{"id":35,"date":"2011-06-04T05:29:55","date_gmt":"2011-06-04T05:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/laurelraab.com\/?p=35"},"modified":"2011-06-04T05:29:55","modified_gmt":"2011-06-04T05:29:55","slug":"the-japan-microsoft-orchestra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/?p=35","title":{"rendered":"The Japan Microsoft Orchestra"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In Redmond, Microsoft offered employees a chance to blow off steam and have fun with intramural sports teams.  I loved spring and summer days where I&#8217;d drive over to the Microsoft campus, sit in the sun and watch Dan and his coworkers play softball.  <\/p>\n<p>Well, gone are those days.  They don&#8217;t have intramural sports team at Microsoft Japan.  They have Microsoft Orchestra!<\/p>\n<p>As common as it is for Americans to grow up playing sports to learn about being part of a team, exercising and sportsmanship, it&#8217;s more common in Japan for children to grow up playing a musical instrument (typically a string or woodwind) to exercise discipline, preciseness and learn to make beautiful music.<\/p>\n<p>Dan and I got tickets to the Microsoft Orchestra through his coworker Junko, who is a wonderful violinist.  It was held at a music hall in Suginami on a nice Saturday afternoon.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s26.photobucket.com\/albums\/c131\/pinkloo\/?action=view&amp;current=IMG_0792.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i26.photobucket.com\/albums\/c131\/pinkloo\/IMG_0792.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Photobucket\"><\/a><br \/>\nWe took our seats in a crowded auditorium and enjoyed the orchestra, accompanied by a choir.  It&#8217;s amazing that these people practice so hard after a long day of work, it sounded wonderful and in the last act a choir of children came out and sang.  It was a great experience and I hope they perform again soon!<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/s26.photobucket.com\/albums\/c131\/pinkloo\/?action=view&amp;current=IMG_0793.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i26.photobucket.com\/albums\/c131\/pinkloo\/IMG_0793.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Photobucket\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Redmond, Microsoft offered employees a chance to blow off steam and have fun with intramural sports teams. I loved spring and summer days where I&#8217;d drive over to the Microsoft campus, sit in the sun and watch Dan and his coworkers play softball. Well, gone are those days. They don&#8217;t have intramural sports team [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5,11,75],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dan","tag-japan","tag-microsoft-orchestra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/penniestoyennies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}