A Self Interview

(note to those who don't know me: I don't have a split personality--both sides are played by me ;-) )

Julie: Hi Julie, what's on your mind tonight?
Julie: Nothing much, looking into my experience again. Wondering what thoughts will come into my mind next. Cleaning out and clearing the mind, you know.

J: What do you mean by 'cleaning out and clearing the mind?'
J: I mean not thinking about other things while I'm doing something. In that way, there are no extra thoughts to divert my attention.

J: Go on...
J: When I practice doing that, less and less thoughts start coming up in the first place. And actually, that means less thoughts come up to distract me in general. All the energy I put into thinking about things, I've found, creates more thoughts on the subject, and clouds the mind with confusion. So clearing is the opposite of that.

J: So how does this 'clearing' happen, I mean how can it be done?
J: Through putting attention not to the thoughts themself, but to their root or source. In other words, why did that thought arise; what caused it to arise?
Clearing the mind happens by reasoning what previous thinking might have fueled the present thinking, rather than responding directly to the content of the thought(or even emotion, I suppose) itself. By itself, it continues to reappear, because its roots haven't been properly understood. If the root of a thought is understood, the train of thought stops and disappears.

J: What does it mean to 'understand' a thought?
J: That's a tricky question. It gets a little philosophical here. Let's assume that there is a certain amount of injury and conflict we have caused our own bodies and our own minds in our lifetime. Those are the trains of thought we can also eliminate in our own lifetime. But what about things that we had no choice in, such as being born with a defect, like being blind or deaf? Where do those individual traits come from? Why was I born a girl and not a boy(or anything else!)? My parents didn't choose either! And they didn't choose my birthday, or the time in human history in which I was born.
I reason that we are set up in our own personal bodies, with our own unique time-revealing challenges simply to clear them up. To let it all play out and become victors over our own struggle. And that way, in the case we have to deal with living in some form or another after we die(after all, I didn't know I was going to be alive this time around), we'll be that much closer to a mind and body (and spirit) without conflict. So understanding a thought means understanding your own situation clearly through self-examination. That's as best as I can describe it to you.

J: Oh, I see! That's why you do Aikido, right?! Because for you Aikido addresses your thinking and response...
J: Yes, that's a big reason why.

J: So it's all connected--your history, your interests, the color of your hair, to your thinking?
J: Well, that's what I'm coming to believe anyway...

J: I'm going to digest this all over a sesame cookie. It's been a pleasure talking with you tonight, Julie.
J: Thanks for having me, Julie. Mind if I join you?

(ha, ha, I crack myself up! But I will have two cookies, just for good measure. hee hee!)

beyond loneliness

Sigh... I had so many friends...

now I spend so much time

alone

or even surrounded by people

and I just disappear...



if you couldn't connect to the people around you

would you think of it as a curse

or a gift?


in my mind

it is a rare chance in life

to actually bear something...

...to find out what life is

without sharing every second of it

with someone else.


what are you without others?

Raining Dogs and Birds

Tonight was another first rehearsal back with the orchestra. As most of my musician friends can surely vouch for, first rehearsal nights can have the effect of making one want to sell their instrument. So I thought about it, and decided that, yes, I would like to sell my instrument. It's time for a new instrument.
Sigh... okay, so that may have to wait until I'm back in the U.S.

It was a bit of a rough return after a couple of weeks off. The (von) Weber Bassoon Concerto is deceptively easy with its pure, classical sound. I played some notes in that one that I think I borrowed from one of the other pieces, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. And some of the notes I played in that one seemed to have come from Mozart's Overture to the Marriage of Figaro, because they certainly didn't come from Mussorgsky.

Ack. So I've been feeling somewhat exhausted for a few days now--can't stop yawning. It isn't acually bothering me that this is a six-day work week at school. I mean I can't quite figure out what's bothering me. I was lucky tonight, that shortly after I was feeling quite down about my playing and feeling some general sadness and loneliness, the conductor of the orchestra put me on the spot. In the spotlight, I should say. Out of the blue, he asked me to stand up and introduce myself--3 people had apparently asked him who I was since last season, unbeknownst to me. I was surprised because he actually held up the rehearsal to continue asking me questions like how long I'd been around and what the name of my city at home was and so on. After that, I didn't feel lonely or sad for the rest of the evening. It's strange and humorous how ephemeral feelings can be, how powerful they can feel, and how a little attention goes a long way...

BTW, to all those who tend to inquire about my language skills, I am now quite comfortable introducing myself in Japanese. I only had to do it 1598 times to get to this point. Other things continue to come slowly. I understand about 41% of formal conversation when it's raining, and 58% of casual conversation when there are dogs or birds in the room.

Writing in this state of tiredness is sort of goofy!

drink, bathe and be merry!

I went to an enkai on Thursday night(what's an accurate translation of enkai?--everyone here just calls them 'drinking parties'). Four new teachers will join the high school's staff starting tomorrow, and the enkai was to welcome them in. If you weren't aware, the Japanese school year begins in April. This year, our first day happens to be a Sunday, which seems really strange to me, but whatever, you know? For the party, we went to a place near my house, a big new bath house call Tsukasa Onsen.

Tsukasa is a company that is best known for their colorful pachinko parlors. If you haven't had the chance to play pachinko, as my brother says, don't get your panties in a bunch. It resembles watching paint dry, only you must keep your right hand perfectly still while watching said paint.
The premise is as follows: you trade your hard-earned money in for a basket of worthless ball-bearings before you even start playing. Then, you sit down at a machine and start feeding your hard-earned..., uh, I mean ball-bearings into the opening at the bottom of the machine. You watch as the balls shoot up the pinball-like display and fall down into one of two or three holes. Mostly the balls fall into the large hole at the bottom, and nothing happens. If the balls fall in one of the other holes, you get more balls added to your balls in the opening. Actually though, the only thing you control in the game is how hard or soft you shoot the balls up. You do this by turning a doorknob-sized handle at the bottom of the machine. You turn the knob and just hold it there as still as possible--that's where the skill comes in.
That's the idea. My goldfish could do it if he was still alive, I think. Which reminds me, the machines have different themes, like 'Under the Sea,' or 'Cowboys.' That means there are different backgrounds to enjoy while turning the knob and watching the ball-bearings fall into the holes. Believe it or not, I have a good friend who bought a car with his pachinko winnings. Must've been a fluke...or was it???

So Tsukasa apparently had some extra ball-bearings left over to build a huge, touristy bath house. That's where the drinking party was. All in all, the parties are usually times when I grin and bear the formalities--namely lengthy opening speeches--but the food is usually spectacular, and the conversation is usually happy or drunken. One man was telling me, 'I want to speak English! January, January, ohh, uhh, I mean 'usually' I have no chance.' He's a funny guy. He worked at Arao #1 Middle School last year as a part time math teacher, and he was the first teacher I ever saw sleeping at his desk. Gosh, I wonder if I can find the picture I took last year...

Anyway, after the party, several teachers and I went to the public bath. The baths are pretty much always separated men/women. A friend once said he went to a bath that wasn't separated and there were plenty of men but the only women in there were kind of ancient and shriveled. I have to admit, it was sort of interesting be walking around naked side-by-side with the ultra-formal accounting lady or the tea lady or do a cold plunge with half the staff in the bubbling bath across from me. These happenings do not normally coincide in my mind. At least I have a difficult time imagining them happening with my old coworkers in the U.S.!
(BTW, if you do go to one of these baths, there is only one main point to remember. The idea is to be clean BEFORE you enter the bath, so use the showers first! Knowing that, all will be well with your fellow bathing friends. Also, wash yourself off lightly with the water in the pool close to the exit before you leave to get all those 'other people germy-germs' off before you leave.)

Well, it's late. Is it I who fades, or the world? I think it is I, therefore I am. Okay, definitely bed time.

Snorkeling, the south coast and Naha

On Saturday, I had an Okinawan-style omelet (carrot inside) for breakfast. Kara and John left to go scuba diving, and Dave and I spent the day together.First, we went snorkeling. Our guide, Mr. Nema, was a really energetic, deeply-tanned Japanese man. He explained all the basics, and then he took me and Dave out in a boat to one of the bluer parts off the coast.
While we took all there was to see, Mr. Nema dove down and picked up various things for us to hold and feel. First was a fat pink starfish. Next, a puffer fish. It puffed up in his hands when he caught it, and when he brought it to the surface, it shot all this water out of its mouth and gills. He gave it to us to hold, and it hurt like there were needles sticking in my hand! I mean it actually left marks!! He brought up a sea cucumber, which felt nothing like a regular cucumber. Perhaps it felt like a cucumber that had been sitting in water for way too long--it was rubbery- and slimy-feeling. It also spit water out its ends. Finally, Mr. Nema caught sight of some sort of striped snake or something, and he went down and pulled it out from hiding so we could get a picture. When he surfaced, he explained that we shouldn’t try that sort of thing at home because the snake’s bite is deadly.
Mr. Nema gave us some pieces of sausage, and we fed fish from our hands. There were so many different colors of fish, and some fish had rainbow colors and iridescence.
I loved the snorkeling experience and I think Dave enjoyed it a lot too. If you ever go to Okinawa and want to go snorkeling, I recommend Mr. Nema at the Busena Terrace Beach Resort.

Dave was all about the Peace Memorial Museum on the south coast later that afternoon. We walked through the indoor museum and then out to the cliffs at the very south tip of Okinawa. By 1945, over 100,000 Okinawan civilians had lost their lives as a result of the war between Japan and the U.S. Among other horror stories, a class of high school girls(60 girls?) were driven to the edge of the coast in the midst of the battle of Okinawa. They hid in caves, but the fighting was so terrible that they lost all hope, sang their school song together, and commit mass suicide by jumping off the cliffs to their death. There were lots of other sad stories of that time in Okinawa. Dave and I walked around the memorial grounds, talking about war and peace, and the politics of then and now. The graves reminded me of the ones I saw in Normandy, expansive and quiet. I thought about how war in one place is the same as war any place. We talked some more, and finally left for lunch.

I ate something called umibudou, ‘sea grapes,’ and Dave had pork, again. Okinawa is known for its pork-inspired cuisine. Dave had had 10 straight meals containing pork by the time we left. We also learned that pork is a low-fat, low cholesterol food, as demonstrated by the hat Dave is modeling here.As a non-pork eater, I tried some of the other culinary delights. Okinawa is also known for its pineapple and sugarcane farms, which we skipped in order to hike to a beautiful, tropical waterfall, but when Dave and I arrived in Naha, the biggest city on Okinawa, I found some fresh chopped sugar cane to chew on.

The shopping in Naha was great, especially in the walking arcades in the middle of town. We went to the Tsuboya pottery sector, and saw lots of shisa, Okinawan lion statue pairs. The male lion, with his mouth open, is said to collect good luck, while the female, with her mouth closed, is said to hold the good luck in. In one of the shops, I found a paper model of the shisa, so I’ll make my own rather than buy traditional ones.

On our last day we went back to Naha to spend more time in the arcades, and shopping on the main drag, Kokusai Street.

Our final stop was Shuri Castle. The castle had been built under the influence of Chinese and Japanese architecture, thus it didn’t look like the castles you can see on the main islands of Japan. It was bright red, and had colorful dragons and fire painted on the front side. It had been burned down in the war, and was restored in 1992. I suspect most of the island had been burned down in the war and restored in 1992.

Reflecting on all of this, and the things I haven’t written about that happened, I’d say the trip had just about the right amount of everything--driving around and seeing the island, new foods, nice beach time, and an overview of the history of the place, and I did make two new friends when I was blowing glass at our hotel. Huh? Yeah, anyway, it really was quite a refreshing time.

Now it’s back to school. I’m starting to feel a little bit more included in the group at the start of my second year here. We received the new textbooks, and they are much easier to use than last year’s, therefore lesson planning is going well. Also, we got space for English club announcements on the bulletin boards. So, it’s back to za du-ra-i-n-gu bo-do.

P.S. The cherry blossoms are now in full bloom and the petals are just starting to fall. You all know what that means--drinking parties under the trees!!

Okinawa, upon further inspection

On Friday the 31st, we got up early and headed for Ocean Expo Park. The park is on the west coast of the island, just north of the major resort areas. If you look on a map with Okinawa on it, you can see where a peninsula juts out on the west central coast. That’s where we went.

Ocean Expo Park is a collection of indoor and outdoor exhibits centering around the culture and environment of Okinawa. The big draw is the aquarium; that’s where we went first.

We watched a show of dolphins playing and jumping and doing various other tricks on command. I thought it was interesting to observe the trainers and the dolphins interacting(note that the show was in Japanese). Seeing the dolphins perform was like playing Carmina Burana--I’d always wondered what it would be like to experience that event, and how it would effect me. Turns out the dolphins just led me to wonder more about life and awareness. Cool.

After the show, I walked to a stand and bought a large green coconut. I watched as the vendor hacked a small hole in it and stuck a straw inside. The contents surprised me; didn’t taste like coconut ‘milk,’ more like coconut water. Honestly, I don’t know if there’s an actual difference between the two, but it tasted really different from coconut milk. Plus, it was really heavy and full, which is not what I’d imagined. I suppose I just don’t have a lot of experience with this tropical island paradise stuff.

I couldn’t find my friends soon after the coconut stand, so I walked around by myself for a while. I saw the sea turtles and the manatees, and then I went to the indoor aquarium.

It was a fantastic aquarium, starting with Okinawa’s shallow ocean life, and a ‘please-touch pool,’ moving on to larger and larger tanks. I was particularly impressed by the blue, yellow, and white giant lobster and by a sign, which directed attention to the damselfishes. I read it as ‘damn-selfishes’ and pondered where they came up with such a name for such a nice-looking fish. :)
The space finally opened up to a humongous tank(27m long x 35m wide x 10m deep) containing rays, yellow-fin tunas, other large sealife, and the imposing whale shark. We got to watch divers hop in to feed them: no bloody body parts flying--how disappointing. ; )

The deep sea collection, the last exhibit, was the one I enjoyed the most. There are really bizarre-looking creatures that live where (almost) no one can see them. I didn’t know that those fish with the periscope eyes were actually real fish, but I saw one, so now I’m a believer. I also liked the cute little fish that stood straight up on the ocean floor, with their heads spiraled like fiddleheads. They were perfectly still, like they were trying to blend in with the environment, but they were so obviously fish that it was funny.

I got lunch after that, something called ‘ran soba,’ an Okinawan twist on soba noodles. Then I walked through the ‘Tropical Paradise Arboretum.’ The crowds that packed the aquarium were suddenly nowhere to be found, and I was able to enjoy the walk immensely.
There was Okinawan folk music being played through some hidden speakers somewhere as I continued walking on into the Traditional Okinawan Village. There were small stone walkways with short stone walls on either side, and under the canopy of palms I could see roofs thatched with straw--houses and graneries.

Back at the car, I reconnected with the others, and we spent the rest of the day at the beach. Kara and I collected some shells, and Dave and John built a sand turtle. The water was niiiiice.

Just before bed, I went to the hotel store and bought an expensive bottle of alcohol as a favor to a friend. The real snake sitting frozen in the bottom of the bottle of Awamori, the local fire-water, stared at me for some time before it was neatly boxed and wrapped and worked with until appeared as cute as the general chazarai that surrounded it on the shelves.

Okinawa

Wednesday, three English teachers from Kumamoto(Kara, Dave and John) and I caught an early bus to the airport and took the short 1 1/2 hour plane trip down to Naha, the biggest city on the culturally conflicted tropical paradise island of Okinawa. We found our rental car, a black Japanese model that looks like an SUV from the front and a k-car from the back, and navigated our way through the complex signage(lack of signage?) of the city. Our first stop was A&W, the rootbeer restaurant. My friends ingested gloppy burgers and big mugs of rootbeer and I did my pectotarian, low-sugar best with a fish burger and an oolong tea. I've come to know that my emerging dietary habits are not usually shared by my fellow Americans, which is okay as long as we all get to eat.
After lunch we found our place, 'The Kariyushi Ocean Spa Hotel Resort,' an 80-acre layout with activity space for golfing, hiking, swimming, and so on. The view from the room is beautiful, facing the ocean.
On the way there we'd passed a Mexican joint, and, never being ones to pass up a rare 'authenic' Mexican meal(of which there are none in Kumamoto--only Mexican-Japanese flavored ones), we went back for dinner. (We did want to make sure to try some Okinawan foods too.)
Yesterday, we got up early and enjoyed a plentiful European-style buffet in the crowded indoor/outdoor banquet area, and headed out to the glass boat. There was all kinds of colorful underwater life to take in. I was amazed at how clear the water was and how easily you could see deep down to the ocean floor. It made me want to try scuba.
After that, we piled into the car, and drove north to the upper tip of the island. As we drove further out, traffic became less and less. We got to the cliffs after about an hour and a half. Personally, this is my first experience with scenery of this sort, I all I wanted to do was sit and watch the waves hit the cliffs. I did spot a turtle swimming away down there, a big brown and white turtle diving down and coming back up, and that made me feel as if I had arrived just in time.
We curved back down the other side of the coast and cut through the middle of the island. On that trip, we got to see regular, sleepy Okinawan towns. They were mostly concrete and uninteresting to look at, but there were a few traditional red-roofed houses, and I saw two thatched-roofed houses.
On the way back, we stopped for dinner at 'Okinawan Slow Foods' Restaurant. My friends ate pig ears, and cherry blossom soba noodles, while I had a salted 'gurokun' fish and two styles of goya, a bitter, green, warty-looking vegetable. After that, I felt very happy. I went to bed thinking about my happy tummy.
Today, we are supposed to go snorkeling. Again, something I have experience with only through things like TV. I have to remember that I don't actually have any skill with this stuff and to be patient if I can't do it all right away! I'm happy to have a new challenge, and an experience to look forward to.
See you on the other side ;)

5 things and happy cupcakes

1. The plum blossoms have opened and they are beautiful.

2. We had our first earthquake of the year yesterday, a small one.

3. I'm going to Okinawa tomorrow.

4. I'm staying in Japan another year.

5. This stationery could be my favorite yet:









Oh,
the thrill of it all

My Dream Toilet

My home just wouldn't be complete without my own Japanese-style toilet. Set on top of the good old-fashioned squat-hole by my handy landlord when I was moving in, only now, after several months, have I had the bravery to use its all its features.

My toilet has an automatically heated seat, controls to automatically adjust the direction of the water from bidet, a 'bidet' for the other hole with controls, 'massage' settings for the bidet stream, 'big' flush and 'small' flush, and, of course, the standard upside-down handle and built-in mini wash sink.

With all the satisfaction the toilet brings me and my guests, I find myself questioning why certain features were not included. I wondered why my toilet lacked the wonders of such toilets as: the one at the public reststops or the one at the train station.

Here are some of those features included in my 'dream toilet(an * indicates a feature I've found or used in a public restroom):'

a blow dryer for after-bidet use*
an automatically cooled seat for those hot summer months
a 'flushing sound' noise-maker, when mother nature's call is just too embarrasingly loud*
motion-activated flush, a.k.a 'wait, I'm not...'*
automated tp dispenser
toilet paper always folded in a pleasing v-shape*
lady's voice thanking me for using the toilet*(I suppose it would be a man's voice on my dream toilet)

the controls on my current toilet

From the 'Happy Stationery' collection

Happy Pudding Stationery


(Be the first to get a handwritten letter on this stationery!
See blog titled 'New Feature!' for rules. Limit one entry per person per stationery; sorry, offer not valid in Chile and Mozambique(exceptions apply).)

A small gap in time

I suspect that at this time of year many people who have enjoyed the quietness of the winter months once again become busy. Spring has finally arrived. Here in the Kumamoto area it's hard to tell, however. It's been cold and windy, like winter, and it was overcast and rainy today.
Today is 'Midori no Hi,' a.k.a 'Green Day' here in Japan. I don't know it's significance(please comment if you happen to know), but there was no school today.
I just returned from a full day's outing in Fukuoka, at the 20th Annual Shohei Juku Aikido Public Demonstrations. It was an early morning, taking a bus down to Kumamoto to meet the gang, and all the way back passed Tamana to Fukuoka in the north, to arrive at the sizeable Fukuoka Sun Palace International Center. The demostrations started at 11:30 and continued until 4pm. My group, the Kumamoto dojo went on to perform at 3pm. For the second year in a row, I was also a part of the demonstration. It wasn't much to brag about though--we only got one minute per pair to demonstrate in front of the audience of around 400 people. In that time, my partner and I could do eight techniques. I was nage(throwing). It took some time to choreograph and memorize the pattern, but after it was memorized, it was kind of fun to practice. My partner is Japanese, but he lived in Hawaii for a while, so he spoke English. It helped a lot to be able to communicate to each other how we wanted to present ourselves.
After the demonstration[sorry I didn't say much about the rest of the demo, but it was pretty much the same as last year's(--see blog archives from March '05)] we had a big, goofy party, where most of the 400 people in attendance drank a lot of beer. They had lots of speeches, some silly presentations by graduating students, and a prize give-away. I didn't win anything, but a guy from a visiting dojo in Hawaii won a sketch of Bodhidharma done by Suganuma Shihan(the head of Aikido on Kyushu Island). Some people from the Kumamoto dojo are hosting some of the Hawaiians, so it was nice for all of us that they had something meaningful to take back with them from the demos.

In other news, I also participated in an orchestra concert on Sunday. We had an insane number of rehearsals last week(five??), and I wasn't able to blog recently for lack of time. The concert went well. Lots of excerpts. I did happen to notice that of the chorus of maybe 150 people, the soloists, the university students, and the regular orchestra members, I was the only non-Japanese person, as far as I could tell. There was a moment at the beginning of the concert when I realized this, and I'm sure my face turned bright red to think I would probably attract attention for it, but after that I barely gave it anymore thought. I'm so used to being a minority, it almost doesn't faze me at this point.
My stand partner, from Kumamoto University, was one of the graduating seniors in the group. At graduation time, seniors seem to be granted full pardons for any insane behavior they demonstrate. During one of our rehearsals, seven graduating university seniors hijacked the symphony for a good ten minutes to give their own mock concert, complete with dancing, gestures, and sound effects. It was so out-there, and actually had nothing to do with the non-student members of the group,(i.e., the volunteer symphony which sponsors the concerts) but no one cared.

Anyway, hope to get back to more regular posting now that... strike that. Next week, on the 29th, I'm going to Okinawa for five days. I can't say if I'll be able to blog at that time, but as always, I'll do my best to post regularly!!

Right now, it's been a long week, so I'm hitting the sack early! Tomorrow's my last class to teach before Spring Break!!

New Feature!!

Japanese stationery often makes me chuckle, and I started collecting Japanese stationery when I first came here more than a year and a half ago. Now I'd like to share some of the giggles in this new feature, "Happy Stationery of Japan."

As an added bonus, if I know you and you would like to request a letter on a particular stationery you see, leave a comment or send me an email. I enjoy writing to friends, and I relieve you of any pressure to write back!

If you already received a letter on the particular stationery, nice!!--leave your impression in the comments field!

The Wonders of Nuclear Power

Today, the ninth graders, teachers, and I went on a field trip to Kyushu's very own nuclear power plant, Genkai Nuclear Power Station. It was a three-hour bus drive to get there, in Saga Prefecture. Several of the teachers asked me along the way, 'Oh Julie, have you been to the nuclear power plant?' I wondered why they thought I might have taken the three-hour trip to visit a nuclear power plant in my free time. So I admitted no, that it was actually my first time.
The bus ride was relatively uneventful. In Japan, they have these women that are hired to talk the whole time on your ride. They are there to make the ride pleasant and enjoyable for everyone, and we had one in a cute orange and black uniform, with an adorable orange hat with a black bow straight from an '80s MTV video. She talked about the weather, her high school, Kumamoto, the Kumamoto dialect(which was interesting for me), and on and on about anything. She was so cheerful and I wished she would stop talking, but that's her job, so she didn't stop. Finally, everyone was falling asleep, so she put on a movie, Disney's 'Stitch,' in Japanese.
When we got to the site, we drove around and got to look at the reactor 'containment vessels' and other big-word things in Japanese.
Inside, we saw the inside of an actual training room used to teach people to operate and maintain the reactors and the power system. I'd printed an explanation of nuclear power and the different kind of reactors to try to aquaint myself before the trip, but the info I printed used a lot of technical terms I didn't know. So I just enjoyed looking at pipes and tubes and pools of eerie blue water, until I finally got a teacher to explain a little. She did the best she could, and I did my best to understand, but it wasn't until we got to the end of the tour that I found a pamphlet in English illustrating the various rooms in detail.
(I took this pic thinking of Homer Simpson with his coffee and doughnut:)
Afterwards, we headed out for lunch. Us teachers, and about 170 ninth graders ate squid for lunch. Big squid cut up into small pieces, small squid cut up into smaller pieces, deep fried squid, fermented natto(soybean)-like substance and squid, and pickles. As you might've guessed, the area special catch is squid. I've gotten used to most Japanese foods, but somehow squid can leave my stomach churning in strange ways. I think I'll be okay.
All in all, an interesting day. The high point for me was when the students would walk around with me, or we'd have fun taking pictures together. Interaction with the students remains one of the highlights of my work. Fun or interesting interaction with the other teachers is very rare at my job, so I try to soak up all the joy in my work from the kids.
When we got back home, we had a formal 'good job, thank you, we're finished' meeting with the students, and everyone started on home. I got in my car and was pulling out, saying goodbyes, and in some sort of dazed tone, like he'd just now realized I'd been on the trip all day, my supervisor(-esque person) shouted towards my car, 'We're finished, you may go now!' I sensed his confusion even as he said it--had he just realized I'd been on the trip all day??

Questions please

Hey, as long as I'm here, anyone have any questions, or something they want to hear about Japan or Kyushu, or culture, etc. etc.?

A bath and Mahler's 4th--not a bad combination.

I moved the speakers into the kitchen so I can listen to music while I cook and eat, and now they are also next to the bathroom.

I can't remember the time before classical music was included in my life. I know there was a time when my palette was empty, and before music's many colors were shared with me. My parents were playing music in our house since before I was born. Many of my comforting childhood memories involve hearing classical music while falling asleep or listening to my parents' brass quintet playing in the living room downstairs, or running around an empty auditorium while my parents were in the middle of an orchestra rehearsal.
My mother devoted so much energy to my own music studies. She sat by my side while I practiced, took me to music camps, and listened to recording with me. I also remember when my dad would come to the lessons. He liked to play Richard Strauss recordings, sometimes at dinner time, even when I was little. I remember playing 'family concerts,' and I remember the sound of the old wooden metronome very clearly. Music seemed endless, like life, at that time.

Somewhere along the way, I gave up wanting to be or thinking I could be a professional. I think it was in high school, but I can't be sure. So now I'm slowly understanding music's place in my life, if not 'center stage.' My palette was empty way back and can still be now. Listening to or playing music is becoming a practice for me. A training, something which helps me to come closer to that person I'd like to become. Until the point at which it ceases to teach me, I consider it a welcome and loving accompaniment to get where I'm going.

Sorry, not Japan related, but I'll get back to that next time.

Finally, we had a warm day today.
Along with the warmer weather, the Aikido mat was packed tonight.
There seemed to be a positive energy in the air, and I noticed right off that I was able to stretch much further during warm-ups, with what seemed to be to be less effort. I think the coldness has a strong effect on our bodies during practice, and that's why (I think) warm-ups in the winter ought to be long and vigorous. About a month ago, during our 'ki' generating drills, I started to imagine dousing myself with buckets of cold water when we pull our arms down from over our heads. I think that 'visualization' of sorts helps to deal with training in cold weather, but I personally still have a lot of work to do to overcome the effects of cold weather on my training.
Today, I noticed many connections between posture and technique, and posture and ukemi(falling). In keeping my posture aligned, the techniques became almost secondary to the awareness and sense of being balanced that were generated as a result. (My idea of 'posture' is a feeling of keeping my lower back and abdomen in a vertical line with my upper chest, and also keeping my neck and head on the same line. In this way, I feel that my body is moving as one connected unit, rather than separate parts)
Currently, I'm working on engaging the inital connection in ikkyo(first technique) omote(to the front) from the nage(thrower) side, and kotegaishi(wrist twist) rotating on a central/spiraling axis. The kotegaishi stuff is fascinating to me, because it joins together so many other Aikido techniques: shihonage(4-directional throw), kaitennage(revolving throw), and even ikkyo, because they all work with rotating around a center point. There's a few people at the dojo who will work ultra-slow with me while I figure it out more and solidify it. I'm so into it, and I feel that I'll be able to progress very quickly when this becomes second nature. For now, very slow practice.

The ikkyo thing is something that's always been there, like an abstract math problem to be worked through to a reasonable solution, only to be disproven time and time again. Ikkyo is also a constant source of fascination in my practice. Working with that initial point of intention really seems to be the basis of ikkyo. Recognizing and responding to that intention takes awareness at the moment it arises. Therefore, the key to ikkyo seems to be constant awareness, so as to appropriately translate the intentions of oneself and others. That is how it seems.(results from tonight's shomenuchi(front strike) ikkyo practice---->)

If someone knows how to create separate folders in blogger, would you send me an email or a comment?
This kind of blog should go into some sort of 'Aikido Chatter' folder or something.

Princess Kiko's pregnancy

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4688056.stm

The Japanese Royal Family's tradition is that only a male succeed the throne, and until recently, it looked as if that requirement would have to be reassessed. With the announcement of Princess Kiko's pregnancy last week, conservatives and believers in the 'male-only lineage' of monarchs may have one more shot for peaceful male inheritance threatened now by the current all-female line-up.

The conflict over the issue surrounding male-only succession is one that I doubt I can and will ever fully understand.
I suppose just having it as a tradition itself gives it meaning. For example, we don't go switching around the king and queen's roles on a chessboard every other game. We keep queen as the piece as the queen, a very powerful piece, and king as the king, the most valuable piece for capture. We don't change these rules because times have changed--we keep them the same. For that reason, I can understand the desire to keep a male-only rule.
But what is royal blood to begin with? Royal blood probably began with someone or something great that continued to pass those qualities of greatness through from one generation to the next. In the case of the Japanese Royal Family, it supposedly originated from deities themselves. But I wonder what is considered different about a man's ability to pass down royal blood, and a woman's ability? Or is it something about having a woman in power? I suppose a lack of convincing answers to these questions keep me from understanding the issue.
I don't want to have a discussion about feminism, but it is quite interesting to look at the ferocious energy that issues like this can gather.

Sweeping our troubles away...

It got colder and windy recently. Today at school, when we opened the windows and doors at cleaning time, the dust bunnies scurried to the far walls and fresh, chilly air swept itself up and down the hallways and through the classrooms.
Cleaning time is one of my favorite parts of the work day. Unlike the janitorial system we have in many schools in the West, whereby one person or a team of people get paid to keep the school tidied, the school's students and teachers here have a designated 'cleaning time.' Each school has their own system: some clean after lunch and some clean before school, but all of the schools I've worked for have had cleaning time.
At the school I work for, we clean after the last class period of the day. Typical responsibilities taken on by both teachers and students include: sweeping the floors, wiping them down with wet rags, wiping the blackboards, vacuuming rugs, clapping erasers, and so on. A particular cleaning method used at this school, which is quite unique, uses tea leaves as a freshener. A student or teacher tosses chopped, wet leaves on the floor in the teacher's room. The leaves are spread with brooms, and the smell of green tea fills the room. Then, the leaves are carefully swept back up and discarded. I used to think the method was crazy; now I just think it is nice. I usually sweep one of the classrooms up on the third floor with the freshman students. When I come back to the teacher's room, it smells fresh and clean.
Sometimes, I would be surprised to see even the vice-principal or principal wiping down the floors, but everyone participates equally, even the head faculty. Hard to imagine such a scene at my old high school!!

Just outside Kumamoto City

Michael Jackson can't sing

These are words you won't hear coming from my mouth, not after my own unconvincing rendition of "Billie Jean" tonight at Paradise Karaoke. It takes some true skill to perform that song, especially with all the 'woo!'s and 'A hey!'s, let me tell you.

Now, you could be wondering what on earth got me back into a karaoke room--you know, one of those private rooms where you've got complete freedom and they serve you coffee and ice cream. No, it wasn't the ice cream, but nice try. It was Etsuko.
We had a nice dinner tonight of nori-maki, sushi rolls that we made by hand. Due to the Bean-Throwing Festival tomorrow, we followed the ancient tradition of the north, made popular across Japan by Daiei Supermarket(which recently went bankrupt). We ate our nori-maki facing south-south-east, this year's 'lucky direction,' in complete silence. I AM NOT KIDDING. We made bets on how long it would take to eat them. I said 12 minutes, she said ten. Exactly ten minutes of silence later, we both finished the last bite.

At the end of the meal, Etsuko looked me directly in the eyes and said, "I have an idea." Another ten minutes later, we found ourselves walking down the silent halls of a karaoke joint which vaguely reminded me of a casino. I took comfort in the fact that I couldn't hear any music from the rooms as we passed by them one by one. The staff woman stopped at number 19. We went in, took off our shoes, and gave it a mighty go!
Can you guess which song I chose to sing first? I'll give a couple of hints: it's by The Beatles, and it's words are simple enough that I once taught it to a class of Japanese fourth graders. Also, I became familiar with it only after coming to Japan.

Ode to Morning Stretches

Morning stretches are such a pleasure, if you can manage to rise early enough to do them. I'm talking about group morning stretches, of course. In my experience, group morning stretches are a universal phenomenon here in Japan. Every morning, from certain public offices and schools, music plays through speakers, transmitted, I believe, from the City Hall or Town Office. The music is always the same, a simple and leisurely classical piece on a piano that reminds me of finger exercises a child might play as a warm-up piece before practicing. And then, in a prescribed sequence, which is taught to elementary school students, and done by old folks all the same, people stretch--in time AND in sync--to the music.

"Ode to Morning Stretches"

Arms up high, Way down low!

Breathe in, Breathe out!

Run in place, Run in place!

Twist your neck, Turn your face!

Never mind your skirt or tie, Or your uniform,

Stretch your body, mind and soul,

Rejoice as you conform!

It's been hard for me to blog in the past few days... I guess things have been going on in my world and through my mind, but I don't especially want to write them down. It's difficult to write any really personal thoughts or issues on a public blog.

Anyway, did you see this news?! It's surreal, yet not altogether unexpected:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4660938.stm
It seems the environment will become the biggest issue whether it is acknowledged by us or not. When will the environment matter enough to start taking care of it? Let's do our best to start now.

Something different altogether

The feeling which comes after inadvertently deleting one's work is difficult to describe. First, I think, comes a wave of disappointment over the time spent and the effort, depending on the quality of what was written. Following, comes a desperate attempt to retrieve the material, even as it is obviously gone. Then there is an assessment of whether to write the entire thing over again or just a synopsis, or perhaps something different altogether.

Did you hear that they are going to start using 'sea-power' to generate electricity in London?
see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4645452.stm

Maybe some day we could generate electricity from all sorts of things.
What if we could generate the electricity in a gym by using 'treadmill-power,' energy taken from the work done by the gym members? I mean, there's got to be a lot of energy generated there, right? I don't know how charging batteries works, what if you could do it just by walking? Self-charge your own iPod? I have no idea how those things could possibly work. But wouldn't the world be a nicer place to live if we didn't have to bear the stress of looming 'environmental concerns' that seem to be getting bigger every day?

Assumptions

So often are my assumptions blown to bits. I'm growing accustomed to this. So, when I arrive at school on days like today to find dozens of cars parked in the playing field and bewildered middle school students clustered about, while adults I've never seen before direct them this way and that, it doesn't bother me much anymore. I just continue on my way up to my desk where I can sit down and my mind can sort out what I just witnessed.

TICK,TOCK,
TICK,TOCK.

Ah, now, I understand: the entrance exams.
I had assumed that when I was told that the entrance exams were being held at our school today, it meant that the girls from our school would be taking exams to get into college, similar to our SATs.
But that's not actually how it's done here. Here, each school administers its own exam to attempt to match potential incoming students to its standard.
Instead of our students testing today, students from other schools will be taking the exam to get into our school. I had no idea what was going on, but since this seems to be common practice here, no one thought to explain anything to me beforehand, and of course, I didn't know to ask.

Something resembling this sort of information gap seems to occur for me nearly everyday in some form or another. People just don't know what I know and what I don't. I can't blame them for that, so I find that I just have to exhibit some patience.

Actually, because of the tests, I have no classes today. I've armed myself with an arsenal of books to ward off boredom. I brought 'To Learn With Love,' a book about teaching music to children. Also, I made a great investment the other day when I purchased a study guide to the 3rd level of the Japanese Proficiency Test, a sort of degree/ranking you can get in Japanese which is recognized throughout Japan. That plus my 'Let's Learn Kanji' book should round out my Japanese education for today. The final book I brought is a book on meditation by Eric Harrison that I've been rereading lately.

Since my lesson plans for next week are finished, I figure 8 hours, 4 books, lunch, a walk, and a brief nap should be just about right.

Enjoy your day!!

Post-holiday catch-up

Please pardon my long absence over the winter holidays. Things are settling back in again over here, and so I expect to be blogging again regularly.

Orchestra rehearsal started up again last night. I'm glad to say that the group is quite relaxed, and this rehearsal was very fun, as opposed to some frightening first rehearsals I've attended in the past. The theme for this concert is "I look at Nature, Nature looks at me." We're doing excerpts, which I kind of don't like doing. I hold a more traditional view that, for the most part, pieces are meant to be listened to as the full work, not just as a movement or an excerpt. That being said, playing and listening to excerpts can be enjoyable in itself, so I shouldn't be too harsh. After all, there were a lot of excerpts at the band concert the other day, and I enjoyed that.
We rehearsed: 'Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity' from 'The Planets,' the last part of 'Carmina Burana', and 'The Blue Danube Waltz'. I believe there are about 6 or 7 other pieces in the lineup, so we may have started with the easier ones.
As for Carmina Burana, I always wondered when I would get the chance to play that work. Seriously, I've actually wondered where I would be when I got that chance. I think the first time I heard it was when I watched 'Young Sherlock Holmes'(the movie) when I was very young, had developed a small crush on 'young Sherlock,' and felt very enthralled by the music at that time. It has to be one of the most immediately moving and over-played works of our time, aside from Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons.' Doesn't mean just because it's overused that isn't a treat to play, though!!

I've been commuting a lot ever since I joined the orchestra. With Aikido, it makes four trips to the city per week, coming out to 8 hours in the car. Now I adore driving my little car through the windy streets, weaving 'round other cars and dodging obstacles like an itty-bitty Frogger, but it is more driving than I've ever done. So I started doing audiobooks in November. I'm almost finished a fourth book,'The Lexus and the Olive Tree,' by Friedman, an informative, well-formulated, and important book about globalization. It's good to get caught up on my understanding of globalization, yet I find the book is bit persuasively presented for my taste(however, some bits are brilliant, like the chapter called 'Just Too Dehumanizing').

Aikido continues to go well. I'm going to start supplementing practice with visits to a gym again. Practice is excellent for focusing on solidfying basic techniques and clarifying principles, but it doesn't provide the kind of physical workout that Boulder Aikikai's training often did. So although my technique may be improving slightly, my physical strength and endurance have slowly decreased.

In other news, the weather's been mild recently. I've been thinking of getting a fish, but I'm afraid it might freeze to death when it gets colder again. I don't think that would be fair to the fish. Hmm...

The olive oil in my house froze right before Christmas. I'm wondering at what temperature does olive oil freeze?

We are the Champions

I know why the Tamana Girl's High School Brass Band is the best in Japan. Their performance is absolutely stunning. I saw their New Year Concert yesterday afternoon. The event not only featured the flawless performances of dozens of members of the symphonic and marching bands, but also included narration, a storyline, dance sequences, light shows, various costumes, a flag squad, and of course, beautifully arranged music, from the 20th Century Fox opening theme to Disney to Star Wars to Titantic to Princess Mononoke to you name it(and not just movie music), but they even memorized the entire second act--it was enough to make any grown woman cry. This being the New Year Concert, it also meant it was the last public performance for the group before the seniors will graduate in April.
At the very last part of the concert the band director announced that this band, the champion of high school brass bands in Japan had to dismember in part. As he spoke, one by one, the seniors put down their instruments and came to the front of the stage, until the front of the stage was filled with girls, holding hands and singing a song in unison to the accompaniment of their younger peers in the background. The director called each girl's name, and the line slowly diminished as each girl ran over to bid farewell to their friends in the band, as the band continued to play. Everyone seemed so moved, many of the students were crying, but there was one girl who didn't look upset at all. She was glowing with joy; her smile was shining, and there was something magical about seeing that among all the tears and sadness. I do believe seeing that girl's joy has made a lasting impression on me.
The seniors left the stage, and walked through the audience finding their family or friends. It felt like a rite of passage, this final performance. The baton was handed from the senior leader to the junior one, and the finale had all of the seniors gather at the back of the auditorium to hold up a banner of well-wishes to the band for the coming year.
When it was all over, it overwhelmed me how they could put it all off. But can you imagine, on my way home from work be it 5:15 or 8:15, as I walk past the school, that I can hear them practicing? When I leave my house on Saturday afternoon for Aikido, I can hear 'Candide' faintly in the distance, and on Sunday, when everyone deserves a break, I can hear trumpets playing passages by Paganini while standing on my back porch. For this kind of devotion, they deserve more than a break, they deserve to be champions. They practice every single day, and devote so much of their time to doing this one thing very well. The band directors must work so hard. How do they do it all??

Coming soon: the other All-Japan Champs--the softball team

How to Peel an Orange

Start from one end, and peel up towards the other end. That way most of the white, sour-tasting stringeys come off with the peel.

Although I found this discovery to be exciting and practical, many people, I'm willing to bet, will find it merely interesting or possibly only moderately amusing. Others still, may have no interest or may have become bored with the subject long ago. I'm not here to judge. Happy peeling!

Coming Down from Winter Vacation

Took the overnight train from Tokyo to arrive in Kumamoto last Tuesday. Monday was a day at the spa. A theme park spa, if you will. There were over 2000 people walking around in robes and bare feet at the Odaiba Oedo Hot Springs. Check it out:
http://www.ooedoonsen.jp/index.html

Went to DisneySea sea last weekend with Hiro, which restored my faith in the Disney machine's ability to spread happiness to the world while making gobs of money. It was inspiring to the imagination, and I hardly felt the lightening of my wallet.

PA was wonderful--lots of family time, which really does make the traveling worthwhile. Mom did a lot of cooking, which is rare, but she seemed actually happy to be doing it. It was good to spend time at Mom's and Dad's. One of the best parts of the trip was when cousin Rebecca appeared out of nowhere, having been given a ticket to come home as a last minute present from her fiance. And seeing my best friend's baby again made me want to see them even more.
All in all, one of the kinds of trips I'd pay money to do again.

It's been taking me all this week to find myself again back here. The trip home and the trip to Tokyo were filled with activity. Coming out of warp speed is taking me some time.

This is a pot of 'oden' sitting on a kerosene heater in the staff kitchen. A lot of the teachers ate this for lunch on Tuesday, including me.






Today's atypically wintery scene.

Very atypical of Kyushu weather, we had somewhat of a blizzard hit the area tonight. Snow's been just streaming down, and the wind is blowing furiously. Driving was awful; visibility was very low and the roads were icy. Tomorrow is the 'closing ceremony' of the second term, so I know school won't be cancelled, but I'll instead be looking forward to a chilly, wintery white walk down the windy lanes to the school grounds.

I've been driving a tiny little thing--the engine that could, if you will. Here's a photo:

I'd like to get a photo with something next to it, like a small child, so it can be witnessed that they are nearly the same size.
Or a walnut.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am quite fond of this car!

I thought of myself for the first time tonight as an actual alien, speaking a strange language, among many other strange and unfathomable beings and existences. It happened when I was watching a preview for a movie that was in Spanish, a language which I haven't heard for a long time. It's kind of silly, but that was my thought.

Life keeps getting stranger and stranger, and the stranger and more expansive my view of the world becomes, the more things make sense. It feels like knowing that instead of frantically flailing my arms and legs in the middle of a huge blue ocean, I could use my body to swim. My experience has now gone beyond my imagination. Does everyone hit this thought at some point past their childhood?

Well, looking forward to the sushi dinner at Hide's tomorrow night. He's got a real nice group of people joining him, all foreign English teachers, I think.

Then, on Friday, it's back home to Philadelphia, for a week. A whoosh back over to another world. Looking forward to it


Here's a look at Saturday's Aikido practice. It was a large class this time, because we celebrated the bonnenkai, year-end party, afterwards.

I've been taking ikebana classes once every two weeks at school. Here's my third attempt--well, my third attempt after the teacher came along, took half of the stuff out and put it back again in quite a more aesthetically pleasing manner!
The arrangement had a winter theme:



And this is a sign I saw yesterday in the mall:

Currently, in Japan, it is 8 degrees celsius in my bed room, which is 46 degrees fahrenheit, and I can't seem to get the ac/heater working. All right, got the spare kerosene heater going, so it's up to 9 degrees now. Soon, I'll be toasty.

Well, I mentioned some time ago that I'd felt some sort of edge with one of the teachers here, Si Sensei. We couldn't seem to communicate, and I couldn't follow the logic of his English class curiculum. Also, something I may not have mentioned was that we might spend an entire class making corrections to a worksheet he'd made, or have a class conducted entirely in Japanese because the students couldn't understand their assignment. I sometimes had the feeling that he might faint in the middle of class and that he seemed a little 'off'.
To follow up on that subject, my relationship with said teacher has improved in that I now understand his situation. He's wanted to retire for a few years but he is continually asked to stay and he does. He is in poor health, and, he visits the hospital for treatment once a week. Since it is actually more important to support him and his relationship to the students and school than worry about how much English his classes are speaking, our classes together have relaxed and become a strange kind of enjoyable, where not much is expected out of anyone, but it's okay for now.

Last time, Si Sensei had to be about 20 minutes late, so we all sang Silent Night in English(yeah, they sing it in Japanese here). When Sensei did finally make it, he surprised us all with his beautiful karaoke-esque rendition of the song. It was quite lovely, and the students cheered at the end.

In other news, bonnenkais are starting again. Those are year-end parties. There is a bonnenkai for every group a person belongs to. This year I've had one so far, with a possible four total by next week.
Last Saturday's bonnenkai 'quote-of-the-party', by a somewhat intoxicated Mr. Naka, 'Julie, you must play your violin for me before you go back to the U.F.O.', produced fits of laughter by all guests present.

Here's a photo of (part of) the Tamana Girl's High School Marching Band. They are the All-Japan Champions! Woo-hoo!!





This fruit is very common down here. We see them growing on trees all over Kumamoto. You can probably guess what it is?

At long last, internet at home. I can post photos! The blog commands are all in English! Rejoice!

Here, have some nabe:
















Help me identify this spider










Here's my garden, before...



and after :)



more photos to come!

response to Jay

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10312475/site/newsweek/page/1/

Thanks for the story Jay.
I think all my friends who are Japanese here have traveled to English-speaking foreign countries before. If people haven't traveled, they just seem to be kind of close-minded to foreigners. It would be like sending a Japanese person who doesn't speak much English to live in the rural American south or in the countryside in the midwest. I think they'd feel the same kind of isolation as foreigners here. I don't think it's all that different from how any race isolates any other race that is in the minority. But the isolation is really real. I experience it every single day at school, where many of the teachers ignore me because I think I make them uncomfortable. It's not my fault, it's a combination of my not speaking Japanese really well, and them not having the patience, self-confidence or the interest to connect with me. I can see how hate could arise from being isolated. That's when I remember that it's just this teacher's community that I am in, and this kind of isolation doesn't happen at Aikido or when I'm with Etsuko or Hiro. When I keep that kind of perspective, it's not so bad.

Aikido stuff

Aikido last night was good. Honda Sensei was in an energetic mood, and he led regular warm-ups. It was the first time I heard him talk about rowing exercise, tenkan undo, and ikkyo undo in detail. Recently, I've been working with a discrepancy between the way we regularly practice the rowing exercise and the way a senior student practices it. Rather than moving his arms and hips forward at the same time, and heaving back, he extends his arms and keeps his hips back, and brings them together for the heaving part. I decided to begin practicing in this way because watching him from the side he seemed to look as if he were actually in a boat, rowing naturally. But when Honda Sensei demonstrated it tonight, he was clearly doing it the first way I mentioned.

I've been focusing on partnered tenkan practice all year. The way we practice here, the grabbed wrist is palm-down, and it curves into uke's center and turns palm-up when uke turns. The angle in the back for the tenkan step emphasizes the angle at which nage can most easily be off-balanced. Ideally, and often occurring in this dojo, there is little stress felt by nage in the wrist in tenkan. The response of nage is based more on the angle of uke's tenkan and the connection maintained through sensitivity in the uke's wrist than by cranking the angle of nage's wrist or tricking or forcing nage to move. It seems like I forget and relearn this every time.

Mostly my concentration has been on increasing the amount of sensitivity I have to my partner's movements, and looking for the 'open spaces' where nage doesn't want to resist and I feel no temptation to force or trick.

We did an interesting variation on kotegaeshi last night that starts out like shihonage and changes to the kotegaeshi movement. The technique ends with nage's face down on the mat, uke's hand pinning the nage's elbow the floor, and uke's elbow pinning nage's neck. Nage's hand is pulled back like kotegaeshi pin to finish.

Maybe I can show some Aikidoka people next time I see you(at summer camp in August?). Of course, all this stuff is hard to describe in words, which is why I've mostly left it out of my blog. I'm thinking about Aikido a lot more than I write about it.

Last night on my way home from Aikido I encountered a road block with four police cars stopped, red lights flashing. I thought it was some kind of accident, but when my car was in line to pass by, four police officers simultaneously approached the windows of the four cars waiting. My car was last in the line, and I wondered what was going on. I rolled down my window and the cop rambled off an official sounding command, holding some sort of flashlight up for me to approve of. I thought he wanted to look in my car, and then I realized the flashlight was a microphone. Maybe he wanted me to speak... I replied to his order with 'Uhh,...' and after some seconds, he said to me, his face almost breaking into a smile, 'Drink alchohol?' His flashlight/microphone was a breathalyzer. Accidentally laughing, I said 'no' and he let me go on my way. I'd never experienced four-car four-cop simultaneous breathalyzer before.

This week is second-term testing week in school. The teachers have been very busy recently making all their last minute print-outs and the students aren't allowed to enter the teacher's room for the entire week.
I was also a little busy. I created the oral component of the exams for six classes. What that means is that I made up dialogues followed by questions. Rather than testing all the classes on the same material, I tried to focus the regular track classes on conversational English, and the nursing track classes on English they might encounter if they had an English-speaking patient in a medical situation. Finally, the seniors will give short speeches in place of their test tomorrow for a term grade.
This is the culmination of what the Japanese English teachers and I have done this term. I found I had to very quickly get with the program to keep my head above water in the past few months.

I noticed that the incredibly lonely feelings I experienced last year have occurred much less since I came back to Japan in August. I'm sure it's helped to keep up the habit of visiting Etsuko once a week or so. We also go out to various events together frequently. Hiro and I keep each other company regularly too, and I often find a lot of joy in our meals and conversation together.

Since I won't be playing in the Kumamoto volunteer orchestra's Beethoven's 9th('Daiku') Christmas concert, I've had my Tuesdays and Fridays free again. Wednesday and Saturday nights are still Aikido nights, and I'm highly looking forward to our year-end bash(that's 'party,' not 'bash each other') coming soon.

I'm sending out Christmas/holiday cards now, and realizing how much I enjoy doing it. Sending out jolly and warm messages to friends.

Yesterday was the school's 'cultural festival.' We held the show at the Performing Art's Center in Tamana. The students danced and sang, and from what I saw of it, it was quite nice.
I was asked to play violin for about 10 minutes, so I played three pieces with piano accompaniment. The first was the theme from the movie, 'Princess Mononoke.' We played the theme while three students sang as a sort of backup. It was a short piece, and I think the audience recognized the theme and enjoyed it. The second was 'Salut D'Amour' by Elgar, which also came off well, I think. Last was a piece that is very popular for violin currently in Japan. It's by Taro Hakase, and the title is something like 'Passionate Song for the Violin.' Taro Hakase composes music and plays it on the violin on a Japanese talk show. Etsuko suggested it might be good to play, and the pianist had the music. It's a kind of cabaret piece, originally played by violin, accordian, electric guitar, and percussion. So we recruited three teachers to play percussion: bongos, maracas, and tambourine. They came up with a name for the band, and the last piece was announced as Julie Sensei, Tanoue Sensei, and the Three Amigos. They didn't really have much experience with percussion, so that piece was more fun than musically precise. I didn't get to see too much of the students' dancing and singing, but I've been told they're producing a video of the entire day's performances, so it'll be a trip to watch it later.

warm thanks from cold hands

Cold cold cold cold. November's brought some below freezing weather already. The school has no heating. The windows are left open much of the time. Emphasis is placed on resiliance and endurance, and no one complains. It's motivating, but at the same time nuts. I'm cold all the time, except when I'm near a heater. Anyone have have any insights on that Tibetan meditative practice of developing inner heat? ;) (actually, I'm okay)

I've been using the school computers since August to post blogs. I'd love to snazz up this blog some and also post more pictures. It's just that all the blogger controls are in Japanese... it seems that the broadband providers I've been speaking with can't locate my phone line at home, they've called me a couple of times, but I always have to have someone who speaks better than I can to call them back. Maybe I'll be able to post pictures again by Christmastime. But thanks for staying tuned regularly or periodically as the case may be.

I called my family this morning at 7:30am to be with them in spirit for Thanksgiving dinner. Cultural things are starting to take on a strange new meaning to me. I can't explain now because I'm too cold, but suffice to say it's interesting to be in a place where Thanksgiving goes largely uncelebrated.

A different kind of thanks comes to mind this year. My goal in Japan has been to become more giving. I never imagined I could become more giving by receiving kindness from others. So I feel thankful for the kindness the Japanese people I've met have shown me this year, and how I've been pushed to become more resilient and persistent. Lastly, I'm thankful when my family and friends support me and when they also allow me to support them. Those are wonderful things.

Who's that girl in the suit?

Having not had much exposure to business attire in the past, it's taken some time to understand what is best to wear to school as a teacher. When I started this job last year, I wore a lot of bright-colored shirts and casual pants. As time has gone on, it's more often that I wear a dark suit jacket or skirt to school, with a pastel top. I understand now that if you're going to see the same people every day, wearing subdued colors calls less attention to you, and they can also see that you care about your job. While elementary school kids don't seem to care, high school kids, in their own uniforms, also seem to appreciate if I also dress professionally. Initially, I really resisted the idea of wearing business attire for my job, but over time I could see that what I wear at work affects other people besides just me.

I'm still filling in the gaps of my professional wardrobe. (Shoes are especially hard because I can rarely find them in size 9) It takes time, but it's become fun. I feel comfortable when I wear appropriate clothing to school and attractive if I can find beautiful but subdued combinations.

Two Stories

I went to a cultural performance on Culture Day last Thursday. I didn't realize it was going to be a sort of 'matured person's' event. I went with Etsuko, who is getting to be matured, I guess, and we were late because her group of friends was performing last. She's been introducing me as her 'daughter,' which is awfully confusing for some people, but quite entertaining for the two of us.
Anyway, I was surprised when we went in she went all the way to the front of the auditorium in the middle of some lady doing a fan dance and sat down. She beckoned me then to follow her. So I went down in the middle of this performance, and a few minutes later Etsuko told me she had to go, to give her group some last words of encouragement before the performance. As soon as she left the auditorium, these two extremely old ladies sitting at the end of the row stood up, shuffled over and sat down next to me. One turned to me(and now there are three shamisen(Japanese stringed-instrument) players playing) and in a very loud voice said, 'Are you a Tai Chi teacher?' I looked at her and said, 'Uh, no. Not at all.' She says, 'Your mother said you were a Tai Chi teacher.' Now, everyone in the audience including those without hearing aids could probably hear her over the performance on stage. No one seemed to mind. I said, 'Oh, that's interesting, but she's not really my mother.' The ladies both looked at me like I was crazy.

I was on the train last night, returning from an Aikido seminar in Kumamoto. An old man sat down next to and started talking to me. From my experience, I know that if an old Japanese man starts talking to me out of the blue, the chances are good that he is drunk or he wants to talk about The Second World War. In this case, it was both. He asked me where I was from, but after about one minute into the conversation, I was somehow from Florida. I told him I was from Colorado, but he thought it was nice that I was from Florida, and what nice weather they have there. Not like when the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. Actually, I'll just stop there. Suffice to say, he was a nice man who was a little sad to talk to. I've had maybe three experiences like that now...

The Hash

Every year, foreign English teachers(usually JETs) come together to run a kind of marathon. They call the marathon a 'Hash.' Two weekends ago there was a Hash in my town, Tamana City.
Two teachers in charge, called the 'hares', create a course and lay out checkpoints around the town for the runners. The poor runners, though, have no idea where the checkpoints are. That's the idea of the 'Hash,' to take a place on a map and have people discover the unique and interesting parts of that particular place. Not that I knew any of this before we started. I just knew to bring some 'running shoes and an open mind.'
The hares painted dots on the city's streets to show possible routes the runners could follow. When we saw the dots, we knew we were on a certain route. Their were true routes and dead-end routes. And there was food placed in coolers hidden strategically along the way. Eventually, the larger group of about twenty split into several small groups of people running and walking, searching for the finish all over town. That's how I made a new friend, 'Hide'. We ended up running most of the marathon as partners. We ran through a school, over top of a museum, passed famous hot springs, through endless twists and turns, and finally up a mountain and down a hunormous slide where the hares were waiting to take our pictures. So it was great fun, the kind of fun I didn't know people were still having. And making friends with Hide and the other teachers made it that much more enjoyable.

Music: Oldies but Goodies

I went to a concert the other day in Arao--it was the 'Ensemble Crane,' a string group playing chamber works.
When I walked in, about 150 eyes were staring right at me! Turned out that Arao #3 Junior High School's eighth graders were taking a field trip to the hall for a classical music experience, and they all saw me at once. We exchanged silly Jap-english greetings and basked in our mutual memory of Ms. Fukunaga's Team-Teaching English classes.
Luckily, the students stopped focusing on me once the concert started though because it had lots of easily accessible pieces like Eine Kleine Nacht Musik, Vivaldi's Fall, and baroque and show pieces. Good deal--easy listening.

Next month I'll see the Czech Symphony Orchestra play the New World Symphony, Ma Vlast and other things. Should be excellent(cost an arm and a leg though!).

And the orchestra I joined rehearses again tonight. The group is Kumamoto's Volunteer Symphony Orchestra, called 'Kuma-Kyo' in Japanese, and is comprised of about 100 members. It rehearses twice a week, and performs about once every two months in the largest hall in Kumamoto City, called Kenritsu Gekijo. Upon attending my first rehearsal the other week, it surprised me to hear that the group was so easy to become a member of because they sounded professional.

The program for November 13th's concert is Brahm's Symphony No.1, and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.5. I get the feeling we will be playing mostly standard orchestral repetoire, which is okay with me. I think I missed a lot of standard repetoire growing up.

In my experience, however, good, steady habits are built up from practicing the standard repetoire. Playing non-standard repetoire consistently could lead to players without solid roots in basic technique or knowledge of music history or literature. So even though I'm almost grown, I want to go back and play those pieces that I didn't get a chance to in the first place. Turns out Brahm's No.1 somehow reminds me of Strauss' Metamorphosen. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

... and pleasant news

I joined a symphony, finally. More on that next time.

Pleasant news and...pleasant news

During cleaning time after sixth period, Da Sensei told me that there would be an assembly in the gym when we were finished.
So, after cleaning time, I headed through the courtyard into the gym where the students and teachers were beginning to settle down on the floor.
The meeting opened and we all sat in the formal seiza style (i.e., sitting on our heels) and bowed to the principal, who proceeded to make two announcements. The first announcement was that the softball team had successfully gained the title of All-Kyushu Champions this Sunday. The second was that the marching band became the All-Kyushu Champions last week. Therefore, they were both going on to the All-Japan Competitions later in the year.

As a side note, lately, I’ve been working again with my posture. When I am standing, I try to stand with my hips slightly more forward. It gives me a feeling of elongating my torso and quads, and that somehow seems to make my body feel lighter, especially when I’m doing Aikido.
I’ve also been working with ways to lessen the burden on my knees when I sit in seiza, formal sitting posture. From watching others, I’ve started to practice sitting a bit further back on my heels, which relaxes my legs, shortens my upper half just a little, and seems to release some of the pressure on my knees.

When I heard the announcements, I was somewhat subconsciously practicing this adjusted way of sitting. My thoughts, however, were preoccupied with the news that those students had put their best foot forward and come out ahead. I was taken by surprise, therefore, afterward, to receive compliments from two different teachers on my sitting posture.

Anyway, my silly sitting story aside, perhaps someday students at this school will be receiving the news that they have made it to the All-Japan English Recitation Competitions. Wouldn’t that be something?

The violin is back.

I started a practice regimen again finally. The school has 6 beautiful practice rooms, used by the members of the famous Tamana Girl's High School Brass Band. The band has traveled all over the world. They are awesome. And they have provided me with the space, the opportunity and the motivation to play again. I think things are going to take off from here.

By the way, among the ups and downs, life here is very good. My Japanese, somehow, seems to be coming along, and my job is making me use my head. Aikido training is good.

It's funny--many, many topics go through my mind when I think about writing, but when I actually sit down, only the bare bones of my thoughts actually come out.

Oh, well.

And you win... another bag of rice!

Spent most of the day with Hiro and his father in the rice fields yesterday. I was told that my clothes 'may become dirty,' so I wore an old shirt and some beat up jeans. When I arrived, I was changed into a really old shirt and some old plaid pants you might've been able to spot me in in my middle school days. And like Hiro and his father, I wore a button-down over top.


What's the deal? Why, it's rice-harvesting season! And an Indian summer, meaning it's hot, hot, hot outside.

The three of us spent the better part of the day cutting rice with a rice-cutting machine and a hand-held saw. We loaded filled sacks of rice onto a truck and took them to the dryer where we poured the cut, uncooked, unsheathed rice into a large holding machine to dry. After a few days, the rice will go into another machine to get the outer coverings taken off. We unloaded 45 sacks, weighing just a bit more than I could lift by myself.
Hard work, but satisfying.

After all was done, we went back to Hiro's house where I was granted the first to shower and bathe. I took my shower and then sat in the bath, which is traditional style bathing, and then sat down for dinner. It was a potage, eggplant and shrimp stirfry, some pickled items, a bitter veggie called goya and tofu.

Then, Hiro and I went to Sega Game World and played the new and improved Taiko game, with extra bonus songs and graphics.

I went home with another bag of Hiro's father's rice, which makes three. Big score!

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Seems some advertiser got ahold of my blog address. They keep posting ads as comments. The only way I know to stop this from happening is to resrict who can post comments. Any comments?(No ads please :) )

Tawara, Tamana, and several colors of loincloth

Last weekend, I went to the Tawara Matsuri, a festival held once a year in Tamana, my new city. Tamana has a population of 45,000, slightly smaller than Arao's, the city I lived in last year, and about 400 of them came out for this bizzarre festival held under the Takase Bridge.
Twenty-seven teams compete for approximately $5000 in cash and prizes(including a year's supply of freshly harvested rice) from morning til afternoon. What are they doing? They're bursting balloons using 800-kilo straw barrels.
The teams have to work together, pulling ropes that extend from the hay barrel, manuevering it through a parking lot and bulldozing balloons set in various places. There are prizes not only for the fastest teams, but also for the teams with the best outfits. Two of the men's teams caught my and my camera's eye. One had colorful robes, with painted samurai on the back, reminiscent of the ones I fell in love with at the Tamana Iris Festival last year and the one I brought back for Boulder Aikikai. The other were men dressed in loincloths of various colors.

The painted samurai costumes won first place.

I don't know about the loinclothed men. Ran a pretty good race though.

Getting used to being alone, or perhaps I'm just not as alone anymore. School is going very well; I can't stress how much of a relief that is to me. In fact, I feel very free.
The high school is preparing for their annual Sport's Day Festival, which means classes are practicing in the gym for much of the regular class time. They take Sport's Day so seriously here--but it's good because everyone is really focused around this time. The only way it affects me is that I have less classes this week, so I've been going down to the gym to watch.

Have also felt a opening into understanding the Japanese mindset(which I actually think is just a mindset, and not specifically Japanese). It's because of the books I found in the cubby(Thanks P). They are incredible and have been blowing my mind as to insights into the language and culture. I've been learning how important it is to say the appropriate 'set phrases' at the appropriate times. It's revealing a different way of operating to me.

Been taking a breather from blogging, but it hasn't quite been a voluntary breather.
To make a long story short, I had to reapply for broadband and send back my old modem so YahooBB can send me a new one. Until I get the modem, I won't have internet at home, which also means I don't have a long-distance plan set up for outgoing calls. I'll be able to write a little more and call a little more after that.
That being said, I've got a ninth-grade class in ten minutes, so I'll make this brief.

Aikido's started to take off. I went on a weekend trip with some members to Okayama, near Hiroshima, last weekend and we had training and went sight-seeing, had general fun, etc. Two days a week of consistent training has finally become the right amount for me. I'm beginning to see the level of skill in the dojo, and within the past month have felt another 'opening' to what I have to learn here. Felt like a release--being open to this different way of doing Aikido.

School is getting better. Day to day is a little difficult, because I've been thrust into curriculum development and grade assessment and all that. Like becoming a teacher without any training. Anyway, gambarimasu(doing my best).

Weather's finally started to cool off. It's been really pleasant the past few nights, and the days are breezy.

Went to Kagoshima yesterday(actually a town called Kuchikino, sounds like 'yesterday's mouth,' but I know my translation's wrong) to go to a temple, Jikokuji, and meet a monk who's originally from Belgium. Have to write about that later, I guess.

Miss talking to friends from home.

Time to go read 'Anne of Green Gables.' How lucky am I?

Intellectually, one step closer to the inside

I've been feeling a real edge with one of the English teachers here, Si Sensei. It seems we just can't communicate very effectively. For example, yesterday he asked if I would prepare something to discuss with the students for the first ten minutes of our class together today. I told him I could think up something or other.

So, I thought up an idea to talk about onomatopoeia and mimesis words, words that sound like the sound or action they are describing. I thought I could write several onomatopoeia on the board and we could try to guess the meanings in Japanese by the sounds of the words. We briefly confirmed my idea in the morning. When I got to class, the teacher started to pass out paper, saying, "Julie will now speak on a topic for about ten minutes. You must write down your understanding of her speech on this paper." I hadn't prepared a speech, and the students didn't know whether to participate or listen, so my activity flopped. I felt badly, but there was nothing I could do at the time.

After class I wrote a speech on my topic so I would be more prepared for the next time, if there is one.
I feel some kind of irritation whenever we have to talk, and it seems as if he feels burdened every time we talk too.

Now, actually, I like Si Sensei, and I know that we can teach together effectively. It was during this train of thought that I picked up a dingy book sitting in a cubby in my desk with all the other dingy books. It's simply called, "Speaking and Living in Japan." I thought it'd be similar to many other books I've read with a similar title, but it wasn't. It tells stories from the point of view of a man living in Japan, learning Japanese. He goes through his daily life, and his mood is affected by the various things he says and the responses he gets throughout his day. It describes why at times, foreigners might feel frustrated with Japanese natives and vice versa. One thing, for example, that it points out, is a frustration I've experienced several times. In Japanese culture, it is considered polite to interject frequently while a speaker is talking to confirm that they are listening. In the place where I come from, it's considered rude. It makes me want to stop talking because I think that the person is placating me and isn't really interested. It's just not that way here, in reality. It's almost unbelievable, how something that feels offensive to me is just my point of view. It's hard to not feel offended by something so ingrained in me!!

Anyway, I think these kinds of misunderstandings are causing my tension with Si Sensei. Unfortunately, neither of us fully understands what the other is considering offensive. It's bewildering. I hope as I read more of this book, I'll begin to understand more of what I can do to keep our misunderstandings and mutual offenses at bay.

Another thing I learned is why I get such a strangely quiet response from the staff when I greet them with "konnichiwa,"(good afternoon) but "ohiou gozaimasu"(good morning) seems to be fine. I learned that "konnichiwa" is usually only used for people outside of your "group," and that it sounds odd to be used when you are on a somewhat familiar basis with someone like a coworker. It's so subtle, but every bit helps me gain some understanding of how to become more accepted here.

Sorry, still no internet at home, thus the long hiatus. I would've liked to be in touch will more people back at home by now, but getting internet and long-distance hooked up has been taking me a while...

I started at Tamana Girl's School on September 1st. Today I'll give my last self-introduction class. There are 21 classes in total, and I team-teach about 13 of them. I see some twice or three times a week, therefore my total number of classes is 17. That's about four a day, which is reasonable.

Class is surprisingly similar to the middle school classes I team-taught before, down to the textbook itself. The three grades(1,2, and 3, equivalent to our 10th, 11th, and 12th grades) all use the same English textbook. I don't really understand why that is yet. The book's really only about 70 pages long.

I teach with four very different teachers. More on that to come.

So far, this job is much more reasonable and satifying than the one I had last year. I'm very happy to have arrived in such a place.

My house is turning out to be nice! It's pretty stinking hot and humid here, but I like to curl up on my couch and watch movies, or play violin with the cool air from my air conditioner blowing on my face. I've read a lot recently too. It's still incredibly lonely sometimes, you know, but that's part of the challenge of being here.

I stayed at my landlord's house for the day and night of the big typhoon that hit us last Tuesday. He's got these cool soundproof walls and windows that don't let in the wind or cold. His family, including his wife, daughter, son-in-law, and two grandkids had a welcome party for me at their house last Friday night. Since I'm so hesitant with my Japanese, I became very shy when I was first around them. By the end of the evening, they were showing me the family scrolls, paper dolls made by the landlord's wife, and the new wooden nameplate the landlord had carved for me in characters. I left with a paper doll, two wrapping clothes, a new summer kimono, and the next morning, the landlord attached the nameplate to my door. So I guess I've made a few new friends. :)