The Japan Experience

This is probably going to be my last journal entry.  I'll try and fill you in on what I've been up to recently, but I've got a feeling the 'you' I'm referring to here is a pretty limited audience (especially because I haven't written anything for probably months at this point).  Anyhow.

This past month has been particularly busy, even though I've moved on from my project in many ways.  I've been playing nightly in my teacher's bar and spending a lot of time hanging out with him and his other American student.  My spare time is mostly spent practicing samisen in the bar's garage, and I've recently increased the size of my repertoire by about three or four songs in about as many weeks (in addition to increasing the size of the lump on the little finger of my right hand...I consider it a war wound).

In addition I've been dividing my time between soubetukai (going away parties) and packing up to move to Chicago.  The soubetukai (among other things) have completely rendered my schedule from any conventional shape, and until recently I've been staying up until 2-3 AM and waking up around 10.  This all started back at the beginning of the month with the Neputa festival, which cranked up performance opportunities (ie, playing mornings in the train station) and reduced sleep, followed immediately by about a week of o-bon, which meant the bar was busy and we had a ton of outside performances (I got paid $30 and a nice lunch to perform once, too).

I don't want to talk about packing up and moving, because it's a drain--both energetically and monetarily.  I've spent about $500 shipping stuff to the US and am kind of irritated with the post office at this point (for a number of reasons), so I'll just skip ahead to the next section.

I leave for Tokyo on Friday, then spend about two weeks doing...what?

1) 3-day trip to Shikoku to visit a friend and go canoeing on Japan's prettiest river
2) Visit friends from ICU Brass
3) possibly appear on the national TV program "Waratte ii tomo"
4) See a friend put on a concert with his 'performance band' Kotobuki
5) hole up in my hotel room writing a paper for a UCLA conference in October--to which I need to submit a draft by the day I leave Japan.

That's what things are like here.  I have no idea what Chicago--the school or the city--will be like, but it's pretty much already been decided that I'm coming back here the first chance that I get.  So we'll see what happens.  Till then...

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I'm still waiting to hear from Chicago about my apartment, schedule, and lots of other stuff, but, alas, nothing of that ilk comes in the mail or in my new mail account : ( On the other hand, I've been getting a steady stream of e-mails from Campus Safety concerning robberies and shootings in the neighborhood!

Anyhow, this week I've been training about two hours a day, on the Neputa-hue. Neputa is the big Tsugaru autumn festival, and I've been learning the hue (transverse bamboo flute, pronounced "fuu-A") part of the hayasi (literally, "encouragement/prodding": the accompanying music/troupe made up of flautists and drummers). There's a kind of drill camp going on in the Hirosaki tourism building where an acquaintance of mine (from a different flute practice) is apprenticed (?) to the teacher. Anyhow, I got invited, and it's basically a big room with maybe 80 people playing flute and I'm the only foreigner.

Which is fine, of course. But the ojiisan (old guy) who teaches the music is a spritely old soul with a good sense of humor. He often goes off on tangents telling funny little anecdotes, invariably falling into his thick accent. When he finishes the story he always turns to me and says "Wagaru? Iina, maina?," which is Tugaru-ben for "You understand? OK? No?"

He's not really picking on me, so I don't mind--it's just kind of funny. I guess that story would only be good if you were there. I'll see about taking some pictures tomorrow.

Anyhow, Neputa (Nebuta in Aomori) originates in the Bon festival ("all souls day") where people make paper lanterns and float them down the river. Well, the origin stories are varied here, but for whatever reason the Tugaru lanterns have gotten huge--like 8 meters tall--and have become pretty cool works of art. The Neputa of Hirosaki are all the same shape--that of a folding fan--and have huge scenes from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Marshall, and period Japanese stories painted on them. There are some really popular scenes that you see over and over, and some that are originals, but basically when they starting this painting style people took novels that were popular at the time (mostly Chinese historical war novels) and copied the pictures from them. When they get lit up they become amazingly vibrant, violent, and sometimes sexually suggestive works of art that have so much dirt under their fingernails I don't even have to mention Bakhtin for you to see the Carnival in it. Very cool.

The Aomori Nebuta are called "Doll Nebuta" because they're all shaped like massive sculptures of paper and wooden frames. They're pretty impressive to see in person, though of course, I really prefer the Hirosaki Neputa.

There's also Tati-Neb(p?)uta from the surrounding towns, which are skinny but even taller than the ones here. I've never seen one, so I can't really say much about them.

The festival takes place in early August, and I really want to see both Hirosaki and Aomori's fairs, so I'll have to split my time between the two. In addition, I'm going to want to play at least one day (the festival is something like six nights), though I haven't figured out a group yet. We'll see how things go.

Also, I've decided it's time to introduce you to Jero:




The Snow that falls into the sea
From the frozen sky
Is swallowed up by the waves
No trace is left behind

Hey, even if I loved
Ah, if it didn't reach you
Hey, shouldn't I
Just throw myself in?

Come after me, to Izumo Cliff
The Japan Sea of sadness
Lost sight of love, at the top of the cliff
The falling tears
are just like the
snow that disappears

If I hold out my open palm
A cold mirage
of me ripped away from this world
I believed it was destiny

Hey, even if I loved you
Ah, while it never comes true
Hey, why don't you just
Kill me, please

All alone on the Izumo Cliff
Without an umbrella, waiting for tomorrow
My wet hair, frozen to the roots
Even words of resentment
disappear on the water's surface
just like the disappearing snow

Hey, even if I loved you
Ah, if it didn't reach you
Hey, shouldn't I
Just throw myself in?

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...and here I thought that band's name was "Relational Theory." Actually, I though the band's name was "Teacher from Hell," but apparently that's the song title. Anyhow, I've gotten myself into a pot over this one.

For the first time in a while I was listening to some Siina Ringo (that's Shena Ringo to you) and I clicked on a youtube link for this band, Theory of Relativity. Because my music consumption on youtube is half an experiment in multimedia consumption, I have to say I was drawn in by the AV combination and the ironic vocal style/lyrical content. Then I said, hey, why don't I put this on my journal?

There's nothing wrong with the song, as far as I'm concerned, but I'm just warning you beforehand that the lyrical content seems, ah, immature. How you interpret it is up to you (unless, apparently, if you're Chinese, in which case Reader Response/ie Postmodern thought still apparently hasn't gotten a hold of the public consciousness).

Anyhow.

The composite product is really what I'm selling here. Take it or leave it.




Teacher from Hell (Theory of Relativity)

Auditing class, premonitions of love
A visit to my home was the gates of hell
After the closing bell, in the schoolyard
I learned 'extra-curricular' love

Feeling like I'm going to bomb the test
or that my weak heart is about to break
In the homeroom classroom
Rumors of boy-girl relationships flew

Teacher, I want to know things I don't know!
I want to see what I can't see, show me teach me
Hey Teacher, lately I haven't been sleeping well
I feel paralyzed [as if held in place or possessed]
Why, Teacher, why?

Sailor suits are battle gear
for a Death-match against class
Determined for disaster prevention
When the chime that almost never sounds, rang

Teacher, I have something to say, but I can't
It's so pathetic I'm mortified, Teacher
(speaking of Teacher, Teacher)
Oh, Teacher, don't use my full name
Just call my given name
Please, oh please, Teacher

Teacher, I still have something to ask
It can't be someone younger?
Answer, answer, please, Teacher
Teacher, the graduation ceremony's coming up
Don't even say goodbye, I'd hate it
I still want to be a highschool girl!



Oh, and I just found this video by the same band. It's pretty entertaining...huhu

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'Hate' is a strong word, so I'm really only using it here for emotional effect. But, I really really hate iTunes.

To be fair, it's a combination of Windows Media Player, Vista, and iTunes, but really it's iTunes fault. I just want to go back to Winamp and forget the whole ordeal, but I can't, because now I'm left with irrevocable damage. Let me explain.

Keeping music organized on my computer is a big deal--you could even call it part of my job. That's where Vista comes in to screw with me. Instead of just leaving my files as they are, it goes through this complex organizational process that splits albums up, creates necessary folders, and makes it so that I can't find what I'm looking for. When I manually fix things on that end, the file locations get misplaced in iTunes, and I wind up with garbage labels and unusable playlists. Of course, (to the best of my knowledge) iTunes doesn't have a "remove duplicates/remove invalid files from library" function like good ol' Winamp does. iTunes also has a handy automatic feature that alters file information on your hard drive without asking--which is why I have such a mass of songs with ???????? for a name instead of the Japanese that I manually typed in (instead of leaving it to WMP, which messes up the conversion anyways). It's frustrating. It really is.

So there I was, I think it was on Friday, trying for probably over 2 hours straight to get some level of basic organization to my folders. I even moved everything into that stupid "iTunes" folder, which just adds something like three levels of unnecessary complexity to my files. Long story short, in the process of doing this whole business, I wound up with two copies of my entire music collection, which is not a particularly harmful thing. But then, when trying to clear out my library (mind you, the library in iTunes, not my files on my computer) in iTunes to start fresh, iTunes DELETED MY ENTIRE MUSIC COLLECTION. BOTH COPIES. I am soured by this.

Of course, I have a recycle bin, thank goodness. I have a recycle bin that's capped at 16.6 gigabytes, which should be large enough to handle just about anything coming its way. Unless, you know, some vigilante code decides to delete two copies of someone's entire music collection. I don't know exactly what I lost, now, to be fair, but I can tell you that I've lost EVERY music recording I've taken this year. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Those are irreplaceable, and that's why I'm peeved.

I have some partial backups, but they're in reduced quality, and they are far, far from complete. Now that I have an external hard drive (just purchased yesterday) I'll back everything up on that, but that doesn't make up for the loss.

As you can tell, I'm rather put out right now. I hate iTunes, I think, a lot.

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Sorry for the gratuitous entry.

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The three Google Books pages open on my computer now are "Irish Culture: image, culture and identity/'the Cracked Pint of the Servant': the Irish Pub, Irish Identity, and the Tourist Eye," (actually, that's only half true~RIGHT now it's open to the book's introduction, but that's the article I'm using), "Cultural Tourism: Global and Local Perspectives/Cultural Tourism: Between Authenticity and Globalization," and, my personal favorite (for reasons actually exceeding the title) "The Tourist as a Metaphor for the Social World/The Home and the World: (Post)touristic Spaces of (in)Authenticity?"

I'm working...ish...on a paper proposal for a conference at UCLA in October. I have another two weeks to finish the abstract, which is awful, because I'm way in over my head as far as tourism research goes. The thing is, the conference is about "Mapping Space" in Japan, and I want to use this as a chance to make use of my recent plethora of Min'you Sakaba experience. There's a lot of stuff I can say about identity construction (my favorite quote, possibly of all time, is by a researcher called Jennifer Roberson, who says something like "hurusato[the notion of hometown] is a constructed and discursive space of reflexive identity making"...and I'm experiencing that right now! In the hurusato itself! Oh, it's just crazy...), which is easily enough connected with the paper topic, but coming up with a thesis that's a little more sophisticated than "hey, look over here! Look what I found! It's...it's...an example of the obvious!" (re practically all of the lame case studies I've read thus far in tourism research) is what's messing with me.

I'm also kind of [I don't know the right word] about Gerald McGoldrick, a Canadian who studies samisen and who wrote a really nice detailed masters thesis a few years back on Tsugaru-jamisen. I have no idea how to express the complicated emotions I'm feeling about his research, but they're taking up a significant amount of my mental energies as of late (as well as table space on my kotatu). I wonder what'll happen if he googles his name and this entry shows up? If you're reading this, leave a comment. We have lots to discuss : )

I was going to leave off with a complex question about intoxication and Japanese etiquette, but let's just say that I'm lucky it's not too too hard to say nothing in a bunch of words in Japanese...and, by definition, be extremely polite about it. Huh?

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Hanabi, literally "fire flowers," should not be confused with o-hanami, which is flower viewing (the 'bi' and 'mi' sounds are close-ish, so I always get them mixed up).

On Friday I had my samisen lesson, after which I was invited by my teacher to play at the hanabi taikai the following day. Hanabi taikai is when you get a whole bunch of different companies/sponsors and firework artists together, and have fireworks for fireworks sake. It's a summer thing, and they're supposed to be really impressive in Japan.

Because I can't play the ensemble songs in my school, I just played the second stage we did and played the intro and outtro, which was my kind of bastardized version of 'Ringo Busi.' The reason I put it that way is because I've figured out how to play about half of my school's version, but the latter half I play the University's club version. What was cool is that we played while the fireworks were going off--timed with them--with te odori youth dancers in front of us and a singer for one song.

The funny thing is, though, there were about 20,000 audience members, so only those who paid top dollar to sit in the A section could even see the stage. I had two groups of friends in the B section, and when I visited you couldn't even hear the attractions. Which is fine, because hanabi is really about the fireworks.

There was another spot of awkwardness, though, because the University circle's teacher had a bunch of the students join him and play with him on stage. I would have done the same if, you know, it wasn't for the whole thing about me being banned from performance with him or at events associated with his school. So what was awkward is that I would be hanging out in front of "our" tent, and "they" would walk by. The students in the circle don't care one way or the other, so they stopped and talked with me, and even took a picture with me. But the fact that they were wearing the one uniform and I was wearing the other, I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure nobody was noticing the inter-school interaction. Not that it would have been a big deal, but it would have been a little uncomfortable. Maybe.

The upshot is that this time, unlike at the All Japan Competition, the school Sensei actually recognized me and gave me a head nod in passing. That'll almost give me enough confidence that he doesn't hate me...enough maybe for me to finally go to his place and ask for an interview...?

Speaking of which, I should be getting busy with other stuff. I have another interview today, and I want to, I don't know, do some more work. Till soon.

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I'm just finishing up my little trip to Tokyo and, since I'm free until 5:00 I thought I might write a bit while I still have the internet. Here's a brief sweep of what I've done:

I got sick, missed out on the conference that I came to Tokyo specifically to see, hung out with the other Fellows mostly in a blur off to the side with a raspy and painful voice, visited friends during the healing process, visited some more friends, healed almost completely for a really cool interview (actually, the interview was pretty unremarkable, but I went out with the guy afterwards for a few hours of casual discussion in a local Hokkaido-themed bar that plays his music, and that was pretty fun), and, well, then today.

Just so you know, I typically get (really) sick only once a year, and it's usually very short term. This time it was weird because I lost my voice almost completely just in time for three interviews enroute to Tokyo. I took the overnight bus from Sendai (2 interviews there) to Tokyo, and it was pretty horrible. I couldn't sleep at all and spent the whole night turning over and coughing. Fortunately the kid sitting next to me was a heavy sleeper (also a nice guy, apparently studying abroad in Colorado now). The sickness slowly progressed (with off and on fever) to something of a drip/raspy voice combination, but never really blossomed into anything too crazy.

Maybe that's because I slept the better part of the day of the conference in a hotel room (Fulbright's 'ogori', Fulbright's treat) that's larger that my apartment back home. Actually, the bed itself was about the size of my entire bathroom. But in exchange for that (not that I REALLY care) I missed out on seeing Aso's brother and the Crown Prince, both of which attended the conference. So it was a big deal. The conference itself, however, was all about soft power, so the topics, although generally interesting, were all political and probably kind of boring.

Anyhow, with regards to the post title, I've been treated to a great hotel room (for two nights...now I'm checking out of an economy hotel on the eastern edge of the city) and transportation to and from Tokyo by Fulbright. That's all well and good, but I've also been treated as a 'guest' by friends and even my interview subject (I'll probably be on his blog soon, too: http://masahiror2.exblog.jp/) to some nice meals. I always feel bad when, especially people my age, pay for things, but I guess that's part of the culture. Anyhow, there's also an understanding that if anyone visits Hirosaki (or, later, Chicago) that I'll pay for the meal. Also, by the way, whenever I go out with my professor, he typically pays for the meal, but I guess I've just gotten used to that.

Speaking of which, my advisor from Ursinus will be visiting Japan for the first time in years, and since he'll be stopping by Akita it looks like he'll be able to spend a night in Hirosaki listening to some samisen with me.

Oh, it's all fun and games until I have to hand in my final project...(more on that later--it's very exciting stuff)

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I just found out that an alternative kanzi for "koraeru" is written as a "long" (time-wise) "heart," which makes sense to me. Does it make sense to you, or is that sensibility just the biproduct of my contact with the language here? I mean, like how I now just kind of understand, gut-wise, why the word for "foothills" is written "mouth-mountain."

That's beside the point. I'm in the library (as usual) using the internet, and there are these two girls sitting on the other side of the room watching Youtube videos or something. I don't know exactly what's going on, but it's apparently pretty funny, because they keep talking and laughing. I'm putting up with it, because I'm leaving for class in an hour or so and I've actually had a relatively productive morning, so there's no reason to say anything. But it's an opportunity to share a short cultural tidbit:

Did you know that when Japanese people laugh at something they think is funny (like, *really funny*) the clap their hands? Do people do that in the west? I can't remember. I guess it's like thigh-slapping, but it's perfectly normal.

Also, (this is a little more of an archetypal image than something you see on a regular basis) when Japanese come up with a good idea or solve a problem, they'll smack their open palm with a fist, kind of like they're splatting an insect they're holding.

A common one is this--when referring to one's self, the appropriate gesticulation is an index finger pointed toward one's nose, not one's chest.

Something that's really uncommon, though, is when a Japanese person touches something hot (like a boiling kettle) and burns their fingertips, what do you think they do? They don't lick their fingers, rather they grab the bottom of their earlobe, which is supposed to be the coolest part of the body.

What else? Japanese people cover their mouths a lot, especially women. Girls will often cover their mouths when laughing (I guess there's that stereotype in the west as well, though), and in public people will cover their mouths while applying chapstick or using a toothpick (tumayouzi, in case you're wondering).

Last, but not least (for today) is the Asian squat. I'm pretty sure this goes beyond Japan, but here when you squat down you can't call it "sitting on one's heels" because you literally don't~you sit behind your heels so your knees go straight up to your chest. You have to lean forward to keep from falling backwards or sitting on the ground. It seems rather awkward, but I guarantee it's a lot...erm...'safer'...way of squatting when using a Japanese-style toilet. If you're wondering, feel free to google it yourself.

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I'm finishing up my plans for visiting Tokyo (June 10-16), including a one-day stop over at Sendai to interview perhaps the greatest samisen player in Japan today. Perhaps.

Anyhow, as if I didn't need any kind of reassurance of my limited grasp on reality, I just checked, for the fun of it, the distance between my economy hotel (I'm moving from the ANA Intercontinental fancy rich persons' hotel after the conference that I'm ostensibly visiting Tokyo for ends) and the place where I'm meeting my friends from ICU for a joint "Joshua's in town and Otiai-san is leaving town" party. Of course, the party is in the vicinity of ICU, which isn't really "in" Tokyo, but my hotel just happens to be on the opposite end of the map, putting me about an hour away, not counting the probably 20 minute walk to the station. Well, I guess I've got to fill my time somehow.

I'm going to buy my train tickets today, so I'll give you the rundown of what I'm planning on doing. On the 10th I'm visiting Sendai (unfortunately right after the Sendai-dwelling Fellow is kicking off to Tokyo) to interview (hopefully) this performer. Then I'm most likely staying overnight in a 24-hour restaurant (there were some planning issues~I'm sure this'll get worked out sometime today) to leave bright and early for Tokyo the next day. I get to Tokyo, hang out with the Fellows for a half day, and then spend the next day at a JUSEC/CULCO cosponsored conference. The conference has very little to do with me, other than the fact that it's a reason for Fulbright to pay for a round-trip ticket to the capital and two nights in a posh hotel, though I'm sure I'll be able to find value in the event itself.

Once that's done, I ride out to God's country and check in (hopefully) to my new hotel, go back out to Kitizyouzi, near ICU, and meet with my old friends for a while. Two days later I should be meeting with another performer who's an incredible player and is actively working on some international projects that should make for some interesting dialogue. I leave for Hirosaki on the last train out on the 16th.

That gives me a little bit of free time to hopefully visit with friends from Ursinus and another top-knotch samisen player that I met up here who moved back to the Tokyo area. So I'll be busy, I'm hoping, and not just kind of hanging out in the hotel room waiting for the next thing to happen.

Now, back to my *real* work...

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It's quite popular for the Japanese language to import words from outside, often from English. In the samisen circle we delineate between rental (rentaru) samisen and personal samisen (mai syami..."my shami", get it?) through the use of these "coming from outside words." Well, that's all well and good, but the "mai syami" way of putting things is a little cute, I think.

"Waga samisen" implies more than simple ownership, it implies a kind of deep personal connection and strong emotional attachment. Usually Waga is applied to things like one's country, lord, school (there's some cultural tidbit for you), house, etc, although you can really use it with anything you want. It's just that since the regular associations are with really 'heavy' subjects, that feeling is brought over when you use it with new words. Like "wa ga samisen."

The reason I bring this up is because now I have to find a way to distinguish between my two samisen. That's right--my second one arrived yesterday and now I have a "waga samisen" in addition to my "mai syami."

It's funny~as soon as I ordered my new samisen, about two weeks ago, my old one started sounding really good. I was worried that I might, for some unforeseen reason, not be satisfied with the new instrument. Fortunately after playing it for a bit yesterday (I'll really be able to put some time into it today) I was pleasantly surprised to find that the sound kind of makes my first instrument sound like a toy. Sort of.

I still have to play both instruments, because if I don't the neglected one's drumhead might spontaneously break. That means I'm going to drop some more cash on a shoulder bag (I'll use that to take the instrument on the airplane as well), I need to buy a new plectrum, and I had to order special bags to put the pieces of the instrument in when I take it apart to put it in the little case. Because I just bought two new samisen cases. This is turning into quite the investment. Hopefully it'll start turning a profit around when I get back to the States. At least that's the plan...

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So last night I got a bag of kanpan and an MRE as a (belated) thank you for performing at the local military base. Kanpan looks like little crackers and tastes really really familiar...I just can't figure out what it is. I put some in my miso soup this morning, and it was pretty good.

An MRE, if you're not aware, is a "meal ready to eat," army rations. I haven't eaten mine yet, and, in fact, I don't even remember which one I got. There were two, and I think I got the beef stew, but I guess I'll find out later.

I did another interview yesterday and, through him, set up an interview with a kid who's supposed to be the best player in all of Japan. I'm going to visit him en-route to Tokyo next month, since he lives in Sendai. Also during the interview I had to turn off the recorder for a minute to hear a strictly off the record bit of information, which was extremely educational and, because it was off the record, nothing that I can apply to research. Or go around writing on web journals about. But whoa, boy, what a piece of gossip.

Anyhow.

I also incidentally set up another interview with the teacher of the other performer I met yesterday. In addition (I did the interview at a kind of museum of Tugaru culture) I visited my new teacher to work out the final details of that end of things.

My 'new teacher'? Yes, that's right, now I'm also going to start taking yokobue (bamboo flute) lessons, although my goal is basically just to memorize one or two songs with as little effort as possible. We'll see how it goes.

On a final note, I just finished setting up my Chicago ID information, and when I tried to create a password it told me that what I had inputted was based on the dictionary word "nocixel" and therefore was invalid. Just for the record, I've never heard of this word "nocixel" and it doesn't come up on reference.com or Merriem webster's site. It's the name of a graphic art or record company, and it might be a word in a language I'm not familiar with it. Bonus points for anyone who can tell me the meaning or, at least, the origin of the term.

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Sorry I haven't been writing much recently, but I've been getting busier and busier. Today will just be a quick entry as well.

Have you ever eaten shark? I picked some up the other day (two slices for 75en~how could I not?) to give it a try. Of course cooking shark and eating shark are two different bowls of soup. Which is probably what I should have made.

Instead I just cooked it in the same way I typically cook everything else--I salted and put soy sauce on one piece and experimented by marinating the other in mirin, and just broiled them. The result wasn't, well, bad, I guess, but it was kind of weird. Shark has the same texture as, say, pork, except that it's a lot softer. So eating shark the other day, I kind of felt like I was eating undercooked pork, because there wasn't much flavor to it anyways.

Also, usually I try and eat everything (depending on how it's cooked, I will eat fish tails and bones and eyeballs, too), but the skin of the shark just wasn't worth it. Of course, it's much thicker than your average fish, and the fat (I think that's what it was) almost had the texture of cartilage, which isn't very appealing. Add to that the fact that it's a whitish color with green-black spots on it, and it becomes even less appetizing.

Another recent culinary adventure was when a friend of mine took me to a soba (noodle) shop over the weekend. We both had the same thing--cold noodles with a bunch of vegetables/raw egg/etc that you mix together. It was really tasty, but there's a thing about Japanese meals that you might not be aware of: they use a lot of dishes. If you don't know what all the dishes are for, or how to eat a particular food, you might wind up doing something embarrassing or silly.

Usually when you have zaru-soba or kake-soba, you take the cold noodles from a basket-like thing, dip them into the tuyu sauce in a small cup, and eat them from there. This time, though, because there was stuff in the noodles, they came in a bowl instead of a basket, and the cup for dipping was much larger than usual. The sauce comes in a different jar, so I didn't know what exactly to do. The person I went with put the sauce directly into the bowl, but that left the cup unused. I did the same, though, because in the end we wound up using the cup for the soba-yu (water the noodles were boiled in). You get that with your noodles, and at the end of the meal you drink it like tea. Usually you take whatever sauces, etc, you have left and water them down and drink them that way, but this time we just drank it straight.

My friend is Japanese, so I would assume she'd know the 'proper' way of eating (not that it makes that big of a difference), but one of the great things is that she's a Tugaru native. That means that if she wants she can just become 'joppari' (Tugaru lingo for "really really stubborn") and decide that her way is the proper way, and nobody can mess with that. There's also a Tugaru attribute called ehurikogi, which although difficult to translate, basically means you pretend to know what you're doing even when you don't. So it's all gravy.

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I've been pretty busy recently with various things, and that's why I haven't written. At the end of the month I'm going to visit a friend's okeiko just to see what it's like, and then set up an interview with him. I've completed my fourth interview as of yesterday~that was with my teacher.

The funny thing is, he didn't have much to say in general until the interview, and then he just talked on and on and on (in, I guess, a good way). After the official part was over he started telling me about all of the video footage and recordings of samisen players his father took, and how he'll lend them to me if I want. If he can find them. If they're not all moldy from sitting in a cardboard box for fifteen years.

Also, just out of pure coincidence, when I was at ICU and took my Japanese music class I actually saw a documentary about my samisen teacher (versus Kinosita Sin'iti) from a while back. At some point I should be receiving a copy of that, too, as well as some insider/background info on it from the man himself. I do think that that's a pretty crazy coincidence, though, that I saw a documentary about my future teacher before I even knew anything about tugaruzyamisen...

In other news I'm going to try and write a paper for a conference at UCLA in October. It's good to have goals, though this one just runs parallel to my current research interests. The conference's theme is "place" and Japan, and that's a lot of what I was planning on dealing with in the future, since right now I'm more concerned with performers' creation and interpretation of abstract concepts.

BUT, because I'm here, and because it was on my agenda anyways, I'm probably going to try and pull together some kind of analysis of the min'you sakaba (folk music bar) scene in Hirosaki as a physical space representing culture but interpreted in diverse ways by the different groups that utilize it. Really, I've done a lot of observation of these places to date...it's just a matter of trying to squeeze some kind of conclusion out of them. But, heck, if I manage to land a paper in a conference that'll both help boost me back into the mindset of "normal" academia (as opposed to the liminality of an ethnography-centric Fulbrighter) as well as hopefully give a good first impression to my future colleagues at Chicago.

So while focusing on that, I also have to prepare a presentation for my lit class next week, which should be fun as long as I can manage to avoid bringing up Nietsche for an hour and a half...

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If you're wondering what kind of people I'm working with over here (or, maybe put another way, how ridiculously small the tugaruzyamisen world is), yesterday I just interviewed this year's All-Japan champion. Actually, it's his second time winning, but that's beside the point.

It was just my third interview, but I can tell you these are a lot of fun--on the one hand. On the other hand, my first two were people originally from the Tokyo area, and yesterday's subject attended Hiro-dai, so they were all spoke fluently in the common tongue. I'm wondering how things will go, say, next week when I interview my teacher. He's not college educated and was born and raised in the area, so I often have trouble understanding what he says. We'll see~exploring a wide(ish) demographic might help me with the final analysis, although it might just be adding a layer of complexity. Here's to producing data for use years down the road!

On a related note, the other day I finally visited Yamauta, the oldest samisen live house in Hirosaki and the home-base of the Yamada school (read: this is Yamada's town). Unfortunately Yamada Chisato died a few years ago, but his group is still very active and visiting there was an important experience. I went with my professor and a folk-singer friend of mine that I played the Sakura-festival with. We were kind of looking for a way to spend the cash we got busking, so it was a good choice--and the woman at the cash register didn't seem to mind the fact that we paid the over $100 bill in coins only : )

By the way, it was my friend's first time there as well, though she already knows most of the people working there. She wound up singing her best song before the regular show and I got to bumble through my competition solo in front of a bunch of Japanese salary men. It doesn't matter if I'm good or bad in that context (I mean, of course, I care when I sound crummy, but that's a different story) because nobody expects a foreigner to play samisen, and they all think it's great that their Japanese culture is spreading around the globe. In fact, that's part of my research.

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So there I was, in the middle of the second party welcoming the freshmen to the samisen circle, talking with a girl who recently visited the US about skunks, and I forgot the word for thyroid gland. I guess these things happen.

If you're wondering, the label for "thyroid gland" in Japanese actually means "kabuto-shaped" (Japanese helmet-shaped) gland, and the character for "gland" is made up of a piece of meat and a fountain, so it should be really simple to remember, right? So it goes.

I did an interview yesterday with the original winner of the Hirosaki All Japan Tugaruzyamisen Competition (the oldest competition of the kind) and it was incredibly interesting. It also didn't hurt that my subject is a Tokyo native, so I understood virtually every word he said. He was very articulate and seemed to enjoy explaining his thought processes in detail, which is a double edged sword--the interview is a great resource, but now I have an hour-long tape to transcribe. It also doesn't help that the cafe/restaurant we went to got pretty noisy, so I have babies crying and dishes clattering in the background. But, hey, that's how I'm going to learn, right?

That reminds me--I'm going to see a concert later this month featuring two of my friends--one awesome samisen player and one folk singer--performing in concert (har!) with an Okinawan folk musician. Okinawan music is very "island-musicy", which makes it the polar opposite of Tugaru music. For instance, the instrument--the sansin/sansen/zyamisen/zyabisen--is a predecessor of the tugaruzyamisen, so it's like half the size and the plectrum is close to the size of a guitar pick. Okinawan music also uses a distinctive mode that includes half-steps, which are NOT in any of the four(?) regular Japanese modes. Tugaruzyamisen players that I've talked to, interestingly enough, seem to equate half steps with "sadness" and "blues jazz," which are two associations that I don't think are that strong in Okinawan music.

Half steps, by the way, are just notes right next to one another--on a piano the black key and the white key next to it are half steps. In western harmonic music they're usually used to create tension or to deceive the listener (by falling short of the melodic trajectory of the piece to extend a phrase or something like that). Of course this is an over-simplification, but just consider this: harmonic progression is almost entirely based on the tension and release created by the relationship between notes played in sequence or simultaneously, whereas there is essentially no related function (that I'm aware of) in Japanese folk music. That's a pretty broad statement, and I'm sure there's some caveats/different interpretations out there somewhere, but from experience I can at least say that in Tugaruzyamisen the concept of tension and release might be best explained in terms of momentum.

...

Okay, I just got lost on Youtube for a minute there listening to samisen music again. If any of you run into a CD with Sirakawa Gunpatirou on it I will pay top dollar for it, at least after I look for it used on Amazon.

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I haven't written for a while because I've been particularly busy, what with preparation for the tugaruzyamisen zenkokutaikai and all. Well, I performed on the 3rd, watched a lot of amazing players on the 4th, and then watched the folk singing zenkokutaikai the next day. I'm surprised at how many people in the top levels of the samisen world I now know, and hopefully in the next month these contacts will prove fruitful for research as I finally start doing interviews again.

To give you an idea, there were about thirty participants in the male level A competition, and they perform in a rough order of who's expected to be strongest. In other words, if you play in the first half of the competition, the chances of you winning are very very slim. Anyhow, you can see on the program that the most competitive players (as considered by this competition, which has been accused of being rigged since its inception twenty years ago) are from the Tugaru region, and I've already met most of them. Sasakawa Kouzin, who's this year's champion, is a player I've seen in concert and who's pretty close with a folk-singer friend of mine at school. The second place competitor won the last two years in a row, but he's not from Tugaru so I haven't met him before. Third and fourth place went to pretty good friends of mine.

In addition, I got to talk with Kevin Kmetz~a Californian who plays some pretty radical samisen~and his students, one of whom gave me a CD he just released with samisen/accordion duets on it. It's not nearly as campy or bad as you might think it is--he really is able to emphasize the lute-like qualities of the instrument and bring a new flavor to it. I was actually very impressed.

Through Kevin I got to speak with Nitta Masahiro, who, for reference, is at least on par with the Yosida Brothers, and plays the lead antagonist (the 'good guy' antagonist, whereas his real-life father plays the 'evil antagonist') in the movie "Overdrive." Very very high level stuff. If I was the type of person to get all excited about this kind of stuff, I'd say it was like meeting a celebrity, which is essentially what it was.

Speaking of which, the guy who took 3rd in the competition is going to join the Yosida Brother's sub-group, Hayate, and offered to introduce me to them. Now I just need to pin things down and get in gear. After this weekend.

I'm not just stalling--this weekend I'm meeting (hopefully) with the father of the guy who came in fourth this year, a man who just happened to win the first two Hirosaki zenkokutaikai consecutively and is therefore something of a legend. I'm just waiting for the e-mail with the time he's free, that's all...

So that's what things are like here. I've met a whole bunch of interesting people, I'm taking a trip to Tokyo next month, and I'm just trying to get things organized and on the move.

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Sorry I haven't written in a bit--I've been pretty busy. Here's the quick rundown:

Golden Week starts tomorrow, but yesterday, the 29th, was the Showa Emperor's Day, which is another national holiday. Basically between that and Golden Week (GW for short) normal people are having a week and a half break from work, visiting family and friends and partying a lot. Of course, in Hirosaki's case, this coincides with the cherry blossom festival, so it kind of doubles up and is extra special. Which brings me to yesterday...

Yesterday my advisor, my 'tutor,' and I went to the cherry blossom festival and played from about 11:00 until 1:30, then we stopped for a while to have a cherry blossom party with about eight people (a friend of mine unrelated to our seminar class even got to join us by chance). Then we were back to playing off and on--it was a lot of fun and, although I don't know the official total, we raked in probably a couple hundred dollars worth of tips. Of course, I don't think I'm going to see any of that money directly, but it's going to pay for the party and probably another party or two down the road. So it goes.

The party, by the way, was left to my discretion. I had to come up with a theme and all, so instead of something very "Japanesey" we did an "American-style" ohanami, which basically means we died Easter eggs, had a short Easter egg cracking battle, and then ate a lot of egg salad sandwiches. Oh, and there was sushi, too, which was pretty good. I also made the last batch of macaroni and cheese I had left, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Okay, going back in time...

Sometime before that we played at the Hirosaki national defense force base. It was miserable and raining, and our first set was outdoors under a tent. The ground outside was like a swamp and so there wasn't much audience gathered. The second set was indoors on a stage in an auditorium full of kind of ritzy-looking place settings and people in suits. We played, and it was fine, and then we got to go down to the ground level and eat and hang out with a bunch of people we didn't know. This is my second time going to the self defense force base, and I'd say I'm pretty popular there because, you know, I'm foreign and yet speak Japanese (this, I like to think, also helped to draw in some crowds when we were busking yesterday). So while the girls in the samisen circle were kind of doing their own thing I got to talk to a bunch of drunk old guys, which is usually at least kind of interesting.

Afterward we got to take basically all of the left over food from the entire hall, so I had my dinner that night as well. In addition, we got to take a bunch of bottles of alcohol and soda and stuff--I got a bottle of nihonsyu (sake) which I, later that evening, gave as a present to a friend of mine who stopped by to drop of some fresh bread she had made with her new bread maker. Things work out nicely like that (did you know you can make cake with a bread maker, too?)

Finally (in reverse direction) I performed in my samisen teacher's bar the other night. I can only play one song in his repertoire (shoot...I forgot, I also played in the train station twice, but not much story there), and it's not very good, so basically it's kind of silly. But the point is that I'm practicing playing my solo in front of people, and my teacher tells everyone that I've only been playing for 4 months (and I'm a foreigner) so they're all appreciative anyways. And besides, it's cherry blossom season, so they're all probably drinking anyways.

Although it's hard to explain why, it feels really good to sit on a stage and play next to people who play a lot better than me. Of course, after the solos finished I left the stage, because my teacher also does gassoukyoku (ensemble pieces), has folk singing, and folk dancing. Actually, at least during this busy time of the year, he works really hard.

Tonight I'm going to my 'regular' samisen bar to hear a guest performer, but hopefully tomorrow I should be back to my teacher's place to play and, you know, at least show my face again before the competition. Busy busy busy. And I have class today. Ganbare.

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I'll make this a short entry, since it deals with language and I don't want to bore you too much : )

Yesterday I had my Miyazawa Kenzi class again, and we read a poem that he wrote for his little sister after she died. I don't know the details of his life--that's not really important--but I thought I'd write a bit about how he wrote.

Basically, before WWII the use of kanzi was much freer (like spelling was in English around Chaucer's time), as famously demonstrated by Natume Soseki...but that's a different story. Also before the war, the way of writing was different--not stylistically, I mean the letters of the syllabary. It's like if you read documents from before Charlemagne when there were no lower-case letters, or if you look at old German documents that use now antiquated characters like the Eszett and Umlauts. The Eszett is now just written "ss" and the umlaut is commonly just represented by an "e" after the vowel. In other words, the appearance was different, but the sound and meaning were the same.

Japanese is the same way. Japanese uses, in conjunction with kanzi (Chinese characters), two syllabaries (characters that represent a full syllable but no specific meaning). Before the war the texts were grammatically very similar to how they are now, but they were written using alternative characters for the same sounds. The books I bought for class are all written in the modern style--the copies I downloaded from the internet (they're all public domain, don't worry) are written in the old style. The old style just, I don't know, has a cool feeling about it, maybe.

Anyhow, yesterday in class we read IN class that poem written by Miyazawa. This was bad, because when under the pressure of time and in the presence of Japanese I basically feel an extraordinary amount of pressure to outdo myself, linguistically, and end up in an essentially paralytic state of non-understanding.

But.

But, I did better than the Chinese girl in the class (probably the one and only time), because she didn't know how to read the old text. Hah! Score one for the white guy. Of course, reading it now it's not that difficult overall, but that's beside the point.

So here you go, old text, new 'translation', English translation. I'll just do one line because I'm busy today, but maybe next week I'll translate the whole thing for fun (spaces in between the words are pretty arbitrary...the important differences mostly have to do w/ H's and A's):

Omahega taberu ameyukiwo tarau tosite / watakusiha magatutatetupautdamano yauni / konokurai mizorenonakani tobidasita

Omaega taberu ameyukiwo torou tosite / watakusiha magatta teppoudama no youni / kono kurai mizorenonakani tobidasita

To bring you rain and snow to eat / I, like a curving rifle bullet / Flew into this terrible sleet

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"Sekai no Hate ni" is actually one of the songs on the latest Yosida Brothers album, "Prism," but that's what it kind of feels like here in Tugaru. I've mentioned before how last year there was sever hail and frost damage to the apple crop, which forced farmers to sell at ridiculously undervalued prices--I was even able to buy 10cent apples at one point. In addition, due to the general worldwide financial instability, tourism is down, and tourism makes up a pretty large slice of the economy here. I mean, after all, I've been thinking off and on if there's an aspect of Tugaru culture that hasn't been commercialized yet, and I can't for the life of me come up with one. Not just food and music and crafts, but things like festivals, the dialect, and (my recent favorite) the STUDY of Tugaru have all been turned into marketable products, and these are all potentially directly affected by the recession(?).

Anyhow, the latest is this: Hirosaki is supposed to have the best sakura (cherry) blossoms in all of Japan, and they're supposed to coincide with the national holiday "Golden Week" when basically the majority of the country takes off, goes on vacation, and spends time with family. Golden Week is the first week in May, but because of an extremely warm winter the sakura have already bloomed, starting a few days ago. The reason why (I'm not going to get into it here, though) the Japanese traditionally like sakura so much is because they don't last very long--a week or two, depending. Which means by the time Golden Week comes around and Hirosaki should be a bustling hive of tourist consumerism, the sakura will have mostly fallen. On top of that, we've had rain since the sakura have bloomed, which means they won't last as long (though it intensifies their fragrance, or so I hear). Basically it's like the great order of the universe is trying to pound Tugaru firmly back into it's historical poverty (though it's not that far off anyhow) so that way everyone here can regain the 'authenticity' of their Tugaru hurusato-dwelling identities.

But regardless of all of that, the point is that this weekend, weather permitting, I should be busking with my academic advisor on Saturday and Sunday. Sunday I'll also be performing in the local self-defense force base with the samisen circle, and hopefully Friday and Saturday I'll be playing just a bit at the train station via my samisen teacher. This is all building up to the competition which is--oh goodness-just about a week and a half away. There's no way I'm ready for it, but I've hit a wall with practicing, because my arms are just getting more tired more quickly and my right wrist is in pretty consistent pain (whenever I tell any of the 'old hands' that, they just kind of laugh, though, so I'll stop complaining). But, for the sake of harnessing the Fulbright Spirit (that's an inside joke) I'll just do my best. Ganbarimasu.