Music: A Universal Concept

I had an exceptionally musical day today which was fantastic. After my Japanese lesson I hopped on my bike, took a deep breath and resigned myself to losing all sorts of electrolytes during my uphill trek once more.

At 1:30 I had my very first koto lesson. The office lady Manabe-san (I think I should start calling her dorayaki-san as she keeps me supplied with a never-ending supply of dorayaki almost as if she too has a magical Doraemonesque pocket – how cool would that be?) found me a teacher. Before we headed over there we stopped at a supermarket and picked up her best friend who was waiting in the parking lot. I’m amazed that I’m able to communicate with Manabe-san as well as I am. But she explained to me exactly what we were doing and I got it. She is exceedingly patient with my crap Japanese and makes an effort to point out things, say them slowly, and teach me whatever kanji might be on the edible gifts that she presents to me by the masses.

Her best friend is an English teacher a couple of towns over and has stupendous English. She is loud, boisterous and probably embodies the mystical (and supposedly untranslatable) Japanese word genki. While Manabe-san is much more low-key, gentle and modest, her best friend was bounding off the walls, clutching the back of Manabe-san’s seat in an attempt to get up and into the conversation. Topics of chatter ranged from how I enjoy dorayaki and udon, to where my Japanese grandparents live and then took a turn to very excited conversation about this man who I later learned was the janitor at school. This man must be exceptionally interesting because he was the topic of conversation for quite a while.

We arrived at my koto teacher’s home and were ushered inside. This woman has a kick-ass house. Maybe if I save up for a year, eat nothing, and go no-where I’ll be able to move out of my current apartment and get a place like that next year. The entire place was air-conditioned. The front room was devoted to kotos. She had about six that I could see; three out and three covered propped up against the wall. They ranged in size, color and tone. One was exceptionally huge had 17 strings instead of the usual 13 and Manabe-san joked about little Nikki-chan lugging it home on the plane back to New York. The room was typically Japanese with Japanese dolls decorating various corners of the room, tatami mats, sliding doors with artificial lights glowing from behind. The rest of the house was quite large- and she had lots of books, a MODERN looking computer, large kitchen and relatively high ceilings.

We spent the afternoon in the koto room. I had no idea what I was doing but it was fun. She brought out a small box full of little plastic pieces that looked like fake nails with rings attached to them which initially repulsed me. The koto strings were much thicker and stronger than I was expecting – hence the need for fake nails to play it, I suppose. There is a whole different system of reading music involving kanji but at least the beginning stages didn’t look too difficult. The great thing about music is that just through sounds and mimicking you can make yourself understood. The instruments were beautiful and even though I suck, at least I got to do it.

As it was an introductory lesson most of my time there was actually spent sitting around a table drinking tea, eating a fruity jelly concoction and biscuits and trying to get what I could from the animated conversation that the three women were having. Every once in a while Manabe-san would turn to me to make the generic “it’s delicious isn’t it?” or “is the seiza position okay? Has the searing pain died off yet?” type of thing. I didn’t mind so much. It was good comprehension practice.

Upon returning to school I was told by one of my fellow JTEs, Hida-san, that the music teacher wanted me to accompany the school’s music club on the piano during the school festival in October. Considering that at that point no one in that school had ever heard me play I sort of wonder what they were thinking. I could have been completely lying when I said I was musically inclined and would therefore only bring them shame at the ever-so-important festival when I broke out into my gloriously simplistic version of chopsticks while the rest of the orchestra started in on Beethoven’s Ninth.

Every time I have attempted to use the music room, it has been occupied by students. I didn’t want to bother them if they were practicing for something important, but I finally sucked it up today and went at it on the upright Yamaha that is in the room adjoining the larger room containing the grand piano and various other instruments.

All of a sudden I had an audience. The two boys that I had said hello to in passing in the hallway had moseyed on in. If there’s one thing that being a JET presents you with most often – it’s an audience.

It was a great way to bond with the students. I met a bunch of kids – guys and girls (one who happens to share my middle name of Akiko which she found AWESOME!!!!11). Many of them appear to be incredibly talented but when I asked several of the girls to show me on the piano what the song we were going to be playing was supposed to sound like (I need to hear things as I’m terrible at reading rhythms) they would just giggle in embarrassment and shy away from the piano proclaiming that they sucked. I can tell they don’t.

What was great about the experience was that they weren’t sticking to the music at all. The band will be performing a piece called “In The Mood” which stupidly I didn’t recognize by name, but hit myself with a “a derf” after hearing the first four notes; a typically American swingy tune arranged by J. Garland. In a country where at camps one is made to fold a dirty sheet into perfectly measured eighths and everyone must congregate in the morning to do pointless callisthenic exercises that only succeed in making everyone look equally like a fool, you’d think they’d stick rigidly to the music that was written on the page note for note. As we went through the piece Akiko Junior took a pencil to the page and together we were busy scribbling out chords that I shouldn’t play, and melodies that I should. Interestingly in some places she was totally changing notes too. I like the fact that they’re changing the piece to make it more their own. I didn’t leave school till six today. If we’re doing something like that, I don’t mind staying late.

There may be language barriers, but music is a constant and a language in itself.

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Published:
8.24.06 / 5pm
Category:
classroom antics, what i call life, culture