Sunday, 6/16/02
Greetings once again! More big changes this week: Cary went home and the rainy season began, almost simultaneously. The rainy season started with an offshore typhoon, that blew everyone around quite a lot but didn’t throw the power out or dump buckets of rain like I thought it might. Well, a few buckets came down. As I leaned into the wind coming out of the office building where I work, I noticed the usual group of students that practices their hip-hop moves outside one of the buildings getting blown all over the place. There’s so much aerial work in hip-hop that the lift from the wind was pretty significant! It was hilarious – the wind was actually knocking them into each other, and they were laughing out loud. We have had mostly clear but incredibly humid days, too. We all walk around with a light sheen of sweat on our faces. Putting on pantyhose in this heat and humidity is not for the faint of heart. The prefectural powers that be decided some time ago that no public buildings should have air conditioning until June 15, so we’ve all been waiting with bated breath for cool air. At last it’s on and we’re enjoying it very much. It reminded me of living in New York City, though, where our landlord was required by law to provide heat until June 1st.

We had a robbery at the apartment building where I stay; the first ever. Our neighbors had gone to their parents’ place for the weekend, and let the newspaper collect for a couple of days. At about midnight, someone neatly cut a triangle in the sliding glass door, and opened it up. They took a computer and some rings, but no one here makes very much money and there wasn’t much to steal. Everyone is still recovering from the shock, especially since it’s never happened before and they have all felt very secure here all this time. Anyone looking in our windows right now will know that we have nothing worth stealing (no computer, just a boom box). Morgan’s praying mantis went the way of all praying mantises, and now she has a baby grasshopper. A couple of days ago she came inside with five baby grasshoppers inside her bug cage, and within three minutes I saw an escapee stealthily creeping along the table. Cary managed to catch it and put it outside, so we put all but the biggest one back in the grass. Morgan has been feeding it fresh grass twice a day, which it seems to like very much. It hops around in its cage when it sees the fresh grass coming.

So I was playing tunes from the early 60s in class, and when I got to Chubby Checker I did the twist for my students, for about ten seconds. I was very, very close to making them stand up and do it too (that’s what got me into trouble at Columbia University, though, so I thought twice about it here). Would you believe that a handful of my students were profoundly asleep during “Louie Louie”?? I even turned it up! I could barely stand still up there in front of the class for wanting to dance, but one guy had his hands hanging slackly by his sides, head back, mouth open. I wanted to rattle him or pull his chair back or something. Drop a bug in his mouth. Happily, the rest were their usual cheery selves, three or four of them chatting away about something, but generally paying attention. I enjoyed doing a comparison between the sound-effects-laden story of The Shangri-Las’ “The Leader of the Pack” and The Sonics’ “Psycho,” where the only lyrics are “Baby, you’re drivin’ me crazy… psycho!” over and over again. Same year, different worlds. Next week it’s soul and psychedelic rock: Aretha, Jimi, James, Janis. This music is so much fun to talk about and think about. My assistant/translator Kayo-san says that the students are desperate to understand my jokes and asides in class, and that she often translates them afterward. Apparently, the students with good English translate my non-scripted comments for those who are barely understanding the lectures. My colleague Notsu-san (who listened to part of my British Invasion lecture) said, smilingly, “I can’t believe that students are listening to this music in a university.” Well, as I believe Al Jolson said, you ain’t heard nothing yet, folks.

Unfortunately, my memory is particularly good for the lyrics of bad songs, so in addition to the ones I’m using in class, a whole host of the really bad ones has been cropping up in my mind. A few days ago I simply couldn’t get “The Candyman” (by Sammy Davis, Jr.) out of my mind. It’s probably because I’m using an example with the same title by the Grateful Dead next week. I also appear to have memorized dozens of soccer players’ names, simply because I keep reading about them in the paper. In fact, after losing my e-mail list en route to Japan, I simply reconstructed the whole thing from memory. The worst, though, is that the co-op here has a recurring song that gets played incessantly, and it sounds precisely like the fighting cat-and-mouse television show theme song (“The Itchy and Scratchy Show”) from The Simpsons. I dream about it at night. This is bad stuff. Surely I have better things to do with my little gray cells, like add more kanji.

We went to Kyoto again with the Hishikawas on Tuesday to see Kiyomizu-dera temple and Chion-in temple. It was a very hot and humid day (with rain clouds threatening), and the steep climb up to Kiyomizu-dera was intense. At the top, though, is a magnificent temple with a huge veranda looking out over a green valley. It was simply mobbed by school kids, but the veranda was fantastic. Next to the altar was an enormous inverted kettle gong (the kind you see in most temples) – this one must have been four feet tall. Micheal struck it and we all gathered very close to hear its ring. There were at least four distinct tones coming out of it, but only if you placed your ear three or four inches from it. Two inches was too close, and five inches was too far. The tones lasted and lasted – it was glorious. The fundamental tone was waaaaay down there. When you leave the upper portion of the temple, you walk down to where the pure water comes out of the mountain in three arcing streams. They have long dippers there for catching the water (a sign notes that the dippers have been “sterilized” by UV rays). Well, the water was some of the finest I’ve ever tasted: cool and clear and incredibly refreshing. What a pleasure, especially on such a hot day. The view up to the temple veranda was stunning! It just floats out there in mid-air, sloping slightly downward. There’s an expression people use that translates as “leaping off the veranda at Kiyomizu-dera.” It means taking a huge risk that may fail but which is still well worth doing; the closest I could come up with “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” Also, we found out that the Japanese don’t use the verb “to smell” for incense, but instead use kiku, “to hear.” It certainly turned my brain inside out, trying to understand that one.

Chion-in temple is another marvel. It’s huge (not as big as Todai-ji in Nara, but big enough!). It has multiple buildings, including a large central room with very large decorated drums and wooden “bells.” There is gold everywhere. I had read about Chion-in’s giant bell, so we walked around until we found it up on the side of a hill nearby. It must be forty feet high and weighs about 68 tons. It takes the strength of 17 priests to swing the big log that strikes it, 108 times to signal the entrance of the New Year. It is a powerful sight. We also saw some of Chion-in’s special features, like its great “nightingale” floors (the ones that chirp brilliantly and squeak on purpose to warn of intruders). Cary made a minidisk recording of the floor as he walked on it: the quieter and more stealthy you try to be, the more it “sings.” Those floors are a marvel of construction: each board is fitted with iron nails every three inches, and you’d think that the tones of the squeaking would all be the same, but they’re not. Each step elicits an entirely different set of sounds, from swooping high notes to honks to chattering squirrels to trilling nightingales. Lovely. We followed some chanting pilgrims into one of the temple structures, where there were dozens of resonating wooden fish clappers (and beaters) laid carefully on pillows. In conjunction with the head priest (who was chanting and striking an inverted kettle gong), all the pilgrims began chanting and striking their wooden fish at a very high tempo. Morgan and I were hovering politely outside, and one of the priests motioned us inside, allowing Morgan to sit and hammer away on her own personal wooden fish for the duration of the service. When it was time to go, she stood up, turned to the priest who had invited her inside, and bowed very low with a solemn smile. He beamed and bowed to her in return. I am humbled and awed by the kindness and respect given to children here. I only wish I could say the same about America.

The Hishikawas took us to a very fine restaurant not too far from Chion-in temple as a going-away gift for Cary, and we picked up some ceramic tea bowls in a department store before heading home. That night we met two other faculty members from Shodai (Notsu-san and Toma-san) at Kobe Sone, the top jazz club in the area. The music was first-rate, all jazz standards, played by a guitarist, piano player, drummer, and acoustic bassist. I wanted to hear more! It was every bit as good as what you could hear at Seattle’s Jazz Alley. Kobe is a very impressive music town, and quite international.

On Wednesday I had an actual gig as an “Irish singer” at the Universal Studios theme park in Osaka. There’s a special train that goes out there from Osaka station, and I noticed a handful of white guys with open 16-ounce beer cans boarding on a separate car from me. You just don’t see Japanese people drinking while they walk in public, or eating either. This was at 10:30 in the morning, and these guys were all drinking rapidly and shouting enthusiastically at each other. I made sure to keep my distance. No wonder people are worried about “fuurigan” tourists. James Hunter, a piper/whistle/flute player, met me at the “Universal Citywalk,” which is like an American mall at the end of the line (Starbuck’s, Wolfgang Puck’s, Gap, etc.). James is an ESL teacher at Gonzaga University in Spokane, but he’s been living in Japan for the last two years while his wife has had an exchange faculty job here. He led me through the back gates, and I got my visitor’s pass, and then we walked into...Southern California! It was the strangest thing. The architecture was all outsized-diner and adobe-colored buildings with chrome touches here and there. I’m enough of a native northern Californian to be simultaneously attracted and repelled by it. There were various Universal Studios characters walking around (Woody Woodpecker, among others) and thousands of Japanese people with giant Universal Studios shopping bags. It’s like a huge theme park store with a few attractions.

We wandered past shop after shop after shop of Universal Studios Japan goods for sale, and ended up in an enormous “Irish pub” called “Finnegan’s Bar and Grill.” The restaurant seats 250, and the bar seats 40. All the signs in the bar are in English, with the exception of the one that reads “Please keep off the stage.” The room is decorated with all kinds of sporting equipment (boxing gloves, fishing pole, ice skates, photos of baseball players and boxers) and the usual etched mirrors and neon beer signs. With the exception of one Caucasian family that wandered in and left shortly thereafter, the clientele were entirely Japanese (possibly there were a few Taiwanese as well). I arrived at noon and the gig was over at six o’clock; we played four sets of about forty minutes each, I think, with a lunch break. In the workers’ canteen there were people in costume (one rather memorable Barbie-looking woman on roller skates) and the food was VERY cheap: about two dollars for my entire lunch of tempura udon, juice, fruit, vegetable. The park has very loud music playing on a half-hour repeating tape loop (I think I heard “Trumpeter’s Holiday” – if that’s what it’s called – at least six times during the day), and the pub itself has a half-hour drinking songs tape loop of Clancy Brothers and other acts that plays during the musicians’ breaks.

James was playing with Taro Kishimoto, an exceptional whistle/flute/bouzouki player. They performed whistle and flute duets, bagpipe and bouzouki duets, and variations thereof. As a singer, I have never felt so welcomed by instrumentalists in my life. They would do a set of jigs (or reels, or polkas), then I would sing, then they’d do another set, followed by a song. Several times during the day we simply performed a song together (with their accompaniment) without rehearsing, and it worked really well. They’re both very sensitive players. We did a tune called “Connla” with uilleann pipes and bouzouki, and a few more popular tunes (“The Wild Mountain Thyme,” “Red is the Rose,” etc.) with James or me singing in harmony. It has been years since I’ve enjoyed harmony singing so much. The audience was pretty much there to eat, so we were more of a colorful addition to the scene than actual musical entertainment as far as I can tell. Most of the music there is instrumental because half the musicians are Japanese, and they generally don’t sing Irish songs. Musicians rotate so that they each play a few times a month, and there are about a dozen of them. I alternated songs in fast and slow tempos, Irish and English-language, accompanied and unaccompanied. The whole thing was great fun, and I particularly enjoyed having the leeway to choose songs that didn’t have to conform to whatever lesson I was teaching for the week, the way I do with the Irish class at Evergreen. Some songs just have their own rhythm and order.

James told me that the restaurant-goers quieted down for each song, but I think he was just being kind. At one point, two young Japanese women got up during a jig set and began doing a sort of awkward do-si-do in front of the stage, with great laughter and exhilaration…James and Taro just kept playing until the young women were ready to stop. Almost all of our announcements of songs and tunes were in Japanese. There were several lively moments, like when a man dressed like one of the Keystone Cops burst into the room, flailing his arms and knocking down chairs and people, then stumbled out, dropping his billy club several times. At another point, the Blues Brothers drove past in their enormous remodeled cop car, music going full blast. As a movie theme park, there were plenty of movie elements in every direction! I couldn’t resist taking a picture, later, of the startlingly realistic New York backdrop. And no, I didn’t go into any of the “attractions” (Terminator 2, E.T., etc.) or buy anything. I was a little overwhelmed by it all, and noticed how easy it would be to drop hundreds of dollars at any given place. An interesting after-effect of the experience was that I was suddenly seized by the desire to watch some old movies.

Japan lives and breathes for each World Cup moment. I have to admit that I’ve gotten a little bit caught up in it myself (how could I not, when everyone else is hanging on to the latest scores?). The slightest mention of the latest win or loss in my class means everyone sits up and beams with enthusiasm. After Japan’s great first-ever World Cup win last week (witnessed in person by one very joyous prime minister, Koizumi), everyone has been on edge about what was going to happen for Friday’s game. When Japan won that game as well, to everyone’s astonishment, there was a sort of national celebration. The newscasters were wearing soccer jerseys and were practically in tears of joy, and Japan’s triumph took up 40 minutes of the hour-long evening news broadcast, followed by ten minutes of Japanese baseball news, followed by ten minutes of this and that political news. And by the way, the Ireland games are pretty interesting to watch, because the Irish never seem to avoid giving the newscasters something to comment about. Whether it’s the wild hats, painted faces, green jerseys, or spontaneous singing (an entire train car full of Irish supporters sang from Tokyo to Niigata, evidently, shocking the Japanese passengers in the other cars and making it onto the national news), the Irish show up on the news every second or third night. And you can be sure that most broadcasts show pictures of Guinness being poured, or at least mention how fond the Irish are of drinking. (All of this, of course, fans the flame of “fuurigan” phobia.) The English/Irish pubs in Tokyo ran out of Guinness within the first week of the World Cup.

Morgan and I took Cary to the airport on Saturday in the late morning. Japan has a wonderful and relatively inexpensive system of airport pick-up and delivery of baggage, so a truck came for his bass and his suitcase on Thursday, leaving him with only a carry-on’s worth of stuff to deal with. It was about $15 per bag, which meant we didn’t have to drag two 70-pound bags to the subway station, fighting the crowds, and get it all to the airport in 90-degree heat. It allowed him to relax for his last two days here. I will probably do the same thing for our bags when it’s time for us to go home as well. Cary has three separate adult music camps at which to teach, so that is why he’s going home five weeks before we are. We will miss him! He’s taken all nineteen of our developed rolls of film (to avoid the worst of the humidity) and the apartment looks significantly more barren now that he’s gone home. And now I’m going to face the huge challenge of bringing Morgan to all my classes, and being the first (however temporarily) “single mom” from Evergreen to work here. Morgan’s resiliency (and deep-seated enjoyment of Japan) will probably carry her through the next five weeks with little difficulty. I hope my colleagues and students are equally resilient about my young companion!

Until next week,
Sean