it`s 2am, and i`m at an internet cafe in akita city with three other students. we came into town tonight to see a rotating group of jazz musicians at a club called the catwalk. the last train left 4 hours ago, so we came here to screw around, read manga, and probably sleep a little bit. there are internet cafes all over japan. it`s usually a mix of drunk folks who missed the last train, people who cant sleep, manga `otaku` [people who have a fixation] and homeless people. there are overnight fares at internet cafes, so they are kind of set up as a temporary place to put yourself for the people who need it. so, yeh... i`m here, stinky, tired, with a little teacup filled with hot strawberry milk from the complimentary drink bar, pecking out drivel on a keyboard where all the symbols are switched around. at an internet cafe, everyone gets their own little booth, almost long enough to stretch out in, with a computer, menu, and phone to call the front desk, and out beyond the islands of booths are row upon row of manga.
the catwalk was a pretty interesting place. the whole club is underground. the only thing at street level is the door and the top of the tunnel that leads down into the club. behind the little wooden stage is a wall filled with all the signatures of well known jazz musicians who have played there since the place opened in 1982. we had some drinks and a pizza, and various folks kept hopping on or off the stage between songs. a trombonist, two saxaphone players, two guitarists, two drummers, an upright bass player, two pianists and three vocalists.
had a damn fine time tonight, walking across the city and back, talking with people at the club...it`s late. i`m startingto lose functionality up around my brains, so i will have one or two more cups of hot fruity milk and then maybe fall asleep for a while. we should get back to school just in tim for the all school snowball fight later this morning. here`s an e-mail i got from kaina today, the half-japanese boy i taught in preschool and visited here in tokyo:
my dad likes guitars. kaina likes ultraman.
kaina
Friday, February 29, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Shashinjutsu Bonus Cuts
octo-pile, old snack shack, observation tower/light house, ryota blowing out his birthday candle, and the guy everyone calls ebi-kun (shrimp-boy) eating the disgusting american candy.
Shashinjutsu Juichiman Gosen Nanahyaku Hachiju Kyu
these 'uns is: some kids i played japanese games with, part of the kabuki performance, the main gate of the big shrine/temple/park area, birds shitting on me, and folks who attended the nabe party.
Iroiro na Mono
ya-ho. herm. a lot of things done over the last week, most of which have escaped my recollection... had some more philly cheese steaks with the ladies on valentines day. in japan, on valentines day, the girls give chocolates to the boys, and then the boys give chocolates on "white day", march 14th. i think we mostly talked about typical valentines day crap - what a pain in the damn buttocks developing feelings for someone tends to be, also differing dating rituals between taiwan and america, how people in taiwan and maybe most of asia don't "date" really, they just decide they want to be a couple first and then go do things together. there was a little valentines party the next night with a few performances and a cake baking contest.
saturday, woke up pretty early to head out to happo-cho for another english teaching thing at an elementary school. i had to teach "head, shoulders, knees and toes" to the whole class, up in front of everyone, alone, by myself, solo, very slowly and several times over. a little embarrassing, but fun i guess. then we talked about our homes for a while as some of the japanese students who came along helped translate for the people who came along from taiwan, china, and mongolia. all i could think of was "uurrt... we got lakes...annnn urrrrt... ". then the aiu people ate lunch in the principals office, and a big group of the 4th or 5th graders asked very sheepishly if they could come in and touch my face hairs. they were astonished! a beard! we left there and went to a nearby community center to make another somethingorother out of peanuts, sticks, hot glue and plastic eyeballs for some inexplicable reason, then headed home.
sunday, had to get up ridiculously early again to go out to a town called sagata, which means "alcohol field" to see some local kabuki for a little matsuri. there was a lot going on, though, new area, a few temples, food stalls, so kind of watched the kabuki along with everything else simultaneously, rather than being drawn into it. the tako yaki, fried octopus balls, had entire baby octopi in them, rather than the usual tiny octopus chunks. i did not try them. after the kabuki, went out to eat at a chain place, then the group went to see the mummified monks i went to see a few months ago. the people who had already seen them went to check out a huge park, shrine, and oservation area next to the mummified monk's temple. i fell a little more in love with japan while standing under a 50 foot tall gate, and then walking through it along narrow snowy paths that led to smaller shrines with their own small red torii, up over little hills to find more little shrines, an abandoned little park, a 19th century western style doctors office, and an observation tower with a view of the ocean and a nearby harbor, which was obscured by a 10 minute blizzard thar cropped up out of nowhere. on the way back, we stopped at a river we had stopped at the last time i went to see the monks to feed the thousands of ducks and geese living there while they flew onto our shoulders, ate from our hands, and shat upon us.
on monday night, i went to a nabe birthday party for a guy from okinawa named ryota. nabe is basically the same as a chinese hot pot, except with japanese ingredients like mochi and kiritanpo. people nab what they want from the pot, and then more is added. there was a student there who just returned from winona state, and she brought some laffy taffy and twizzlers from america for the japanese students to try. everyone there took one bite of the stuff, made a face and a wretching noise, and then collectively spit it in the garbage. they said it tasted like erasers. i explained that i used to eat laffy taffy by the damn bucketfull, and they looked at me like i was seriously damaged. the most popular japanese snack items are fish paste/cheese sticks and dried squid, which i've aquired a taste for, and they said it's strange that sometimes americans eat snack food without beer.
in the near future, another field trip and tentative plans a-plenty including karaoke, cooking, drinking some chu-hi, and wandering around the city.
saturday, woke up pretty early to head out to happo-cho for another english teaching thing at an elementary school. i had to teach "head, shoulders, knees and toes" to the whole class, up in front of everyone, alone, by myself, solo, very slowly and several times over. a little embarrassing, but fun i guess. then we talked about our homes for a while as some of the japanese students who came along helped translate for the people who came along from taiwan, china, and mongolia. all i could think of was "uurrt... we got lakes...annnn urrrrt... ". then the aiu people ate lunch in the principals office, and a big group of the 4th or 5th graders asked very sheepishly if they could come in and touch my face hairs. they were astonished! a beard! we left there and went to a nearby community center to make another somethingorother out of peanuts, sticks, hot glue and plastic eyeballs for some inexplicable reason, then headed home.
sunday, had to get up ridiculously early again to go out to a town called sagata, which means "alcohol field" to see some local kabuki for a little matsuri. there was a lot going on, though, new area, a few temples, food stalls, so kind of watched the kabuki along with everything else simultaneously, rather than being drawn into it. the tako yaki, fried octopus balls, had entire baby octopi in them, rather than the usual tiny octopus chunks. i did not try them. after the kabuki, went out to eat at a chain place, then the group went to see the mummified monks i went to see a few months ago. the people who had already seen them went to check out a huge park, shrine, and oservation area next to the mummified monk's temple. i fell a little more in love with japan while standing under a 50 foot tall gate, and then walking through it along narrow snowy paths that led to smaller shrines with their own small red torii, up over little hills to find more little shrines, an abandoned little park, a 19th century western style doctors office, and an observation tower with a view of the ocean and a nearby harbor, which was obscured by a 10 minute blizzard thar cropped up out of nowhere. on the way back, we stopped at a river we had stopped at the last time i went to see the monks to feed the thousands of ducks and geese living there while they flew onto our shoulders, ate from our hands, and shat upon us.
on monday night, i went to a nabe birthday party for a guy from okinawa named ryota. nabe is basically the same as a chinese hot pot, except with japanese ingredients like mochi and kiritanpo. people nab what they want from the pot, and then more is added. there was a student there who just returned from winona state, and she brought some laffy taffy and twizzlers from america for the japanese students to try. everyone there took one bite of the stuff, made a face and a wretching noise, and then collectively spit it in the garbage. they said it tasted like erasers. i explained that i used to eat laffy taffy by the damn bucketfull, and they looked at me like i was seriously damaged. the most popular japanese snack items are fish paste/cheese sticks and dried squid, which i've aquired a taste for, and they said it's strange that sometimes americans eat snack food without beer.
in the near future, another field trip and tentative plans a-plenty including karaoke, cooking, drinking some chu-hi, and wandering around the city.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Shashin-jiujitsu-jutsu
these pitchers is: people making stuff for chinese new year, the folks that made food and ate it together, namahage drumming, namahage dancing, and namahage scaring the crap out of everyone.
Toire ni Itta Koto ga Arimasen
last thursday, i think, was chinese new year's day, so on wednesday night, most of the foreign students from chinese speaking countries (plus the koreans, a few nihonjin, and i) got together in the kitchen and cooked a whole damn bunch of food. there were kimchee pancakes and some other korean pancake thing from the koreans, and gyouza and an extremely spicy hot pot made by m'ladies. we sat around the hot pot digging out the stuff we wanted (cabbage, mochi, kiritanpo, beef, chicken, sausage, noodles, some long stringy mushrooms) and dumping more ingredients in when the pot got low. there was so much food that we got together the next night to eat the leftovers: big fat delicious gyouza and an even spicier hot pot that was making people cough just by standing next to it, which is the perfect ammount of spiciness.
friday night, got invited by the school to attend some sort of international dinner night set up in an area called omagari, a local hub where a lot of trains transfer. a couple international students gave speeches in japanese, and then there was a dinner afterward where the aiu students (9 or 10 of us) sat with local people and talked about our homes, future plans, etc... i talked to, or maybe more accurately was talked at, by a pretty drunk tailor who told me in japanese about some of the trips he's made to america. something about going behind niagra falls and taking an elevator somewhere. i also met a retired english teacher who was, of course, a little easier to communicate with, a middle aged woman who just started studying english four years ago, and several employees of a fireworks manufacturing company in omagari. there's a huge fireworks competition there every august. i had a glass of beer in front of me which was never allowed to be less than full all night, and i didn't want to reject all the salarymen who kept walking up to me and proffering bottles, so i would drink whenever it was filled, whereupon it would immediately be refilled. i also didn't want to be shoveling food in my mouth while people were trying to talk to me, so i was a little zonked by the end of the night.
saturday, we took a trip a few hours north to an area called the oga peninsula for their namahage matsuri. the namahage is a legend centered around the oga peninsula. every new year's eve night, this demon called the namahage comes down from the mountain where he lives and bangs on the doors of all the houses with children in them, demanding to be let in and threatening the family and suchlike. the family lets him in, and the namahage hunts down the children, who have gone to hide somewhere, asks them if they've been good children, and tells them he'll take them away if they don't study and help their parents. then he demands a bucket full of sake from the parents and stomps away to the next house. every year on the peninsula, the story is re-enacted, people dress up and roar around the peninsula, genuinely scaring the shit out of kids and pretending to take them away. at the festival, in a clearing between several shrines partway up a large, steep hill, there were namahage dances and taiko performances, and then a whole string of them came down from a shrine at the top of the hill, holding torches and growling, wandering through the big crowd and terrifying everyone.
since then, i've been nipple deep in homework. some photos, then?
friday night, got invited by the school to attend some sort of international dinner night set up in an area called omagari, a local hub where a lot of trains transfer. a couple international students gave speeches in japanese, and then there was a dinner afterward where the aiu students (9 or 10 of us) sat with local people and talked about our homes, future plans, etc... i talked to, or maybe more accurately was talked at, by a pretty drunk tailor who told me in japanese about some of the trips he's made to america. something about going behind niagra falls and taking an elevator somewhere. i also met a retired english teacher who was, of course, a little easier to communicate with, a middle aged woman who just started studying english four years ago, and several employees of a fireworks manufacturing company in omagari. there's a huge fireworks competition there every august. i had a glass of beer in front of me which was never allowed to be less than full all night, and i didn't want to reject all the salarymen who kept walking up to me and proffering bottles, so i would drink whenever it was filled, whereupon it would immediately be refilled. i also didn't want to be shoveling food in my mouth while people were trying to talk to me, so i was a little zonked by the end of the night.
saturday, we took a trip a few hours north to an area called the oga peninsula for their namahage matsuri. the namahage is a legend centered around the oga peninsula. every new year's eve night, this demon called the namahage comes down from the mountain where he lives and bangs on the doors of all the houses with children in them, demanding to be let in and threatening the family and suchlike. the family lets him in, and the namahage hunts down the children, who have gone to hide somewhere, asks them if they've been good children, and tells them he'll take them away if they don't study and help their parents. then he demands a bucket full of sake from the parents and stomps away to the next house. every year on the peninsula, the story is re-enacted, people dress up and roar around the peninsula, genuinely scaring the shit out of kids and pretending to take them away. at the festival, in a clearing between several shrines partway up a large, steep hill, there were namahage dances and taiko performances, and then a whole string of them came down from a shrine at the top of the hill, holding torches and growling, wandering through the big crowd and terrifying everyone.
since then, i've been nipple deep in homework. some photos, then?
Monday, February 4, 2008
Or Maybe It's The Harpuba?
this doesn't have a whole hell of a lot to do with much of anything, but i thought i'd mention an instrument i invented in a dream last night called a "tubarpsichord" or something like that. there was a guy playing a four horned tuba which was tied to the frame of a harpsichord, and everytime air came out of the horns, it would vibrate the strings of the harpsichord. i don't think i ever got to hear what it sounded like, because the guy was having trouble pushing air through all the tubas horns. i think he was also trying to hold the entire thing aloft without any sort of pulleys or belts or anything.
i think the stuff in the dream came from watching a dvd that a friend here lent me of a live performance by a japanese jazz pianist named hiromi, who just released a live duet with chick corea. in the performance, she's reaching into the piano and plucking and slapping the strings, and generally whooping ass and being incredible, and it reminded me of a vitality i see in japanese art and performance that seems pretty rare in other parts of the world. my perspective is probably a little skewed, it's just that almost every time i've seen or heard a japanese performer, they put a little more into whatever they're doing than most people do, seem to believe in it more. there's an earnestness in the art coming from japan that just isn't quite as strong and consistant for me in art from other parts of the world.
yes, so, in my repose, japan brings me the "tubarpsichord".
i think the stuff in the dream came from watching a dvd that a friend here lent me of a live performance by a japanese jazz pianist named hiromi, who just released a live duet with chick corea. in the performance, she's reaching into the piano and plucking and slapping the strings, and generally whooping ass and being incredible, and it reminded me of a vitality i see in japanese art and performance that seems pretty rare in other parts of the world. my perspective is probably a little skewed, it's just that almost every time i've seen or heard a japanese performer, they put a little more into whatever they're doing than most people do, seem to believe in it more. there's an earnestness in the art coming from japan that just isn't quite as strong and consistant for me in art from other parts of the world.
yes, so, in my repose, japan brings me the "tubarpsichord".
Friday, February 1, 2008
Tomodachi Dakara Kenkashitaku Nai Yo
dewdz...not a whole hell of a lot of action this week...walking around in the few plowed areas around campus where i won't get run over by a truck, hanging out in the library or dorm lobby or cafeteria...went to daisen city on thursday with two other students, in a car driven by the principal of an elementary school out there, to take part in a weekly english teaching program. we sang a counting song with the kids, who were around 9 or 10 years old, then introduced ourselves and said something about new year's celebrations in our countries. after that, we broke into teams, one gaijin per team, and the kids would ask us questions in english, getting one point for every answer they could explain in english, like "he is peter, and he likes green". our team name was "rainbow sexy monkey", which i thought should have recieved some bonus points, but we came in last place. the whole thing was kind of a display of the program, so teachers from all over akita prefecture were there watching, and then they had a meeting afterward, during which we had to find ways to entertain ourselves. we walked around the school a little, into the gym where all the kids were playing dodgeball, asked if we could join, then had an intense boys v girls game which was a nail biter, but i think the dudes won. went back to some boardroom to wait for the meeting to finish while cup after cup of green tea was brought out to us. finally 2 and a half hors later the meeting ended, and we drove home through a crazy ass blizzard, stopping on the way for some pretty good ramen.
as soon as we got back, i ran to the library and did a massive pile of japanese homework and studied for the next days test. i was in that damn library for four hours, and the test still confused the hell outta me. maybe i did ok, though.
the english teachers at the school were two guys who came there through the JET program, i think it stands for japan english teaching or some such variant thereof. turns out i'm still elligible to apply for it after i graduate, whenever the hell that might be, as long as its within the next 4 1/2 years. sounds like something to shoot for, which i didn't really have up till now. a chance to come back to japan in a few years, and also work with kids. now i just have to find a decent japan studies program somewhere...
as soon as we got back, i ran to the library and did a massive pile of japanese homework and studied for the next days test. i was in that damn library for four hours, and the test still confused the hell outta me. maybe i did ok, though.
the english teachers at the school were two guys who came there through the JET program, i think it stands for japan english teaching or some such variant thereof. turns out i'm still elligible to apply for it after i graduate, whenever the hell that might be, as long as its within the next 4 1/2 years. sounds like something to shoot for, which i didn't really have up till now. a chance to come back to japan in a few years, and also work with kids. now i just have to find a decent japan studies program somewhere...
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