The Untold Story of Sound House’s Founding Episode 3: Unexpected Encounter at a Concert

A few months after I unexpectedly arrived in Narita with my dog Mitchie, I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to start a concert night at a local church on Sunday nights where I could do what I loved to do, which was singing and playing guitar. After I returned to Japan from the States, I ran a music venue for students in Nishi-Waseda, Shinjuku, and I was blessed to be given the chance to play guitar every day. I hoped that somehow I could continue to play guitar and sing in Narita as well. Then, the opportunity came knocking.

The first concert was only a small gathering, probably a little less than 20 people. I sang while playing the guitar, and I also talked in between songs. A beautiful thing that happened was that the audience sang along with me because it was a church crowd. Also, I didn’t have to care about singing for a small audience because I was used to only small crowds coming to see me perform at gigs that I played in Tokyo. I was just happy to just be singing and playing guitar.

I was also booked for the following week and performed again at the same church. Since it was the second time, there were some new faces who probably had heard about the concert through their friends and more people came. As I began to play, two people in the front row caught my eye and for some reason I was drawn to them. It was only my second time performing there but they sang aloud with me while moving their bodies to the music as if they were my most loyal fans. I still remember how impressed I was by their open demeanors. After the concert, I talked to these people and found out that they were a father and his daughter. I was very grateful to them.

At this series of church concerts, I was only aiming to perform solo and lead the audience so they could sing along with me. However, I unexpectedly got a big reaction from the audience, so I came to regularly perform on weekends for a while. At my third concert, that father and his daughter sat in the front row and sang with me again. Regardless of the audience size, concerts can be filled with energy, but after this performance, that father who was in the front row with his daughter told me, “I have something to tell you” while there was still the energy from the concert lingering in the church. I thought he just wanted to have a casual conversation, so we went to a quiet place to sit and talk. That was when the bell of destiny finally rang. The father was actually the one who rang the bell.

To my surprise, he suddenly came out with, “Please marry my daughter!” I just couldn’t believe what he just said! I knew that unbelievable things happen in this world, but I had never thought it would ever happen to me and it did just then! At the time, I was 33 years old and I had started to think that I would have to get married soon. However, no woman would be interested in a man with no future since he had quit his job and was just driving around Narita with his dog. Therefore, the thought of meeting my future wife never even crossed my mind. Holding concerts at a church came to me out of the blue when I was simply looking for a mountain to pray on, but suddenly, it turned into a marriage proposal, which was not from “her” but from her father.

I of course didn’t know what to do. This literally was a thunderbolt out of the blue that a man, who only had Mitchie, a car, and a guitar, received a marriage proposal not from a woman, but from her father. At that moment, the clock began to tick faster and I started to zone out in new dimensions. (To be continued in Episode 4)