Lemony goodness

I finally uploaded a couple of pictures from last week.

This one is from the hougaku concert I went to on Saturday

These ones are from back on Wednesday when I went to this cheap kaiten sushi place where different sushi plates circle around and you pay by the plate.

Today was very nice. I slept very late to make sure I was fully recovered, then got up and had a leisurely breakfast and indulged in an iced coffee from the combini.
After finally getting around to paying my first health insurance bill, at around 2pm I was all ready to clean up my room when I remembered that I had to write a couple of self-introduction things in Japanese and English before the dorm meeting tonight. Then at 4:30 I had to get moving and buy groceries and make dinner, so I ended up having no time to clean up my room, again. I really really really will do it tomorrow.

Dinner turned out really well, though. I made sautéed fish thing with lemon and parsley butter sauce and a Caesar salad, and they were both full of buttery/olive oily lemony deliciousness.

Mostly better

I think I’m pretty much completely over whatever sickness I had now. It’s such a great relief to actually be able to not work and just rest up and have Sawa pamper me by making me meals when I’m sick, instead of having to push myself through daily routines in misery and struggle to keep up with homework and stuff.

Yesterday I was thinking of bailing out on my invitation to go sightseeing and eating and drinking with the shodo (calligraphy) club, but decided it would be good to get out a little bit and it would be sad to miss the opportunity to go see the grave of Nijima Jo (the founder of Doshisha University, who graduated from Amherst). I ended up passing on the second half of the sightseeing and the eating and drinking part, and I was glad I went to see his grave and to Nanzenji temple.

The shodo people were a little weird. They’re kind of quiet and awkward, and they don’t seem to all know each other that well. I guess it’s because the club is pretty casual and people kind of come and go as they please. Also, it’s the calligraphy club, which is going to attract some solitary and slightly awkward people. But, it was interesting going with them, and it was cool hiking up this mountain a little ways to see Nijima Jo’s grave.

This morning Sawa and I went to this wedding place for us to try on wedding clothes. It was kind of cool, although a little weird. I would put up the trial photos we took, but I want it to be a surprise for the wedding.

I went to chorus again today. Chorus is quite different from the shodo club, in that it’s really a huge time commitment. They have three rehearsals a week, two that are 2.5 hrs and one 3.5 hr one. That wouldn’t be too bad if they actually went that long, but they all actually end up going about an hour longer! And now they’re trying to get me to do some sort of additional thing on top of that, but I’m putting my foot down. I know see what people have said about Japanese groups, that most people usually just get involved in one and it takes up all their time, and they do a really thorough job of it and everyone’s pretty committed. It certainly has some benefits, but it also seems to prevent people from trying lots of things.

I’m passing on going to teach at the elementary school tomorrow, because I don’t want to go straight from being sick to a day with little kids (plus I don’t want to get them sick too), and I want to get the things done I couldn’t do while I was sick these last few days. I’m planning to finally clean my room, which I’ve been putting off for about a month, and I think when it’s finally clean I’ll feel much more in control of my life.

Oh, I also sent out an email today requesting help finding a shamisen to buy/rent/loan that isn’t crazy expensive. I have to try to acquire one before next week, so if anyone reading this has any ideas, I’d love to hear them…

Sick

So, on Thursday I was just saying how great it was that I hadn’t been sick once since I came to Japan, and thinking that it must be that the food is much healthier and that I’ve been less stressed out. But of course, come the next day, I suddenly felt bad in the morning when I went to teach my class at Kyo-tanabe campus, and by the time the day was over I was feeling so bad I had to cancel my plans to go out to dinner and karaoke, and by the time I actually got home I felt miserable. I fell straight asleep and slept for about 16 hours, waking up occasionally to go to the bathroom and eat a delicious porridge that Sawa made to help me feel better.

My class actually went very well, despite my being sick. This week I got them to talk on their own in groups for the first time, and that was a lot less work for me and also seemed to be better for them, so I’m definitely planning to have them do that more. Also, I was very pleasantly surprised to see that most of them actually seemed to have watched the movie I assigned them for homework. It’s not really a very onerous assignment, but still I expected that most wouldn’t do it, so that was nice. Unfortunately, I’m starting to run into trouble with just the logistics of keeping track of the different students who miss class or homeworks for one reason or another, and with handing back homeworks and collecting revisions and stuff. It’s especially hard because we only meet once a week at this far off campus, so all these hand-offs add up to way too long for the class. They’ll hand in homework one week, I’ll circle places they need to fix and give that to them the next week, then they’ll try to correct it the following week and four weeks have gone by by the time I correct their revised homework, and that’s assuming they don’t miss a class or hand in their homework late or something. I’m going to start dropping things off at their campus for them to collect on their own, which should at least cut down the time.

This morning I felt much better after my long sleep, but then I had to go to chorus (since I missed it on Monday and only went to half the week before) and after 4 hours of that I was feeling not so great again. After that, I went to this concert of music on traditional Japanese instruments (some traditional music, some contemporary). My new shamisen teacher was playing (but she was playing the koto, which she’s better at), and she was so awesome! She was the highlight of the show! I’m pretty psyched to have her as a teacher after seeing her play.

After that, I went back home to get ready for the Halloween party they were having next door. Only then did I realize that, contrary to what I had thought, the party didn’t START at 10, it ENDED at 10. This was especially sad because Sawa had been preparing to get her mumy costume all ready and by the time I realized my mistake, it was too late. We went to the party costumeless for a little while, but I was feeling not so good, so we left pretty soon and went home to drink some warm tea and go to bed. Which is what I plan to do now.

First part-time job

Today Sawa and I went to the English conversation lunch as usual. For some reason, only two people came today, instead of the usual 6 or 7. Hopefully, it was just one of those things were everyone randomly misses out together, and it doesn’t mean they all decided to bail out because they hate me or something.

After getting an iced coffee from the combini and drinking it with Sawa in the imperial palace (which looks like it might become a post-English lunch tradition) and going to the bank, I gave my first private English lesson since I’ve been here. There’s this Ph.D. student who wants to improve his conversation skills before taking a research trip to the states. It was pretty sweet, we just sat outside on my balcony and chatted for an hour about art and Japan and life and stuff, and then he gave me ¥3,000 (~$30US). It’s a pretty cushy job.

After that, I just prepared for my class tomorrow and watched a couple of family guy episodes with Sawa. All in all, it was a pretty nice, relaxed day.

Wow. Lots of awesomeness.

Sorry I haven’t updated for a few days. It has been pretty crazily fun filled and awesome.

On Sunday, I spent most of the day doing calligraphy with the calligraphy club.

I finally learned how to do all the different kinds of strokes, which helped make my writing a lot prettier than it ever was the few times we tried it in class. Here’s one thing that I drew. It says “yuuai”, which means friendship.

After everyone was thoroughly tired of doing calligraphy, they busted out a takoyaki (fried octopus balls) (balls of fried octopus, not fried octopus testicles) machine and I got to make takoyaki for the first time.

It was really fun, although it took forever because there were so many of us and so few takoyaki machines. The shodo people were pretty quiet and a little awkard (which isn’t necessarily that surprising, since they are in a club where you sit around and focus on handwriting in excruciating detail), so at times I kind of wished it wouldn’t take so long to make all the takoyaki.

Anyway, after that, I got back to the dorm just in time to go off on a big expedition to Daimonji with about 15 other students living in the surrounding dorms. Daimonji is a really cool mountain that overlooks all of Kyoto and has a big Japanese character carved into its face by a couple of paths, and in the summer they light it on fire for one festival and it’s supposed to be awesome. There was no fire while we were there, but we did have a gorgeous view of the city by night.

was so much fun to go on a late mountain-climbing mission with a bunch of university students I kind of new. It felt just like freshman orientation at Amherst!

The next day was full of festivities, as there were two big festivals happening. The first was called “Jidai matsuri”, where a huge number of people get dressed up in all these cool costumes from different periods of ancient Japan and parade around the city on real horses. There was even an ox-drawn carriage! Sawa took a bunch of awesome photos, but hasn’t uploaded them yet for me to share.

After a quick meal at MOS Burger and a nice cup of coffee and cheesecake at Papa Jon’s, we headed off with the ryosei to another festival, the Kurama Himatsuri (Kurama fire festival). For some reason, this is a really big tourist attraction. A little too big, actually. Basically, the festival involved carrying around lots of things that were on fire to various degrees. I couldn’t believe these young dudes who were wearing almost nothing and carrying these huge, burning stacks of wood on their backs as ashes scattered all over their bare backs. It was really cool and all, and since it’s out in the country with the local residents, it feels more authentic than one in the middle of Kyoto city, but there were so many people there to see it and it was such a small little village it was way too crowded and hard to see, and we had to wait for about 45 minutes to get on a completely packed train for the 45 minutes train back. (Here’s Nikyu amusing himself on the train by pretending to eat the hat of the old woman in front of him)

At both this matsuri and the jidai matsuri, I couldn’t believe how many foreigners there were! I usually get weirded out when I see foreigners in Japan: I kind of feel like I’m supposed to be the only foreigner here. Also, many of them are kind of annoying or weird and creepy, and a lot don’t make any effort to learn Japanese or engage with the culture. But, on the positive side, it makes the Japanese unnecessarily impressed when I can actually speak Japanese and like Japanese food and know a few simple things about their history and culture.

The next day was a Tuesday, which meant I was back to the elementary school for another day with the younguns. I actually overslept a bit and missed the first hour and a half, but it was OK. It was good today, I wasn’t feeling down about the teaching like I had been last week. I think the extra sleep helped. Later on in the day, I actually got to take the alto section of the choir on my own, instead of just sitting around not doing much in the choir, so that was good. It was tough trying to teach little children to sing using Japanese, but it seemed to work out OK.

After that, I rushed straight to the house of this shamisen teacher for my first shamisen lesson. It was actually pretty much the same as the informal one I got from the hougaku club guy a while ago. Basically, she told me that now I have to find a way to get myself a shamisen and start practicing it, then we can really start going. This teacher was one this friend of mine knew and is less expensive than the former geisha I was going to learn with. I’m still thinking I might like to check the other teacher out, since it might be worth more if she’s better or if it feels like a more authentic experience, but at least now I’ve got something going. My first real lessosn will be in two weeks, so I have until then to find a shamisen and decide whether I want to continue with this teacher.

After the shamisen lesson and a delicious karaage dinner Sawa made, I headed back to the dorm for their weekly dorm meeting (which I didn’t realize they were doing weekly until just last week). I sat around for a bit and couldn’t really follow most of what they were talking about, but I did get some of it and was able to help out a little bit. They were discussing preparations for recruiting new students to joint the dorm, and there may be some drama in that area soon if the school tries to prevent them, which they might do. There’s a lot of weirdness between the school and this group of students.

The meeting ended as it always does with a song that captures the week’s events. Last week we had dinner with Ueda-san, who’se really into her chorus, so we sang a typical chorus song that they sing at graduations. This week, the Himatsuri and Daimonji were very fiery places (and maybe somehow we had a premonition about the California fires?), we just made up a song on the spot about fire.

Today was my more relaxed day, although I took advantage of it to catch up with Jennifer Li, a friend from Amherst whose in Kyoto studying abroad living in a Buddhist temple on a really cool-sounding programme. I showed her all around my favourite spots near my dorm, from Eze Bleu, the delicious, cheap bakery, to Nashinoki shrine, where I get my fresh water, to a shady little picnic area in a walking path in the imperial palace where we ate and drank the aforementioned items, to the Kamo river, where we ate plain tofu from this great tofu place with our bare hands (you’re not supposed to do that, I just wanted to), and then to Papa Jon’s for cheesecake, coffee, and a delicious Uji maccha green tea white chocolate latte. This place called Uji just to the south of Kyoto apparently has the best maccha in Japan, so I really wanna go there soon and get some.

After that, I finally got started on grading my students’ homework from last Friday. I was planning to get that done quickly and try to finish planning my class by the end of the evening, but it took me all night just to grade their short essays. 33 students is really a little much. I’ll have to plan my class tomorrow.

Unfortunately, although the whole week has been great, preparing for my class has been hanging over me the whole time, because I don’t want to come to class unprepared like I did the other week. I really am going to try hard from now on to get all the preparation out of the way immediately, so I can frolic and enjoy the rest of the week without having that loom over me.

Sorry for the long silence and huge update. I’ll try to get back on track updating on a daily basis now.

Chorus and steak

Today I slept until almost 1pm, which felt absolutely great. I went to the chorus performance of Ueda-san, the woman who had me and the ryosei over for dinner the other week. I thought it would be pretty crappy, but I felt like I should go so I could maintain my number one ranking in her books. It was actually a nice experience, just seeing an ordinary Japanese concert, with all these old Japanese women singing cute songs. They apparently sing more “old school” Japanse songs, but despite that they all sound very western because they’re all from after the Meiji restoration, when Japan opened up to the west and pretty much changed a lot of their traditions to become Western. Except for the words, the music sounded like it could have been from anywhere, and in fact they sang songs like “Edelweiss” with Japanese lyrics.

After that, I went off to the second meeting of my own chorus. I realized during the middle of the lesson that this was a good opportunity for me to try singing tenor instead of bass, because I’m kind of sick of always singing bass for the last 5 or 6 years, and I think that singing tenor would be better to train my voice to sing higher and learn a slightly different style of singing. I had already sung with the basses during the first practice, but I managed to switch without hurting their feelings too much by sort of implying that their basses were so good and the tenors could use more help. Anyway, singing tenor makes me feel better about singing with this group, and it really does feel good to be singing again and working my voice after not singing seriously for a few months.

I arrived home from chorus to the amazing smell of a delicious home-made steak dinner with home fries that Sawa made. I had no idea she would be such a great cook when I first met her, (nor did she, actually, she only started experimenting during the summer after our second year at Amherst), but it turns out that she’s really amazing. It was so good!!

Later, I finally finally actually did some serious Japanese study in the common room of our dorm with one eye on the TV show that the ryosei were watching. It felt good to finally be studying it seriously, so now that I’ve got some momentum I think I’ll be able to get into a groove with my Japanese studying.

Tomorrow should be a big day: I’m going to an all-day calligraphy event of some kind (a little vague on the details, but it’ll involve me doing calligraphy at least) and then we’re going to go climb up to this cool mountain at night with a bunch of the students of our dorm and the other two dorms next door. Should be fun!

New handshake

My class today went pretty well: definitely much better than last week’s. I started off playing a name game, and it seemed like everyone had fun, and if nothing else it gave me a chance to finally learn all their names. I threw out candy to them when they volunteered to answer questions, and they seemed to respond well to that. They still are very hesitant to speak up in class, though, and seem to have a lot of trouble understanding me, even though they can write pretty well. I’m finding out how hard it is to try to teach a subject just relying on my own ideas and syllabus, without any curriculum or textbooks. I think it’ll be a great experience to help me appreciate the value (and drawbacks) of having those kinds of resources and training when I eventually get them.

After that, I went to a gyoza restaurant with Sawa and our friend William and had a delicious (although a little expensive) meal there.

After that, we headed back to my dorm, where an alum who used to live in the Amherst House with my dormmates was back visitng them, so we hung out and had a couple of drinks and snack food. It was very fun hanging out with them, and good practice for improving my practical Japanese. Before I went to bed, Sawa and I showed the ryosei (dorm mates) me and Kelly’s extremely complex handshake, and then we spontaneously created an awesome new handshake for us. It involves one person twirling underneath the other’s arm like a ballerina, and then bowing at each other and making the sign of the “A” (for “Amherst House”, their old dorm). It’s a friggin awesome handshake, if I do say so myself. Sometime I should get a pic of it.

Katsudon

After a leisurely 11am wake up and free meal courtesy of the staff English conversation club, Sawa and I took advantage of the gorgeous weather, grabbed an iced coffee each from the combini (convenience stores: they’re everywhere and they really are incredibly convenient) and went and sat under a shady tree in the imperial palace grounds. It was so nice, I can’t believe how lucky I am to live here and have the free time to enjoy it.

After that, I spent the rest of my day dividing my time between preparing my class and making dinner, both of which took a long time. I think both were worth it, though. I’m pretty confident that this class will be a lot better than last week’s. For dinner I made katsudon, which is one of my favourite Japanese dishes, with miso soup and some plain tofu too. Normally, I’m not a fan of plain tofu, but this tofu was so good! I did at all my shopping at this local market for the first time, and it was so cool.

The tofu shop there is supposedly one of the best in Kyoto, and I felt very proud to be able to find everything I needed at that market on my own. I have enough trouble doing that when it’s in English! On the way back I biked through the Shokokuji temple and heard the monk chanting and ringing the bell again. It seems like they do that every day around sunset. I stopped and took a picture, since it was so pretty (although it was a little dark).

I’m pleased to say that the katsudon came out great.

(sawa’s pic)

It’s basically deep fried pork cutlets boiled in a sauce full of Japanese flavourings (soy sauce, fish stock, sake) and onions all over rice. I’m so glad I know how to make it now! I want to learn how to make a bunch of my favourite Japanese dishes so I can make them for people when I’m not in Japan too.

Next on my list: sushi.

Class prep

Wednesday is my nice day where I don’t have any obligations, so I got a chance to catch up on some sleep. I talked for a while in the morning with Mike Kohl about our plans to tour Japan with a jazz group this summer. It’s a pretty crazy idea, but it should be awesome, and it’s exactly the kind of thing I wouldn’t be able to do if I didn’t have this fellowship to support me. We’re gonna assemble a group of keen musicians, write/arrange a bunch of songs, and then take Japan by storm, performing as much as possible throughout Japan. If anyone has any suggestions of places to sing at, let me know, because it’s gonna be my job to book all our gigs and do all the logistical stuff here in Japan. It’s a good thing I already got some practice doing that kind of thing last year with the Zumbyes’ Japan trip, but this’ll be even more intense.

Other than talking to Mike and my parents for an hour and a half or so each, I mostly just graded my students’ hilarious original Beauty and the Beast lyrics and tried to plan my next class. It was nice sitting out on our great balcony in the sunlight (although it’s starting to get colder and get darker earlier now). Grading and preparing classes is really hard! It makes me see my former teachers in a whole new light now. For one thing, it’s tough just remembering al the names of the students, and keeping track of who’s coming to class and doing their homework and participating in discussion, let alone being really closely tuned into their learning needs.

I think this class’ll be better than last week’s was. I’m going to use the musical “Rent” to teach them about rhyming and metre, so that was also a good excuse for Sawa and I to watch the movie together. I also had a fun idea for my students: I figured I’ll get them each to choose an English song they like and want to sing, have them work on analyzing it, and then everyone who wants to come can come on an extra-credit class trip to karaoke and we can have fun getting to know each other in an out-of-class setting. I think karaoke is a brilliant brilliant institution. It’s one of the major activities that the Japanese do when they’re going out, along with bowling and just drinking with friends. I’d be really interested to try to see how it affects the musical life of the Japanese. Could be an interesting research project for a masters degree if I do it in ethnomusicology like I’m thinking about…

School and random thoughts

Before I get into today, here as some photos from yesterday I didn’t have the chance to upload:

(me drinking post-sento iced coffee, Japanese-style)

(Slumber party!)

(The craft market)

(Me mixing maccha at the market)

OK. So anyway, I spent today at the elementary school from 8:30am-5pm, after again not getting as much sleep as I’d have liked. I wasn’t exhausted at the end as I was that first day, though. I’m feeling weirdly ambivalent about the work: I really like working with the kids, but it’s a fair amount of time to spend. I also feel awkward helping out other teachers; I much prefer being in charge of my own group to teach, like my university class or coaching my little brother’s team, but here I kind of feel like a permanent guest helping out the other teachers in their classes. It can be fun, and it’s certainly less work than having to prepare my own lessons and do long-term planning, but it doesn’t feel as meaningful. I keep on oscillating between feeling like I want to cut back the amount of time I spend there and thinking it’s totally worth it and great. I don’t know what I’ll end up doing. It is really fun hanging out with the kids, so I think I’ll probably at least stick with it for a few more weeks before I decide.

I’ve also found that it’s really a struggle to interact with people and do things at the level I want to with my limited Japanese, when teaching these classes and in other areas like interacting with the other students and organizing things. I thought I was pretty good before I came, but not being able to communicate fully makes you aware of how complex all our daily interactions are.

That made me think about what I want to get out of my year here, and although I do like all the things I’m doing and want to do more of, like teaching these various classes and singing in the choir and hopefully starting to learn the shamisen soon and such, in the end probably the two most important things I’ll get will be working on my Japanese and just the experience of living in Japan. That experience will happen regardless, and I’ll certainly improve a lot on my Japanese without studying too hard, but I do think that being really conscientious about studying Japanese daily will help me get the most out of the year. There are a lot of foreiginers here who’ve lived here for years but speak very little Japanese, so it’s easier than it seems to just coast along.

After making fried rice for me and Sawa and having a bath and tea and delicious chai panna cotta Sawa made the other day, I arrived back at my dorm to find the ryosei (dorm mates) in the middle of a dorm meeting. Apparently, I’ve missed them for the last two weeks just because I wasn’t aware they were happening. They say I don’t need to worry about coming, and I think most previous fellows didn’t usually attend, but I felt like it’d be a good gesture if I came. We planned a couple of events with the students of the next door dorms, as their big project is to create a good community here as a way to preserve their dorm against the university’s trying to sort of get rid of them. They always finish their meetings by singing a song that relates to that week’s events, which I think is a great tradition.

Oh, one random observation that I had the other day but didn’t put up: Japanese guys don’t do housework. It’s very strange, and I get a little guilty pleasure out of it because people like Sawa’s mum think I’m amazing just for washing the dashes, let alone actually cooking a meal on my own, but it’s very disconcerting. I was going to go early the other day to help cook for the meal, but it was made clear to me that that was just for the girls. And when dinner was over, the girls all started cleaning up, and I tried to help but they really just wouldn’t let me. Sawa said she never really noticed it till she went to university in the states, and then it really kind of bugged her. The expectations about male-female relationships in Japan are much more conservative than in New Zealand or the States, which is kind of sad.

Slumber party!

Yesterday was awesome. After a few hours of being surprisingly productive (studying Japanese, writing a couple letters in Japanese and a big long letter to important people at Amherst about my thoughts about the future of the Amherst-Doshisha Fellowship that I’m getting to live this sweet life thanks to, I headed off to dinner with my dorm mates at the house of the lady who used to cook lunches for them when they were in the old dorm.

She has this really funny system where she explicitly ranks them according to how much she likes them and that determines where they set at the table. This time, I was first on the list! (with the side note that it’s because I’m kakkoii, ie good-looking or cool) It might just be because I was a guest, so we’ll have to see what ranking I get next time we go to dinner.

After that we all went off to a public bath, which are awesome. Oh, man, I totally took a picture of me drinking post-sento iced coffee Japanese style this time in response to Jennie’s request, but I can’t upload it right now! Sorry! Next time.

After that, we went back to the dorm and had a good old-fashioned slumber party, complete with a game of hide-and-seek, for the first time in about 10 or 15 years. It was so much fun to play again, but it was also incredibly dusty and afterward we were all sneezing like crazy for hours. Before we went to sleep, they gave me a cool Japanese t-shirt and Sawa a cool photography book as a late welcome present, which was very sweet.

With only five hours of sleep, we got up early to make a big round of pancakes before everyone had to go to class (thanks for the cookbook, Mum, the recipe worked well just like it did when I made it for you all at home!). It sucked only getting that much sleep, but it was totally worth it for the really fun night and great morning.

After that, a couple of the students who didn’t have early class took me and Sawa to this monthly handmade arts and crafts fair in this temple grounds. It was really cool to see the local creations in such a  cool setting. I especially enjoyed getting some maccha (powdered green tea) and some delicious mochi (pounded rice) and setting at the top of the temple steps looking over the bustling market.

Back in the dorm, I wandered downstairs when I heard someone playing the piano, and ended up finding out about the Doshisha choir which happened to be rehearsing in the evening. So, I went along and now I guess I’m in the choir… I’m a little ambivalent, as they’re doing mainly Western music and it’ll be hard to do after having so much more fun singing with the Zumbyes at Amherst, but it did feel very good to be singing again after a while, and I think the more chances I have to interact with Doshisha students the more interesting experiences and friends I’ll be able to have.

Tomorrow I have to get up at ungodly hour to go teach the little ones at the elementary school, so it’s time to call it a day. I wish I could post these photos right now, because I think there are a lot of good ones, but I’ll try to update this post tomorrow with the photos.

Night.

Sleeeeeep!

I thought I’d start with this photo because I’ve been meaning to take a photo of this pond for the longest time and finally got a good one. Unfortunately, it’s missing the awesome lotus leaves that have been there since I’ve been in Kyoto, because apparently they harvested them on the morning I took this photo! (Lotus roots are really delicious, as my dorm mates who tried Sawa’ lotus root hamburger can attest to)

Anyway, today I finally got to catch up on sleep from the past hectic week. It was really nice to just sleep in. When I finally woke up around 1pm I met up with a friend of one of my dorm mates who’s interviewing people from America about male-female etiquette for his undergraduate thesis. Then I finally set up this printer I bought a week or two ago and have been meaning to set up for ages and studied Japanese. It feels good to finally get going seriously studying Japanese, since I’ve been meaning to but not doing a serious job for the last month. Sawa and I went to a nice okonomiyaki place nearby for dinner and had coffee and cheesecake afterwards to reward ourselves for studying (me Japanese, her for her UN English exam she’s taking).

After dinner and studying I went to a sento with one of my dorm mates. I actually went with them all in June, but this was the first time I’d gone since I arrived in September. It was really nice, and it was good to hang out and chat with him one on one. The Japanese really have a good thing going with their bathing. Sento are public baths where people go, get nice and clean and then soak in various pools, including a crazy one that has an electric current running through it and feels like it really can’t be good for your body, and a really cool outdoor hot pool with all these cool rocks around, and a sauna and good stuff like that. It’s really relaxing to just go in their for a long time with cool people, then hop out and get a nice cool drink and relax. Nikyu showed me the Japanese way to drink my iced coffee after getting out of the hot tub, which is all in one gulp with one hand striking a pose with my other hand on my hip.

Tomorrow should be very cool. We’re going to have a dinner with a bunch of the dorm mates, and then all go to a sento together (although the guys and girls are separated) and then have a good old-fashioned slumber party afterwards! I haven’t had one of those in years, I’m so excited!!!

Whew

This hectic week is finally over and I finally have a chance to update my blog. After the trip to Kyushu with Sawa’s family and the party, Sawa and I spent the next day together celebrating our 4th anniversary. We sort of did that last week, but I had to work at the school that week and stuff, so we kind of celebrated it half last week and half this week. We were going to go to this cool shrine, but the weather was bad so we just hung out and watched a lot of family guy. We had also been planning to go out to a nice restaurant, but since we’d been spoiled so much lately with good food, it seemed like we wouldn’t appreciate it as much, so I made a nice curry and we drank a lot of tea and Sawa made a yummy panna cotta.

The next day I finally got a chance to catch up on some things I’d been meaning to do, like the two weeks’ worth of laundry that had piled up, leaving me with my last pair of underwear and mismatched socks, and finally getting in touch with my good friend Loren in the states who I’d been trying to chat with unsuccessfully for the last month or so. I also fixed my bike tire, which had punctured on my ride to the elementary school the other day. That night the dorm mates had a sudden meeting to discuss the future of the dorm and the Doshisha Fellowship, since Marika, a former fellow is going to talk to people at Amherst about it soon and they wanted to have their voices included, so Sawa and I ended up spending about four and a half hours discussing it with them and helping them to translate and draft a letter to the president. Although I was pretty tired, it kind of felt like being a student again-staying up late with other people trying to revise a paper or something…

The next day I had my usual English conversation club (complete with free lunch, which is always key), then Sawa and I went to a wedding place to investigate having it there. It was really really pretty, with this bad-ass Japanese-style place with a gorgeous garden for the ceremony and a Japanese/modern fusion place for the reception. It was still pretty pricey, but if we can’t work out a cheaper option amongst our contacts at Doshisha this week we might end up going for it.

After that I went to a barbecue with Marika and her friend Mako. Mako lives in this ridiculously awesome place pretty much in the middle of this cool shrine, and we had a delicious feast of barbecued meat and vegetables and homemade noodles and we had a taste-test of two different home-made plum wines that Mako and his friend made. It was really fun, but I had to go back a little early because with all the action of the week I still had not prepared for my class the next day, so I ended up staying up late that night and having to do a mediocre job.

I really don’t like doing a mediocre job of something that I care about, and today the class didn’t go that well because of it, so I’m gonna make sure to be much more on top of my preparations in the future. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t as good as the first class. I noticed when I was grading their homework that they are still really horrible at conjugating verbs (I see, he sees, etc.) so I tried to focus on that for some of this class, but I had a lot of trouble explaining it to them in English or getting them to volunteer the right answers. I think I’ll have to find them some worksheets and have them do them for homework to get them to really learn it.

I also had them present their original lyrics to “Beauty and the Beast”, but didn’t realise how much they struggled with everything, from the concepts of metre and rhyme (which don’t really exist in the same way in Japanese) to basic grammar. Reading through their work was pretty funny though. Some of their stuff was actually quite brilliant, the kind of stuff I would pay great money to have on a hilarious Engrish-style T-shirt. For example: (to the tune of “Beauty and the Beast”…)

“I like playing music.

I can play the guitar

I belong to two bands/complex is my hands.

Sometimes watching star.”

Or:

“I want to eat beef

I want to eat more beef

and even chicken and of course poak

please

I want to drink juice

I want to drink more juice

Both orange juice and apple juice

Fresh and the Delicious

And I want to play

And I want to sleep

But I don’t want to study

as all chidren.”

Word. He really tells it like it is.

After that I showed them my favourite scene from the lion king where Scar tells Simba “I killed Mufasa!” (Kelly knows the one I’m talking about…) and had them try to read it out loud with drama, but they really resist that and do their best to read it in a monotone.

Anyway, the class was OK, but I really feel like I need to make it less of a “teacher up front, class sitting listening” thing and get them more active and engaged and stuff, so I’m going to try to plan some fun activities for next week to shake them up (I’ll start earlier this time). If anyone has suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Lunch today was free, courtesy of the English club at the campus where I’m teaching. Then for dinner I was invited to a restaurant by the head of the English club from yesterday, so I managed to eat for free all day. The whole culture here in Japan seems to be that elders (either much older or just a year or two senior in classes or clubs) tend to treat the younger ones to meals quite frequently, and in return they treat the younger ones later. It’s a nice system, and I love being able to get lots of free, delicious meals.

Oh, I also got my first offer to teach someone private English lessons. 3,000 yen an hour is a pretty sweet pay, and since I don’t have that much work to do I think it’d be good to make some extra money doing a couple of these lessons a week. Maybe then I can afford this former geisha shamisen teacher… (I still haven’t decided on a teacher yet)

So, anyway, that was my past week. Sorry for the lack of photos and excessive length, I’ll be much better about updating it now. Oh, on Monday I finally sat down and made up a schedule for me to study Japanese and work on music and stuff, so if I can stick to that I think I’ll start being a lot more productive than I have been till now. We’ll see about that, though…

The tiredness

Sorry I haven’t written anything for the last couple days. I’ve been so busy I haven’t had any time. There’s been some drama about the fellowship, and I’m trying to work out my espresso/sewing machine debacle, and I barely had time to do a mediocre job preparing for my class tomorrow, so I’m going to have to wait till tomorrow night for a full update, but I just wanted you all to know that I haven’t stopped blogging.

Night.

Onsen

I’m writing this on the Shinkansen back from Kyushu, since we’re having a party at my dorm as soon as I get back to get to know all the students in the two dorms next door. One is a coed dorm for international students and the other is an all-female dorm, with half international students and half Japanese. In addition to just wanting to get to know everyone and have a good time the dorm mates are really hoping that in the long term we can expand the number of Japanese students in our dorm (the Friend Peace House) and make it a central place where the international students and Japanese students can get together, since before the current students were kicked out of the old Amherst House to live here there were less chances for international students to interact with Japanese students.

Actually, I didn’t have the time to finish on the shinkansen, so I’ve now finished the party and it was great fun. The other dorm mates are very nice and we all had a good time. I’m looking forward to hanging out with them all more and I think the more we can make a community out of our three dorms the more fun everyone will have.

Anyway, the trip to Kyushu was great. We met up with Sawa’s parents and went to visit Sawa’s grandmother; a first for me. Although she didn’t say much, she really seemed to appreciate the effort I went to to get to know her and to speak in Japanese, and she smiled a lot, so I think I made a good impression.

After visiting her, we went on to an onsen (hot spring) place and enjoyed a luxurious evening and morning of delicious dining and pampering in natural hot springs baths. Sawa and I even got a full-body massage, complete with scented oils. It was ridiculous. And, when we were going back and forth to the baths, we got to wear these cool yukata (bath robes) that made us look bad-ass (although I look kind of stupid in this photo)

It was very nice, I felt so relaxed after the massage and the delicious meals and the multipe awesome baths. It’s gonna be hard to get the energy to do things now after that luxurious laziness.

Double festival day

I’ll try to make this a lot more concise than yesterday’s, because I have to wake up in four hours to go catch an early plane to Kyushu with Sawa to see her grandmother.

Today I was going to go to the elementary school sports festival early, but I was too tired from not getting enough sleep and staying up late last night so I went back to sleep for a few more hours and arrived almost 5 hours after it started. It was worth it, though…I needed the sleep.

The festival was very cute, and I got to sit in the cool people tent with the principal and vice-principal and Morita-sensei. I could get used to this kind of treatment… I watched most of their various races, and even joined in on a game of pop the balloons tied to other peoples’ feet (emerging unscathed with both balloons intact!). This is me playing.

I had ridden managed to bike the whole 45-odd minutes up there just by looking at a map and remembering it in my mind, only getting lost once, which is quite a feat for my directionally-challenged self. Unfortunately, I don’t know how but something went wrong with my tire, and on the way back it slowly deflated and I spent the last 20 minutes or so biking on a pretty much flat tire. I hope I can fix it, but this is the second time I’ve had an issue with this tire.

As soon as I got back, Sawa and I headed off to meet up with our Amherst classmate William in Otsu for the aptly named Otsu matsuri (Otsu festival). It was really cool, there were all these lit lanterns and cool elaborate floats with festival ensembles sitting on top and playing.

I’d read about and listened to this kind of playing, but this was the first time I’d seen it up close. It was really neat, and a lot more casual, fun and real than I had imagined. I sort of thought of it as a serious kind of stage performance, but it was more like a slightly more subdued version of street drummers back in Cuba St. in Wellington or something like that, with a bunch of hippies banging on drums and playing instruments and chanting things and sharing some alcohol (the ensemble members were passing around a can of Kirin beer). I got to play along a little bit on one of the drums, which was really cool!

That’s pretty much it for today. Tomorrow I meet Sawa’s grandmother on her father’s side for the first time. This is the same grandmother who warned Sawa before she left for university in the states not to fall in love with a white guy, so this may be interesting…

Geisha + teaching english = awesome

Wow have I had an action-packed couple of days: so action-packed, in fact, that I didn’t have time to write last night and I’m only finding the time today because I’m writing this on the train back from Osaka.

As a result this post is extremely long, but if you bear with it you will learn all about my evening with multiple geisha, as well as my first English class.

First, here’s the penne with meat sauce and fresh eggplant we got from the farm last weekend.

And the creme brulee Sawa made…delicious!

So anyway, yesterday my entire day involved being treated to successively more and more ridiculously awesome free meals, culminating with an evening with a level of unadulterated ostentatious luxury that I wouldn’t be surprised if I never experience again.

In the morning, I got up and went to the English conversation club with Doshisha staff as I do every Thursday now. They provide a nice little lunch for me, I chat with them in English, we all have a good time. The week before I felt slightly awkward and was worried that it might remain so the whole year, but this week was very free and friendly, which was nice. As soon as that was over, Sawa and I hopped on our bikes and biked down about half an hour along the Kamogawa river to the famous Yasaka shrine (not to be confused with Yasukuni shrine housing war criminals in Tokyo). Sawa had booked us for a wedding planning consultation at a venue there, which it turned was not only free but also gave us a free lunch at a really nice restaurant, including the best tiramisu I have ever had. It felt very wrong to be getting this for free just for coming to look. However, when I saw how much it cost I didn’t feel so bad, they obviously are dealing with money on a scale that I have trouble comprehending. Not saying it was a rip-off or anything; it was a really lovely venue but you certainly were paying for the quality. So anyway, now we’ve seen what the upper tier is like, we can start looking down for more affordable places.

Feeling pretty pampered, I biked back up to the Amherst Guest House just in time to meet Morita-sensei and Prof. Upton and his wife visiting from Amherst under the faculty exchange programme. We all headed off to this restaurant where the President of Doshisha was hosting a welcome dinner for Prof. Upton and sort of me too, although more Prof. Upton.

Amherst is apparently a big deal there, because they really pulled out all the stops. First thing after we enter the restaurant, we are led through this gorgeous garden into a bad-ass tea house lit by candle-light where a tea ceremony master treated us to a tea ceremony. I practiced sitting on my knees, since I’m going to have to be able to do that if I want to learn shamisen, and was pleased to find I could manage it for the whole 15 or 20 minutes without even being on the brink of collapse.

Then we went up to a room upstairs where the real event began. So not only were us Amherst people and the President, the Vice-President and the Amherst representatives (Morita sensei and his predecessor), but there were not one but two geisha! (Technically, one was a maiko, the other was a geisha. Maiko are the kind most people think about when they think of geisha: very white faces, elaborate hairstyle, under 20. Geisha are older, less ostentatious and more subtle.)

This was the first time I’d ever seen geisha up close, let alone talked to them or been served by them. In case you have mistaken impressions about geisha, let me explain right now that they are not prostitutes, their job is just to entertain people and be the perfect dinner companions: pouring drinks, making conversation, performing. I got to talk with them both in Japanese and was surprised by how normal they sounded. I kind of expected them to be like ghosts floating out from two or three centuries ago, but they sounded a lot like most other Japanese girls around that age. In the middle of dinner they got up and they geiko performed on the shamisen and sang while the maiko danced. This was especially sweet primary source research into shamisen playing for me.

The dinner itself consisted of about 12 or 13 courses (each very small though, Japanese style) and each apparently using some of the most expensive ingredients possible, maybe just for the sake of it. The first dish was sake poured over a matsutake mushroom, which only grow wild under Japanese red pine trees and are apparently about US$50 a mushroom. Matsutake appeared in two other courses, as did kobe beef. I had always wanted to try kobe beef (and be entertained by a geisha, actually), but I knew I’d never be able to pay for it myself, or if I did I’d just feel stupid afterwards for wasting so much money, so I’d been hoping that one day someone would treat me to these things. The Kobe beef was so ridiculously good.

Everything was so ridiculously good. I still can’t believe the whole event. I also feel kind of bad that the Doshisha students’ tuition was going towards us all having such a good time. I think there is quite a rift between the Doshisha administration and the students partly because they seem to have quite a corporate attitude about the whole eduation enterprise, with a corresponding corporate attitude of indulging in excess at the top. However, it certainly is nice to get to see what that kind of life is like, just for a little bit.

When I got back to the dorm, I was ready to crash after a long and blissfully delicious day, but when I got back to my dorm my dorm mates wanted to go to karaoke. I was already pretty tipsy from having every kind of imaginable alcohol: hot sake, cold sake, in-between sake, red wine, white wine, beer, champagne…although spaced out over the entire 4-hour ordeal), and karaoke in Japan is usually as much about drinking as singing, if not more (most places are nomihodai: all-you-can-drink). I knew I’d regret it the next day when I had to get up early and teach my first class, but I also had been bugging the ryosei for weeks to go to karaoke and I couldn’t very well turn them down. Plus, what could make my awesome day better than karaoke?

However, apparently some god had decided I should take it easy, because although we biked all around Kyoto for about an hour looking for karaoke places, they were all closed or too full to take us, so we returned a bit disappointed, but healthier after all the biking, had some delicious ramen so the night wasn’t a waste, then went to sleep.

This morning, after a lovely chat with Mike Kohl about how we’re planning to create a jazz group and arrange a tour of Japan next summer (seriously), I headed off to Doshisha. After having lunch with the faculty English club there and getting all my photocopying and stapling and video prepping done, I was ready for: my first real solo teaching experience ever!

It started off pretty much horribly. The students filed in and I immediately got to feel firsthand the way students take seats as far as possible away from me. That wasn’t too bad, but when I started introducing myself and talking to them about the class, they just started at me blankly and I felt like they were sucking the energy out of me. Whenever I asked them questions they just stared back at me uncomprehendingly, and even though I was somewhat prepared for this I just felt very awkward and didn’t really know what to do.

However, eventually by the time we got to watching Beauty and the Beast and then taking turns reading out the dialogue, I had managed to convince them that participating in class was the single most important thing I cared about and that would affect their grade, and when I started checking off the very few students who volunteered answers and said that volunteering answers will result in better grades, they gradually started to come on board. The next thing I knew the whole class was raising their hands and it was such a great feeling to know I got them to do that!

As they started warming up, I felt a lot more comfortable and relaxed a bit and joked around a little, which they seemed to appreciate. They really understand much more than they pretend to, but they’ve perfected this blank stare technique to avoid having to answer questions. I eventually even got them to sing along to “Beauty and the Beast”, and for homework I’m having them write their own lyrics. It certainly wasn’t perfect, and even though I was prepared for their low level of English, it was still a bit of a shock, but overall I couldn’t believe how well it went from the initial blank stares to the students participating.

I managed to take this picture of the blackboard after I class, which I’m sure I’ll look back fondly when I’ve been teaching for many years. I quite like the look of the blackboard, it looks like the kind of class I want to be teaching.

After that, I ran into this amazingly cool Japanese dude named Kimura who I randomly met in Amherst 2 years ago when he visited. My coincidence I had arranged my first (and I believe only) jazz cocktail party night on the day they arrived, so when I talked to him earlier in the day I invited him, and he came along and brought his shamisen, and we had one of those amazing spontaneous jam sessions in the middle of the party and it was great.

So today, he randomly asked me if I wanted to come to Osaka to see some musicians he knew but had never heard before, and I went and it was great. They were these crazy weird white musicians who’ve spent the last 5 years traveling through Europe and Asia on bicycles with their instruments, playing gigs to survive and get enough money to move further east. They were crazy. Nuff said.

When I got back, there was a party next door with a bunch of the international students, so I stopped in briefly to learn some names, but then I had to write this blog and crash, because TOMORROW I have to go to the elementary school early to check out their sports day, then go to some kind of crazy festival north of here in the evening. Wow, this has been and looks like it’ll continue to be an awesome couple of days.

Shamisen and teaching prep

I’m pretty tired from spending the last few hours planning my class for this Friday, so I might not write too much.

This morning I went to meet with the head of the hogaku (traditional Japanese music) club. It was really cool, I got a chance to try playing the shakuhachi a little again (still couldn’t make any sound) and also to try playing a shamisen for the first time. It was really cool, and unlike the shakuhachi, I could actually make sounds and even play a simple tune before too long. Although I like the sound of the shakuhachi better, I think I’ll end up learning the shamisen because it seems like it’ll be easier to pick up and because you can sing while you play it. (The shamisen is a little bit like a guitar, while the shakuhachi is basically a flute). Also, Morita-sensei put me in touch with a former geisha who is apparently a great shamisen teacher, and it would be pretty bad-ass to learn the shamisen from a former geisha.

There are only really two big worries: one is money. It’ll end up costing about 200,000 yen for weekly lessons for a year, and probably another 100-200,000 to buy or rent a shamisen. I think I can afford it if I budget accordingly, because my fellowship is supposed to pay for my research here and I’ve been budgeting planning to spend about that much total on musical stuff here.

The other problem is the way you sit. To learn shamisen, you have to sit on your knees Japanese-style for about an hour. I tried it today and pretty much gave up after 15 minutes. I think I might be able to train myself up, but I’m not positive. It’s really bloody hard. Any way, we’ll see about that.

Other than that and making dinner, I just planned my class. I’m using the scene in Beauty and the Beast when they dance in the ballroom and then the Beast decides to free Belle. I’ve been very worried about doing this, but now that I went and watched it I got all excited and I’m feeling pretty confident about my first lesson. However, I don’t really know how they’ll react, so that’ll be interesting. I’m savin all the rest of my planning for after I’ve done this first class and gauged how the students are.

Aah, I’m tired. Tomorrow I’m going to have dinner with the president of Doshisha University, so that should be pretty cool. Night!

Anniversary

Today I went back to the elementary school to face another day of insanely energetic children. With a full 8 hours of sleep and not having to start until 10:40 (as opposed to 8:30am last week), I was able to make it through the day much less exhausted than I was last week. It was very fun again, although I’m slightly worried about how I can keep this up for the whole year. Last week was fine because I was like a guest and had to introduce myself to the kids and things, but this week I was no longer a guest, but didn’t know many fun things to teach the kids and kind of felt like I’d never have the spontaneity or energy to be able to teach kids full time. Also, there are always several teachers at once and I’m never sure whether I should do something or whether that would be stepping on the toes of the other teachers. It’s also a little intimidating trying to teach in front of other teachers, I always feel a little like I’m being judged. Teaching little kids seems to be much more about personality and creative ways of teaching than actual knowledge of any particular subject. I guess maybe it’s actually the same with older people too.. I guess I’ll find out very soon because I have to start teaching my university class on Friday! I think it’ll be very interesting having to teach these very different age groups. Tomorrow I’m planning to spend the whole day planning out my first university class to get off to a good start.

The other big news from today is that it was me and Sawa’s 4th anniversary! We actually decided to wait until next week to do anything special, since I had to teach all day today and I’m kind of busy trying to prepare for my class this week. However, I did get the kids at the elementary school to write her cards and leave a “Happy Anniversary” message on her cellphone. When I got back, Sawa had made a delicious rice casserole dinner with the leftover meat sauce, and, even better she had made crème brulee for the first time ever, caramelizing the sugar by heating up a spoon on the stove. Again, sorry I can’t put up any pictures now! We also had a nice time just watching a Dane Cook comedy video (our favourite comedian) and a family guy episode.

I was feeling a little intimidated again today thinking of the fact that I’m really going to be living here for a whole year. I’ve been missing Amherst, partly the excitement and interest of my classes and activities and partly by how great it is to have cool people all around that I’ve gotten to know well over the last couple of years and am comfortable with. One thing that’s especially tough for me here is the fact that I just can’t communicate with people in Japan at anywhere near the kind of level that I am used to being able to, and there’s no hope of that happening any time soon. However, Sawa and I decided we’re going to set up a study schedule together this weekend (Japanese for me, poltics/current events for her to pass some United Nations exam she’s taking soon), and we’re going to try talking only in Japanese as much as possible.

Alright, that’s it for today. Sorry it wasn’t grand and exciting…

Letters

I can describe today in pretty much one word: letters. There isn’t really anything special behind this, it’s not a clever device to introduce an important topic. I just woke up, had some tasty bread from the bakery down the road, then wrote a few letters to some friends and family, including thank-you notes to Sawa’s parents and grandparents for being so nice to me when I was in Yokohama last weekend. I also delivered one of these letters, along with CDs of Sawa’s and my theses, to this professor I’d told about them and meant to deliver about a week ago. In between, I managed to screw up I believe 5 appointments, one of with the head of the traditional Japanese club (because I misread his Japanese note) and the other to chat online with my mum because I completely forgot till I got back from delivering the letter (I’m really sorry Mum! Could we chat on Wednesday instead?) The other three were also long distance chatting appointments with friends that I had been meaning to call in the morning. I was trying to coordinate 4 different conversations with people in 4 different time zones (which were all different from my own), and there’s also the issue that New Zealand just changed from daylight savings time, which I believe is earlier than the states, but Japan doesn’t have daylight savings time at all… you can see how it’s easy to mess these things up.

Sawa made this amazing pasta with meat sauce and fresh eggplants from the farm we visited with the elementary school kids on Saturday. I thought I didn’t like eggplants, but with these delicious fresh ones I’ve been converted. (Can’t put up photos right now, sorry!)

I’m going to try to go to sleep very soon, because tomorrow I’m going to the elementary school again and I’m not planning to make the mistake I made last week of going to play with crazy little kids all day without a full night’s sleep. Night!