This notice was in my mailbox this morning

ALERT

The Japanese and Japanese Culture Center, and the Foreign Exchange Student Center, sent out a message advising students to be on the alert for groups engaged in religious proselytizing. Since these groups seem to be particularly intent on targeting foreign-exchange students, AKP received this notification. The notice characterizes this religious group as "evil," and indicates that they are most likely to lure unsuspecting students into their clutches through feigned connections with clubs, by asking for help with their surveys, or through suggestions of language exchange, after which their modus operandi is to forcefully importune the student to join their sect. Cases of mind control are not unheard of, and instances of psychological, physical, and economic suffering to the point they disrupt a student's academic life are common. In the event you are solicited by one of these groups, please resist their entreaties, give them no personal information, and report their presence to the AKP office immediately.

Doing these things that I do, part 2

Now I will describe the structure of a taiko practice. My last class on wednesdays ends at 430, so if I catch the appropriate train I can be home as early as 515. Between 620 and 630 I need to leave for taiko practice. I ride my homestay dad's bike, and it's uphill the whole way there, and this bike ride takes me about 25 minutes. The bike is a terrible Japanese bike and of course has no gears, so this is a pretty good warm-up. I arrive at the culture center and help carry drums from the storage room to the practice room upstairs. By seven, most people (out of about 30 in the group) have arrived. 7-740 is 'basic training'; this is my favorite part. Sensei leads with a basic beat and everyone follows. This practice is for rhythms and for taiko form. 740-820 is called 'kiyari' practice. Kiyari is a style of taiko where the drums are placed sideways, and one person plays each end of the drum. This is really hard, but it seems to be one of Uzu's signature pieces, and it's getting easier. I usually don't participate in the 820-900 practice because it is usually much more complicated pieces far beyond my skill set. But I have a lot of fun watching and trying to understand the patterns that hold the rhythms together. 

Last week, in addition to normal practice on Wednesday I also attended a bonus practice on Friday. This practice was almost entirely devoted to the teaching and learning of one of those more complicated pieces. I don't remember what it was called, maybe something about a fisherman and a mountain? Only about half the group showed up, which created a really nice atmosphere for me to learn in. I had an incredible epiphany, that sometimes one arm needs to move way faster than the other arm. 

On Monday, I went on an incredible run around my neighborhood, and finally visited this cemetery on a hill really close to my house at the end of my run. I have been thinking about grave sites since reading about the pattern of Grave Sites (70) in the book A Pattern Language. Sometimes, it's really important to remember all stages of the life cycle. I could see Uji and Kyoto extending far into the distance from the top of the hill. 

Last night, Kendall and I went to a tea ceremony class in an old ryokan (Japanese-style inn). It's really hard for me to describe the circumstances that brought us to the old ryokan, as well as the actual experience of being in the ryokan and the tea ceremony class, so I'm not going to. But it was amazing, and in two weeks we are going to start practicing tea ceremony. 

I am about to go to another taiko practice. 

Lost! ....lost?

When I am with my friends I tend to be Hurley. Not really a leader, pretty much just going with the flow, very easy going and laid back. 

When I am at taiko I am Locke. I know what I am doing, or at least I know what I am supposed to be doing. At times it is difficult, sometimes exhausting, but no one can stand in my way of my mission. There is no rational explanation, but I feel it is the absolute right thing to be doing. 

Most of the time, walking around, with my homestay parents, I am Sun/Jin (or else everyone around me is Sun/Jin). How can I learn to speak the same language? What is the process of communication?

I think in some ways it was very Kate of me to come to Japan at all. What was I afraid of at UCLA, or at Whitman? Why has it been so important to me to keep running? 

I don't think I am ever Jack, but I don't think thats a bad thing. Occasionally I do have moments of true, genuine leadership, but in these moments, I never forget that I'm not just their leader, I'm also one of them. 

Very frequently I am Desmond. It's hard to stay in the present moment. Very frequently I see something and I am suddenly somewhere else, in a different place, in a different time, in the past, or the future. This seems natural. 

When I first got here I felt a bit like Charlie. But now I have adjusted to island life, and if the moment ever comes when I find a plane full of Virgin Mary statues, I too will chuck them all into the sea. 

Fall Field Trip

This field trip was really hard, really stressful, really fun, a good use of AKP's money, full of weird juxtapositions. I'm still having trouble expressing what it was like to be at Hiroshima and Miyajima, but Italo Calvino (in Invisible Cities) says it real good.

This is what it was like to be in Hiroshima:

Cities & Memory 5

In Maurilia, the traveler is invited to visit the city and, at the same time, to examine some old post cards that show it as it used to be: the same identical square with a hen in the place of a bus station, a bandstand in the place of the overpass, two young ladies with white parasols in the place of the munitions factory. If the traveler does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one, though he must be careful to contain his regret at the changes within definite limits: admitting that the magnificence and prosperity of metropolitan Maurilia, when compared to the old, provincial Maurilia, cannot compensate for a certain lost grace, which, however, can be appreciated only now in the old post cards, whereas before, when that provincial Maurilia was before one's eyes, one saw absolutely nothing graceful and would see it even less today, if Maurilia had remained unchanged; and in any case the metropolis has the added attraction that, through what it has become, one can look back with nostalgia at what it was. 

Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices' accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old post cards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city, which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one. 

We went to the Genbaku Dome (the structure below where the a-bomb was dropped); we walked through the Peace Park and went to the Peace Memorial Museum; we got okonomiyaki (the most delicious food in the whole world); we listened to a hibakusha (a-bomb survivor) tell her story; we went to Miyajima. 

This is what it was like to be on Miyajima:

Cities & Signs 1

You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye light on a thing, and then only when it has recognized that thing as the sign of another thing: a print in the sand indicates the tiger's passage; a marsh announces a vein of water; the hibiscus flower, the end of winter. All the rest is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are.

Finally the journey leads to the city of Tamara. You penetrate it along streets thick with signboards jutting from the walls. The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things: pincers point out the tooth-drawer's house; a tankard, the tavern; halberds, the barracks; scales, the grocer's. Statues and shields depict lions, dolphins, towers, stars: a sign that something--who knows what?--has as its sign a lion or a dolphin or a tower or a star... The wares, too, which the vendors display on their stalls are valuable not in themselves but as signs of other things: the embroidered headband stands for elegance; the gilded palanquin, power; the volumes of Averroes, learning; the ankle bracelet, voluptuousness. Your gaze scans the streets  as if they were written pages: the city says everything you must think, makes you repeat her discourse, and while you believe you are visiting Tamara you are only recording the names with which she defines herself and all her parts.

However the city may really be, beneath this thick coating of signs, whatever it may contain or conceal, you leave Tamara without having discovered it. Outside, the lands stretches, empty, to the horizon; the sky opens, with speeding clouds. In the shape that chance and wind give the clouds, you are already intent on recognizing figures: a sailing ship, a hand, an elephant. . . . 

We saw the famous torii at the Itsukushima Shrine; we had a room party in the hotel; we tried to escape the tourists; we went hiking on Mt. Misen and had fabulous views of the Inland Sea; we went to Daisho-in, a beautiful Buddhist temple; we came back to Kyoto. 

Today I wanted to go to the Kyoto Botanical Gardens, but it's still early autumn: the leaves have yet to explode into red. So instead, Jason K. and I went hiking up Kurama-san and down into the valley town of Kibune. 

Friendship and Exhaustion Collide

Sunday, I think to commemorate the Uji Tea Festival, the Cultural Center where I practice taiko held sort of a 'cultural center festival.' I thought the building was just a regular community center, but it isn't at all. Many kinds of cultural groups practice or hold meetings there--drawing, bonsai, other taiko groups, European-style flower arrangement.... Uzu, my taiko dojo, had a performance, which I watched, but that was only 15 minutes of the day. The bulk of the morning and afternoon was spent doing "mochi-tsuki," or mochi making. This was one of the coolest processes I have ever seen. The rice had already been soaking in water overnight. After setting up all sorts of tables and stoves, we started steaming the rice in huge pots stacked on top of each other, 6 pots at a time. When one pot of rice was ready (how this was determined I have no idea), it was brought over to the huge wooden mortar, where one person beat it with a huge wooden mallet and another person kneaded it. The rhythm these two people kept was a lot like taiko. I was part of the rotation of people wielding the mallet, and beating the rice was really hard work. But, the end result was delicious rice balls! 

Sometime in the middle of the day, my taiko colleague Toshiaki took me to a store so I could buy tabi, traditional Japanese sock/shoes to wear while playing taiko. I thought he was going to take me to a taiko equipment store, so I was really surprised when we pulled up at this huge overwhelming Japanese wal-mart called Konan. On the way, he told me more about the connections between taiko and mochi-making. The beating of the rice, the use of the mallet, and the rhythm created, are all very reminiscent of taiko; beyond that, there is a specific style of taiko that was performed after the rice harvest. Harvesting rice is a huge communal effort, and in the celebration that followed, people would play taiko in gratitude to the rice kami (?) for allowing them to have a good harvest. We talked a bit more about how Japan and America appreciate nature differently, before moving the conversation on to such topics as the election and the Doobie Brothers. 

Taiko practice Wednesday night was really fun. Especially after making mochi with all those people, it is starting to feel like a real community. 

Today was Yom Kippur. Jasons and I took the day off school, and the three of us fasted and went to Ryoanji, a temple with a famous rock garden. We stared at the rocks for a really long time and meditated on the past year. I thought a lot about how the rocks reminded me of islands. In my gardens class, we learned about how this one type of moss looks like a cryptomeria tree, so to look down on the moss is supposed to emulate the feeling of looking down on a forest of cryptomeria trees. So these rocks had tiny islands of this moss around them, and I thought about if they were islands, what it would be like to be a person living on one of them. Would this person have any idea about the existence of the other islands, let alone the people living on them? 

Ryoanji was really crazy. It still astounds me to think about all the things I thought and felt while I was there. At the Welcome Party, only 10 minutes after meeting my host dad, he told me that I will only be able to understand Ryoanji if I go more than 15 times. And he is probably right. It was so empty, but so full of meaning. Those rocks have been there for hundreds of years, and will continue to be there, exactly as they are, probably for several hundred more. 

We broke the fast at a pretty great Nepalese restaurant, and then we bought Sigur Ros tickets. Tomorrow I head off with all of AKP for our fall field trip to Hiroshima and Miyajima. 

Here I'm alive, everything all of the time

What is the experience of going to a Japanese concert? Hannah and Jasons and I booked it to the Osaka Municipal Gymnasium, or Osakashi Chuoh Taiikukan, on Thursday after school. Class ended at 430, the doors opened at 5 and the show started at 630. We walked into the venue around 645 and Modeselektor was in full swing. I parted from my friends because I accidentally bought a seated ticket instead of a standing ticket, but this turned out to be a really good mistake. I had a great view of the stage, and pretty close, on the left side. Hannah had bought her ticket from the states, so she was standing really close, and Jasons were pretty far back, but Jason's other friend was able to sneak them into some really good seats on the right side. While Modeselektor pumped out some crazy techno, I ruminated for a bit on the building and the crowd. In doing research for how to buy this concert ticket, I stumbled onto this website: http://www.hku.hk/mech/sbe/case_study/case/jap/Osaka_Gym/index.html, which explains a lot of the weird structural/architectural designs for the stadium. And I was really in awe at how cool the interior was. 

The crowd was so different than anyone I have seen yet in Kyoto. I actually wanted to be friends with most of the people I saw--both Japanese people and foreigners. This kind of judgement was based on clothes, hair, and piercings. It wasn't until going to Osaka that I realized some of Kyoto's biggest flaws. Kyoto is not hip, it's old and full of tourists. They really do seem like different cities. On the train in, Jason pointed out some of the huge skyscrapers and downtown areas, and I felt utterly overwhelmed in Osaka's big train station in ways I have never felt in Kyoto-eki. And they are far from each other! I still can't believe that Jason wakes up in Osaka and then spends all day in Kyoto. Every day. 

There is so much more I want to explore in Kyoto, but this trip made me also want to plunge into the depths of Osaka. Could it be, though, that Osaka and Kyoto are really just two neighborhoods within the greater Kansai area? And what of the train commute? All I really saw was trains: the way the Hankyu line went from Shijo/Karasuma in downtown Kyoto straight through to the big Osaka station, two subway transfers, and then arrival at the venue. Here's what Italo Calvino has to say about these two cities: 

"The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born. When the forms exhaust their variety and come apart, the end of cities begins. In the last pages of the atlas there is an outpouring of networks without beginning or end, cities in the shape of Los Angeles, in the shape of Kyoto-Osaka, without shape."

And then....Radiohead came on. The concert was pretty much the same as a concert in the states. In the beginning, Thom Yorke said 'konban wa' instead of good evening, and every once in a while he tried to say 'arigato gozaimasu' but sort of butchered it. He mumbled some jokes throughout, which were enjoyable, all the more so because I knew that I was one of a very few people who understood them. The set design was the same as when I saw them at Outside Lands in August, and I realized this was the first time I had seen a band twice on the same tour. They played a lot of the same songs but also a lot of different ones. During the show, I thought a lot about the experience of being at Outside Lands, and how that experience was extremely emotional. This was just a great show. Here is the set (if you are interested):

Reckoner

Optimistic

There There

15 Step

All I Need

You and Whose Army?

Weird Fishes

The Gloaming

Videotape

Morning Bell

Faust Arp

No Surprises

Jigsaw Falling Into Place

Idioteque

The National Anthem

Nude

Bodysnatchers

1st Encore: Airbag

Knives Out

Just

Where I End and You Begin

Planet Telex

2nd encore: Fog

Karma Police

Everything in it's Right Place

wow!!!

you think it's like this but it's really like this

The Suntory Whiskey distillery at Yamazaki was probably some of the cleanest fun I have had yet in this country. No joke! Sure, we drank some whiskey, but the whole day was very reminiscent of middle school. I went to the Yamazaki station on the JR line and waited with Jason K. for Richard and his host family to pick us up. I thought it was just Richard's host dad who was taking us all to the factory, but suddenly two cars pulled up: one filled with Richard, Jason B., and Richard's host parents, and the other with Richard's host sister and host niece (nine year old Miu is one of the cutest little girls I have ever spent time with) and an empty backseat. We headed to the factory, and really appreciated how clean and sweet the air smelled. Shinjiro Torii chose Yamazaki as the site of the distillery because of the fresh air and water. The water there is so fresh that even Rikyu, famed Japanese master of tea ceremony, built a teahouse in Yamazaki. We learned some really interesting things about the production of whiskey, not my favorite of alcoholic beverages, and then we went to the tasting room. When we left the factory, we went back to Richard's house, where we all enjoyed a delicious meal together and talked and played some games. Jason K. and I weren't spending the night, so Richard's host parents gave us a ride to the station and even bought us our tickets back to Kyoto Station (just like as would have happened in middle school!) A good time was had by all.

The weather the past week and a half or so has been pretty rainy, which was really dragging me down. I woke up this morning and it was cloudy but by the time school was over the sky was totally clear, a beautiful autumn day. 

Today at school, I did two really important things between my first Japanese test of the year (which went pretty well, I think) and my gardens class. 1. I watched Tampopo, an amazing Japanese film from the 80s. I walked into the lounge and it had just started, and I was totally hooked. It's about food and etiquette, sort of focusing on one man's quest to find the perfect noodle restaurant. But this story is intercut with scenes that have nothing to do with this man except to illustrate different variations on the theme "food and etiquette in Japanese society." I highly recommend it. 2. After the movie, I bought a new box of colored pencils. I mysteriously lost the green in the box I found in my desk (where do vanished objects go?), and the purple was too short to use effectively. And green and purple are two of the most important colors, so a new box was totally necessary. My art project is coming along nicely, I have 10 squares completed (out of a total 64), I am a little behind if I want to finish by the end of the semester but I'm not worried. 

Taiko practice was really fun today. I got some explanations on how to read the sheet music I received, so now I can actually practice at home. I also saw today that not everyone there is really good at taiko. I'm not sure anyone is quite as unskilled as I am, but there is a very evident range of mastery, which was reassuring. They are having a performance on Sunday, which I am going to, but won't play in. Although I'm a little unclear if it is a performance so much as it is mochi-making (using bachi--taiko drumsticks--to beat the rice). Sunday is the Uji Tea Festival, and this event is part of the community celebration. 

Tomorrow I am going to Osaka for the first time this year. I am going to Osaka to see Radiohead at the Osaka Chuoh Taiikukan. Here I go...