

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