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Moved

April 2002

Well, folks, the spring holidays are over and it's back to school. Not that I ever really left - some JET participants get time off work in their school vacations for free, but I have to take paid leave if I want to avoid turning up to the office. I don't really mind, and as they say when you step off the plane in Tokyo, "every situation is different". I thought briefly about a weekend in Taiwan mid-break, but ended up spending the two weeks turning up to work for a few hours each day, studying a bit of Japanese, playing computer games at home and going to the onsen whenever it was open. A relaxing fortnight like no other I've had since I arrived. Now I'm glad to be back amongst it.

The education system in Japan is such that the school year ends and begins again in the spring. Don't ask me why, but it doesn't escape me that students move on from one phase of their education to the next in concert with the bloom and fall of the cherry blossoms that are so loved in this part of the world. The graduation of students from elementary, junior high and senior high schools is marked by a ceremony specifically dedicated to presenting these students and saying farewell - it's called "sotsugyoushiki". Duly, about a fortnight later, these same students are welcomed to their new school in an entrance ceremony, called "nyuugakushiki". We don't really go in for the ceremony thing in Australia, not in the way they do here. I was therefore a bit wary at first, but having been through two graduations and one welcome in the past month, I am sure of their value. They are both sad and joyful, in the same manner as hellos and goodbyes (which is what they are, of course). I was moved. Another JET said that sotsugyoushiki is both the best and the worst day of the year. He was just about right.

Fortunately for me, though, I get to see the kids who graduate from shoogaku when they turn up at chuugaku. This past Tuesday, a great bunch of 11 children walked the carpet and have begun finding out what it's all about. The number of children living in the dormitory during the week has also jumped. Last year, only nine girls stayed on campus, but now there are eight boys and eight girls, fully half the student population - something to do with the boys having more company. It's not only the students who have come and gone, of course, but a whole batch of teachers has rotated between local schools this year, as well. I have a new Japanese Teacher of English, Fujimoto-sensei, who seems to have a different sort of temperament to my previous team teacher but speaks good English and knows his stuff. His three young daughters are good fun - I can only respect him for dealing successfully with life in such a household! I'm slowly getting to know my new workmates, but I am anticipating our first staff drinking party as an opportunity to really work on communicating with them. After all, I'm stuck with these people for the rest of my time here in Nishiiya. It's shaping up to be a positive couple of years.

As you know, the musical "The Wizard of Awa" concluded its tour in early March, but the final curtain was hardly the end of the action. As Dorothy's love interest, the Robot, I seem to have attracted some, er, extra attention from a few likely local girls. I received some innocent fanmail from a high school student who lives in Anan, some three hours away. Another young lady, 24 years old and living just a little closer, wrote me a very flattering letter (in excellent English, mind you) about how she thought I was very romantic. She signed off, "all my love", and duly left her contact details at the letter's end. She said it was the first time she'd ever written a letter like that to someone she didn't know. It was certainly the first time I've received such a letter! Indeed, it was quite moving to see someone step out of their comfort zone in a second language like that, but part of me is glad that Nishiiya is a good place to hide from potential stalkers. :)

Contemplating this dilemma while beating up the bad guys on my computer a week or two ago, I was jolted out of my revery when the monitor started shaking and I felt the building sway beneath me. Checking that the bad guys were still safely trapped on my screen, I made haste for the door, opened it and braced under the doorframe as I realised that I was experiencing my first ever earthquake. Living on the top floor of my apartment block probably didn't help, but the tremor ended up being both weak and short. As far as I know, Shikoku is relatively safe so far as geological phenomena go in Japan - no volcanos, a separate continental plate, and even the natural hot springs are slightly cooler because of the thickness of this plate - but my Australian legs aren't quite used to the earth moving around so much! This past month has seen me being moved in many unexpected ways! :)

Deciding that it's high time I took all this moving into my own hands, I have started dancing Awa Odori with a local dance group. Minoda-ren is based in Miyoshi town, about an hour's drive from my apartment, and they practice on Saturday nights. I first turned up during the spring break and was taken under the wing of Hatohoko-san (try saying that three times quickly), the "renchou", basically the guy who leads the group. He is aging but still agile, evidenced by the ease with which he hops around to the 2-beat rhythm of Awa Odori, clearly the result of having danced since he was old enough to walk.

Despite my shockingly bad Japanese and his even worse English, we got through my first lesson relatively unscathed and with one theme firmly entrenched - "one, two, one, two". Keeping both hands moving in time with the beat is the most important thing, I gathered. Since then, I think my legs are getting the idea, but I still feel like a fool. The Japanese guys look pretty foolish, too, but somehow they look GOOD doing it. It's all apparently okay, however, because the saying

"Odoru ahou ni miru ahou,
Onaji aho nara odaranya son son!"

loosely translates to

"The dancing fools, the watching fools,
Fools just the same, so you might as well dance!"

Now that's my kind of dance. :)

Equally conspicuous as a gaijin in Japan but not looking nearly so foolish was a man named Chris Sharp, a country music performer from Nashville, who I saw performing in Kawanoe city just a couple of weekends ago. He happens to be touring Japan in some random way at the moment, and I happened to catch his concert (my second ever, the first being a quite forgettable East 17 concert in 1994) after a similarly random encounter at a local restaurant. He also happens to be the guy who played the guitar for the song "Man of Constant Sorrow" on the Grammy Award-winning soundtrack for the movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" With that reputation in mind but an otherwise non-existent knowledge of country music to my credit, I headed on down to Ishimatsu Hotel in the good company of Japanese friends and got to see country music, Japanese style.

Chris was backed by a local band, who were rather good and looked the part as only the Japanese can. They belted out a few numbers in Engrish, which is like English but demands some experience to interpret, before Chris joined them on fiddle, git and banjo to add a little something special to the show. And I have to say, he really was a class act. Makes me wish there was someone nearby who could teach me how to play a guitar. I got to have a good chat to him about his Japan adventure. Being his first trip outside the States, it's all a bit surreal, as it was for me, but he's having a good time and is here on an open ticket. While there are still people to play with, he'll keep on touring, I guess. But I don't think he's quite up for an onsen yet. I must admit, bathing with other people demands a bit of a change of perspective. If he makes it to June with his sanity intact, I think he'll be doing alright.

I met yet another person who has done a bit of moving himself at Chiiori, the traditional thatched house up the hill, just last Saturday. Theo is a New York State trooper who has spent the last thirty-odd years chasing the bad guys in his police car. He was also sent to Ground Zero last September to help with the cleanup of the World Trade Centre site. Having had a fair innings on the force, he's looking forward to retiring in the near future and spending six months of the year in America, and the other six in Japan with his Japanese wife and her Tokyo family. Besides for being fascinating personalities in their own rights, Theo and his wife (whose name escapes me just now, but ends with "ko" like many Japanese women's names) are interesting to me as an example of overcoming cultural and communication barriers to have a meaningful and lasting relationship.

They met when Theo was serving in the US Army, er, a long time ago, here in Japan. Don't ask me how they managed to communicate enough to get to the "let's get married" bit, since in those days neither of them had any appreciable bilingual skills at all, but they did, and the got married, and almost thirty years later they seem to be very happy indeed. Part of that initial communication struggle was overcome by a pair of massive bilingual dictionaries, by which it was possible to find the correct words with which to insult each other in an argument. I'm sure the greater part of it, however, demanded a good deal of trust. A remarkable thing, given the military nature of the relationship Japan and America had in those days. Thought provoking for me, having just recently met a lovely local girl myself.

Having been moved, having gotten into moving myself, and having met other people who are doing a bit of moving, all that remains is to move a few other people. Sure enough, as I seem want to do, I have suckered myself into taking on an organisational role in the local association for JETs in Tokushima. It's not a big deal, but sometimes it is a big deal. It keeps me busy and provides me with regular email, anyway, which fills my regular spare time at school when I should be studying Japanese but don't feel like falling asleep on my textbook again. This weekend we'll be printing and distributing our first edition of the local JET magazine "Days of Awa Lives", and then hitting the lanes for a bit of tenpin bowling action in the evening.

And once we're finished with AJET business, on Sunday I'll be climbing the world's longest suspension bridge, the Akashi Ohashi. I'm not a big fan of heights, but I'm sure that the effort to move myself up those many sets of stairs will be worth it. The view should be great. It may even be moving. ;)

Dave