So I've been meaning to post this for a while. My amazing koto teacher is letting me use her fabulous 6ft koto. It got me interested in looking at kotos on ebay, and I found a good deal for a half size one from a seller in Japan. It arrived on my doorstep in only bubble wrap, and it looked, and smelled not so good, like a really, really old, stale book. Parts of it were broken, and cracked. I didn't want my family to know I bought it, so I hid it, and then, I eventually told my sister, and then everybody found out.
It was not what I was expecting, so I decided to take a chance and give it a make over, and fix several broken cracks. It also did not come with any bridges. I was scared to take off the strings, because I didn't know I could put them back. But with help from my koto teacher, also my sister Bess I was able to re-string it. My koto teacher is very generous, and she also sent me a new set of strings to put on this one---though I decided to wait until the silk strings break to see which koto needs new strings first. I sanded the koto, and painted it. I wasn't going to varnish it at first, because I liked the blond wood, but I thought it might help preserve my painting, and the wood as well.
After fixing this one up, I really appreciate the koto my teacher is letting me use, as mine goes out of tune, really fast.
I also had the urge to paint a set of wooden bridges, and they look pretty cool on the koto, but I sanded the bottoms of that set too much, so they slide too much. So they are mostly for decoration.
On a funny note, I was talking to my koto teacher, and told her that I noticed that the koto music I was learning from, looked like the code symbols you see in the matrix movie. So I had to google it, and sure enough, I found that the matrix code is simply just recipes for sushi in Japanese. So if it's raining fish, you know you're seeing the code koto.
Starting to varnish.
I wrote my name in Japanese, and also the meaning of my name in kanji
I wa
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