Wednesday, June 11, 2008

If you don't wanna go to Fist City...

My Japanese class is going really well. Every Tuesday after class, there is another optional hour and a half of extra class where a bunch of volunteer teachers come in and split us into groups. I have had the same lady to myself every week and it's been great. We try to talk to each other using things I've learned, and then she teaches me new useful sentences. As we talk, I ask her how to say a lot of things in Japanese. Then she makes me write everything we say down in my notebook in hiragana or katakana. Only foreign words can be written in katakana. You must never write Japanese words in katakana, or foreign words in Hiragana. Which is annoying because you have to know two different characters for every phonetic sound.

Anyways, I really enjoy these optional lessons because I get to learn whatever I want and have real conversations with someone. I learned that my teacher used to live in the States for quite a few years. She's lived in New Jersey and California, I think. As a result, she knows some English, which helps when I don't understand what she's asking me, or I want to know how to say something. The really exciting part, though, was when we realized that her son and I both graduated from Washington University in St. Louis! He graduated almost 10 years ago, but he got a degree from the architecture school. He lives in Japan now. I thought that was an amazing coincidence.

This past Tuesday we had another lady sit in on our lesson. I think she is studying to be a volunteer Japanese teacher too, so she wanted to watch. We ended up including her in the conversations and she was also really nice. They taught me a lot of useful art-related vocabulary, such as art museum, painter, painting, modern art, sculptor, painting. It was fun. Afterwards, the lady who sat in on our lesson ending up walking with me back to the station. She was extremely cute and old, and literally half my height. I had to bend down to speak to her. She doesn't know much English, so I was trying to talk to her in Japanese. As we were walking, she asked me to have coffee with her. We stopped at a coffee shop where she treated me to an iced latte and we shared halves of a sandwich. While it was difficult and I'm sure I said a lot of strange things, we managed to have a conversation. We talked about our past travel experiences, where I wanted to go in Japan, what movies we liked. I told her about my plans to go to Kyoto with my mother and grandmother in August. It was quite fun to really try to have a conversation with someone who didn't know English. She seemed to really enjoy meeting me, too. I don't know what it is about the older Japanese ladies, but they really seem to like me. It's really cute. They're really cute.

In other news, I have started a band with three guys from my guest house. Our band's name at the moment is Blazing Cranes, but I'm not sure if that's the final name or not. All of us are foreigners. Leo is Asian-Australian and he plays the drums. He's pretty quiet, so I don't know him that well. The other two are both English teachers at the same company as me. Andy is from Glasgow, Scotland and Daniel is Canadian. The two of them switch roles back and forth playing guitar and bass.

Our first practice was last Sunday. We found a nice studio in Tachikawa, a few stops away from our guest house on the Chuo line. For about 25 bucks each, the four of us can rent the studio and all the instruments and equipment we need for four hours. Not bad, I think. We rented a full drum set, a guitar, a bass, amps, microphones, a fancy electronic keyboard, and maybe some other equipment too, but I don't know anything about that stuff.

Andy and Daniel had already written a few songs since we had first decided to form a band, so we practiced those. Since they had been practicing the songs in their rooms with their own voices, they decided to sing their own songs themselves. I played the keyboard and did backup vocals. However, as my strengths lie mostly in singing, I hope and expect to be given more of a singing role. I played piano as a kid and took lessons for a long time, but I honestly don't remember much. I never got very good cause I never wanted to practice. But at least I can remember what key is which note. I also have pretty good pitch so it's easy for me to match notes.

Anyway, I really enjoyed practicing with these guys. We seem to have similar tastes in music and all have quite a broad range of tastes, too. So far our music seems to have a bit of a folk, punk, post-punk, slightly country feel. Some of it reminds me of the Velvet Underground, Beat Happening, and... not sure what else. But I like it. I really enjoyed being able to improvise my own parts. They would play me the guitar parts of a song, and tell me what notes/chords they used and then I would come up with a keyboard part. It was all very simple, mostly ambient chords and such, but it sounded pretty nice. Gave the songs a richer, fuller sound. I also enjoyed coming up with some backup vocals for a few songs.

Since I don't really know how to write music, the guys suggested I come up with a cover song or two that I'd be interesting in singing. Last night we decided to do a cover of Loretta Lynn's "Fist City," at my own suggestion. I played the song for them and they really liked it. They tried playing it on guitar while I sang and it worked quite well so we are all very excited about it. I am pretty excited to be singing again, too. So we'll work on that this upcoming Sunday. The plan is to practice every Sunday night.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are a way cool daughter. I am not surprised that the little old ladies in Japan like you!

Volare said...

Awww...I hope to be able to visit and get a tour complete with old ladies and a live concert.