Trip to Wakayama

(Note: written on June 25th)

I just got back from an overnight trip to Wakayama to see my brother and meet his host family, and going from there directly to my Noh lesson at 11am this morning and I’ve started writing this on the bus back.

The last few days have been full of good food, traveling, fun meeting people, and sickness.

Some time last Thursday or so I started getting a cold for the first time in Japan (not including the two times I got food poisoning or something). On the weekend we went to Kyushu and Kobe to see Sawa’s grandma and other relatives, which was great and full of delicious food, including this sweet Kobe beef! Shibe was so happy!

I thought it was getting better, but then on Sunday morning for some reason my right cheek hurt, and rather than getting better it hurt more throughout the day and in the evening I started getting a fever. (The day was great though, we met the last of Sawa’s relative that I hadn’t yet met and had a delicious kaiseki meal).

Unfortunately, although the next day was my birthday, I woke up still feeling horrible. Fortunately, since we knew we’d be busy around my birthday we had planned a quiet relaxing day, which worked well with the sickness. Sawa also started feeling sick, but that didn’t stop her from pampering me and having a nice birthday drinking coffee,

watching the DVD of the spring Zumbyes concert, listening to some new standup comedy, talking to my parents and brother and having a nice bath. It did stop her from making a special birthday dinner like she’d planned, but it worked out well because Ranbo had wanted to make us dinner anyway and made some great Japanese fusion-y pasta.

Also, by the end of the day my fever had come down, although even now my cheek still hurts and I feel a bit sick.

On Tuesday I went to Wakayama to see my brother Kelly. We met up at his host brother’s athletics festival in Osaka, which was interesting to watch. We even got to participate in this one game where we throw little balls in the hoops (like old-school basketball).

His host brother is super-fast, and also, it turns out, super strong. He’s a tiny little 15-year-old Japanese kid, but he destroyed me and Kelly in arm-wrestling. It was so embarrassing.

After the festival, we went to a nice onsen to relax (they didn’t have the kind of iced coffee I wanted to drink afterward!) and then we had an amazing birthday celebration dinner at his host family’s house, complete with some nice presents from Kelly (including his famous chocolate chip cookies). It was all great fun.

(I keep updating these late and then having to catch up the next one too. Unfortunately, now I need to sleep, but hopefully I might be able to catch up tomorrow on the commute to work. Unfortunately, after that I’ll fall behind again for a couple of days because I’m going to basketball camp!)

Dean goes bye-bye

(Note: written on Saturday, June 22nd)

I guess my apologizing for being late updating the blog is getting a little repetitive. To atone for this, I present the large group family photo from the wedding.

With Dean here last week I spent the time doing things with him and just barely getting time to prepare for my classes and practice shamisen/koto once or twice, but didn’t have time to update the blog.

Suddenly there’s been an onslaught of visiting friends: Dean was here for the week, Nina, my friend Avi’s sister, came for an evening the night before Dean left, then the evening Dean left my old friend Yukie from Tokyo and her husband visited. Now I’m on a train with Sawa’s family coming back from seeing Sawa’s grandmother in Kyushu (she seems to be warming to me!) and tomorrow we’re seeing some final relatives I haven’t yet met in Kobe. Then Monday’s my birthday, Tuesday I go to Wakayama to visit my brother, on Wednesday Sawa’s friend Jennie’s coming to hang out for a week, Friday my friend who just got married in Saitama a month or so ago’s coming for the evening, then I’m going on a camp with the basketball club on Saturday and Sunday! Whew. I should enjoy this chance while I have it, because all the entertaining and visiting and traveling is practically like a full-time job and I’m sure I couldn’t sustain it if I were working a real job!

The rest of the time with Dean we did some touristy things in Kyoto a little, like going to see the Katsura Imperial Villa, Gion, Chionin, biking down the Kamo river, etc.

However, he was more interested in meeting people and speaking in Japanese than generic sightseeing, which I approve of, so I tried to organize a bunch of activities to get him a chance to interact with the students who live nearby. As I said last time, we had movie night and firefly viewing last Thursday, then went to my class and out to a club on Friday. On Sunday morning, Dean came to my first utai performance, and seemd to enjoy seeing it and then the two of us singing along with the chorus in super-bassy voices. However, after the first hour or two he bailed out, which was good, because it went on for over 5 hours! It got pretty boring.

On Monday night we climbed Mt. Daimonji,

Tuesday night we went to karaoke, where Dean sang ridiculously intense Korean songs and we busted out some of our Zumbyes dance moves,

Then on Wednesday we went with Hayao’s seminar classmates on tours of the nearby beer and Suntory whiskey factories.

The train ends up costing about ¥1000 round trip, but in addition to the educational value of seeing the production system, you get lots of high quality alcohol and snacks for free. Sweet deal.

That night, we had another movie night, where we also made takoyaki. The other events were a bit of a struggle to get people to participate (although in the end we managed to get at least two others to come each time), but for movie night there were more than 10 people all hanging out and having a good time. Unfortunately, Dean was being murdered by the mosquitoes, so he had to bail out halfway through. It’s now the middle of the rainy season and definitely into summer mode, including being humid and having lots of evil mosquitoes and all kinds of insects everywhere, including in the dorm. Somehow, though, despite being the rainy season it barely rained once the whole week Dean was here!

Actually, Dean went on the beer factory tour without me in the morning, because I had an appointment to call Professor Steven Brown in Canada about the possibility of doing research with him. The more I find out the cooler it sounds and the less likely it seems that I’ll be able to find anything else very related to the research I want to do. Fortunately, it turns out even if I wanted to do a Ph.D. I would have to start with a two-year Masters, so if I try it and it doesn’t work out quite as well as I’d like I’d be able to leave after two years with a Masters in Psychology. The drawbacks are that it’s in Canada and that I would have to start next September and couldn’t delay until Sep 2010.

All this thinking about graduate school made me realize I still need to do a lot more research about the possibilities and the way the system works, and if I do want to apply for 2009 I’ll have to start taking GREs and getting letters of recommendation pretty soon. Well, good thing I have all this time on my hands.

That’s been mostly all I’ve been doing. I haven’t had a chance to practice any utai since the performance on Sunday, and only fit in a little koto and shamisen practice. Yesterday I had my only shamisen/koto lesson for June, and my teacher gave me a new long piece for both instruments. Now I have about a month and a half to learn them wel enough to perform them at the recital on August 17th, which I think fingers crossed I’ll now have the time to do.

Oh, that performance might cost quite a lot for me to perform in, which reminds me that I looked at my budget a day or two after Dean arrived and realized I’ve been overspending a bit, particularly in the “research/teaching” category.

I think all the little things on top of my lessons added up, like buying sheet music, accessories, having to buy those tickets I couldn’t sell, plus various basketball/choir fees and parties and buying chocolates and renting movies for my class. I technically have plenty of money to keep going, but I had planned to save 10% of the Fellowship and want to try to stick with that, so I think I might try to start picking up some part time jobs or something. Not to mention the fact that I’ll need to think about how I’m going to earn money after the Fellowship officially finishes…

Dean in Kyoto

Hmm, I didn’t really have much excuse for not updating the last few days, at least until Dean came on Thursday. However, I was kind of in one of those moods where, because I have so much time, I feel even less like doing the few things I was supposed to do. I did study my Japanese and practice, but it was a huge effort to motivate myself to do them.

When Dean came I got motivated again, but we were busy for the whole time. On Thursday I had the English club before he came (all of a sudden 4 new people appeared!) and then I had my English conversation hour with Tadaya for the first time in about 5 months! After that I taught my English class at Demachiya (the old Kyoto house), where we ended up spending most of the time playing hangman.

After that I went to pick up Dean and took him to Bimota, and then it was time for the movie night that he mentioned, followed by seeing fireflys and going to a sento (although Dean passed because he was too tired). Here’s the group of us who went to Shimogamo shrine to see fireflys (there actually weren’t many).

On Friday the class went OK. We decided to teach them to play this Zumbyes game, but didn’t realize that it would take way too long with 30 people and that without the Zumbyes dynamic it didn’t quite work. It was still pretty fun, but it got a little too drawn-out.

Oh, and this Engrish was just too ridiculous not to capture on film:

That night we decided to go to a club, for the first time since I’ve been here as the fellow, and only the second time since I’ve been in Japan, after we went in Roppongi with the Zumbyes. This girl Emu from Richards House invited a friend who knew the Kyoto club scene and took us to “Sam & Dave”, which apparently was unusual in Japan in that everyone was actually dancing. Apparently, usually if anyone is dancing, it’s only foreigners (who are disproportionally represented in clubs) and the Japanese just kind of watch, but everyone was into it there. It was a lot of fun.

Since we were out until 3am, me and Dean just slept late, had some good food from my favourite local places – Eze Bleu, korokke from the tofu place, and mamemochi from Futaba. We also got some bento for dinner from this new place called “Genkiya” that sells bento for only ¥250! It was surprisingly good. I’m still trying to figure out what must be wrong with it, because I can’t see how it can be so cheap…

And now, I’m just about to head off to the train station to meet Sawa, who’se finally returning to Kyoto for at least a while. Yay!!!

Mosquito Bites

Hi everyone, this is Dean Chung ‘10 from Amherst College. I’m taking a week to visit Kyoto, and Pat was generous enough to let me stay over at his dorm. and now he asks me to write a guest blog, so here i begin.

I arrived at kansai airport at 3 p.m and got to kyoto around 5 p.m. by this train called haruka(cute). I studied Japanese really hard, so much that i had to skip over 2 years worth of classes this year, but I never got to make use of that Japanese skill until now. It was really strange, because I was going through the same process that I went through the year before with the Zumbyes, except this time I could figure out what the P.A. system said in the train and the station. Feeling somewhat self-fulfilled, I called Pat when I got to the Kyoto station and arranged to meet him at Imadegawa station.

I ran into hug him when I saw him, saying Pat, oh my god, it’s been… a week! It felt strange because we’ve seen each other a week or so before in amherst during reunion, but seeing him in Japan again made it seem everything a somewhat distant memory. But still, we never really got to do anything together in Amherst- so it was good that we could just talk to each other for a prolonged period of time. He brought me to this local restaurant, the name escapes my mind, and the food was great. I love getting quality food at cheap price, which is why i enjoy being in japan and korea so much. I also loved that distinctly local feel, with the chef man being friendly and talking to the customers.

This is more so turning into one of those ‘everything that i did today’ kind of articles, sort of like chris’s BMJ, but much less interesting since it would make an Asian Man in Japan. What’s so special about that? So cutting to the chase, I was introduced to a lot of Doshisha students living in adjacent dorms(and watched a korean movie that i happened to have watched a couple times already and enjoyed it still). This was great, because I got to speak in conversational Japanese! that never happens with anyone else, since while learning Japanese you’re supposed to respect your teacher and your classmates to an extent. It took a little bit of getting used to, though. I’m really bad with names. I’ve been introduced to at least 10 people, I think, but only names i remember are emu-san and rambo-san. It might get awkward later on if I can’t recall their names(haha). But I think I left a good impression on most of them. None of the KY stuff that Pat taught me, which I found very amusing.

I spent a whole day with Pat today, accompanying him to classes and eating together. Of course, I’m thinking about applying to the the same fellowship that he has now, so it was very relevant. The Japanese students seem like a challenge, especially since they’re not very talkative, and they don’t seem to care about grades much as long as they pass. Coming from a competitive amherst culture, it was rather strange to observe how just a general level of analytical thinking sunk pretty low. Granted, it was a foreign language class, but nobody really made a in-depth comment. They probably could have done that in Japanese, but it might have been nice if they actually tried in English, or let alone compose a full sentence voluntarily once in a while. At any rate, it was nice to talk to Pat for a long commute between subways and dining places. Zumbyes, Japan, and culutral differences. Good times.

On a final note, mosquitos are killing me. They bit my armpit and I can’t see it, but Pat told me it is out of control. Grr. So that sums up my first couple days in Japan so far, on Pat’s blog as an honorary visiting writer. Maybe I’ll write up one more of these as a departing note before I go back to Korea. Pat told me that he might look into an option of visiting ME in Korea for a few days which excites me as well. Oh, and did I mention that Japanese women are beautiful? And Pat married one. good choice.

Battling jet-lag

Once again, sorry for not consistently updating. I keep meaning to, then being overcome by jetlag and crashing out.

After arriving last Thursday night and going straight to sleep, I woke up the next morning and went to teach my class. Here I gave them their midterm grades, and since they’ve been pretty disappointing as far as participation, I gave 22/34 of them Fs, handing out a copy of the sheet I gave in the very first class where I said participation was essentially the only important thing and that they would fail no matter how good they were if they didn’t participate. I was worried they would take it harshly, but I think by know they understand I’m not a hard-ass, and so even though I forgot to bring candy to throw out for answering questions, this time when I asked for volunteers they were climbing over each other trying to get me to pick them. I guess it shows that grades are a much better incentive than little pieces of chocolate. Hopefully this new-found enthusiasm will continue throughout the class and not just be a one-off thing.

On my way back home, someone called out to me and waved me to come from the little hang-out area on the Kamogawa as I was crossing it on the bridge. I couldn’t see her face, but I thought it was a friend from Richards House. After I came all the way out, however, it turned out it was some crazy random girl I’d never met, but she and the two guys there were very friendly and offered me a beer and some snacks, and I ended up hanging out with them and some of their friends who arrived later for a few hours. At one point we went to look at fireflies a little further up the river.

For the next few days I did a lot of catching up on sleep and trying to get myself into the Japanese time zone, which is almost 180 degrees out of sync with Amherst. I got back into my routine of studying Japanese for an hour and practicing noh, shamisen and koto for an hour a day. On Saturday night this girl Michiko Theurer (Amherst ‘11) who was visiting Japan and her old baby-sitter (?) treated me to a dinner. I had planned to take them to Nanohana, which is so awesome, and when I called they said there was plenty of room, but 45 minutes later or so when we arrived it was completely full, as was another restaurant I tried to take them to. Unfortunately, one thing about living a life of luxury like I do is that I lose track of which days are week-days and which aren’t, so the idea that I might need a reservation on a Saturday night in a country with one of the highest population densities in the world didn’t cross my mind. Oh, and I also played a bunch of basketball.

I also spent many hours reading Alan Lomax’s “Folk Song Style and Culture”, which I was recommended by several different sources, including a strong recommendation by the guy I’m thinking about doing graduate research with (he called it “the bible”). It was really exciting in the way it proposed a quantitative, cross-cultural study of music like I’d been thinking about, but extremely frustrating in the way it was poorly organized and treated the data in ways that ranged from awkward to scientifically unforgivable. But it was exciting to see a prototype for the kind of research that I want to do, and that it has so many ways it could be improved but no one seems to have tried for the last 40 years.

It’s a little lonely without Sawa here, but it’s great to think that she’ll be back in Kyoto for good in less than a week. It’ll be quite strange, because since about Christmas one or the other or both of us have been in and out of Kyoto (China, Yokohama, Amherst, Hokkaido, Fukuoka, Sawa’s crazy job all over Japan) and when we were in Kyoto there was wedding planning craziness, so our cozy little Kyoto life of sharing cooking and doing our daily activities that we had from September-December hasn’t happened for almost 6 months! It’ll be nice to go back to that again, now as a married couple!

One thing I thought of today that I realized is one of the few things I think I might be missing out on in my time here: I never ended up getting involved in a traditional Japanese music group. I did sing with the choir, but that was very Western, and my koto, shamisen and Noh stuff is all individual. I thought about trying to get involved with some kind of group at the beginning of this semester, but knew it would never happen because of the impending wedding, and the semester before that I was too knew to Kyoto to have any idea of what was going on. Depending on how things pan out, I might try to see if I can join a group later this semester, or next semester even though I won’t be the official Fellow any more.

Back to Japan

(Note: written on June 4th)

I’m writing this in mid-air on my way back to Japan. Although the trip to the states was short, it was incredibly fun and adventure-packed and definitely worth the hassle and expense. It ended up being very hectic, as it spanned Amherst’s graduation, reunion and our US wedding celebration, there were all these different groups of family, professors, our old underclassman friends and old friends who’d already graduated, and we wanted to make the most out of our time with all of them. However, it was definitely best to be able to see them all at once, although it would’ve been nice to have a little more time to spend with everybody.

Graduation was great, as always, although Tony Marx’s speech was unusually boring and I got pretty sunburnt while he droned on. Everyone always gives him a hard time about his speeches, but I usually actually like them. Not this time, though.

After graduation, I threw lots of Frisbees around on campus and then headed off with John Babbott ’07 and a bunch of current Zumbyes to the river, to relieve our olds Zumbyes Commencement/Reunion days of heading off to swim and jump from high places into bodies of water and throwing frisbees whenever possible.

Later on in the week, I also went to Puffer’s Pond with Chris Gillyard, his girlfriend Ann, and Dave Wadden. I had hoped to do more, and Sawa had wanted to come too, but I guess we’ll have to save that for the next reunion – whenever that will be. Here’s Chris jumping off the rock.

Throughout the rest of the week leading up to Reunions and our wedding party on Saturday, I spent most of the time catching up with various friends and professors, hanging out with my aunt and uncle and cousins, and getting preparations ready for the wedding party.

I had a couple of long and helpful conversations with some old music professors I really liked and respect their opinions, talking about my ideas for graduate research.

Lately I’ve been more and more excited about potential research ideas, and never lose a chance to explain my ideas in great detail to whoever will listen. It must be really annoying, but it’s such a great feeling to feel so passionate about a particular line of research after worrying for so long I’d never mind one thing I was really passionate about doing, although I liked many different things. I love how this potential research project studying music and migration of Austronesian peoples unifies my interests in music, science, language, geography and anthropology and am feeling more and more like I want to try to get involved.

In this vein, there was an incredible coincidence. I was talking with Sawa’s good friend Laura, when it turned out that she was one of a handful of people in the world who I had been wishing I could get in touch with, but half given up on. You see, I still am really excited about my idea about creating this new audio notation system, but realized that no one will care much about it as a theoretical idea until I actually get the program created and apply it to something. I have no idea about programming myself, and thought it would be really hard to find and convince someone with knowledge of the systems to be interested. However, it turns out that Laura is one of 4 programmers for this programme called Raven that I had found independently through the web and seems to be the closest existing thing to my system. I talked to her about the things I want to tweak with it, and she suggested she might be bale to do them with a couple of months of work! What a small world. We’ll still have to see if it really happens, but it seems very feasible now with this inside connection.

The wedding celebration party went really well.

It was nice to have it much more laid-back than the real wedding, talk a lot, but still have a little formality. It was really great having the Zumbyes sing, too, and John and Andrew who were the other two seniors in my year both made it back and we all joined in on one of the Zumbyes songs and it was so nostalgic.

I felt the same great, nostalgic and wonderful feeling later that night at their reunion show and then partying with all those guys.

I was also really glad my family could make the show, especially my dad, who had never seen a live show. He really enjoyed it a lot and it meant a lot to me for him to see and appreciate something that had been such a huge part of my life.

That weekend when my family all arrived, I ended up dividing a lot of the time hanging out with family during the day and then partying with friends at night while the family slept. Hence, I’m pretty sleepy now. At one point while my family was hanging out my cousin Ross demonstrated his new ninja tricks on Kelly, after Kelly challenged him to battle with a traditional Maori haka.

The night before the three of us all partied on campus, and it was fun showing them around and introducing them to my friends. Unfortunately, we all forgot to take our cameras. This is the only photo I have, which is actually from the night before when it was just Kelly and I.

For my last day in the States, Sawa and I went into NYC and saw Avenue Q. I had actually seen it once before, courtesy of Amherst College, but Sawa hadn’t and she’d really wanted to see it, so we went together. I was surprised by how much I’d forgotten and how incredibly hilarious it still was. The cast was really great, both the acting and singing. It was a little scary because it’s about recent liberal arts graduates having trouble finding their way and adjusting to post-college life and missing it, so at times it was eerily familiar.

Saying goodbye to all the friends and family again was sad, but not nearly as sad as when I graduated. This time,seeing everyone again was kind of like an unexpected treat, rather than the norm, and the joy of that outweighed the sadness of having to say goodbye again.