IrishOboe

Dec. 26, 2005

I slept in again and it was a beautiful, warm (relatively) day. I hung my futon and washed my sheets. There was a stiff breeze, so my bed will be nice tonight!

I did some much neglected cleaning and Megan came over to use my shower since her pipes broke on Christmas day. I’ll think I’ll leave my pipes dripping from now on . . .

In the evening I went to Adden’s for dinner. Adden is from China and is studying at the university where New Life International church meets (Eiwa). He was a chef in China, so it was a very good meal! We talked and watched a movie. Apparently homeschooling is legal in China, though it is not very common. Who would have thought?Dec. 27^th I went to work and used the day without classes to plan for next term. It’s tough, but I think I’m getting somewhere. I had some good discussions with Shimizu sensei, too, which helped.

In the evening I cooked spaghetti and garlic bread and ate mochi from Sunday. I spent the evening trying to figure out what I’ve been doing with my money . . .

Dec. 28^th I went to school again and this time I tackled the mess that was my desk. The whole desk surface was full of notebooks from my predecesssors (at least three generations), and the large desk draw was full, too. I went through the stuff lightly (most of it is lesson plan stuff for ways of teaching that I don’t care for), and put it all in a big box. It overflows, actually, but it fits nicely under my desk. Now I have a desktop and a draw that I can actually use. Where had my stuff been previously? In piles on the desks next to mine . . .

Dec. 29^th I couldn’t do my dishes because my hot water pipes had frozen even though I left it dripping overnight. They didn’t thaw before I went to Kasia’s (fellow Eastman grad, cello, JET in Kiyosato 30min north of me). It was a beautiful, blue sky sunny day. I finally pulled out my Japanese language tapes again for the train ride up. I had stopped because it was too difficult to pay attention to the tapes and while I was biking to and from work. Well, I haven’t done much studying per se, but I’ve sure learned a lot. The tapes were much easier (though it has been three months!!!).

It turns out that Japan shuts down around the New Year. That means three days before and after. We tried three places for lunch and all of them were closed. Later on we tried an onsen and it was closed, too. As Kasia pointed out, at least that means that everyone gets a break!

We had lunch at Kasia’s, which turned out great because she had left over asparagus stew, which was delicious. She showed me her koto, and it was impressive to watcher her play. She’s learned a lot in four months! She showed me how to play a little, and how to read the music. I remember looking at the koto music from the recording session in Rochester I helped Mitzie with. I was able to follow the rhythm by the end. Like the Japanese language, you read the music from top to bottom and right to left. There are measures as in Western music but the pitches are indicated by the name of the string in kanji. At the time it looked like hopelessly complex kanji characters. How did she know which string to play? How could she remember the name for each string? As I looked at the music at Kasia’s I realized the strings were simply called “1, 2, 3, 4 . . . 13”! I had studied the kanji for the numbers 1-10, but I was far from quick at reading them. Add the fact that I was playing a new instrument and couldn’t see the dots on the bridge telling me string “5” and “7” because my hand was in the way, and I found it quite challenging! Of course, nothing that couldn’t be learned with time, but surely it takes a good amount of time! After fooling around for a little my legs grew tired of sitting in seiza (feet under butt), but I was excited to go to her koto lesson that evening. We played a game of Quiddler, but I have to say, Quiddler is more fun with many people! I miss family game time!

I don’t have the words to describe what happened at Kasia’s koto lesson. It was great to watch Kasia and her teacher play together (two kotos). This is no simple stuff. Kasia’s doing tremelos, fast finger work, pitch bending (with the left as the right plucks), and left-hand plucking while right-hand picking, and don’t forget the page turns!

At the end of the lesson Kasia asked if I could play and her teacher suggested Sakura. I thought she’d show me gently how to play and maybe teach me the tune by ear, but I was in for a surprise! After tuning, which was something I could do easily and apparently made her think I knew more than I did, she put music in front of me, let me find the starting pitch, and said “san, hai!” which means “ready, go” (literally “three, yes”). How she thought I could read music just like that is beyond me and I immediately panicked and after two measures (5, 5, 6 repeated) I gave up on the music and just played by ear. This failed soon enough because I didn’t know the proper version. She stopped and pointed out my mistake and Kasia helped me find my place in the music when I said I wasn’t looking at it at all! This did not discourage her teacher at all and on we went. This time, I did my best to keep my eyes on the music and look down enough to hopefully hit a few right notes. Of course it helped that I’d heard the tune, and of course it helped that I (theoretically) new the kanji, but it sure felt way out of my ability! In a swirl of thoughts I pulled together everything I had and just tried to hang on. I really felt like I was pulling something out of thin air – I had no time to think! Even with a number of stops I struggled through remarkably well. Once again I’m shown how learning to swim by drowning sometimes works quite well. I look back on how lost I was when I first joined the Irish dance class, but again, how quickly I learned! I think this is also further proof that I don’t have to use Japanese here, but that’s besides the point.

After we got through the duet Kasia asked if she could play with me. Just picture it: two souls having unknowlingly spent two years at Eastman together finding themselves in a tatami room in the middle of Japan sightreading a Koto duet together – how unreal!

After the lesson we at dinner with the family and thought I think the conversation was mostly in Japanese, there was a bit of English since their daughter is in high school and is doing quite well at English. We had stukiyaki, which was one of the best meals I’ve had here. Stukiyaki is kind of like a Japanese style fondue. There was something to the dashi (broth) that was SO delicious! In the broth we cooked beef (it was great, especially since I don’t eat meat often here), sprouts, and lettuce. Yes – cooked lettuce! It was good, and I’m a big raw veggie fan. Perhaps even stranger is that each person has a bowl of raw egg to dip things in after pulling it out of the pot. Strange? Nasty? No way! It was oishi!!!! That means delicious! Suzie tells me there’s no salmonella in Japan . . .

When I come back to America my taste buds are going to get bored.

During this wonderful dinner we had good conversation and once again I was impressed with how well I was able to keep up. Kasia knows far more than I do, but I understood good deal and managed to say a number of things, too. Otosan (father) always laughed every time I said something. I thought it was because I said something wrong, but apparently I was just very cute when I spoke Japanese!

After dinner they persuaded us to play our instruments. We had brought them with us so as to keep them a little warmer than they’d be in Kasia’s apartment. Kasia sounded great to my ears and I was struggling with a now a bit-to-old reed. Shame died a long time ago though – they were even video taping! It made them happy, so I supposed it’s the least we can do. I also played a little whistle, which is always easier and gets a better response. Will I ever learn from that lesson?

I spent the night at Kasia’s and managed to stay warm. It seemed to me that her place stayed warmer overnight than mine, but I could be full of it.

Dec. 30^th Kasia made a breakfast of bacon and cranberry French toast with honey and bananas. It was great! We tried an onsen again with no luck so we showered at her place and practiced koto and managed to find a place to eat lunch. The lunch wasn’t so hot but the conversation was challenging, which I always enjoy. Time slipped away and we spent a ridiculous amount of time in the restaurant. We then jammed together at Kasia’s place going from simple pentatonic improvisation on Sakura to no-boundries wacky whatever is, goes full out craziness. It was fun! We both wish we had more skill in improvising!

Alas the day came to a close, but Kasia convinced me to go out to dinner, which was a great thing. I had another top meal, though this time it was salmon lemon butter (all in katakana) – oh it was tasty!

Dec. 31 I slept until 11:30, which shocked me! I little time to clean up before going to the station for church at the Brown’s. Leslie and her brother (visiting from America) came, too, and we hung out until people came for church around 9pm. We hung out and enjoyed each other’s company (and I was working on crocheting leg warmers out of left over yarn from my shirt I finally finished), until around 10:30 when we worshiped together. I told them it was my spiritual birthday and they prayed for me, which was wonderful because usually Mommy and Daddy pray over me while I light my baptismal candle, and all three were in America.

We had a little Bible study then we prayed and praised into the New Year. God has blessed me with a fellowship of believers here!

We stayed up until the ridiculous hour of 3am and Leslie, her brother and I spent the night because the trains don’t run after midnight . . .

Jan. 1 2006 we all slept pretty late then we ended up staying most of the day. It was great to hang out and talk and play with Mikey and the dog. Ah, there’s peace in that!

Happy New Year!