November 19, 2000

6. My Young Days

I don't know what to talk about today but my young days. The main theme of this page should let people in overseas know about Japan and not so much about myself, I originally tought. But today, I will talk about myself anyway a little bit more since I would like you to understand "Who the hell Yoshi Mukai is", "What things Yoshi Mukai has done" type of things in order for you to understand Japan better because Japan in this page is totally defined by Yoshi Mukai.

Specially, during I was in Junior High, Hi-school and University, my first priority was music. Of course I loved soccer, windsurfing, snow skiing and other things but music is still Number 1(actually next to my family, now) for me. My basis of music has been mostly established during these days.

When I was in Junior-High and High-School, I lived with parents, brother and sister in Takatsuki City in Osaka Prefecture and school had a "6 years continuous system" which was escalating into High-School almost automatically as long as I did good. It's almost 30 years ago.

The most interesting experience in the school was so called "Culture Festival" as "BUNKASAI". The festival is not only for Junior High students but for High-School students as well. Therefore it was really impressive gigs which were performed by 2-3 years older guys. They played really exciting for myself because I was only 13 years old fellow. The most impressive one was that some band played a copy of Cream's "Crossroads". Then I made up the band with my friends to play Cream's songs and targeted Crossroads as ultimate goal.

The band was started sometime we were 13 years old with total 4 members, Guitars as myself and another guy, Bass and drums. But the longer we played together with these guys, the more we had to know all members' favorite music and they were all different each other. Gradually, we has become not to follow Cream's style but several different musicians' plays even for myself. The another Guitarist loved Al Cooper and Michael Broomfield, Drummer loved Country & Western music, Bassman loved Canadian band, "The Band" and I loved "Robert Johnson".

Our band itself continued for almost 3 years and broke up. I was just listening to Robert Johnson's LP and trying to be the same as his guitar play as well as singing. I still love to play the band of course but at that time, I was really "Lonely Blues Man" and concentrated on acoustic country blues style specially mississippi delta style.

That's all about today's story and next time, I would like to go back to my original plan.The major cities or towns where I used to live or currently live have been almost covered already but still missing "TOKYO" and even "YOKOHAMA 2nd Story" I promised before! Therefore, I will talk about Tokyo next time and followed by Yokohama 2nd story, I do my best.

Thanks a lot !!!