Go Morocco Penniless: Atsushi Yanaka

You've heard of Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, then a personality Atsushi Yanaka is familiar to you of course. Yanaka is a baritone saxiophone player in that orchestra and writes lyrics, very good ones too. He has one of his legs deep in theatrics and performs. He adores Frank Vincent Zappa, enough to compile a compilation album. 

In a nutshell, Yanaka is quite a versatile artist. That he certainly  is, and here's a cool story concerning him and Morocco based on a column in the Asahi Shimbun August 26.

It happened just like that, he recalls. He happened to read a book on Morocco recommended by someone and right after that he met a trader who was used to travel to Morocco. Then another man, 20 years senior to him who had headed the magazine "Scola" one time, told him a most bizarre story involving Morocco.

The man told him he had painted  "white" a certain wall of the lodge he stayed on a photo location　and asked if Yanaka could go see if it's still "white". Bizarre indeed; he thought he had to go see....
His band had just pulled through the hardest tour in the winter of 2000 - notorious "Euro Tour". Yanaka headed straight from Frankfurt via Casablanca to Marrakech.

He arrived Marrakech at midnight without his luggage. It had gone to Denmark with his wallet within. Totally penniless, he "performed" ad hoc on the spot talking his head off. A man came up to him and offered him a lift to downtown and settled him in a hotel.
The following morning, he was having his breakfast when a man, obviously the owner of the hotel, stood behind him and asked, "Are you the penniless lodger?"

Well, it so turned out that the owner made no big issue out of it. In fact, he helped Yanaka trace his luggage. The luggage arrived the following day; Yanaka spent every penny he had in a few days' time, left Morocco and flew back home.

"Such an absurd trip, so absurd that I still remember 15 years afterwards...", recalls Atsushi Yanaka.