I’m a retiree in Chiba, Japan, who somehow decided—after sixty—to take up two unlikely hobbies: performing classical music with virtual instruments (mainly Beethoven’s piano sonatas) and learning the cello.
Beethoven’s piano sonatas once felt impossibly out of reach—I had barely touched a piano in my youth. But thanks to MIDI programming, I now find myself, well into my eighties, making them sound at least somewhat listenable.
The cello, on the other hand, was love at first sight, though at my age it quickly became less of a grand pursuit and more of an “anti-aging exercise.”
Still, the joy of music comes in many forms, and I spend time on it every day, telling myself, “little by little, someday.”
Online I go by “Chibanoinkyo”—a playful nickname that simply means “a retiree in Chiba.”