形音符 Shape Notes to Japan

One more mission as a cultural ambassador and recipient of an Alabama State Council on the Arts grant to share traditional Alabama culture in Japan was to teach shape notes, an American pedagogical device invented in the early 1800s to aid in teaching people to sing in unaccompanied four-part harmony. While mostly used in churches to sing church hymns and mostly preserved in tiny rural churches in the American South, the shapes themselves are helpful for teaching any songs with notes, i.e., any songs. That's what I did on four separate occasions in Japan last month, beginning with the singing below in Hitachi, Birmingham's Japanese sister city.

More on this, with video clips, at my blog http://shapenote-japan.blogspot.com/

江戸東京博物館 Edo-Tokyo Museum

Edo is the old name for Tokyo, before Tokyo was the capital, which it became in 1868-ish when the government moved from Kyoto (the emperor finally moved too in 1869). Edo was Edo longer than Tokyo has been Tokyo, so a museum on the history of Tokyo pretty much has to have "Edo" in the name. This museum was built in the days before Japan's economy went to heck, which is apparent in the exterior. Its overwrought architecture is indicative of the hubris of the times and looks more like some sci-fi spaceship than an homage to Japanese history. I failed to take a picture of the exterior, but here's one from Wikimedia:

From Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Musee_edo.jpg

Once you're inside, however, an homage it is. They had a lot of space to recreate the Edo/Tokyo of various periods. Here's a recreation of the residence of one of the daimyos of the early Tokugawa Period, when shoguns started living in Edo. This guy spent more on his digs than either the shogun or the emperor. This scale model was based off of existing drawings, paintings, and diagrams. But, as luck would have it when you store up all your treasures in possessions, this place burned from a lightening strike less than a hundred years after it was built. It was never rebuilt because thereafter nobody had the money to build anything that gorgeous.

 Here's Tyler waiting in vain to be carried away in a palanquin.

鎌倉 Kamakura

The Great Buddha statue in Kamakura is one of those iconic images that for the whole world says "Japan," or even more than that, the exotic, the inscrutable Orient, the Other. To see it, you have to go through a gate and come around a corner, at which point for me a big gong goes off in my head like it's some airline commercial. But to Japanese, Kamakura is much more than an ad campaign. It was the site of the first shogun's government in 1192 (which Japanese remember with a little mnemonic device in which the numbers 1192 sound like the Japanese for "good country": イ・イ・ク・ニを作ろう、鎌倉幕府). The Kamakura Era only lasted about 150 years and by the time the shoguns set up their tent ("tents" referring to their militaristic origin, as if on a constant campaign) in Edo (the old name for Tokyo), Kamakura was a neglected backwater town. But the temples and shrines built in its heyday were kept up and those are pretty much what Kamakura is known for today. It's also just an hour's train ride from Tokyo, which facilitates a constant flow of tourists and their yen to preserve the old landmarks.

Here we are chumming with the Great Buddha, who was once inside a temple that blew down in a typhoon, so they built another temple, which blew down in another typhoon, so they built yet another temple, which washed away in a tsunami, at which point they said to themselves maybe this statue was meant to be outdoors. So, since 1498, he's been outdoors.

Here's a great mystery to me. This rather ordinary grave off the tourist circuit in Kamakura is that of Minamoto no Yoritomo, the first shogun of Japan. If you don't ask and you're not good with directions, you probably won't find it. I took this picture with past and future students of John Van Sant's Japanese history course at UAB. (Dr. Van Sant, does this give students extra credit?) Compare this to the gilded mausoleums of the Tokugawa shoguns at Nikko like this:

which we did not go to (image from Wikipedia), and it makes you wonder where the Kamakura shoguns went wrong, although Nikko is hardly fitting for guys that fancied themselves living in tents (which they did not). And this is just the entrance.

狛江高校 Komae High School

Those of you who remember Mikiko Kohno, our Fulbright Japanese Teaching Assistant at UAB in 2008 and 2009, will be pleased to know that she is now a high school English teacher in Komae, on the outskirts of Tokyo. Visiting a Japanese high school always brings back memories for me as a former JET teacher teaching in many different schools. For the UAB students, however, high school is the site of countless anime and manga. In a way, it was like walking into a real live anime. The architecture, the layout of classrooms, the uniforms, the after-school activities, it was all there.

Here's the English class of Mikiko, er, Kohno-sensei, with UAB students interspersed throughout the classroom. Just as we like to do when we have Japanese visitors to our Japanese classes, she had the class talk part of the time in English for her students' benefit and part in Japanese for our students. There's Tyler speaking Japanese.

Here's John in another after-school class for kids who are going to visit their sister school in Australia. There's Mikiko's happy face mugging for the camera. Those lucky students!

Japanese high school teachers have a lot tighter schedule than their American counterparts, but from the school, Mikiko took us to a Vietnamese restaurant just down the street near the station.

Here are some of us with Mikiko in the Vietnamese restaurant. We were just fortunate that day that Mikiko could join us. A Japanese high school teacher's job usually includes guiding some after-school club activity, with "after school" usually including Saturdays and Sundays. Mikiko is the coach of the girls' basketball club, which took a day off the day we visited so she could do stuff like go with us to the Vietnamese restaurant. Before we left the school, she showed us other club activities. Judging by how single-mindedly each club was engaged in their respective activities, I figured it was a big sacrifice for girls' basketball to take a day off. Sorry, Komae HS girls' basketball. Thanks for loaning us your coach for dinner.

六郷祭り Rokugō Festival

This time of year, any neighborhood of consequence in Japan has a festival at their local Shinto shrine. The neighborhood where Mako grew up in south Tokyo usually has their annual festival the first weekend in June, when we were still in Hitachi. But for some reason, it was switched to the second weekend.

Here are Tyler and Callie in front of the shrine gate. Leading up to the shrine are all sort of fun stalls selling food, toys, goldfish, cotton candy -- sort of like Japan's version of a county fair, but without the rides.

During a festival, neighborhood people take the local kami (god, spirit, deity -- translations always fail) from the shrine on this portable shrine and carry it through the neighborhood. When we saw the shrine carriers resting, we went up to the shrine to look at it and take pictures, at which point they cheered and asked us to help them carry it. There's Ashley, Callie, Josh, and Corey in there bearing their share of the weight, which was considerable. This still picture doesn't convey how boisterous the heaving and hoeing was, as if the kami were a jolly good fellow. This whole affair was more like a carnival than a religious event. I'm sure Japan has its share of pious folks, but they seem to lay low during a festival.

Gundam!

Yesterday we went to Odaiba and in front of the shopping mall, Divers City, they had a huge replica of a Gundam. It was so cool even though it was kind of raining on us but that did not stop us from standing and getting pictures with it!!

浅草 Asakusa

The place we're staying, Sakura Hostel, is filled with mostly foreign students for some reason I don't understand. Foreigners stay here because it's cheap compared to other places one could stay in Tokyo. It's so popular with foreigners that it was even featured on a morning news show. Mako, John, Jordan, and Callie were even interviewed for it. The show is all in Japanese, but even if you don't understand it, it's still pretty cool to see us on TV:

Sakura Hostel isn't that cheap (e.g., approximately US$40 per night), but for Tokyo, it's considered near rock-bottom. What I don't get is that Japanese students aren't rich either, so why don't more of them stay here? It would make it more interesting for the foreigners and it would be a great place to practice English, which actually one group of Japanese guests did do.

Here's the main floor. That's the front desk in the back, a kitchen for guests on the right, and 6 computers with Internet on the left. Guests can bring food and eat it on the tables in the middle. Mako and I use a group of tables for our classroom.

Here I am teaching the class on manga and anime.

As you might expect for a place that's called a "hostel," Sakura Hostel is rather spartan, meaning small rooms with bunk beds and communal showers and toilets down the hall.

Here's a room with six bunk beds. We reserved this for the girls because there were six of them. We got a room with four bunk beds for the guys' because there were four of them.

And here's the double room for Mako and me. Pretty much just four walls, two beds, and that amount of floor space between the beds.

This was the view from our room. I should have taken this on a clear day, but during the rainy season, there are far more cloudy days than clear ones. See that pagoda on the right? That's the same as...

...this pagoda on the left. I was walking through here by myself and realized it wasn't cloudy, and also realized I had my camera in my pocket, so I snapped this shot. We're in the Asakusa area of Tokyo here, and this is Senso-ji, the big Buddhist temple with the iconic Kaminari-mon, or Thunder Gate.

Here's Kaminari-mon in the evening, with a passing group of junior high school students on a school trip to Tokyo.

Through the gate is this long row of shops. This car-free street is called Nakamise. That's Kaminari-mon there at the end.

And if you turn the other way, you see this inner gate (that's our students there in the middle) with the actual temple there in the back. All the back streets around here are mini-adventures into every kind of imaginable store, noodle shop, sushi joint, bathhouse, little shrine that pops out of nowhere, and a little amusement park (which you can see from Mako's and my room above). We're getting pretty used to all this enchantment because we have to walk through it to get to a subway station to go anywhere else in Tokyo. Like ordinary Japanese folks, we end up walking a lot, to get to the bank or the post office or the grocery store or places to eat or the subway. And the subway is how we get to anywhere else. I myself much prefer this kind of workout a gym because we're putting exercise to a practical use, i.e., getting somewhere, as opposed to a piece of gym equipment—the ultimate reduction wheel in my mind.

Pictures!

 Getting interviewed at the hostel.

 Mako-sensei getting interviewed.

 John at the Ghibli Museum.

Tim-sensei at Engaku-Ji.

From Ikeda-sensei

If you can read Japanese, here's some pictures and descriptions from Ikeda-sensei, the Japanese language teacher who helped to make UAB and Ibaraki University sister universities: "UAB students' visit to Ibaraki University." Thanks, Ikeda-sensei. It's our privilege to be associated with you.

More Ibaraki University pics

Here are some more pictures from our visit to Ibaraki University on May 31. Taken by Daiki, who is an assistant to English instructor Joyce Cunningham.

 Lunch with Joyce's students.

Long-time friends meeting for the first time.

 Fujiwara-sensei's Japanese language class.

 Mako talking to students from Japan, the U.S. and Indonesia in Kanamoto-sensei's ESL class turned bilingual for our benefit.

 Kanamoto-sensei comparing daily schedules of Japan, the U.S. and Indonesia.

After class with Kanamoto-sensei. Many thanks, Kanamoto-sensei, Fujiwara-sensei, and Joyce-sensei, for accommodating all of us in your classes. And thanks to Daiki-kun for taking the pictures.