Japan Tour ’26 – Chapter 2: “Café Frosch”
Leave a comment
On September 23, just one day after arriving in Kyoto, we had a very special date waiting for us at Café Frosch, a beautiful café in the Nishijin area of Kyoto, very close to Kitano Tenmangū Shrine.
This was an important day for us, and one that will probably stay in our hearts forever: Café Frosch was the first place where The Kyoto Connection ever performed live for an audience in Kyoto.
We arrived around noon, just as some people were coming in for lunch. Sumi and the whole Café Frosch team welcomed us warmly and showed us the space where we could set up our instruments. It felt almost like playing in someone’s living room: a cozy space filled with vintage objects, books and little treasures from different parts of the world. From the moment we arrived, we felt that Café Frosch was a place with a lot of soul.
At 12:30 we started playing for a small but incredibly receptive audience who listened to us with great attention and warmth.
We played songs from The Kyoto Connection, Jesica sang some songs from her own repertoire, and we also left some room for improvisation and play. Cielo joined in too, dancing while we played. For about forty minutes, the three of us shared this little musical world we have brought with us from Argentina to Japan.
We recorded the entire performance, and the full concert is available on our YouTube channel. Watching it now feels particularly special because it captures the first time our music was played live in the city that has inspired this project for so many years.
The concert was also a great opportunity to continue developing our traveling live setup. During these weeks in Kyoto we are moving from place to place with a very simple configuration: violin, synthesizer and Jesica’s voice. Everything has to fit into what we can carry ourselves, be quick to set up and allow us to play in very different kinds of spaces. Café Frosch was a perfect place to put that idea into practice.
After the concert, we packed everything away and stayed for lunch. We had a delicious meal and tried different flavors, and Jesica particularly fell in love with the affogato. Cielo, meanwhile, decided it was the perfect moment for a little nap.
When she woke up, we crossed the street to Shōran Park, the small neighborhood park directly in front of the café, and spent almost an hour there playing with her.
And, as often happens when walking around Kyoto without any particular plan, we found another little surprise nearby: an old confectionery where an elderly man makes some of the most delicious cookies we have tasted in Japan. We bought some and, of course, they didn’t last very long.
It was a simple afternoon, but also one of those days that perfectly explains why this trip means so much to us. We came to Café Frosch to play a concert, but ended up spending the afternoon eating, talking, playing with Cielo in a neighborhood park and discovering another small corner of Kyoto.
Thank you, Sumi, and everyone at Café Frosch for opening the doors of your café to us and giving The Kyoto Connection a place for our very first live performance in Kyoto.
After more than twenty years making music inspired by this city from the other side of the world, being able to finally play it here, in front of an audience, was something very special for us.
We are sure our paths will cross again.
