One of the major problems all taiko groups face is the cost of drums. They're beautiful, they're loud, to drum on them is a spiritual experience, but they're very expensive. Groups find various solutions to this problem. Some groups, the like the one I'm member of, make their own drums. Other groups raise the money to buy drums from one of the major taiko drum manufacturers like Asano Taiko. Often there aren't enough drums to go around, not to mention a desire to reduce excessive wear and tear on those nice, expensive drums, so practice drums are used.
Those practice drums are can be anything from a trash barrel turned upside down, an old tire with packing tape stretched over it for a head, clever surrogates made with industrial cardboard tubing all the way up to just using older and/or less expensive drums . . . there are a huge number of solutions the taiko community has developed over the years.
Back about the time I started this blog I ran across a group that had come up with a type of practice drum that seemed to be a cross between a cajón and a taiko drum. The commercial site can be found here. It's in Japanese, but Google Translate provides a certain amount of assistance if it's required.
I thought they were pretty cool. Check it out:
