Alex Quinn's Japan Journal

1/21/2005, Cherry Jam jazz club in Osaka

On Friday night, I met Akemi in Osaka after work.  We went to a jazz club called "Cherry Jam".  We had never been there before.  She found a coupon in the paper and she heard they had live jazz with no cover.  Usually cover charges for jazz in Japan are between ¥4000 (≈$40) and ¥10000 (≈$100) so this looked pretty good.  It was fantastic.  There was a singer, a guitarist, and a bass player who were all really good.  The food was delicious and interesting.  It turns out the singer is also the owner.  Some of her family was there that night which made it more fun.  I got to talk to them.

At one point, the singer came and talked to us.  Akemi told her I play jazz piano.  She asked me a little bit about it and eventually invited me up to play a tune with the band.  It went off pretty well.  We started with Autumn Leaves.  They made a bit of a fuss over me for no good reason.  After eating some more of my dinner, they invited me up again for a few more tunes.  Later that night, after finishing my dinner, they invited me up for a third set of a few tunes.  It was a lot of fun.  I didn't have my proper camera, but Akemi took some pictures with her cell phone.  Her cell phone doesn't take very good pictures, but it was a cool experience, so I decided to post them anyway.  So, here they are.

Me, playing the piano.

Me and the guitarist.

Me and the guitarist.

The guitarist.

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