16/7:
On Wednesday I had my final Noh lesson ever. Actually, I didn’t have a lesson, I just explained to my teacher that I was going away and at the end of my Fellowship and had to stop, and gave her a bottle of NZ wine as a thank-you present. Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to understand what I meant so it took a long time till I finally made it clear. I felt kind of bad about springing it on her at short notice, but I think it would have been just as awkward no matter when I did it. I’m very glad I learned a bit about Noh, but I do feel at this point I could do other things that will be more beneficial to my learning.
After that, I went to do 3 hours of helping out at the shop whose float I would be pulling the next day. As cool as it was to pull the float in the parade, I was ever so slightly miffed when I learned that many Japanese students actually get paid to do it, while I not only did it for free but also did those 3 hours of selling entry tickets for free as well. It was certainly worth it for me, but of course it’s always nice to get money.
Here’s a photo from when this group of monks came by and did some kind of prayers for the shop.
During that job I got to speak in polite Japanese as I’ve been hoping to do in whatever job I eventually get after the Fellowship. It waas fun, but saying the same phrases over and over did get a little tiresome even after just 3 hours, so it would be nice to get a job where I actually have to say many different things in Japanese, not just the same things over and over.
After grabbing a quick meal at Bimota for the first time in over a week (!), Sawa and I went to a saxophone concert by Yasuaki Shimizu and his Saxophonettes, where we were meeting Sawa’s former dentist and family friend. It was a pretty random concert that I never would have gone to on my own, but I must say it was really cool. It was fairly avante-garde and there were lots of very strange progressive musical things going on, many of which I didn’t enjoy that much. However, some of the things he tried were actually really cool, and even the things that I didn’t like so much still had their own kind of charm, which is a hell of a lot more than you can say for most avante-garde art.
After that I quickly changed into my jinbei, grabbed my shamisen and hopped on my bike to meet my brother, Oli and the Full House members who had just finished strolling through the Gion Festival and had made their way to the Kamogawa river to hang out and let off fireworks. While there, we took some cool photos, let off some fireworks, had some beers, and then ran into Kimura-san and his crew of crazy hippie drummer/dancers who were busting out their styles in front of a big crowd down by the river.
I had hoped to catch them before they left, which was one reason I brought my shamisen. Unfortunately, it turned out that the delicate sound of the shamisen was completely drowned out by the pounding of the djambe, but I still played along anyway, and when Kimura-san traded me his sanshin for a few minutes I was able to be heard a little bit.
17/7:
After getting back at around 2:30am, I had to get up at 7am the next morning to go pull a 10-tonne cart around the city in the beating sun all day. It was pretty sweet, although not exactly like I had been imagining it.
Here’s me and my crew of fellow float-pullers:
I had to write a short article about my impressions, so in lieu of repeating myself in my blog I’ll jus reproduce that here:
“I have two words of advice for any one planning to participate in the Gion Matsuri: wear sunscreen. Especially on your feet. Also, if at all possible, avoid having said feet be large enough to cause your entire heel to extend beyond the bottom of the traditional sandals and onto the burning hot pavement as you walk around the city for 6 hours.
Apart from those minor inconveniences, though, the Gion Matsuri was an amazing experience, although not quite in the way I had expected. From reading the descriptions of past participants on Doshisha’s web site and allowing my over-excited imagination to run away with itself, I had this image in my mind of being enveloped in a cocoon of camaraderie with the other 40 pullers of the Minami Kannon Yama as we ran along tugging mightily at our float, collapsing at the end in an exhausted but satisfied pool of sweat and brotherhood. It was true that there were times when the pulling was a bit of a strain, and it was cool getting to meet some of the other exchange students and Japanese locals pulling the float along, but to be honest the most exhausting thing was just being out walking in the beating sun for such a long time with a lot of standing around waiting in between bouts of pulling, and after a few hours I had had my fill of small talk.
Many of the past accounts also mentioned how they felt that the experience allowed them to feel their connection with the Kyoto of years gone by, but to me the most important part of the Gion Matsuri seems to lie not in preserving the past but in strengthening the present. The ridiculous ritual of pulling giant unwieldy floats in a huge circle through the city seems to have very little, if any, of whatever religious meaning it once had; it’s just an excuse to bring the community out into the streets and for them to bond together (although I wouldn’t be surprised if that community-building aspect of it was the real driving force even back in 869 when it first began). To be able to experience that from within, to hear the shouts of school children as they cheered us on from their classroom window or see the blissful, toothless smile of an old woman as she and her family cheered us down the home stretch from the second floor of their traditional machiya house, was a unique and powerful experience that I will never forget. Not only did I get to see the Kyoto community grow closer to one another, but by helping in this ancient but vibrant ritual, I felt welcomed into that community as one of their own. 俺は京都人や！”
(Here’s a photo of my foot immediately after the festival ended and I unwrapped the tape that had been protecting my foot from the sandals, and also the sun, providing a nice before and after contrasting effect for my ski colour)
Exhausted and sunburnt after the festival, I just wanted to lie down, but Kel and I had to pound out a coupel of batches of our famous chocolate-chip cookies – some for him to take to his final classes and host family in Wakayama, and some for me to take to my final class. (And or course, some to eat ourselves and share with the dorm people). Incidentally, there’s no overn in the dorm, so we had to cook them in Sawa’s microwave oven one very small batch at a time. However, I perfected the technique of making tiny tiny cookies to get the maximum number of cookies out of each batch.
Kelly and Mum had both been in town for the festival, but my Mum had to go back pretty soon after the festival to get ready for her research trip to Kyushu, and after baking a couple of batches Kel had to catch the train back to Wakayama. Then, after a delicious dinner with Sawa and Oli at Katsu Katsu Ton Ton, eating a batch of fresh cookies and getting a DVD of Zumbyes videos ready to show my final class, I went to sleep.
18/7:
Today was my last class, and my last day at the Kyo-tanabe campus in general, unless I come visit one of Chris’s classes sometime. It was kind of sad, and also just kind of unreal thinking that my entire year as the Fellow was essentially coming to an end. Here’s the final photo I took with Omata-san and Mizuno-san from the Kyo-tanabe English club:
In class, I had them all present the papers they wrote and I corrected/commented on. Theoretically, they corrected/rewrote them, then practicd presenting them until they had the pronunciation good and the speech from memory. In practice, only a few of them had it from memory, and for those few there pronunciation was if anything worse than the others. In retrospect, I wish I had made more of a point of them practicing their pronunciation and not worried about the memory thing, but oh well.
I had underestimated how long their speeches would take, so all we had time for in the class was to go through each one (I had to cut them off at 2.5 minutes too), and I just snuck in a brief clip of the Zumbyes singing “Thriller” at the very end. I wish I had maybe had a little more decompression time at the end, but all in all I was happy with this class as a whole. I still have to grade their papers and give them their final exams, but I feel like I conveyed the important things I wanted to, like having them participate in class, backing up abstract points with examples, and writing and thinking meaningful, interesting things instead of just bullshitting.
