left: kids performing at Col's school festival
left: Lake Akiko near Hakuba area
Last week, Colleen and I went to a quaint Japanese restaurant in downtown Ueda. The menu was deathly allergic to English words so we asked the waitress to choose veggie/fish meals for us. She brought out five spectacular courses: a small crab and mesclin salad, tuna sashimi in an avocado salad with slices of red snapper on the side, a tomato and egg omelet with fresh tomato sauce on top, vegetable tempura, and tofu with ginger and garlic. We felt like we lucked out considering we didn't know anything about the restaurant's menu before, during, or after we ate there!
right: powerlines on the mountain behind my house
After dinner we went to a tiny, six-seat bar that Colleen had noticed earlier in the week. As we road our bikes past the entrance of the bar, the young bartender bowed in our direction from his chair on the sidewalk with drink in hand. We took seats at the bar and after realizing the bartender spoke a little English, we asked if he could choose a type of sake called shochu for us to try. He put three bottles in front of us and explained that all were rare brews from the Myzaki region of the Japan. The liquors had names like Mountain Monkey and Mountain Bird. We each pointed to different bottles, sipped the shochu from thick, handmade pottery, and started talking to the bartender. He explained that he works at the bar a few nights a week and DJ's on the weekends, spinning everything from jazz to ska. After about a half hour, he disappeared into a tiny back room and emerged after a few minutes pointing to his watch, "What time you…can you…" Thinking that it was time to close and he wanted us to leave, we started to motion towards the door. He shook his head and tried a different explanatory path, "My friend, know little English, she here. 20 minutes?" We excitedly agreed to stay to meet his friend and after another half hour, a young woman walked into the bar and introduced herself. She was born in Ueda but moved to Tokyo two years ago to go to college where she was majoring in English education. She actually attended Someyaoka High (where I'm teaching) and remembers seeing my predecessor around the halls. We talked about Japan and America, and like most of the Japanese people we have met so far, the young woman smiled from ear to ear, at times convincing Colleen and I that we might possibly have futures in stand-up comedy when we return to the states.
As the night rolled on and the shochu migrated from bottles to glasses to bodies, two more friends of the bartender entered the bar. Both men introduced themselves and I immediately noticed the one with a wiry, thin goatee and fishing hat had an accent that seemed faintly familiar. We started talking and I learned that he lived in Boston and went to Berkley for four years to study jazz guitar. After Berkley, he lived for a year in Harlem and studied privately with a jazz guitarist in New Jersey. The understudy changed his life, "Before I studied one-on-one, I always played and thought about chords at the same time. I was always worried about my changes and I tried to plan everything out. It wasn't until after that year that I realized I could play anything and tie anything together as long as I stop thinking about chords and just feel the music as I play. My teacher taught me how to not think and just feel." The man explained to me that he would never become a great jazz musician because he doesn't have "the right swing" inside of him. When I asked him to elaborate, he said that he would never have "that black jazz swing" inside of him because he is Japanese. He said Japanese jazz is not as loose as "black jazz" and he will never master the looseness that makes certain jazz musicians stand out because he doesn't have the "right blood" for it. Before leaving, he invited us to come see his band play the following weekend. We said we would try to attend the show, said good-bye to the bartender and the young woman, and walked out to our waiting bikes in the alleyway. The air felt cooler and cooler the faster we rode and we zigzagged down empty streets all the way home.
I never thought I would enjoy karaoke. While in the states, I couldn't understand the appeal of karaoke; the whole karaoke experience seemed so silly to me. How could adults enjoy singing pop songs off-key to one another? A few days ago, however, I was touched by the hand of the God of Karaoke and I saw the light! Actually, I might have just been blinded by one of the rotating color lights in our rented karaoke room, but either way, I had a surprisingly good time singing one-hit-wonder type songs from the past few decades.
After a long train ride, a short barbeque, and a few introductions to other J.E.T.s in the area, I joined about 12 other J.E.T.s for a late night karaoke session at a local karaoke bar. From what I hear, most karaoke nights for J.E.T.s start at about 1:00 a.m. after someone standing in the heart of a barbeque party calls out in a devilish voice, "Whooo's up for karaoke?!?!?" Usually, no one really thinks before answering this question, instead they reflexively respond, "Yeah!!"
This night proved to be no different and when we arrived at the karaoke bar, it was 1:30 and I was sure that I was too tired to enjoy two hours of rowdy yodeling. We each paid 2,000 yen at the door (about $20) for two hours of karaoke and access to an open bar.
When we entered our private room, the veterans in the bunch immediately ran to the massive karaoke songbooks resting on the tables and started flipping through the pages aggressively, hungrily. A huge leather bench surrounded the tables and a phone, used for ordering drinks and food, hung by the door. After I sat down, a 3rd year J.E.T. leaned over and asked me, "So what's your song?" Confused, I asked him to explain. He said I needed to pick a song and do it every time I went to karaoke. It was taboo for two people to claim the same song. I laughed at this and said I'd think about it and try to pick one before the night's end.
I broke my karaoke cherry with a Jack Johnson song (I forget the title, what a sin!) and I helped other people sing a few other songs as the night rolled on. Sure enough, as everyone had predicted on the way over to the karaoke bar, I had an amazing time and I laughed for two hours straight. We sang some ridiculous songs, some fast songs, sappy songs, and some classics. At about three o'clock in the morning, someone brought two tambourines into the room and like blind joggers looking for arrows on the streets of a road race, we tried desperately to find the beats of various songs with no success. At the time, of course, we thought we were starting a tambourine revolution of sorts, smashing the hell out of poor little plastic thingies, thinking we were creating melodies of divine proportions, shaking and pounding out notes held together with honey and rays of sunshine. Colleen was so enlivened by the little tambourine that the musical spirit hibernating in her appendix (the place where mysterious things live) awoke after a song or two and prompted her to smash the hell out of her thigh. She woke up the next morning with the world's first thigh shiner, a bluish, blotchy battle wound that makes her laugh when she stares at it in the mirror.
***Note to self: Send urgent email to American tambourine manufacturers warning them about the dangers of the tambourine. Advise them to put huge, irremovable "Warning" stickers on all freshly made tambourines to avoid frivolous lawsuits.
This afternoon, I had a very interesting conversation with my caretaker here at Someyaoka, her name is Akai. I asked her if there was any truth in a remark I'd heard last week about the importance of high school. One of Colleen's teachers explained to me that high school entrance exams are incredibly important in Japan because a student's score on the exam dictates which high school the student will attend, and the high school a student attends determines the type of college the student can attend, and the college a student attends determines his/her place in society. I found this sort of fate sealing incredibly strange and couldn't believe that one test could play such a crucial role in the lives of the Japanese. Akai confirmed what Colleen's teacher had said and explained that the high school entrance exams are incredibly important in Japan. A student's score not only acts as an indicator of a student's work ethic, but it also reveals how hard the student's parents worked towards creating a smart child.
Akai explained that Tokyo University is the Harvard of Japan, kind of. Normally, no students from Someyaoka High School go to Tokyo University but every once in a while, a student from Someyaoka reaches Tokyo University. If a student can learn to play the game well enough to get into Tokyo University, his/her position as either a future political giant, powerful corporate executive, or high-class socialite is established. If a student can get into Tokyo University, he/she is basically guaranteed a high position in society and all of the respect that comes with it.
Unlike American universities, Japanese universities make it very hard for students to switch universities or transfer credit in the middle of their college careers. Akai explained that if a student leaves a university before graduating, the student betrays the university because all of the students and faculty make up a family or single unit (how Japanese!). If someone leaves, they abandon everyone else. She also said that there is so much weight assigned to the high school and college entrance exams that students do most of their academic studying and learning BEFORE college. Colleges are not viewed as academic institutions, but rather job preparation institutions. Apparently it's more important to lead a club or organize big events rather than earn high grades while in college because this shows future employers if a student is capable of being a leader and team player. She described college as a relaxing holding pen, a paradise of sorts that is solely meant to prepare students to enter the work place. Majors are not that important unless one is going into science or education or law.
Colleen is now officially addicted to the Harry Potter series! She's on book four at the moment and she stays up late into the night reading about Harry by candlelight, frothing at the mouth with a demonic glare in her eye, rocking back and forth in the shadows. I often find her in the morning passed out under a book blanket next to a pile of warm candle wax. Someone please send over some methadone because her addiction is making her do irrational things, like pay exorbitant amounts of money for imported English paperback Potter books! I am rereading a copy of Catcher in the Rye that someone left in our apartment. I never noticed this before but I think our beloved Holden is actually gay. I haven't checked on the Internet to see if this is a common interpretation of his character, but I can't help but notice it this time around. Has anyone else had this impression?
More to come as life unfolds,
Andrew
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