The Sweet Life

Greetings, Dear Readers

Now that summer is here, things couldn't get much sweeter. The grass is green, the sky is blue (and occasionally ominously gray and wet), and yours truly has shaken off the frigid malaise of winter to glory and bask in the sunny wonder that is being at large in the world at 23.

Things have been on the up around Nakatsugawa. I used to complain about the town's lack of, err, urban charms, but after a firm attitude adjustment on my part in which I decided that I was never going to be happy to come home after the weekends unless I had something to come home to, I am happy to call it home. Somewhere a few months back, I endeavored to take a bigger bite of the local community and see what it had to offer. The results have been good.

My calendar went from empty to full pretty fast, and I'm liking it. I now teach private English classes twice a week at the local Mitsubishi factory. We talk about things like efficiency and ventilation fans and also where you can find cheap ramen. I must say, teaching engineers is a little more stimulating than teaching 16-year olds, but I can't complain.

Another positive development has been my joining of a taiko group. For those of you who don't know, taiko is a traditional type of Japanese drum that they used to use for many things, including scaring the opposing armies in warfare and also for Mitsubishi commercials. Sometime around 50 years ago, some enterprising fellow saw all these ginormously oversized drums sitting around everywhere and thought, surely there must be a way to play these in huge synchronized groups. He was right.

My particular taiko group is affiliated with a local junior high school, and as such I outrank even its most senior member by about 7 years. No matter. We have practices every weekend for about 4 hours each day, and I must say, it's HARD! Remembering the rhythms and transitions is a particular difficulty for me. My mind is not so pliable and trap-like as it was when I was an ambitious high school student, and I swear I forget half of what I learn every day. Although, I shouldn't be so hard on myself, as the instructions are coming in Japanese, a language which has well-documented frustrations for me.

At least the kids are pretty nice. On the first day, they all stared at me in that way that says, "Wtf, why is this guy in our taiko group? He's huge and foreign." No matter that: I am totally unphased by this stage in the relationship! That gradually morphed into a sort of shy, befuddled look whenever I speak to them. Now, I can almost get actual smiles from some. I think I'm always good for a laugh whenever they want to feel smart, as pretty much everything I do has some sort of ridiculous air of incompetence when I'm at taiko practice, even when it doesn't involve drumming. Just in picking drums, I found out I'd been stealing other people's taikos because I hadn't been properly reading the labels. They promptly ran off to the storage shed to get me my own, tightened and tuned it for me (no small task), and presented me with a label to claim it as my own. I wrote my name in Japanese letters, but they insisted I write it in English. I think they thought it was cooler that way.

When we're practicing as a group and I f-up some part of the sequence (which is often, though I must note that the other beginners make many mistakes as well, as do some of the seniors of the group), the seniors dispatch one another in shifts to go sit down in front of my drum and beat it with me to help set my pace. I must thank them for that. Even the gruff-looking 8th-grader who just calls me "foreigner" (I call her "Japanese") sat down with me for the better part of an hour to make sure I understood the beats. Very nice.

To top off the goodness all around, my much-beloved mountain bike showed up from home a few days ago, and its arrival has been like the centerpiece that gelled all the positive developments going on around me. I've been riding it all around the rice fields, shrines, highways, and back alleys of town since Friday, and it's been something like pure bliss coasting through the air on its silky smoothness. I never thought I could be so happy to be on a bike.

Goodnight from the fields,

Jay T.