Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

In a bizarre evolution of events that seemed to make perfect sense at the time, I’ve decided to keep to my promise of not spending too much money on crap, by starting to learn the harmonica.

Oh the irony! I hear you cry. Well you can stop, because harmonicas are cheap. And - as I have been finding out - frighteningly addictive to play, regardless of how good you are or how irritating it is to the person standing behind you at the ATM.

This all started off as a 100-yen impulse buy. I mentioned some time ago on this website about 100-yen shops and how you end up buying a bunch of shite that you don’t need, since it’s all cheap and sometimes wonderfully tacky. Well, recent trips have been no different, where say, I go in for a lightbulb and come out with a lightbulb, some 3 way party blowers in the shape of elephants, fake plastic money, hello kitty toilet paper and on one occasion- a small plastic harmonica.

After neglecting this harmonica for a few days, something- perhaps some kind of divine force from another dimension, or simply the fact that there was naff all else to do in my house at the time- something persuaded me to pick it up. I’m not going to wax lyrical about this much - because playing the harmonica is really bloody easy. You just blow and suck into the goddamn thing. Oh sure it takes time to get GOOD and I’m nowhere near the “improvising to a blues riff like a bastard” level yet but the harmonica has got a distinctly more accessible learning curve compared to something like the violin or the original Dragon’s Lair arcade game (remember that? Fricking impossible).

Fast forward a couple of days where I begin to start really enjoying it, learning a few tunes and cultivating some kind of sick fascination about how hillbilly white trash it makes me appear. Eventually I grew tired of my 100-yen harmonica’s cheap tinny sound and wanted a harmonica with an altogether more quality tinny sound so I set off for my local music shop and bought a proper Hohner jobby.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 24th, 2004 at 8:11 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.