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!