Playing music with snakes in a rainforest

I was grown up in a country side surrounded by mountains in Japan, and I’d been wanting to move to Tokyo as soon as possible. Tokyo was a very stimulating city for me. (still it is)

I thought Tokyo ~ the high population density city full of unique cultures old and new ~ had everything I needed.

I was in a comical band called “Alien monsters”. Because our music was unique, catchy and funny, we got opportunities to be on TV shows and radio.

(The most memorable TV show was “garimpeiro” (Tokyo MX TV) staring Nozomi Sasaki.)

I loved the life. I was going to spend the rest of my life in Tokyo.

However, now and then I’d been recalling one of my dreams… to play music in overseas.

A huge earthquake in Japan in 2011 made me contemplate on my life deeply, and long story short, I've decided to move to Australia. The place I arrived at was… literally middle of nowhere in a rainforest. The opposite from the concrete jungle Tokyo.

There were many more cows than humans in the village!

Beautiful rainforest!! So lush!!

Trees, birds, wallabies, horses, lizards…

Sometime snakes sneaked into my little cabin when I was recording music. (But probably it was me disturbing their peaceful lives)

I was fortunate to meet great musicians and play keyboard for them, such as Fantuzzi - one of the MCs and the performers at the original Woodstock Music Festival in 1969!!!

The reason why I wanted to live abroad was...it's related to my experience in my childhood.

I was bullied at school.

Because of my dad's job I had to transfer to another school in countryside where people were more conservative than the place where I lived before.

I stood out because I looked different. That's why I was bullied. My classmates picked up on me just because I was slightly different from others - the way I dressed, the way I spoke etc.

When girls bully girls in Japan sometimes they just ignore you completely. They behave as if you didn't exist. That was extremely hard. I almost wished that they would beat me up, because it means that at least they acknowledge me. It is really hard when your existence is denied completely.

That's why I wanted to move to a multi-cultural place where differences and diversity are more respected.

That was a little heavy story, but this is the one of the reasons why I moved to Australia and then to Canada.

I hope you'll enjoy the music video "Aquila"⬇︎, one of the song I made in the rain forest :-)

I produced many songs there.... If you have a moment, I'd like to invite you to play some of them HERE 🤗🙏

Talk soon, Pico