Yesterday was D-Day, or Decision Day, for me. To renew my contract or not to renew my contract, that was the question. I won’t keep you in suspense: I compromised. I extended my contract for another eight months from November, so I will finish on July 23^rd, 2009. I intended to stay until the end of May, but Ryoko and Mayumi-sensei asked me to stay the extra two months. I asked if they wanted me to stay to complete next year’s self-study counselling, since it’s basically impossible for a new teacher who doesn’t know the students well to counsel them. They said actually it’s for new students who start in the spring. I will interview them, and many of them will choose the school based on their experience with me. So it’s disappointing for them to start school, and then have me leave. Also, I know the learning curve for a new teacher – it’s steep, steep, steep! I was practically useless for three months before I learned the ropes and became confident in the classroom. (Atsushi, one of my new students, went to Tokyo on business and attended an AEON school there for a week. He told me when he came back that the teacher was all energy and no skills, and that he had new respect for me as a teacher. He thought maybe that teacher in Tokyo was a new teacher.)

So why did I renew at all? And why not a full year? Part of the reason I renewed was money. I’m still paying off debts, and it’s important that I finish paying them and sock a little money away before I come home. Another reason is that I haven’t decided what to do when I return. Until I do that, it’s better to be working than to drift around and worry about the future. I feel it’s important that in the future I do something that makes me happy, but also helps people. So I have more time to think about my plans, but I think my deadline is December of this year.

More important than the money, and even the future planning, is that I’m learning a lot in Japan. I’m learning about myself a lot, discovering new loves, like singing, and learning new skills, like teaching. I’m jogging a lot (though truth to tell, this week I’ve been very lazy). I just played a soccer tournament last week, and acquitted myself well. Despite my fears about my knee, it was fine through the tournament (thanks, Peter McAuley from my aikido class in Halifax – your sister’s brace gave me the physical and moral support I needed to play).

And Matsue is great. I’m so lucky I didn’t end up in a larger city, where the natural beauty and history of Japan would be strangled in concrete. Matsue is a funny sprawl of the old and the new mixed together. A bamboo-shrouded shrine sits serenely next to the bottleneck of traffic coming off the bridge, surrounded by taller hotels, apartment buildings and offices. Hundred-year old homes, made basically of wood, glass and paper, jostle with pre-fab apartments and modern homes that give a nod to the architecture of the past in their tile roofs and the shape of the windows and doors. At this time of year, gardens and greenery are everywhere. And life, for better or worse, is also everywhere – fish, birds, bugs (I saw the first dazed cockroach emerge from under the sink in my apartment last week; Yumi and Martin were visiting, and Martin killed it) and frogs. I saw a bullfrog while I was jogging the other day which was – no word of a lie – almost the size of a dinner plate! Now I can put a face to the sound of the bass in my night chorus.

I know that when I leave, it’s going to be really hard to say good-bye. I have a lot of friends here, but it will also be hard to say good-bye to my students. Some of them will leave the school before I do, but others will still be here next July.

To my family and closest friends: I’m sorry that I’ll be away for longer, and I probably won’t make it home for Christmas. Please keep sending me emails and pictures and letters, and I’ll do the same. A lot of my pictures are on Facebook – if you go online, you can see them all. I’m thinking of you all a lot. I miss you, and sometimes, yeah, I’m a little lonely here. I have a lot of friends, but they aren’t you.

Anyway, I want to update you on one of my new hobbies. Here’s a letter I started a while ago.

…from Sunday, May 18^th…

It’s a damp, sticky day today, and the sky was gray until evening, when a pearly sunset broke through the clouds. I went for my jog late today, and the weather fooled me into thinking I needed heavier clothes. Shortly into the run, I regretted it. I was already exhausted when I started, and the humidity wrapped around me like a blanket. I enjoyed running across the fields at twilight, though. The herons were out in force, and some pairs of ducks swam or waddled across the rice fields. I hope you don’t get tired of me constantly talking about the birds; I never get tired of watching them. Most people in Matsue seem to take them for granted, because they’re so common, but I think they’re beautiful. Seiji burned a couple of enka CD’s for me, and I put them on my ipod, so I’ve been listening to it as I run. Enka is like Japanese country music. It kind of had its heyday in the 70’s and 80’s, I think. The music is a little sentimental and – dare I say it? – pretty cheesy, with lots of swelling violin strings and French accordion. The sound, though, is still clearly Japanese. The songs, like country songs, are about love, betrayal, loss and rain. I don’t like listening to my ipod when I’m riding my bike – too dangerous, too much traffic; I like having all my senses, thank you – but on the empty roads snaking through the rice fields, I feel more comfortable.

I want to talk about singing, a little. I’ve written already about shigin quite a bit, and touched on karaoke back in the fall, but I don’t think I can stress too much how important music has become to me. For a while in the fall and winter, I was obsessed with karaoke. In Japan, you can go to a karaoke place and rent a ‘karaoke box’. This is a room with some low couches, a large table, a karaoke machine, a large screen and a small raised stage. A karaoke box holds from six to twenty people, depending on the size. I don’t actually go to a karaoke box much, though. They’re a little cramped, and the one near the university is quite smelly. But Seiji has ‘Kayaoke’ once a month now, and I’ve never missed it. In fact, I have been known to monopolize the machine, if other people weren’t singing. One night, Seiji got the machine a day early, so I came in when Kaya was empty and SANG FOR FOUR AND A HALF HOURS. Seiji was impressed by my fortitude.

Jennifer was the one who really got me into karaoke, but these days she doesn’t come much. I sometimes wonder if it was because I got kind of competitive about singing with her. She pretty much has chosen ARGO over Kaya, though; it’s more her style. I prefer the atmosphere at Kaya, but Kaya is usually empty these days, except for special events; if I want to talk to someone besides Seiji, I have to go elsewhere.

Anyway, I was pretty timid singing at the start, but rapidly started discovering what I could sing and what I couldn’t sing and getting more confident. My repertoire, for better and worse, includes: “Summertime” (Ella Fitzgerald, or in a pinch, Joplin – its my number one song), “My Heart Will Go On” (it’s shocking, yes, but I admit that I sing Celine Dion), “I Will Always Love You” (Whitney Houston – ditto), “Time After Time” and “True Colours” (Cindi Lauper), “Fame!” (Irene Cara – the theme song from the movie and TV show. I sing it so much my Japanese friends can sing along now), “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” (Madonna’s version – it’s faster), “Working For the Weekend” (Loverboy – just because it’s there…), “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To” (Helen Reddy – this is simple and beautiful), “Barbie Girl” (Aqua – silly but entertaining), “Chiquitita” (ABBA) and many others. You might notice that many of my songs are seventies and eighties standards – the height of my musical education was reached at about the age of fourteen. (Seiji teased, “You like old songs – ‘cause you’re old.” I stuck my tongue out at him.) Fifties tunes and jazz standards are good too. But if I want to sing something everyone is familiar with, I can’t go too far wrong with the Beatles or the Carpenters. Everyone in Japan knows them. So I had to learn some Carpenters tunes, too, but I’m not great at them. (I’ll tell you my karaoke secret; I research my songs on YouTube, where I can watch the videos and learn the tune. It really helps to watch the original singers, so concert footage is good. Pretty geeky, huh?)

When singing my regular songs got boring, I decided to learn some Japanese songs. Seiji helped me find some that everyone would know, and I practiced them (YouTube, again). My only rule was that the songs be slow and simple, since I can’t speak Japanese very fast yet. But learning the songs is actually helping me read Japanese better. When I first started singing them, I recruited Rika, Keiko or Ryoko, to sing with me, but now I can sing on my own – with the words in front of me. Next goal is to learn them by heart and wean myself from the paper…

So why do I love to sing? I think partly it’s the absence of theatre in my life. I need a creative outlet that singing provides. Also, it’s great to just open up and vent my feelings in a song. It’s a great stress-reliever. I am discovering my own voice, and that voice is strong, clear and, well, loud.

So I have karaoke, to blow off steam and play with different kinds of music. And I have shigin, which teaches me discipline, breathing and other new skills (including Japanese). I came in third in the beginners' rank at the most recent shigin competition, despite my shaking knees and the sign falling down behind me while I was singing. And now, very recently, I have begun to sing live with musicians at open mic events. It all started last December, when there was a Christmas Open Mic at ARGO. I had talked with Adam Cooke, an Irishman working with the JET Program, about singing some Irish tunes. Those didn’t really materialize, but we DID end up singing – what else? – “Barrett’s Privateers” to the bar. It went over well, though I almost had to stop, I was laughing so hard at Yusuke gamely trying to sing along. The rest of the evening was fuzzy, although I do remember babysitting the drunk and miserable, standing in the bathroom while one girl I knew was sick in one stall, and another cried her lovesick heart out in the other stall, fending off the guys (it’s a co-ed bathroom) and thinking to myself, “I’m too old for this.”

That was it for a long time, but in April Seiji organized a successful Open Mic night. The night before it, he and his friend Kishi-san, a bass player, persuaded me to try Ben E. King’s version of “Stand By Me.” So I showed up after aikido. Irish Adam was singing, accompanied by Tim. Tim is a multi-talented musician in his late forties. He’s married to a Japanese woman, and has lived in Japan for about 17 years. Listening to them, I made a mental note to learn “The Wild Rover” and “Cockles and Mussels” for next time. I sang “Stand by Me” with Kishi and Seiji playing along. Tim asked me what else I knew, and I drew a blank. Then I suggested “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” by the Beatles, and we hashed it out and sang it – pretty well, I thought. Tim had to go, but I attempted “All of Me” with Kishi. That wasn’t as successful, I think because I tried to sing it too low. Jiro was there, and played the shako-hachi (bamboo flute). It’s a traditional instrument, but he played it in a jazz style – very cool. Afterwards, we were talking about music, and he gave me a few tips: 1) Don’t read the music. Memorize it. 2) Just keep going if you screw up. 3) Talk a lot between songs.

The next open mic, I was ready. I learned “Nobody Knows You (When You’re Down and Out)” by Eric Clapton, practiced “All of Me” and “Stand by Me” and prepared some Irish tunes for Adam. Turns out I didn’t need those, because he didn’t show up. When I got there, it was pretty quiet, but a duo of skilled Japanese blues musicians were jamming with Kishi-san and another guitar player. I was cowed by their prowess, and it took a little while to summon the courage to get up and sing. Reiko and Yumi came as well, and offered lots of moral support. Once I was up there, though, it was easier. And the guys played with me! I sang everything I had prepared. It was great fun. Nishikori-san, one of the musicians, figured out the music for “Summertime” and “Ai San San” (aka “Love is Falling,” one of my Japanese karaoke songs) and we sang those too. I could get used to this. I need to learn a lot about music – I don’t even know what key to ask for – but I love singing live. Pat Murphy, who works for Amity, AEON’s sister school, came with his bass guitar and jammed with the guys on the Beatles and Pearl Jam. For Seiji’s sake, I wished more people had come, but I had a lovely time.

Any song recommendations? I think I might try Sheryl Crow (“Strong Enough”), Norah Jones ("Don't Know Why") and some more jazz tunes, but I’m open to suggestions…

Sarah
copo NT 202, chome 1

11-24 Gakuenminami

Matsue, Shimane 690-0826

JAPAN

Phone: 011-81-852-28-2735

"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - C.S. Lewis