Looking Busy
Stephen Horowitz
January 30, 2001
I mentioned in the last edition that I have joined the town taiko group. For those of you who do not know, taiko are Japanese drums that are usually played in an all-percussion group and which are very cool. Anyway, taiko groups never play with sheet music, so all of the pieces (which can be as long as 15 or 20 minutes) must be memorized. My town's group, called Togamurei Jindaiko, has essentially four groups of different skill levels. The best group is made up of adults from the town and they are quite good. Next is a group of mostly high school students (who are also quite good), followed by a group of mostly middle school students, followed by, take a wild guess, a group of mostly elementary school students. In any event, after receiving the music to the first piece I'm going to learn (about 15 minutes long) and reading along to it a few times while the high school group was playing it, the leader of the adult group who was sitting next to me turns and says "Do you think you can memorize all of the music? I don't think you'll have a problem since even the elementary school students have memorized it." Of course I replied that it wouldn't be a problem, but I was thinking, "Unless I'm mistaken, memory does get worse and not better with age, but oh well."
By a week later I had memorized the first half page (of three), by far the easiest part of the piece and proof that I still have a long way to go. I subsequently found out that I was supposed to memorize the third page of music first, so I had been memorizing the wrong thing. However, I now have almost the entire third page memorized along with the part of the first page which I memorized before. Everyone says that I am picking the music up very quickly and that I'm quite good considering how short a time I've been doing it. I don't know whether or not to believe them though, since anyone who has ever been told that their Japanese is very good (despite having only said 2 words to the person) knows how easily the Japanese pay compliments. In any event, it is really quite fun and I find myself looking forward to it as the high point of each week.
I also went to my first badminton practice two weeks ago and had a great time. Although the gym was probably 80 degrees and humid, and although by the end anyone who saw me would honestly think that I had jumped into a pool with all of my clothes on, I showed them how we do it on the other side of the Pacific. I played a game of doubles against one of the best guys in the club and won. It was a close game, but, as the Japanese say, "kachi wa kachi da" ("a win is a win").
I'm also continuing the Kendo instruction I began the last time I was in Kyoto two years ago. It is going ok, except that I haven't really been able to do it as much as I would like. In addition, some of the things that my instructor here is telling me to do contradict things that I learned from my instructor in Kyoto. So, basically, I am in the position of having to unlearn some of the things that I learned in Kyoto and start ever again from square one. It's really quite annoying, actually, but the Japanese have a word, "gaman" which basically means to put up with something and stick it out. That's what I'm going to do.
I've been playing some golf while I'm here, including in a tournament. I shot a 104 (not very good), got a birdie (good), and came in 31st out of 60 (not very good). I had fun, though, despite the fact that it was raining almost the whole time, and I guess that is the most important thing (next to winning, of course).
Well, that's about it for the extra-curricular activity department, but maybe I can find something else to write about. Oh yes, I'm about to get very, very busy starting next week. My English and cooking classes are about to start and so I am going to have to start planning lessons and recipes and things like that. In addition, I have three speeches to give in a row on the 19th, 20th and 21st of September.
Hopefully the audience doesn't overlap so that I can give the same speech on all three occasions, but we'll see. The topic is pretty much "America," which is broad enough to allow me to speak about pretty much anything. In some ways that makes it harder than if they had given me a specific topic to speak about. It's like when professors in college tell you to write a paper about something, they don't care what. If they just give me a topic it really would make my life slightly easier. On a positive note, though, there is a CIR (that's the title of my job) online database which contains a speech bank for all to use. Yes, it's plagiarism, but that is what it is there for (Really! During the orientation they encouraged us to use it).
I'm a celebrity, by the way. I was interviewed by the Oita-ken newspaper (a ken is essentially equivalent to a state) and so now everyone who sees me knows who I am. It's kind of cool, but I can see why celebrities get tired of all the attention. The novelty of it wears off quite quickly.
