November (and some of October)

OK, so I have a lot to catch you all up on. No time for needless introductions (hah, look at me, I'm doing them anyways).

The weekend before Halloween I went to Nara. Nara is the second capital of Japan (after Asuka and before Kyoto and Tokyo). I went with my friend Sophia - we have a few classes together and we talked sometimes, but this was the first time that we really hung out. Both of us wanted to go to Nara and no one else did and we made spontaneous plans and it totally worked out. It was great to get to know a new person.

Nara is famous for a few very old temples, a Daibutsu, and its deer. The old temples were cool - we saw them all - but they reminded me a lot of many other temples that I've seen. The Daibutsu was also awesome (Daibutsu literally means big Buddha), but I also don't think it was as cool as the Daibutsu in Kamakura. This is not to say that Nara was in any way disappointing. Seeing that other Daibutsu was way better than not seeing it at all. It was majestic and old and beautiful - I just think that the facial expression, especially, of the other Daibutsu is more realistic, and thus a little more impressive.

The deer were super fun, though. We bought a sweet potato that we saw some Japanese people eating for about Y500, but it was kind of gross so we began feed it to the deer. They were really into that. The deer in Nara are famously very agressive - they are used to tourists giving them food and will literally come up to you and gnaw at your backpack if they smell food inside (or even if they don't, because backpacks so often have food). In an especially impressive moment, I saw a man training a deer to bow. He had some food and would bow once and then the deer would also bow its head and he would give it some food. Super Japanese deer!

Feeding the deer some sweet potato in Nara

Oh, and in Nara we also rode a rickshaw. I had never ridden a rickshaw before and it was super super fun. The guy brought us back from near the Daibutsu to the train station. It was nice. I didn't want to ride back, and plus now I can check "ride a rickshaw" off of my bucket list!

Halloween this year was on a Wednesday - four weeks ago today, as I recall - and Kansai Gaidai went all out. Japanese people don't normally celebrate Halloween, but Kansai Gaidai is influened pretty heavily by the Western world. It's also trying to promote multiculturalism. As such, many Japanese people dress up and all of the international students do as well. There is a giant costume contest in the evening and everyone is walking around all ridiculous all day.

My costume for the daytime was to dress in all blue and have "da-ba-di, da-ba-dai" written in two strips of paper safety clipped onto me. If you don't get that reference, you should go brush up on your 90s pop culture. Hint: Eiffel 65.

Anyways, the costume contest was awesome. Some notable costumes include a zombie Two-Face and (I shit you not) two large groups of people dressed as McDonald's characters. There was a group composed entirely of Ronald McDonalds and a group that had one Ronald, one thing of fries, a hamburger, a drink, a server, the hamburger thief, and a few distinctly recognizable McDonald's people/things/monsters. It was super super creepy. McDonald's is huge in Japan - there is a McDonald's on campus right across from the cafeteria. I have eaten more McDonalds in the last three months than I have in the rest of my life. It's a little gross.

That night I went out drinking with my comrades and seminar house friends in costume. The mask taht I bought in Venice was worn by everyone at one point or another. There are pictures. We did cheap nomihoudai - it is less than $15 for all you can drink from 10 pm - 5am (not that I stayed that late). I have gotten much better at being drunk in Japan. I didn't have a hangover the next day! Wow. Yeah, mom, I'm sure you're happy about that.

That weekend was Kansai Gaidai's culture festival. The school presents its best face to the world and has food booths and international booths and a day-long concert (you have to be in the music clubs to do it). It was totally awesome - a great way to spend Friday and Saturday. My part in all of that was as a sort of teacher for elementary school students. We helped a bunch of 8-10 year olds learn how to say such phrases as "What is your name?" and "Where are you from?" and "What is a famous holiday in your country?" They then went around (herded by the teachers, of course) to different booths in the Center for International Education and asked the students there about their cultures.

Afterwards we went out to an all you can eat and drink restaurant. That's sort of a thing you do after completion of a large event in Japan - maybe in America too? I don't know, I'm not legal to drink in America yet. But I will be when I get back! Nice.

After a large meal and many drinks, I met some of my friends at the station and we went to hear my friend Tomoki play a DJ set in the same bar that I've mentioned on here before. One of my friends brought a skeleton onesie from the seminar house with her because it was a costume party. The majority of the people in the bar were Tomoki's friends, so we had a lot of fun dancing and acting the fool. In fact, at one point, Tomoki, Shota (his friend), Saran (another American), and I were freestyle rapping over the beats that Tomoki was playing. I was rapping in a weird mix of English and Japanese (mostly English), sometimes using English sentence structures and Japanese words, sometimes using Japanese sentence structures and English words, sometimes all Japanese, sometimes all English. It was really ridiculous. Someone took a video but I haven't seen it... Too bad!

Let me get away from a strict chronology for a second. I want to talk a bit about a fun cult that I have been a part of. We're six or seven international students, who, fed up with all religions that we've come across, decided to create our own and dedicate it to the blueberry. Why the blueberry? Well, a more adequate question is why not? It's tasty and nourishing and no one has ever died for a blueberry. We meet on Tuesdays and make a dessert (different every time) with blueberry as a main ingredient. We have some beer and smear blueberry juice on our face in a way reminiscent of war paint. Every time we come back to the seminar house, people look at us funny. "Did you know you have, uh, something on your face?" "OH REALLY???"

We also are mostly anarchistic. If something goes wrong, we blame roll. If there are seven people (there are usually seven people) we roll an eight sided die. We assign ourselves numbers in a circle from the left of the person who is rolling, and whoever's number comes up is responsible. An eight means we're all responsible. We also roll for menial things, like who has to do the dishes and who has to go to the store to get the blueberries that someone forgot. It's really freeing and totally fun. It's a great way to relax in the middle of the week, especially since I don't have class until 11am on Wednesday.

Also, I had a show on Tuesday that I have been trying to set up since the first week of the semester. The ICC (International Communications Center) is a new building at Kansai Gaidai and they are trying to get everything up and running and have many events to make students like the space. As such, I offered my musical skills (how selfless, right?). We organized a Multicultural Music Event that got cancelled twice (once a day before the show!). Bands kept dropping out, the administrators in change of approving events didn't ever make a decision in a timely manner, and there was never a lot of communication. I was really angry, especially the second time they cancelled. The event initially had three bands, then two, and then finally just my band 外Genius. Since it was multiculturalism-based, they thought that only one band wouldn't be enough. However, they also recognized that I had been helping them through every step of the organizing process and were very grateful for that. The students then worked hard to get a one band bill passed, and it did, with the caveat that I had to give a short talk on music and multiculturalism through music beforehand. I did. It was really fun. About thirty people showed up - including some Wesleyan friends who are studying abroad in Kyoto! - and everyone seemed to have a great time. The band played well, the vibes were good, we plugged the bass into a PA that had speakers in the walls of the room. I felt like a rock star for a second again. Pictures to come on Facebook, but here's a sneak preview.

外Genius live at the ICC on Tuesday 11/27/2012

With that, I want to get back to my chronology. On Saturday the 10th of November, I went to Mt. Hiei with my Japanese History class. It's a really famous mountain temple complex outside of Kyoto that is the base of the Tendai school of Buddhism in Japan. Dogen (founder of Soto Zen), Eisai (founder of Rinzai Zen in Japan), Nichiren (founder of Nichiren), Honen (founder of Jodo-shu Pure Land), and Shinran (founder of Jodo-shinshu Pure Land), among many others, all studied at Mt. Hiei. The leaves were beginning to change color and I wondered to myself if those famous monks had seen some of the larger trees I saw when they were just saplings. I wondered if they turned the same colors.

A group of use hiked up the mountain. Some friends and I had brought a bottle of shochu (a type of alcohol) and we split it amongst ourselves during the picnic at the top of the mountain. Initially we were  concerned - you know, alcohol on a school trip - but then we saw our professor having a glass of wine for himself so we thought it was fine. Indeed it was. There were two professors on the trip - the other one teaches a course called History and Ideology of the Japanese Warrior. The shochu we brought was a brand that he had mentioned in class, apparently. He got a total kick out of seeing us drinking it. It also made the cold day feel slightly warmed, and for that I am super grateful.

The next weekend I went to Arashiyama, a very beautiful place in the outskirts of Kyoto that is famous for the mamoji (changing of the leaves). There is also a famous Zen temple with a giant painting of a dragon inside called Tenryu-ji. I can't really do it justice in words, and my camera couldn't do it justice either. The colors were amazing. I eventually decided to stop snapping pictures and just enjoy the eye massage. It was wonderful.

That weekend I also went out to two birthday parties for Japanese friends of mine. Birthday parties in Japan usually involve nomihoudai. They were fun. We took silly pictures. One of the birthdays was Tomoki's! During that dinner we also freestyle rapped around the table.

That Thursday was Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, there is almost no turkey in Japan. We couldn't get any. As a consolation, we went to an all you can eat restaurant where you cook the meat yourself. There was a two hour time limit - the last order was a half hour before that. My table was only five people but we ate for ten! We literally did not stop eating from the minute we could order until a minute before they stopped us. We finished everything - anything you don't finish you have to pay for separately. When the waitress came for the first order (appetizers only), she asked what we wanted and we replied "Everything on the menu." Thinking she misheard us, she asked again, and again we replied "Everything." It was all gone before she came back to let us order meat. You could order 3 plates of meat every time the waitress came - we did. When she brought out the food for our last order, we had on our table two soups, three salads, various plates of veggies, five plates of meat, and a few other appetizers, as well as thirteen small bowls of ice cream. We ate it all in half an hour, despite the fact that we were almost full when it came (that was probably because we had been stuffing our face for a solid ninety minutes). If you can't get turkey and mashed potatoes, you make do. And, gee whillikers, we made do. It was a Thanksgiving to remember.

Last weekend I took advantage of a Friday off and travelled by train up towards Nagoya. There was a very famous light show in an amusement park of sorts called Nabana no Sato. Again, words cannot do it justice. I'll provide a picture instead.

Part of the winter illumination at Nabana no Sato

Friday night was the closest I have ever been to sleeping on the streets, though. We tried to book a hotel in Kuwana (the town near Nagashima, the island where the park was) but we couldn't find a cheap hotel on the internet so we decided to just go and wing it. It was a national holiday in the middle of mamoji season, the time in which everyone and their mother wanted to go to Nabana no Sato. We got into Kuwana and walked to all of the hotels. They were full. We had nowhere to stay. A kindly attendant named Yamamoto-san took pity on us and promised to call the hotels in the area, even those several stops away, and get back to us by ten. We wandered and checked out some bars that were open until 5 am - that was an option. We were also scoping out dark places on the streets that were protected from the wind where we could potentially sleep. He called us back at ten and told us that every hotel was full. Our hearts dropped. "However," he continued, "my hotel just got a cancellation. If you come right now, you will get the room." We sprinted there and got the room for just a little over $100. It was awesome. It even came with free breakfast. What a start to a magical weekend!

And I guess that brings us up to now. I have another show on Friday and we're about to hit finals week so that's going to suck. I'll leave you with something cultural that I've been thinking about a lot. In Japanese, the word for "wrong" and "different" are the same - "chigau." I'm wondering which English translation is closest. If it's more like "wrong," then everything that is different is simply wrong and culturally it makes people stay in the box and be afraid to try new things. However, it could be an awesome form of perspectivism if everything that is wrong is simply different. Oh, you just perceive that differently than I do; it's not wrong because I don't know if I'm right. It might imply a super post-modern lack of objectivity. However, as with previous cultural things that I've mentioned, I have no idea of the truth. I am an outsider here and doubt that I will every fully get it. All I can do is try my best to not be chigau.

Also, Dad, because you asked for a picture of the man in the loincloth and gas mask (upon further inspection, it may be a snorkel) at Borofesta

A bunch of festivals, a bunch of teaching, a bunch of tests, and a good amount of alcohol.

Well, I have not posted on here in a dog's age. If you were hoping for updates on my adventures, I am truly sorry. I have been living far too hard to spend any time writing; all my "free" time (read: when I'm not travelling, hanging out, or rehearsing) has been spent reading articles for essays that I am currently procrastinating upon. Looking at my calendar, it seems that four weeks have gone by. FOUR WEEKS! That's a month! I hardly even have that much time left in Japan. I've had this tab open on my computer for a month meaning to write something down, but the more I procrastinate, the more I live, and the more daunting the task of writing it all down gets.

So I guess I'll go back to the weekend of the 13th of October. My friend Kaoru, who played some songs with me at my show at Cafe Istanbul, was playing at a Jazz fest out near Lake Biwa in Kyoto, so I went with my friends Jen and Chie to go check her out. The band before her was terrible. I mean, absolutely terrible. Apparently they were a bunch of high school kids who had never heard the blues before but were trying to play it. I mean, I didn't think you could play the blues worse than a white person, but you can, apparently. The drummer couldn't really keep time, the bass player didn't walk at all, the solos weren't even really in key (HOW DO YOU EVEN DO THAT WITH BLUES???), the guitars were too distorted, the vocals were out of tune. Ugh. Terrible.

Then imagine my surprise when Kaoru's band came on and absolutely killed it. My favorite song of theirs was a rendition of "Spain." I was told by the drummer after the show that it was inspired by Stevie Wonder's version. The bass player was playing a fretless, the drummer was one of the sickest players I've seen in a long time, and everything was wonderful. Did I mention I was hanging out with them afterwards, joking around in Japanese? Perks of knowing the band. Oh, hey, if you're interested in hearing that drummer, check out his Electro-dance-pop band Welcome Toxicity. They're pretty rad.

Anyways, afterwards I went to a nightclub with my friends which was pretty funny because they played all American top-40 electro-dancey songs and the Japanese people were all singing along. The demographics were also amusing; a bunch of older Japanese men, younger Japanese women, and tons of gaijin all trying to prey upon Japanese people of the other sex. I wasn't that drunk because the drinks were expensive and I was just laughing at all of it. There was one guy (always, right?) who was a little too drunk and jumping around and acting the fool and I was forced next to him for a while by the crowd. I couldn't tell whether or not to laugh or cry.

By the time we left the nightclub, we had missed the last train, so we went to karaoke and paid for a room for the night and just fell asleep. It was awesome. We were so tired that when we got up two hours later (I actually didn't sleep because there was music everywhere and musician Tennessee listens to music really intensely even when he doesn't want to) we just hopped on the first train and rode it back and forth and slept for two hours and got off at the same station. Since Japanese trains only charge you for how far you ride, not how long, the nice two-hour nap only cost about $1.50. Awesome.

The next day I had an audition for an International Music Festival in Kyoto. Since I was going to be playing "traditional American music," I wanted an acoustic guitar. I didn't have one, so I had said previously that I needed one for the audition and the show. When I got there, an organizer said that he couldn't play guitar and he had a $60 guitar and hey do you just want it? It's blue and three-quarter sized. I was psyched.

I will probably have to give it back, though, since I'm not doing the festival. They didn't really want one person acts, especially because they had so many large groups audition. Oh well. As sort of a consolation, they asked me if I wanted to sing in the large group song at the end because they like my voice or something. I went to go practice it only once. It was three hours and fifteen dollars round trip for transport for an hour of practice. The song is like some Japanese version of "Kum-ba-yah" and no one else that is singing is a trained singer. The song is too high for the boys and too low for the girls. All in all, it sort of sounded like a bunch of cats being strangled while simultaneously clawing themselves up a blackboard. Needless to say, I was not happy. I quit soon after. I should probably give that guitar back...

And, with that, I hit midterms week. They had sort of started up the week before, I guess. Starting on the Thursday the 11th and continuing through Friday the 19th, I had a speech in Japanese, an in-class essay in Japanese, an oral exam in Japanese, two written tests in Japanese, and another written test in English. Thankfully the rest of my English classes put off midterms until about now. Also thankfully, this university is really easy. I only studied a bit and got really good grades on everything. Nice! I think I stressed more about the midterms than I should have. However, I'm worried that I won't stress enough about finals because midterms were so easy, and since I won't stress I won't study enough, and since I won't study enough I won't get good grades. Most students here only get a pass or a fail sent back to their home university, but Wesleyan actually factors the grades you get at Gaidai into your GPA. I want to keep my GPA up, but I also want to experience as much as possible while here. It's a conundrum. Balls.

The following weekend I spent Friday night at my friend Tomoki's house. He is getting to be one of the best Japanese friends I've made here, aside from the Japanese girls that are living in my seminar house. He wants to be a teacher, so he invited me to help him teach a physical education class on Saturday morning where I spoke/gave commands in English so the kids could learn English while having fun running around. But what better way to get ready for a class than have a party? He bought lots of food and a good amount of beer and we sat around and drank and ate with my friend Sakura (who lives in my seminar house). She also wants to be a teacher, so she and Tomoki have a lot of classes together and they're also good friends. It was a regular friendship-fest. Two Japanese girls who were going to help us the next morning showed up a bit later. I forget their names. I'm terrible.

The next morning we woke up a bit too early for my addled brain and headed to the gymnasium where we were going to be teaching. We practiced the routine and I learned a dance to warm up the kids (man, it had a lot of squats. My legs were killing me for days). My favorite part, besides the kids obviously being scared of the gaijin at first and eventually coming to like me, was that I was playing my guitar most of the time. While calling out "run!" or "walk!" or "hop like a rabbit!" or "run like a gorilla!" or some such thing, I was playing a really simple I-IV-V type thing that everyone was running/walking/crawling around in time to. It was so nice to see that everyone was moved by the same music, that it transcends all cultural and distance-based boundaries. Little kids everywhere like C, F, and G. And an A minor sometimes. WOAH!

The following day, Sunday, I went with five friends to an all day three stage indie music festival in Kyoto called Boro Festa.  It was one of the best experiences I've had in Japan. The first band we saw was this awesome band called Young who played totally infectious indie-wave of sound-pop. I loved it. They jumped out into the crowd a lot and had a hype man with bunny ears and a tambourine. My friends and I were right in the front and we were dancing the most because apparently Japanese people don't really dance at concerts; at least, it seems that way from the experience I have had at all the concerts I've been to here. Anyways, because we were so animated, I was making lots of eye contact with all the members of the band. At the very end, there was a really crazy jam going on and the guitar player was wailing and the lead singer took his guitar into the crowd. The bass player just ditched his bass and jumped around in the crowd at the same time. While he was doing that, he hugged me for about ten seconds. I was so surprised and honored and a little drunk and it was awesome. The other bands were awesome, but not really as awesome, I think. Another notable band was one called Hello, How Are You, a duo that played really cute music. I feel like it was Electric Tiger Lily in Japan, for those of you who get that reference to my past. The last band I watched was sort of a headliner called Toe that played almost all instrumental rock. They were awesome, especially the drummer. I got two signatures, too! One from the lead singer of Hello how are you and another from a super super super hot bass-playing chick who was in a band called the Freak Folk Fuckers. There was also a giant fist that was sometimes paraded from the outside to the inside of the venue amidst a procession of people in very strange costumes banging pots and pans. One dude was only wearing a loincloth and a gas mask. I got a picture with him.

My favorite band from Borofesta. They were called Young.

Not content to end the fun of the weekend there, I had one of the craziest experiences of my life that Monday. Once a year in a tiny one-street town called Kurama about an hour out of Kyoto, there is a fire festival. What is a fire festival? It is exactly what you might imagine it is. There are a bunch of men wielding large torches marching down the street chanting "sai-reya, sai-ryo!" over and over, with the occasional gilded kami shrine in the procession. OK, maybe that's not exactly what you were anticipating. The people are dressed in Edo period clothing (I think, they're definitely old-style); it seems like the festival has been happening in exactly the same way for hundreds, if not a thousand, years. Everyone has been drinking a bit, too!

A typical view at the Fire Festival.

So, we arrived at about 10:30, in time for the climax of the festival (coincidentally, on the same train as my Zen Buddhism professor!). The festival was amazing; people were chanting - apparently the chant has no meaning, but is just syllables passed down from ancient times - and fire was blazing and there was a samurai in full regalia at the shrine, maybe to ward off evil kami or something. So we watched, and watched. There was dancing and more chanting and they loaded two gold-gilded pagodas into the main shrine. Totally otherworldly. I can't really describe everything that happened. If you want to know, look at my Facebook pictures or ask me in person. What happened during the festival is not the best part of the festival. It's what happened afterwards.

The festival finished and we walked back up to the train station only to find that we had missed the last train back to Kyoto. Oops. We had been planning on spending the night in the park in Kyoto anyways, so we weren't too mad. We grabbed some coffee and decided, with the help of Vicky's smartphone app, to walk back down to Kyoto. It wouldn't take more than two hours. Whatever, no problem. It would be an adventure.

As we were walking down the single street of the town, we passed the shrine where most of the festival  had taken place and noticed a few Japanese people and a few gaijin hanging out and conversing with the Shinto priests under the awning of the temple while the holy fires slowly burned out in the slight rain that had begun to fall just as the festival ended. Well, let's just stop in for fifteen minutes, we thought. What's fifteen minutes?

And so we started talking. There were a few gaijin who had been in Japan for 10 years or so; one of the priests had been first a musician, then a teacher of autistic children, then decided to become a priest. As the conversation progressed, the main priest offered us a beer. Sure, what's one beer? But one beer turned into two turned into three, and we were getting friendlier and friendlier (my Japanese gets better when I'm a little drunk because I'm less scared of making small grammatical mistakes and more worried about just getting complex ideas across). The priests realized that they had a lot of holy sake and food that they had offered the kami that they were supposed to consume. No kami has ever actually eaten the offerings put out for it in the thousands of years that Shinto priests have been doing it, so there is no sense in letting it go to waste. And so we opened the sake. It was a two or three gallon bottle. And when we finished that, the priest calmly went inside and got a new one. Every time we would drink, we would raise our glasses in the direction of the shrine and say "Okamisama no okage de!", which means "Thanks to the kami!" We drank heavily from 12:30 until 5 in the morning. All the alcohol was free (obviously), and I was drunk as a skunk. I talked in Japanese with these priests about life and the differences between cultures and how there really isn't any difference between humans, only cultures. The fires burned out and we took the holy charcoal and painted our face and danced around like fools in the rain.

And finally it was 5 in the morning and the first train to Kyoto was coming in 20 minutes. We caught it and I made it back in time for morning classes. I went from drunk to hung over in the middle of 11 am class. It was terrible. I skipped afternoon class to go home and sleep. And that's my story! I can't believe it wasn't a dream. I think it wasn't a dream... The people I was there with definitely say that it happened, so either we had a communal dream or it really did happen.

And that brings me up to two and a half weeks ago. I want you all to see this and don't want to keep procrastinating so I'm just going to post this now and start up another blog post immediately to be left permanently open on my browser so I can write about my more recent experiences when I have a little bit of time. Much love!