Sunday, 7/21/02
Well, at last! This is the final Kobe Gazette from yours truly. Thanks so much to all of you for sending encouraging messages, reactions, and general good thoughts. I’ve really appreciated having a sounding board. My only regret is that I couldn’t include a few pictures here and there, but they take forever to download and sometimes include viruses that I would never want to inflict on my friends and family. Maybe next time! I have decided, however, to go back through, clean things up (correct my typos, especially), insert a bunch of pictures, and then print it up as my own special souvenir “book” to remember this marvelous experience by. Typhoon #7 managed to pass through our area overnight earlier in the week, and it looks like Japan is all done with typhoons and, indeed, with the rainy season, for the rest of the summer. Certainly, I am all done with it! The howling wind was really something, rattling the shoji screen in the bedroom and causing the playing children outside to lean hard into the wind just to stay upright. While I couldn’t sleep because of the noise, I started reading Joy Kogawa’s excellent book called “Obasan,” about the Canadian treatment of Japanese-Canadians. Well! I couldn’t put it down until I’d finished the entire book at about two in the morning. I have learned a lot about the internment of Japanese-American citizens, of course, but had no prior understanding of what was going on in Canada. That would go right up there at the top in terms of recommended reading, especially because it’s one of the (surprisingly) few that offers women’s perspectives.

I have been packing and cleaning, and it looks like we won’t go over the weight limit for our luggage. That’s my hope, anyway. All four of our bags were picked up this morning to be delivered to the airport a couple of days before our actual departure. All you do is call them up, they pick up your bags, and then when you get to the airport with your carry-on, you go right to counter (on the same floor) and load your bags onto (free) carts. It’s pretty cheap, too. It works the other way as well; you get off the plane and hand your bags over, and they show up at your house the next day. No dragging four large suitcases (and carry-ons) over to the subway, transferring up and down escalators onto trains, etc. etc. It has to be one of the smartest delivery systems I’ve ever seen, and it is one of many aspects of Japanese culture that is far more sophisticated than ours (along with the showers and baths). Morgan and I are – sort of – hoping that our flight will be overbooked. United Airlines is offering $400 plus food plus hotel plus BUSINESS CLASS seats the next day for each person who gives up their seats. I told Morgan that if we were able to get that good deal, she’d be able to stretch out and sleep in business class during the flight instead of fussing and sprawling all over me. We’ve got our fingers crossed. Oh, and I’ll send a quick note in a couple of days to let everyone know that we made it home safely.

I gave my final lecture on Monday, giving a review of the different styles and talking about all the hybrid musics of the 1990s and early 21st century. It was big fun, especially for me, to watch their faces change in surprise as they caught each stylistic “thread” in the songs. My favorite hybrid tune is by Leftover Salmon, which shifts from a verse in country style to a chorus in reggae style, then back and forth between country and reggae. It’s hilarious! I also gave them a short lecture about looking beyond the United States and Japan for musical inspiration, and made some suggestions about where else in the world they might find good music. And of course I told them that music was NOT just for background noise while they talk, eat, sleep, or watch TV, and said that I hoped there would come a time, ten years from now, when they would ask someone to turn off the TV and listen to music instead. Kayo-san (my interpreter) had given out some comment cards for the students, and she collected them all and handed them to me in a nice little booklet. It was great! Some of the comments were really funny, and some were touching. Many people mentioned something nice or funny about Morgan (“Teacher’s daughter is very very cute,” “I had to watch for sleeping police,” etc.). I will treasure this collection of comments. The pictures of the class came out very well.

On Thursday morning I gave the final examination. I played the ten selections right away, and then again an hour later. Some of the best students finished in about 20 minutes, and some took the whole 90 minutes. One of them slept right through the exam (no surprise – he’s been late nearly every day and utterly failed the class). To my great surprise, the one question that many of them got wrong was the one about white gospel music NOT including references to God. Hmmm. The other big error that most of them made was in assuming that the consumer is the most powerful person in the music industry. (My thought: “have you not heard a word I said all semester?”) And three students really thought that a “piano roll” was a kind of bread in the shape of a piano. Morgan took the exam, too, just for fun, and received the same score as Kayo-san. And hey! I’ve heard back from a bunch of you folks that you got less than 30 on the exam! Perhaps it’s time we had a big music and dancing party or something so you can improve your scores! I was very pleased that most of the students passed, with grades in the As and Bs far outnumbering Cs and failures. And actually, the numbering system here works so that 80 to 100 is an A (mighty generous if you ask me), 70 to 79 is a B, 60 to 69 is a C… which makes it rather easy to get an A. The highest score in the class was 97, and there were a couple of 96 scores as well. I was impressed! In any case, marking the exams and creating the grades (30% attendance, 30% paper, 40% exam) went pretty quickly. Since Morgan plays so much outside with her friends, I was able to do it all during the day and turn in the grades on Friday. So now I’ve completed my work here.

Morgan’s dead-on imitations of the recorded announcements we hear (in the post office, subways, train stations, and in shops) and of what people say on a daily basis are incredibly funny. She did the whole series of imitations for some (Japanese) friends who live in the apartment building, and they couldn’t stop laughing! They said that she has no accent at all. Of course I thought it was funny when she first started doing it, but in the last few weeks I’ve come to realize that if we actually lived here, she’d end up being fluent, with no accent (or at least a Kansai-area accent) within just a couple of years. How nice it must be to have such sharp ears…it bodes well for musical study, too. Earlier this week, she corrected a minor (Japanese language) error of mine, and it was a real shock for me to realize that she was right. Today she rattled off the Japanese names of about a dozen different kinds of insects and bugs.

On Monday in the late afternoon there was a tremendously fun wine party at one of Yoko’s office neighbors’ office. We walked in and it was already in full swing with platters of squid sashimi, wine, beer, fruit, cheeses, you name it. Everyone was talking and laughing, and I was able to follow at least some of the conversation. Yoko needed to translate for me frequently, I’m embarrassed to say, but it didn’t appear to diminish the fun of it at all. Everyone was surely on their best behavior, and the conversation was downright gracious. After awhile people started bringing out their real treasures: California and Bordeaux wines, French cheeses, etc. Whee! It was really fun and people talked about all kinds of things. After I left that party, I rushed off for a lovely dinner at Notsu-san’s place (their kids had been playing with Morgan while I was at the wine party). There were more platters of sushi (really delicious, very high quality stuff) and great conversation. The Notsus are leaving next month for a year in Olympia, so of course they have many questions and I had many (not all) of the answers. They gave us a beautiful doll reproduction of Sukeroku, one of my favorite kabuki characters. I just hope that I can be half as nice of a host as they (and everyone else) have been for us.

On Wednesday we were up at 6:30 and out the door with Donna Fujimoto to go to Kyoto. Within about two minutes, we were in the midst of an absolute downpour – serious, driving rain! My umbrella broke about halfway to the station, but even Donna’s working umbrella hardly did her any good. By the time we sat down on the subway, all three of us were soaked from the hips down. We met Yoko in Osaka and arrived in Kyoto right on time, about fifteen minutes prior to the first arrival of the floats in the enormous Gion Matsuri, Japan’s largest festival. It was started about 1100 years ago as a way to ward off summer-related diseases, and has been going almost continuously since then, each July 17. There was a light rain falling, so we stood at a street corner underneath an overhang and got packed tighter and tighter in as the crowd swelled. When the first float arrived we realized that Morgan wasn’t going to be able to see anything, so we lifted her up on my shoulders. At that point I couldn’t see anything except the top part of the float (which extended about two hundred feet into the air), but I was thankful – for once – for having very broad, straight shoulders that could support Morgan easily. Every thirty seconds or so, I asked her what she could see, and she described it all beautifully. The floats are built in the old style, which means that the wheels can’t really turn from side to side, so each float has a whole group of attendants that lay flat wet bamboo slats on the ground at corners, then push and pull the float so that it can turn. It’s amazing! Everyone in the crowd was shouting with anxiety as the floats shifted position (they’re very top-heavy, and look as if they’ll go right over in an instant), and the two dozen flute players and drummers riding in each one seemed to blow just a little bit harder as the floats were careening onto the next street.

When we realized that our vantage point wasn’t doing any of us much good (and Morgan’s feet were starting to fall asleep), we shifted positions to the middle of the block and were easily able to get right into the front row and see everything perfectly. Morgan even had a place to sit on a railing, supported from behind by Donna. The rain was very light at this point, but a lot of people still had their umbrellas out. There were dozens and dozens of middle-aged men dressed in traditional samurai wear (with geta sandals and paper parasols) – I think that was one of my favorite aspects of the parade. I took LOADS of pictures of them. There were also young boys made up and dressed as royalty. Each float had marvelous tapestries (some of which are national treasures) draped over the sides. In addition, there were two men at the front of each float waving gorgeous fans in choreographed movements and shouting and chanting. Several dozen men with thick long ropes pulled each float, wearing happi coats, shorts, hats and rattan or straw sandals. One float had a very large green praying mantis statue on top, and smaller gold-colored praying mantises on the corners. Yoko knew a lot about the history of the individual floats and entertained us mightily with each approaching float. A noteworthy point is that there was not a single woman anywhere to be seen in the parade. Hmmm. But what a marvelous experience it was! It was unforgettable, and because of the rain and a light breeze, it wasn’t as terribly hot as we’d dreaded it would be.

We later wandered through some of the side streets in the Gion district (the “old Kyoto” area), and I found some very fine origami paper and local incense to remind us of the temples and shrines. One of the shop girls was charmed by Morgan (especially when she caught Morgan imitating her greeting – “Irasshaimase!”) and gave her a little origami crane, which we will bring home. After that we found a great, great soba shop and had a delicious and intimate lunch. Then Yoko went back to Kobe for a faculty meeting, and we went to the Takashimaya department store in search of ice cream. Oh my, there’s nothing in the world like rum raisin and chocolate gelato in a cool shop on a hot, humid day. The three of us just sat there in bliss with our respective cones and didn’t talk for a long while. When I came out of my gelato-induced trance I noticed that we were surrounded by at least twenty other women doing exactly the same thing: eating gelato and not talking. Later we picked up a bag of my favorite Kyoto treat: intensely cinnamon-flavored cookies in the exact shape of small roof tiles. I’m just crazy about them. I could have those every day for the rest of my life. After we arrived home about two hours later, Morgan ran out to play with her usual irrepressible energy, and I fell sound asleep for half an hour in a surprise nap that completely overpowered me.

On Friday afternoon we had a visit from Taro-san (the outstanding flute player with whom I performed at Universal Studios in Osaka) and his girlfriend Yuka-san. What a great couple they are: talented, interesting, and very personable. I’m guessing that they’re in their late 20s. They’re in a band together in Kyoto. She’s a great singer of various styles, especially Irish and Tibetan songs. She reads Tibetan easily (and has studied with several Tibetan singers in South India), and asked for my help with some of the Irish pronunciation. Luckily, I knew the songs and was able to help a bit. I really enjoyed her unabashed love of the music and her willingness to sing without pretending to be reluctant. She has a really striking singing voice that just grabs your attention right away. We talked a lot about learning songs as a non-native to a tradition, and generally hit it off really well. We also laughed a lot and talked about Taro’s work with Peruvian music. If I lived here I would want to spend lots of time with them and meet their friends, too.

Later that evening I went out with Donna and Donna (Fujimoto and Tatsuki, respectively) to a Jamaican restaurant downtown. Well! I couldn’t have asked for a nicer pair of women to hang out with, better food, or a more congenial atmosphere. We were there for hours! We had many beers (including hemp beer, which to our surprise had no particular flavor) and a great dinner of jerk chicken, steamed fish, rice and red beans, curry….my mouth is watering just remembering it. Best of all, we laughed and laughed and talked about all kinds of things that certainly shouldn’t be repeated in the Kobe Gazette! The loudspeakers were playing endless reggae tunes (many of them ones I knew), and the music was just at the right volume so that we could listen and talk at the same time. I’d go back there anytime. It was funny and interesting to me that the two times I should go out with the Donnas, I had the chance to try foods I’d never tried before (last time, Nepali, this time, Jamaican). It was simply a great evening, and it was tinged with a bit of wistfulness to me because I knew it was another going-away event and that I’d have to leave these friends too soon. We are lobbying each other for a reunion in the Pacific Northwest later this year, which would be loads of fun.

We had originally planned to visit Kyoto for one last time on Saturday, but I had too much packing and cleaning to do; in spite of my best efforts to be on top of packing, it sort of caught me by surprise that the luggage pickup would be the next day, so I went into full-speed packing mode and got it all done. As much as I would have liked to have done a “Central Kyoto” visit (To-ji, Nijo-jo, and the Imperial Palace), it makes sense to leave that visit until the next time we come to Japan. They’ll still be there. On Sunday we had a very nice going-away lunch with the Takiis, a couple who met and lived in Vienna and who live upstairs from us. Misako-san, the wife, is a musicologist who specializes in Kurt Weill and is doing a translation of his biography from German into Japanese. We mixed German, Japanese and English during lunch, with Morgan greeting them in German when we walked in the front door (in her school at home she takes two German classes each week). I was terribly flattered when she asked me to figure out a dedication by Leonard Bernstein that had been written in his scrawly handwriting. It was easy, actually, and fascinating. He mentioned something about music critics being little more than failed musicians, the concept of which didn’t translate well into Japanese, so it made for a lively conversation. Misako-san spends most of her days in Tokyo (where she teaches – can you imagine commuting three hours by bullet train several times each week?) so we didn’t get to spend much time together while I was here, but I thoroughly enjoyed talking to her. Her not having a child (they’ve been married only one year) has effectively shut her out of the “mothers’ network” at the apartment building, so it’s been hard for her, I think.

On Sunday night I went out with Micheal Hishikawa and Nobu Tochigi, a professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University. I’m scheduled to give a guest lecture at Kobe University today (Monday) with Tochigi-sensei (who area is Irish poetry) for Micheal’s students, so we planned to go out to The Dubliners, the Kobe branch of a national chain of Irish pubs. Surprise! It’s closed on Sundays. So we went to the roof garden of a department store for beer and dinner, and had a remarkably good dinner of very fresh scallops. Tochigi-sensei’s English is excellent, and he talked eagerly about an upcoming tour of Ireland that he’s doing with some Japanese poets. Evidently, these poets went to Ireland before, wrote a volume’s worth of poetry about Ireland, and are now going back to do a reading of these poems in Ireland. Several major Irish poets will then be reading English translations of their poems about Ireland. What a great idea! I’m just sorry I can’t be there to see and hear it.

No, we didn’t climb (or even see) Mt. Fuji. We didn’t go to Tokyo or Hokkaido or Okinawa, or swim in the ocean or become fluent in Japanese. But we loved being here for four months, and our lives are ultimately much richer and more complicated for having experienced so many aspects of Kansai-area life. I will miss our friends, some of the delicious foods, the easy ability to practice Japanese anytime I want, the extraordinary shrines and temples (and their sacred music), the marvelously-efficient public transportation system, the deep soaking baths, the Japan Times daily newspaper, the Hanshin Tigers baseball team, and the dazzling performing arts of all kinds here. There’s a lot I won’t miss, of course, like the jumbo-sized mukades and the wooden fruits and vegetables. But it’s been a marvelous journey. We’re heading home tomorrow, and the grasshoppers and I are eagerly looking forward to their release just before our departure. I promise to send a quick note when we get there just to let you know that we made it safely.

Thanks so much for listening.
Love, Sean