When Natsuko Miura puts one hand on her hip, holds the other in the air and belts out, "I got my mo-jo wor-kin'!" you'd have a hard time imagining this young powerhouse ever had any doubts about what she was doing -- the voice, that body language . . . she's lethal. But her first experience onstage, harmonica in hand at an open mike night about five years ago, didn't go so well.

"When it was my turn to play, I totally froze up," she recently confessed over a beer. "I couldn't do anything. I left the stage and went home and cried."

Hard to imagine that. Earlier this year, during a gig at Hoochie Coochie, a tiny basement dive in Daikanyama, Miura cranked out two sets of blues to a wedged-in crowd of hard-core blues fans. Wearing a genie's cap, complete with crown jewel, Miura presided over the club in an appealingly defiant way, holding her chin up as she sang and listening to her band with pleasure.