Something is hatching

Every day Gunch does wonderful things for me and we have wonderful conversations. I have become wholly spoilt and come to expect it. Today he surpassed all expectation. When I arrived through the office door, I still had my teacher face on, having just taught a class. I don't know exactly what my teacher face looks like although I do know what it feels like; it feels stern but motherly, like a nurse in a WWI tent who has seen a thing or two, takes no nonsense from boisterous invalids and will kindly mop the brow of the legless until they breath their last. That's what I want to be, when I am a teacher. How ridiculous.

Anyways, I arrived through the door with my teacher face on and Gunch was sprawled at my desk, looking triumphant, a newspaper open in front of him. This was unusual because generally we respect each other's desks as private space. By meeting at the empty desk in the middle of the office, we allow each other privacy. His mouldy coffee tins and dictionary towers are his business. My celeb blogs and heaps of chocolate wrappers are my business. 'Jemma-san', he said, 'today I have some very very good news.'
'Really?' said I, I know he likes to play these things out at a leisurely pace, 'what's that?'

It turned out to be very, very good news indeed; a bulb of news that, as from-bulb gardeners know, may flower beautifully or sadly come to nought. If it does flower...well let me just tell you!
Gunch had me sit down and he showed me a small article in the local section of the paper. In the picture accompanying the article was a man doing a Kamishibai performance. Kamishibai is my new obsession, the traditional form of storytelling said to have spawned manga. It effectively died with the advent of TV but it can be seen in places like the manga museum (where I saw it) or at little local festivals and events. Before the war it was huge. Every town had several Kamishibai performers: men trying to supplement their income by riding around on bicycles with ingenious, very portable little stages strapped to the back. They would be welcomed at the gates to the local temples by swarms of kids and would tell stories using painted picture cards that slotted into the little stage. The monies were earned by selling sweets. Everyone could watch a Kamishibai performance but buyers got to sit in the coveted front row.

The article Gunch showed me had a picture too. The picture was not a black and white one of a 40s Kamishibai performance, but a colour pic of a performance that happened two days ago at the local medical school, which is spitting distance from my house. The crux of the article, which we read together (so very slowly, in case we needed to build any more tension) was that medical students stand to gain valuable people skills from performance like Kamishibai. It teaches them to chill out and listen and the importance of humour. Nothing new there. Then the article talks a little bit about the performer himself Higeroku-san (a nickname that roughly means Beardy). He is 67 - 'a spring chicken' says Gunch, now 68. Higeroku-san used to work in a collar and cuffs at a desk right here in Mihara. Then he retired and began performing Kamishibai. He travels all around Hiroshima prefecture but he lives in Mihara and produces his work from here.

We finished reading the article. I now knew where this was going and Gunch obliged by leaning back his eyes twinkling. 'Yes, he said, we will make contact with this man and you can speak with him.'

For months I have had thoughts rattling around in my kop - mostly they polarize into two camps - the 'what am i doing with my future' camp and the 'why am i feeling so fucked up in Japan?' camp. Kamishibai, at first abstractly but now I think, pretty concretely, will help me to calm and order my thoughts. As an art form, it neatly and perfectly includes everything I like to do. Making the pictures and telling the story. As a viable theater form its kind of great too. The style of storytelling relies heavily on sounds and gestures and the pictures of course, so it can transcend languages and age gaps quite nicely. Different pictures, or different deliveries can change your performance from playschool fare to serious political analysis or bawdy nonsense. As a proposal to a university it also seems like a pretty good weapon to have. "I want to make cheap, effective, sometimes political, sometimes educational, always relevant, mass appeal theatre and I want to do everything myself and this is how I can do it." l

Then, really the 'why am I feeling so fucked in Japan?' question has had an answer for months but it's very had for me to acknowledge. I am feeling fucked because I am not integrating, I have spent the better part of the year simply adjusting to the horror or foreign cultural terrain and any time left over I have divided equally between avoiding the now less alien but no less terrifying cultural terrain and berating myself for avoiding it. Apart from Gunch, I have no Japanese friends here. Not in any real sense. That is immensely depressing, given the length of time I have been here, and I blame no one but myself.

Imagine though! Imagine if Gunchy and I meet this man (whose real name is Rokuda Genji) and he is cool and he offers to show me Kamishibai, or even just chat with me? It could be the beginning of my next creative endeavour, an endeavour that is inectricable from th place where I am - Japan. Something I can take away and show to people - "In Japan I learned this." . My friendhsip with Gunch will I am sure, always be the most valuable thing I have gained here, but Kamishibai is something else, something quantifiable to people who wear glasses and want to see product and issue scholarships. For that I am very excited. I am excited to have found an art form that makes me excited. For a time, friends, it did feel like those pockets of my brain had plasticized. Did I blog about it? Probably not. It was too fucking terrifying.

Gunch went to find Rokuda Genji in the phone book. Sure enough, he found him. We crafted a letter to him, I wrote in English in green ink and Gunch wrote in his signature dusty pencil on bent and mucky paper. I don't know how he manages to destroy paper, old Gunch, just by holding the stuff. I will give him a pristine pile of worksheets, he hands them to students right then and there and somehow by the time they are in their hands not his, they are water-damaged, torn, bent and covered in mud. It's amazing. Gunch had no doubts that Rokuda Genji will be responsive; he reckons that if this man grew up in Mihara then they probably sat and watched original Kamishibai performers of the town together. He assures me that Rokuda Genji will know the famous Kamishibai story of The Golden Bat - a super hero with a skull for a head. He ended the day's excitement with a (mis)quote from Charlotte's Web - 'life is full and rich when we are waiting for something to happen or to hatch.' He knows that the quote isn't quite right and heas been browsing through Charlotte's Web for weeks trying to get it right. He hasn't found it. He has turned his copy into a frayed soggy mess. But I know exactly what he is trying to say.

skuru festivaru

Hi. Apologies for the absence. Today was school festival - a Potted Sports type affair with copious amounts of fried chicken, lurid slushies as bright as the class t-shirts and other healthy eating options. It was great fun! I ate junk and looked at weird things made by the students. I made my own stamps out of erasers, gambled with cardboard chips and even attempted to solve mathsy brain teasers in the quiz game classroom (aided by two very patient students who had the option of thinking I was dim-witted because of the language barrier or because my maths is so very very kak, regardless of the language in which the problems are presented).

It's starting to feel like I am part of the school - not some strange interloper, easily identified by my hair colour, eye colour and aimless wandering about. I still have these traits, but they they are now a known quantity, not so strange anymore. I think that when I felt isolated and unwanted (which was most of the time I have spent here thus far, if I am honest) it was partly because in my head I was expecting certain people to like me for certain reasons. It turns that actually other people like me because of different reasons. You simply can't always choose who likes you and why they should. Another life lesson then. I prefer it when life lessons are accompanied by junk food. Junk food softens both the gut and the blow to one's ego when things, as they invariably have been doing, don't go according to plan.

Yesterday and Today (昨日と今日は)

Yesterday I read all about North Korea on Wikipedia. Today I am reading all about Roe. v Wade. There is so much to know in the world! I wonder what I will read about tomorrow.

The Day Before Yesterday (Ototoi おととい)

I bought a new bicycle. She is an extravagance inasmuch as my old bicycle is perfectly functional. She was a bargain in that she was cheap. Especially bargain-some in that she is extremely gorgeous, much more than my old bike. Pinky (that's her name) also has a useful back ledge, the likes of which I have wanted for some time - good for carrying people or perhaps setting up a tv/dvd system so that, if I ride very slowly people walking behind me can watch movies.

Pinky New Rules (that's her full name) has changed my opinion of myself completely. I have dressed with much more care in the two days that I have had her. Because she is so pink and so beautiful, she stands out anywhere - if I am on her therefore I must surely be extra presentable since heads will be a-turnin.

I made a fool of myself twice in the hour it took to buy Pinky New Rules. Firstly, I tried to ask the man at the UFO home-store when he would attach the chain. A bike needs a chain after all. Luckily my Japanese is so rubbish that it was taking him a good long time to work out what I was talking about. In that time I worked out for myself that the chain is inside a convenient compartment. Amazing what they do on first-world bikes! I kept the revelation to myself and distracted the man with some banal comment so that he would never discover the depths of my Luddism.

Secondly, I was under the impression that I had to go and get Pinky registered at the police station in case she was ever stolen. Dutifully I headed off and spent a happy twenty minutes being amiable with three police officers that looked like huge action figures covered in more detachable accessories than any young boy could ever dream of. The most senior of the three saw to my case. He looked at my registration papers (issued by UFO-man) and my alien registration card - how extraterrestrial this all sounds, looking back. We hit a snag only when he began asking me when I bought the bike where the bike was and where my old bike was. I became guarded because dumping old bikes is, i suspect, a serious felony here and technically that was what I had done - I left it at the Lawson convenience store next to the UFO center. Oh, said I, the old bike is...somewhere. Yes, he persisted. Where is it? shit! I was going down - I broke into a sweat. Senior Action Policeman then called for back-up and brought in Junior Action Policeman, distracting him from his noble task of tippexing out a bathroom mirror in an architectural drawing of a men's bathroom (he was doing it with super-hero level precision). They discussed me and my case, seemingly to decide who would be good cop, who would be bad cop. Like hardened interrogators they kept asking, in slightly different ways - 'where is the bike?' . I could feel my story wilting. Finally I said 'the new bike is here! the old bike is at Lawson! please, please don't throw me in the slammer!' They looked extremely surprised and asked to see the new bike. ONly with pleasure sirs, she is after all, such a beauty! We went outside together and marveled over Pinky. Then we went back inside and Senior Action asked me for the number of my school and the name of my supervisor. I told him everything.

After speaking with my supervisor (laughing even when crime in Japan was, or so I thought, no laughing matter), he handed the phone to me. I was sure my supervisor would then gently explain the protocol for foreigners in Japanese prisons. 'You bought a new bike?' he asked
'Yes,' I sniffled, 'at the UFO home center.'
'Where is your old bike?' he asked.
'At the Lawson.' I said, trying to keep it all under control.
'So everything is OK?'
'Umm..yes. Everything is ok! I promise I won't abandon my old bike!'
'Why are you at the police-station?'
'Um...to register my bike?'
'It is already registered!' he laughed. hahaha! go home!
Relief washed over me. I was not going to be put away for attempted bike abandonment. I handed the phone back to Senior Action and backed quietly out of the police-box, their barked questions and secret laughter ringing in my ears. They had thought I was reporting a stolen bike and couldn't work out why seeing as I obviously knew the location of not one, but two bikes. And I had thought I was going down! Hahaha, Lost in Translation - what fun! Oh Pinky! The adventures we have had already!

thinking about speaking

Yesterday I taught more classes back to back than I ever have before. Gunch had said to me that teaching is a physical labour but I just thought he was being dramatic - turns out tarum tarum, he's right. I had to eat cake between class four and five, just to ensure I didn't pass out.

In my local language class that caters to JETS-like-me, other random English teachers and several Filipino ship engineers and their families, our conversation practice last night with Fukuda sensei turned horticultural. He asked me what I had done on the weekend and I told him that I had planted lavender but they were sick. How, he asked. I was already quite proud that I had managed to say 'lavender sick', - an actual diagnosis in Japanese would just be too much. So I made limp lavender actions with my arms and head, lolling and looking baleful as if in a wet wind. Ah! says Fukuda sensei, you are watering them too much. Guilty as charged, I have been watering them everyday and I told him so. Yes, that is the problem he mused, he then drew a diagram of lavender, the sun, a watering can and various clocks and arrows. And words of course. I learnt the words for sun, grow and plant medicine (which I think might be a 'made up for my benefit' word, not one that would yield any results if I went around saying it at the local nursery). After the plant talk we went on to adjectives and their conjugation and while my friends and language partners The Lithe American and The Happy Brit battled with negative form I withdrew into my head for a quick reflection. I was in Japan. I am in Japan. Me and The Lithe American and The Happy Brit and the funny little community we are part of, are learning - no dammit - speaking Japanese. I struggle to call what I do to the language speaking but if its getting the point across (with some necessary lavender impersonations), then that is speaking. Speaking Japanese? How utterly weird. And a bit great. All these thoughts must have shown on my face because The Lithe American turned and asked 'Having a existential, Jemy?' Haha, yes I said. She said it happens to her all the time too.

Later that night I found myself in a car with two Japanese people and My Best Mexican American. Conversation was lively and multi-lingual. One of the Japanese people there was fluent in English and Spanish, the other in Japanese and Laughing. Had I had my existential then, I think my head would have popped. Four people, three languages? Conversational success to the point of revelry? Amazing. Just amazing. But luckily I had had a few beers, so I couldn't reflect, just participate with a little bit of Japanese, a lot of English and lots of lolling lavender style actions.

kimono

Today I had a traditional day with kimono wearing and tea ceremony. Both were stupendously beautiful and also rather painful. I'm not going to go into detail - safe to say I simply couldn't do either event justice without expending thousands of words trying to capture every intricacy and minutiae. Both felt very formal and I mean formal as in 'concerned with form'. It was fascinating. Overwhelming. Beautiful, so so beautiful. Those kimonos? God, to die for. Look at some pics here.
On me though...eh, let's just say they do not um, celebrate bodies like mine. I had to take off my bra (the first time I have been braless in public since, like, I was 15) and a woman (who, no kidding, came up to my waste) strapped them down with meters of cloth till I was not so much flat chested, that could never happen, but barrel chested. I didn't have breasts, I had chest. Like an opera singer man or a chuffed bird. It was sore (and not very flattering) but totally worth it because I wore something so beautiful and I had the experience of being dressed by two women - it feels totally regal. They way their warm, rough hands snaked and tweaked about was wondrous to witness. Wearing a kimono is not a single garment affair you see, I was wearing at least twenty items of clothing - seriously! And their hands belied an intimate knowledge of the ancient technology of the clothes. The dressing is a necessary accompanying master-craft to the making of kimono themselves, if they are ever to be more than elaborate wall hangings. Being inside that kimono and inside that activity felt very luxuriant and comforting. Sitting in Seiza (the traditional sitting position expected of you at tea ceremony - see here) is the opposite - it is mean and desperately uncomfortable. I thought I would pass out at one point during the ceremony which is only half an hour : 27 minutes too much Seiza. Man, it sucks! Apparently you get better with practice. I'm sure eating forks also improves, with practice.

Let the Wild Rumpus Start!

Today I went to a big book shop in Hiroshima that has a good English language book section. However, and I think I can afford to be smug here - I was not going for English books today. Oh no. I was buying Japanese books! For Japanese people and, and for myself!

I bought a copy of Winnie the Pooh in the hometaal for Gunch's daughter and then I bought myself my very own Japanese book. A manga called Hinachan. I chose it because the pictures are cute but mainly because the writing is really big and there isn't much kanji. Even so, I fear I might still be in over my head - I'll get Gunch to help me out! Being in the kiddies section of the shop inspired me to really hammer at this Japanese - do you know I can read all the Maurice Sendaks, Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eloise, The Shrinking of Treehorn, The Little Prince? All in Japanese. This bookshop had the platonic ideal of a children's section with the one ironic oddity that it was all written top to bottom in a language I can't read.

I can't read now... Maybe soon, or not so soon, I will. I want to read Fantastic Mister Fox with Boggis-san and Bunce-san and Bean-san, one tall, one fat one lean-san! Wouldn't that be amazing? Suddenly another year here doesn't seem like nearly enough. I could spend the entire year just in the kiddies section of Fukuya bookshop rereading all the classics.