I was talking to one of my students, a biology researcher at the university, after class one Saturday in March, and wished him a happy St. Patrick’s Day. This piqued his interest, as most Japanese have really no concept of St. Patrick’s Day beyond the idea that people wear green. So he asked me who Saint Patrick was. I explained that Saint Patrick was a Catholic holy man, and that he was famous for making the snakes leave Ireland, so that there are no snakes in Ireland now. He considered this a minute, then said (with beautiful timing): “So, he destroyed an ecosystem.” I was so pleased! One of my students made a joke! In English!

His comment is akin to a story I heard before I came, of a foreign English teacher trying to explain Easter to high school students. The Resurrection was particularly difficult. He explained that Jesus died, and then came back to life. The penny dropped for one of his students, who said, ”Oh! Jesus was a ZOMBIE!”

Another student, a professor at Shimane University, made an unconscious but telling mistake when we were discussing environmental problems, when he complained about ‘faculty emissions’ instead of ‘factory emissions.’ Some days it’s hard to keep a straight face.

These days I’ve been working hard on improving students’ pronunciation. I am waging a personal war against the mispronunciation of “th” (No more “sank you” or “where is za bassroom?”). I joked one night at ARGO that I wasn’t leaving until everyone in Japan could say “th”. Bud made a grimace and said, “Good luck!” I taught a pronunciation workshop one Sunday focussing on vowels. Many of my students have difficulty with differentiating the vowel sounds in words like ‘books’ and ‘box’. There is only one ‘o’ sound (and one ‘a’ sound, one ‘i’ sound, et cetera) in Japanese, so beginning learners can’t hear, let alone speak, the difference between the different vowel sounds. Also, many students can’t hear or pronounce the difference between ‘ear’ and ‘year’. And I am not sure why many of my students can say ‘why’, but not ‘would’, habitually dropping the ‘w’ (“’Ould you like a tea?”). However, I have been concentrating on pronunciation for about six months, and – wow! - I think some of my students have improved! It’s nice to think I have might made a noticeable difference, especially at the end of the day, when I’m drained from expending all that energy and sitting in an empty classroom that smells vaguely like a locker room.

Classes have been good these days. I think it won’t get any better than this. I am confident as a teacher now, and I know many of my students very well. I have been teaching some of them ever since I started, a year and five months ago. Plus at the beginning of April, I got a bunch of new students who I am very happy with. They are outgoing, interesting people, and I think we’ll have a good time in class together. I have new textbooks, and while it’s annoying to have the extra prep work, the textbooks are better and the teaching technique is different but easier. The most fun for me is the dialogue section, where I get the students to make oversized gestures to accompany the conversation. I sometimes feel guilty that I am creating ham actors, but everyone seems to enjoy it!

The balance of students has shifted, too. I used to teach about 80% women and 20% men, but now I teach about equal numbers of both sexes. Many of my new male students are ‘business bachelors’, which means they are married, but they have been transferred for work and their spouses or families live in another part of Japan. One of my new students, a lecturer at the university named Kohei, told me his wife and son were in Fukuoka. I said, “That must be hard for you,” and he flashed me a big smile and said, “No, I enjoy!” When I told Miyuki, the assistant manager, she made a face and said, “Japanese men!”

On a different note, literally, I want to tell you about shigin, the Japanese singing I have been studying since last June. It is certainly one of the most ‘Japanese’ activities I have pursued while I’ve been here. I told you about some of our practices, but last October 28, I took part in a large shigin recital, as a kind of showcase for the art. Shigin is kind of a dying art, I think, since most shigin singers are over fifty. The heads of the many shigin associations are trying many different strategies to revive interest in shigin. Kanda-sensei, my teacher, is reaching out to the foreigners in Japan; hence, my involvement.

On the day of the recital last October, I woke early and went to Ryoko’s house, where her mother runs a hair salon on the ground floor, to get my hair put up. Ryoko watched and translated as her mother put my hair in a kind of French roll and decorated it with little pink flowers. I had some time to kill before Seiji arrived to collect me. Things were kind of strained between Seiji and me, and I think he might have skipped the event completely, but Kanda-sensei guilted him into staying. He bought a new suit for the occasion, and looked very nice. We practiced in the car on our way to the Prefectural Hall (the same place where I saw the bunraku puppet show last spring). It was a beautiful fall day, and the weather was warm. The hall was a beehive of activity. I went to the dressing room assigned to “Team International” (my nickname for our singing quartet, since all but one of us were foreign, representing Korea, China and Canada). It was full of schoolgirls in their uniforms (yes, even on a Sunday - some schools insist), chattering excitedly.

We had a couple of hours, so I found Seiji and we went outside. We took a few pictures and tried to relax. When we went back in, Seiji was whisked away for a practice, and I returned to the dressing room. The teenagers had changed into matching costumes and were busily applying dramatic, kabuki-esque red eyeshadow to each other’s faces. Kaya, Nagai-san and Chie-san had arrived. Kaya was putting on her kimono, Nagai-san was wearing a shimmering blue Chinese dress (she seemed a little embarrassed by the high slits in the thigh, but it looked really nice), and Chie-san was wearing a traditional Korean costume with a voluminous red skirt and embroidered blouse. We practiced a few times and took the opportunity to tour the stage – which suddenly seemed HUGE. Then I began to get nervous.

The show opened with children mimicking some of the festivals the Shimane region is famous for, including the Drum Frestival and the Yasugi-Bushi dancers. Very cute. We watched from the wings. And I watched Seiji’s group – all one hundred of them – sing the opening song, Fuji-san, a homage to Mount Fuji. It was followed by a sword-dance and fan dance by children, but I couldn’t see them. Then we were waiting our turn. The curtain went down, and we walked out to our places at the microphones. And the curtain went up, revealing a sea of Japanese faces. There was an audible gasp of surprise from a few people out there. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe and the kimono was constricting me, so I stood very still. And I saw Takako, my student, with one of her friends in the third row! I smiled at her and felt a little better. We all introduced ourselves. I tried to speak my Japanese clearly and accurately: “Konnichiwa. Watashi no namae wa Sarah Blenkhorn desu. Canada kara kimashita.” Then Nagai-san read our poem, Tsuto ni Hakutei-Jo o Hassu, in its original Chinese. At last, the flute and koto began to play and Chie-san sang the first line before we all joined in. I think we sang well. The curtain came down on the applause, and I breathed as big a sigh of relief as I could.

I slipped out to watch some of the other performances. There were tea ceremony, flower-arranging and calligraphy demonstrations set to shigin music, plus a fan dance. It was enjoyable, but not gripping drama by any means. Martin and Yumi had come and Martin was clicking away with his camera. Yuko and Noriko, two other students of mine, had also come, but they left after my performance. At the end, we all piled onto the stage to thank the audience and wave farewell (I was caught by surprise, and had to run up from the audience; sure wish I could speak Japanese…) Then I changed into another dress given to me by Arisawa-sensei, a black Chinese dress with beautiful beadwork. It was too big for me, but looked all right anyway, and I felt I should wear it for Arisawa-sensei.

We made our way from the Prefectural Hall to Hotel Ichbata, where I got my first taste of a formal Japanese party. We were shown to our table. There was a moment’s confusion because Seiji wasn’t supposed to be seated at the table, but I had no intention of spending the evening without understanding a single word that was spoken to me, so I insisted – as much as I could with my terrible Japanese and some sign language – that he sit at the table. The place was ornately set, with lacquered dishes and trays, but the food was rather disappointing. It took some time for us to taste it, and the drinks set out at our table, because we had to wait for the ‘kampai!’ to toast the occasion and take a drink. So we sat through several speeches – fortunately, none of them particularly long – by distinguished Japanese gentlemen who spoke on behalf of the various shigin associations of Shimane Prefecture. Need I remind you that I couldn’t understand any of this, so sat with a look of glazed interest on my face, stealing glances down at my food and my glass of beer? A short demonstration of a folk dance by vintage ladies in red satin trousers followed and finally a kampai led by Kanda-sensei. It seemed everybody took up his or her glass with a sigh of relief and a heartfelt “Kampai!” And then we did a “Banzai,” a group cheer where everybody throws their arms up into the air and shouts “Banzai!”

With an outburst of chatter and clatter, everyone sat down to eat. The stage was set for karaoke, and many people got up to sing enka and other popular older Japanese songs. And the beer and sake and oolong tea flowed in fountains from the hands of people wandering from table to table, introducing themselves, making small talk and topping off glasses. The amount of alcohol was unbelievable! Most of the gentlemen turned quite red-faced after only a glass or two. After we had cut our hunger and eaten most of the meal, “Team International” took up bottles of our own and went to fill glasses in our turn, mingling, chatting and posing for pictures. People seemed quite tickled to have their pictures taken with us. The men had changed from the kimonos they had worn in performance to black suits (I really liked Kanda-sensei’s elegant black kimono with a white family crest on the shoulders and back), but many of the women still wore their beautiful kimonos. I’m thinking of buying a used kimono before I leave Japan, but I will need to take lessons to learn how to put it on.

After the dinner, the nijikai, or ‘second party’ took place in a karaoke box in the northwest of Matsue. About sixteen of us crowded into the small room. I don’t think you can really say you’ve sung karaoke until you’ve shut yourself in a karaoke box for about three hours with a predominantly older group of Japanese singers, singing enka tunes. I sang The Beatles, which everybody knew, and some fifties and sixties songs that Seiji recommended. It was still early by the time I got home. Things got a little tense between Seiji and I in the car as Yuzo, Seiji’s friend, drove us home (awkward, I’m sure, for the other folk with us…), and we had a spat in the street at the end of the night. Not pretty. Seiji spent the night sitting by his car in the Hotel Ichbata parking lot, in his rumpled suit, staring at Lake Shinji. I, sorry to say, slept like a log.

After the recital, we had a long break from shigin, only getting together a couple of times to practice. I was told that, as part of “Team International”, I had been a guest of the shigin association. Now I had to choose if I would join in and practice in earnest. I thought about it for a while, and decided to continue. Seiji thought about it, too, and almost gave it up. But in the end, after some time apart to (kind of) get over our break-up, he decided to continue as well. In January, we started in a newly formed shigin group, called Ajisai Danshi. We practice in a small, newly built community centre in the subdivision of the same name. The community centre is built on a curve in the road at the back of the subdivision, and its front window looks out on rice fields and a wooded hill with a small shrine at its foot, lit by the afternoon sun. The centre is lovely; after taking off our shoes on the foyer and stepping through the sliding doors, we are in a room of tatami mats, smelling faintly of fresh straw. The smell takes me back to afternoons spent playing in haystacks in the barns of my childhood friends. We slide the closet doors open when we arrive and set up low tables, designed for kneeling at, and cushions for everyone to sit on. There is a small, neat kitchen off the tatami room as well.

Kanda-sensei is our teacher. He is the owner of a very fine and expensive traditional Japanese inn, or ryokan, whimsically called Ten Ten Temari (Bouncing Ball Inn). He is always very tidy and well dressed, with over-sized glasses and a round, mild-eyed face that gives him the look of a turtle. Between singing practices, he tends to tell us long stories. He told us recently about the time a group of yakuza (the Japanese mafia) rented rooms at the ryokan and demanded geisha (there haven’t been geisha in Matsue for a long time). He said he could see their gang tattoos down to the wrists when they relaxed and pushed up their sleeves, and he described how his hands shook as he poured sake for them. He treats me as Japanese and makes no real accommodation for the fact that I can’t speak the language well, so he can be hard – nay, impossible – to understand. I am quite proud when I understand without Seiji’s translation. We talked about the difference in climate between Nova Scotia and Matsue once, and he recalled winters as a child when the snow was incredibly high and Lake Shinji froze so that people could walk out to Yomegashima Island. People are always astounded when I tell them about the temperature in Nova Scotia in winter. It’s a rare cold winter day that goes below –5 here.

Nagai-san has remained with this group, but she can rarely make it to practice. She lives in the Ajisai Danshi subdivision, and often sends her teenaged son down with the keys to open the centre. (He sometimes practices with his band at the centre, after we finish.) Tamei-san and Kakuda-san are also in our group. They started, very tentatively, in January, but they are making good progress. We had a competition at the end of March, and we all practiced the song Fuji-san together in class. The competition didn’t require kimono, just formal clothes. It was held on a Sunday morning. There were over a hundred competitors, but as beginners, we went first. I saw Inoue-san, who had helped me dress at the recital. She was excited to see me, and wished me well. It was a distinguished-looking collection of people. In the room where our competition was to be held, rows of chairs were set up for competitors and spectators, and there were two long rows of tables, one on each side of the room. This is where the judges – all TWENTY of them – sat. I stood with Seiji and Yuzo, and we were joined by Tamei-san and Kakuda-san. I was suddenly very nervous and aware that I had not practiced enough. We took our places and the competition began. Seiji sang second or third, and I was impressed. When he started singing shigin last June, he was not very confident and had trouble with the higher notes. But today, under pressure, he came through. A couple more people and it was my turn. I certainly was aware of intense scrutiny as I gave my number and waited for the music to start. A woman started to videotape this unique moment – a gaijin singing shigin. I felt good as I sang, until the beginning of the third part, where I noticed I was off key on the high note. Apparently that threw me off, because then I forgot the words! I found my place again and finished, but I was mortally embarrassed. I was pleased Kanda-sensei wasn’t in the room. Inoue-san praised me for my posture, though.

The next week we had a party at Ten Ten Temari to celebrate the formation of our shigin group. I was intensely curious about the Japanese inn. Ten Ten Temari is on the north shore of Lake Shinji. It is a yellow building, older than the other inns along the shore, with bamboo shades and a tall wooden fence around the ground floor, over which Japanese pines can be seen. We entered through the curtains into a cozy lobby with tatami flooring and shelves of traditional Japanese crafts for sale, including many of the cloth balls, covered with colourful patterns of thread, that the inn is named for.

The plan was to soak in the hot springs at the inn for an hour, than sit down to a meal. We were the first, so after a short, ritualistic mini-tea ceremony with macha (bitter green tea) and wagashi (Japanese sweets made with rice powder and bean paste), Kanda-sensei let us pick out yukata (for me) and jumbei (for Seiji) to wear, then led us to the hot springs. I went into the ladies’ section, where I discovered I had the hot springs to myself. This was my second time at an onsen; the first time, in February, Yumi showed me the ropes. First rule, no clothes allowed. Second rule, scrub yourself in the showers as thoroughly as possible before getting into the hot spring – for at least ten minutes, preferably longer. Ten Ten Temari only has small pools or tubs, suitable for only a few people at once and the water is hot, hot, hot! I soaked outside for about twenty minutes before Tamei-san and Kakuda-san joined me. They were a little shy and embarrassed, actually; not everyone in Japan is comfortable in hot springs. We soaked for a while longer, until Nagai-san came in and told us we had to hurry for lunch. We struggled into our yukata with help from one of the girls who worked at the inn. She was also wearing one, and was quick in tying our obis. I was bright red from the hot spring – not unlike a boiled lobster.

Then we sat down to the meal, an unbelievable nine-course Japanese meal. A basket containing bottles of tea and beer was brought in and we took turns pouring drinks for each other. At a party like this, it is the custom to fill other people’s glasses and not your own. The formal mood dissolved a bit and we made small talk, with Seiji translating. Some of us were a little reticent, but the gentleman from Yamaguchi was a good conversationalist, and engaged everyone in conversation. The attendants lit the braziers and soon the beef and vegetables were sizzling away. The presentation of the meal was remarkable. Some courses were served in brightly painted ceramic globes with lids. Sushi was served in a music box. The dessert, ice cream, was served in a lacquered box with a bit of dry ice, so that a low mist drifted out when the lid was lifted. It was whimsical, charming… and delicious. I paced myself, but the beer was plentiful and I got a little tipsy. It was a delightful, unforgettable meal. We got a significant discount on it, too, but it was still expensive.