With a stage name like Rattlesnake Annie, it's easy to imagine a musical cowgirl with a guitar in one hand and a lasso in the other. Instead, waiting in front of Tokyo's Yoyogi Station is a grandmother with great bones, piercing blue eyes and long softly graying hair. She has just come from Tachikawa, where she performed for the 10th year running at Kunitachi Museum as part of her annual "sakura tour."

A short walk away, in the guest room on loan from famed singer pal Tokiko Kato, Rattlesnake explains her weird and wonderful provenance. "Part Cherokee, I was always a rattlesnake woman. (Her paternal grandmother was half native American; the rest is Scots Irish.) "I have this deep affinity with reptiles."

Though disapproving of rattlesnake roundups, she found it easy enough to kill and eat a rattler that got a bit too close on a family picnic years ago. "I hung the tail from an earring and have been wearing it ever since. See, it's fragile," she warns, "so I have to be real careful, treat it with the respect it deserves."