Sunday, 4/14/02
This is the second installment of the Kobe Gazette; please let me know if you do not want to receive these, and I can easily take you off my mailing list. Also, thanks to all of you for replying to me individually and not to the group. I think e-mail is a marvelous (and easily abusable) wonder of the modern world, and I am grateful for the ability to keep in touch with all of you.

I had my first class this week in the dazzling multi-billion-yen language lab. You never saw such a place. None of the faculty here can believe it. Each student has a computer screen, minidisk player and console. Standing in front, I can play CDs, cassettes, VHS, DVD…you name it. I can press a button and each student’s minidisk player can record my every word, or the musical selections I play in class. It is stunning. I can hook them all up to the internet. I can use the document camera for song lyrics. Yesterday during the training session for the half-dozen of us that were there, I asked the fellow if I could use the document camera AND play a CD at the same time. He stood there, thinking, and I assumed he didn’t understand what I meant. It was awkward (I thought “Ack! I’ve made a social gaffe!”), and he finally said no. The one thing I can do is put the songs into the board’s memory and have the students listen through headsets while I project the song lyrics onto their individual screens. Complicated? Oh man, you have no idea. It feels like I am a combination of the wizard of Oz behind the curtain, the fellow in “2001: a Space Odyssey” communicating with (and dismantling) HAL, a jockey on an almost out-of-control racehorse, and an elegantly-dressed executive herding cats. In front of the students, I tried to act as if I’d been a high-tech wizard my whole life. Right.

My classroom has seats (and consoles) for 63 students. Over a hundred showed up the first day! They were sprawled all over the place, leaning against the walls, and a bunch of them even showed up, desperate to get in, after the class was over. I felt sorry for them, because only 63 can really register. So on Monday we’ll have a little writing quiz for them in English, and my job is to pick the best writers in English. Dang. Everyone was surprised that I had so many, but several of the older male faculty said that this kind of class would attract the worst kind of students anyway – just listening to music and having fun. Maybe I should ask those faculty if they want to take my final exam…. One of them was present during my first class “to make sure everything is okay” so I played an opera selection in the class just for him.

Kayo-san, my assistant, continues to be wonderfully friendly and helpful, and does a great job of translating. I write out my lectures for her, and she reads them carefully. Then I explain the things she doesn’t understand. It is odd, to say the least, to have lectures written out instead of improvised from an outline! Her reading comprehension of English is quite good, and she is eagerly looking forward to coming to Evergreen in the fall. She was chastised by the German teacher here for translating word-for-word. “Even I can understand her!” he said. “Just summarize so the students are forced to listen to her!” So on Monday and forever after, she’ll just summarize my lecture at various points. That’s good, because it allows me to spend more time on the music. Speaking of the German teacher, I had lunch with him and a handful of other language teachers (Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, English). It was sobering to think of the impressive array of capabilities at the table.

I now have a subscription to the Japan Times. I requested it online, and it arrived on the specific day that I asked it to start. I am verrrrry impressed with its international coverage. Oh, and I found the 10 pm English-language news on television, translated from what the NHK reporters are saying in Japanese on the spot by a man with an Australian accent and a woman with an American accent.

I also now have an English-language operating system on my computer. Whew! And I’m starting to become accustomed to working with a PC. It’s not that different, but there are things I do automatically on a Mac that create strange reactions on this PC. It’s all an adventure! I also met the president of the university this week. He is friendly and serious at the same time, speaks surprisingly good English, and accepted my gift of a wooden box very graciously. He said that he has been especially impressed with the Evergreen style of teaching, and that he hopes that I will teach style as well as substance. When I left, I bowed deeply, but looked up and he was still bowing, so I felt a little awkward and honored by his extra-long bow. It was nice of him. Yoko kindly accompanied me to his office. I mentioned the bowing thing to her, and she said that she didn’t bow at all when she left! She waved her hand dismissively.

I think I may have to get a rice cooker when I come home…there’s a delicious mix of seaweed flakes, bonito flakes, and various spices that some people here shake over their rice. Wow, is it good! I use it every day! I hope they sell it at Uwajimaya (the Japanese food store in Seattle). Last night I had it with rice, fresh broccoli (courtesy of a neighbor who brought it from his father’s organic farm), shoyu, and peanuts. Yum.

I love the Japanese way of bathing and showering. It’s like being in a hot waterfall to stand under the shower, and takes about five minutes to wash my hair instead of the thirty minutes that it takes me at home. The system is very sophisticated; the deep hot soaking tub fills up automatically and speaks out loud when the bath is ready!! And because you wash BEFORE you get in the tub, the tub stays clean and your body gets really clean. It’s a nice way to warm up, too. The high-tech heated-seat toilet/bidet/body-dryer is one of the stranger inventions I have encountered. No, my apartment doesn’t have one.

My two big adventures of the week: an overnight trip to Kurashiki, and a visit to Kyoto. The Kurashiki trip was with about 90 first-year students and six other faculty (mostly language teachers); we drove in a bus for about 2 hours to a hotel, where each of us faculty were given our own room. We had dinner with the students in a huge tatami-floor room; tons of good food. Then they cleared away the food and we led the evening’s activities in English. It was hilarious! They had to do a bunch of games using English words and physical activities (lining up, relays, etc.). They were so cute sliding around on the tatami in their socks. Everyone was laughing. Then I led an activity in which each group had to come up with a specific rhythm. Once they’d chosen the rhythms (requiring considerable negotiation and overcoming-of-shyness on their part), I had them all play together. It was fun. Then we disappeared and they talked ALL NIGHT, evidently. They looked half-dead but happy the next morning.

Yoko and Donna (a Japanese-American English teacher from Hawaii) and I took a bath outdoors under the stars. It was about 9 pm, and we were the only hotel guests in the bath. It was tiled, and clean, and steaming hot. I loved it! I was also glad that no students were there. Bathing naked with colleagues is one thing, with students is another thing altogether. Especially looking so different! Then we put on yukata (like a thin cotton kimono) and joined the male faculty in a special intimate tatami-floor party room. There was beer, red and white wine, and lots of little snacks. Because there were three native English speakers among the seven (Myles is an English teacher from England), everyone kindly spoke English. It was especially nice of them, because Myles and Donna speak perfectly good Japanese. The interesting thing about the party was that the three of us women were clothed only in yukata, and the men were fully dressed. I tried hard not to think of what a bizarrely feminizing experience it was to have the three of us covering our mouths and giggling at the men’s jokes. Donna later said “Jeez, I thought my smile was gonna crack.” Thank goodness I fit easily inside my yukata and didn’t have to worry about it. I had glass after glass of beer, and didn’t even feel tipsy. I actually wondered if it was non-alcoholic beer and looked at the bottles. Nope.

The next day Yoko, Donna, Myles and I went to the “old town” section of Kurashiki, where there is a beautiful set of art museums. (Myles has an understated English sense of humor and mentioned that the museum was Irish – it’s called the Ohara Museum. Ahem!) We saw incredibly impressive modern Japanese art – I loved it! There was also a large collection of Euro-American art (Picasso, Monet, Bracque, you name it). Then we found a great place for udon (thick noodles). I always thought udon were heavy and leaden, but these were freshly made and were light and tender. How can I ever go back to American udon? I had tempura udon…the best I’ve ever tasted. We got to watch a man making udon, too! Then we found a 300-year-old shop (from the Edo period!) selling kibi-dango, the local sweet treat. It’s like a rice-flour marshmallow, sort of, with a subtle sweet taste and very tender texture. It’s heavily featured in the story of Momotaro (the Peach Boy) – the young boy uses kibi-dango to entice a dog, monkey, and pheasant to help him in his quest to defeat the ogres. The kibi-dango shop was along a lovely canal that had cherry blossom trees. Great. Later we stopped for the best cappuccino I’ve ever had. Everything tastes so good here!!

Finally, on Sunday I went to Kyoto. Of course I got lost, took the local train instead of the express, couldn’t read the kanji, etc., but loved the trip anyway. It was my first attempt to go to Kyoto alone. I met my ethnomusicologist buddy Margaret Sarkissian, who is living in Kyoto this term. Then I caught the bus to Kyoto University (arriving on time and at the correct gate – amazing). Michael Hishikawa met me at the gate; he’s a professor of Irish studies, and was my host for his bi-weekly gathering of Japanese people who study Irish grammar and poetry. I’d been asked to give a two-hour presentation of traditional Irish singing and its relationship to grammar. Their English was very good; they were all professors from various universities, and grad students, and it was a real pleasure to talk with them. Then they asked me to sing a bunch of the songs. Because I’d e-mailed Michael with the song lyrics in advance, when I arrived the songs had been neatly translated into Japanese, with phonetic pronunciation exactly the way I do it for English. Wow. Michael is someone I think I would like to collaborate with! Afterward, we all went to the “Hill of Tara” pub, where we had fish’n’chips and Guinness. (!?!?!) What a nice group of people! Upcoming events include a ceili, singers’ circle, set dancing practice, poetry study group, and others. I just missed the Kyoto area’s first St. Patrick’s Day parade last month, but there were photos of it all over the pub!

Thanks for listening! I hope you’re all doing well.
Sean