This is just to help keep all those people who dream of playing the harp awake at night!

While hunting up information about small pentatonic lyres, I discovered that Japan is home to, no, positively riddled with people playing German lyres - there are very simple pentatonic ones designed for children at Waldorf schools, but the stunners are the ones with anything from 20-odd to over 40 strings.

You can't apparently play them exactly the way you would play a harp, but I don't understand about all that stuff, I just enjoy listening to it, and marveling at how much can be done with a truly lap-sized instrument.

Rose Lyre is one brand very popular here, but also Gartner Leier (is you google soprano lyre, alto lyre tenor lyre sopranleier, altleier etc, you can find even more about these astonishing things.

German lyre, Japanese lyrist
She has put up a number of videos, unfortunately quite a few of them were recorded on a cell-phone...

Hmm pretty relaxing music! But I think everyone dreaming of playing the harp should just go for it Harps are waay more versatile than lyres, then again...I might be slightly biased
Lil_miz_music