The next morning, we showered together and went to breakfast at Denny's (yes, they have Denny's in Japan, too) before he left. In the early afternoon, I assembled the equipment I was going to take to the audition, which included my Strat, my Marshall combo amp (which was more than loud enough for a small rehearsal room) and three effects pedals (a digital delay, a phase shifter and an overdrive unit). I dragged the lot over to the taxi stand at the train station and took one to the rehearsal studio I was supposed to meet the rest of the band at. Mai was already there and when she saw me walking up with my stuff, she assumed I was the girl who was going to audition for them. She did a double take because of my resemblance to Mari Hamada. "Moushikashite Aiko-san deshou (You are perhaps Aiko-san?" she said. "Hai (yes)," I affirmed. She took me over to their practice space and I hooked everything up and warmed up. Shortly thereafter, the rest of the group turned up. They were comprised of Miki Goto, who was a classically trained pianist who branched out into electronic keyboards, bassist Seri Kamayama, and drummer Akemi Saijo.

They set their stuff up after Mai introduced me to them. When they were done, Mai suddenly said, "play something for us." This was weird because I expected them to want to play with me from the get go, but I decided to do Deep Purple's "Burn." Miki jumped in with me as soon as she recognized the tune since Jon Lord was one of her favorite keyboard players ever. They asked me if I knew "Crazy Nights" by Loudness and we jammed together on that. I asked if they wanted to do "Beat of Meta Motion" by Vow Wow and we did a rendition of that. Then I just started doing the opening tapping sequence of Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher" They told me to wait a minute and they huddled in a corner of the room. I was in.

Unfortunately, there were problems. The drummer just wasn't up to standard. After everyone else had departed I hashed over the possibility of bringing in a more aggressive and powerful skinswoman from the U.S. Furthermore, they had never done a real gig before and they didn't even have a name for their group yet. We were also going to need a second guitarist so that the rhythm part wouldn't lose body when I went to solo. Mai was a hell of a singer, though. She was a music education major in college and was 20. Miki was the oldest of us at 23 and was working on her MA in music performance while the rhythm section was held down by a couple of 19 year olds.

Finding a second guitarist wasn't that difficult. At my suggestion, we just put up notices at a couple ESP academies (these are guitar schools run by the manufacturer of some of the best instruments in the world) that said, "ladies band (which is what all female groups are called in Japan) looking for second guitarist with advanced technical ability. Must play aggressively, be a hard working team player and disciplined." That soon got us 19 year old Satomi Kuramoto, who was exactly what I wanted. She could do Yngwie stuff no problem and she liked to show off her considerable skills.

At the rehearsal after we drafted Satomi in, we chose to call our band Ominous Twilight. The drummer still just wasn't cutting it, so I put an ad in Music Connection in L.A.. "All female hard rock band seeking hard hitting double bass style drummer. We are based mainly out of Japan but will be operating within the U.S., too, so you will need to possess a passport. Must have tight meter, fast, punishing hands and be willing to work closely with the bassist to become an explosive rhythm section. We will provide the drum kit when you audition. You must be in good physical shape. No druggies, flakes or losers! For touring reasons, you also cannot have any kind of criminal record as an adult!" I created a Hotmail address to have the hopefuls respond to.

My involvement with the band was taking a bit of a toll on my work performance since I spent a lot of my mental time devising ideas for songs, lyrics and marketing us to audiences. I was still so smitten with Tsutomu, though, that I was able to focus on just him when we were together. Tsutomu was a business major, which would come in handy down the line. However, the more I worked with him, the harder it also became to keep my hands off of him. I mean, when you see your boyfriend, it is only natural to want to give him at least an occasional kiss. On one occasion, I snuck him into the girls bathroom and sucked him off. When I attempted to smuggle him back out one of the other girls saw us. "Hey you two! Knock that shit off!" she said to us as she scurried down the hallway. Fortunately, she didn't report it to any of the higher ups, though probably because discussing it would be embarrassing for her more than anything else.

In order to conceal our relationship from his parents, he couldn't be sleeping over with me every weekend using the "going out drinking" excuse. So on that day, we often went right from work to my place, made love, and then he went home. On some Wednesdays, I would travel by train to his school, which was a bit of a schlep, and we would go to a love hotel while he was on a break between classes to have sex. Of course, since we were still in the honeymoon stage of our relationship I was frustrated by not being able to be with him intimately when I wanted. Sometimes, I would leave work after whispering to him, "I want you inside me so bad right now" and furtively grope his crotch before saying goodbye.

My job was also making it hard to schedule rehearsal time with the band. Yeah, we could get together three times a week, but we needed to do more than that. Also, the more time I put into the band the more conflicts it would create with when I would be able to see Tsutomu due to our work commitments as well as his college career. At the end of April, I told my company I was going to resign. I moved into a hotel room and now I could rehearse with the band whenever we needed to. We also began writing songs, many of them originated by our keyboard player. We had agonized over what direction we would take. None of them wanted to do thrash metal and I didn't really want to, either. The three of us who had bigtime chops wanted to do more than just dumb dumb four chord rock and so we settled on a kind of neo-classical version of Led Zeppelin, basically. It would give us a fairly expansive palette to work with.

We also had to admit the role our looks were going to play in our success. Again, at my suggestion, after every rehearsal, we headed to the gym to work out with a personal trainer I hired.

At the end of May, I went back to California and contacted the drummers I was interested in. I rented a rehearsal studio in Buena Park and had them come down to show me what they could do. The battle wasn't close. The only one who knocked my socks off was a Berklee graduate named Cindy Larson, who was a fan of Mike Portnoy and Mike Terrana. She was also just under six feet tall, a surfer with a killer toned body and blonde. Compared to the rest of us in the band, since we were no taller than 5'5", she would seem like an Amazon. She was a good  three inches taller than Tsutomu.

I took her back to my house and lectured her about how to handle being in Japan, including information about its criminal justice system and how to keep from doing anything that would embarrass the band. I also warned her that since we were going to Japan in July, when it would be hot and sticky, that she would have to be cognizant of staying hydrated, especially since the rehearsal spaces there weren't air conditioned.

She was also a lesbian. I didn't know how the other band members would handle that, so I told her to keep that part of her biography under wraps for now. I also confessed to her about my own bisexuality, which led to her flirting with me. We later went to bed. "God, I wish I had your breasts," she admired when she got a gander at my C cups. She was an A cup, but I assured her that they were cute while I sucked on them. Her trimmed bush was no impediment for my tongue, which traipsed all over vulva and wrestled with the hood of her clit while my fingers cleaved her pink slit. We ate each other into a state of near delirium and topped it off with me holding on to one of her long legs while I ground my twat against hers to a soul shivering orgasm.

Just for the sake of convenience, I had her move in with me. She knew about Tsutomu and therefore understood that I wasn't going to be her girlfriend, but it was okay if she wanted to sleep with me when Tsutomu wasn't around.

By the end of June, I was ready for the return trip to Japan. We left on July 1st and installed ourselves at a hotel in central Tokyo. The next morning, which was a Tuesday, I took Cindy on a small tour of the city, showed her how to use the trains, etc. She wanted to know how the surfing in Japan was and I had to disappoint her by saying that the beaches are nowhere as nice there as they are in SoCal.

Wednesday, I accompanied her to her first rehearsal with the group. I'm glad I didn't have to be there when they told Akemi that she was out of the band. The difference between Akemi and Cindy was apparent from the first few bars of a jam we initiated, which was over a simple II-V-I progression. The time was rock solid and the force with which she hit the drum heads was just this side of bone rattling. Not to mention the pulse she created with her powerful feet on the dual bass drums. The kit itself was brand new since I bought it a few days before leaving Japan. I also acquired a couple of Marshall stacks. In addition, I put together a powered pedal board so that I wouldn't have to be reliant on just the batteries inside my effects pedals.

I had rented that rehearsal space for the next year so we could leave our equipment there, thus saving wear and tear on our backs and arms let alone on the gear. We continued to write songs and I composed, translated and edited all of the lyrics. We wanted to be a worldwide band and so they would all be in English. That necessitated having Mai polish her pronunciation, too. She had loads of power and was like a female Ian Gillan. I imparted tips on how to comport herself in front of a crowd, too, since she would be the most responsible for interacting with the audience as our frontwoman.

At the end of the month, the entire band packed up and came to my home to spend their month long summer vacations from college with me. That would result in our rhythm section becoming very close.