Introducing... Yoichi!

Yes, the day has finally come where I can share our Taiko player image!  I think a lot of you probably already know that my husband is a Taiko player and heads the group Puna Taiko here in Hilo... well, actually Puna.  He started off as one of the students in this community group that mostly contained senior citizens that were also church members.  Rev. Ikeda taught the group what he knew, and then he pretty much handed the group over to my husband.  They have been around for about 10 years now and it has evolved to be a youth group and a recreational adult group.  Gee, has it really been almost 10 years?  Time sure flies.

To say that my husband loves taiko is an understatement.  He lives and breathes Taiko.  In fact, he has a bumper sticker on his car that says "Eat, Sleep, Taiko". That pretty much sums it up.  Our neighbors knows us as the Taiko house because our garage becomes a drum building, stand making, skin stretching workshop throughout the year.  Whenever he has a free moment, he is listening to taiko, reading up on taiko, watching taiko videos, chatting with the kids about upcoming performances, etc....  I guess that's how I am with craft stuff, so I can't complain.

On our first trip to Japan, we went to the Miyamoto store in Asakusa.  He was literally a kid in a candy store.. pure heaven!  After we left with several bags of supplies, he turned to me and said... "now I know how you feel when you go craft shopping".   FINALLY!  

I guess you could say my husband was the inspiration for this image.  When my sister sent me this image, he was pretty much drooling over it... so how could I not name the image after him? Yes, Yoichi is my husband's name.  I think it kinda looks like him when he had hair.. HA! (Please note that he is bolo head by choice).

So I turned to my husband for more inspiration when making this project.  We were throwing around ideas of what I could do for a project using Yoichi and it evolved to this....

He told me that the group needed a message board to hang in their store room at the church.  I had bought a bunch of $1 wipe boards from Target when I found them in the dollar bin, but never did anything with them.  So I dug around in my closet and finally found them buried in some boxes.  Yay!  The board is not very big, looks like it's a little bigger than an 8 1/2 x 11" paper.  (Sorry, I didn't measure it).

I decided to keep it simple and added a strip of washi paper to the right and then crossed over it with a red "flag" across the top.  Then I got some foam Thicker letters and spelled "puna taiko".  At first I added Yoichi over the cross section, but Yoichi himself suggested I mount him on a circle. I think he stands out much better now! Thanks Paul!

Here's a better look at Yoichi.

I guess Paul was happy with the sign because before I could even take a photo, he had taken it to the Hongwanji where they practice and mounted it in their storage room.  He had to take these photos for me.

Ok... now for more candy!  If you would like to win Yoichi, just do the following:
1.  Leave a comment below on THIS POST by  March 31, 2013 11:59pm HST.
2.  Tell me what you are passionate about!

Good luck!  Don't forget to stop by tomorrow to check out our next Chinese Zodiac installments!