Everything You Wanted to Know About Japan, But Forgot to Ask

(Feb. 7) In case anyone woke up this morning wondering whether a can of coffee bought from a machine can come out hot, the answer is, “Yes.” Whether Japanese bikes have the same kind of built-in sliding half-circle lock as the bikes in Salzburg? Yet again, “Yes.” Is there a Chinatown in Tokyo? You guessed it. Do some Japanese cafes serve pesto and play Charlie Parker recordings? They do. Do some mothers ride bikes with a baby strapped to their chest and another kid behind them? I have photos to prove it.

And I know you’ve all been curious about the plastic bag situation in Tokyo. Are there too many? Yes, there are. Did one restaurant offer whale meat? Sadly, that’s a yes.

Is it really true that the school year ends in February and begins again in March just a couple of weeks later? And that teachers only get four or five days off between the two years? Apparently, that is a yes. And come on, is there really a festival to bless sewing needles by sticking them in tofu? There is.

On another note, if you ever need to know whether a Niji pen can go through a laundry wash cycle and still write, I can report, “Yes.” (But not before some ink gets released into the cap that will then stain your hands.) And while we’re reaching beyond Japan here, might as well throw in this forgotten tidbit from Korea. Apparently, everyone’s age advances one year at the Korean New Year (Jan. /Feb.) instead of on their birthday. Thus, a baby born in December will turn two a couple of months later!

And speaking of birthdays. Back around 32 years and 40 pounds lighter ago, I finished a year-long trip around the world in Tokyo on my birthday, turning 28 on July 28^th. I have a photo of me blowing out a candle stuck in a donut in a Tokyo park (wonder which one?). That same day, we flew home to San Francisco and crossed the International Dateline and I had my birthday twice. One of those little-big-moments that I’ll always remember.

So farewell to the all the subway lines and a large-hearted domo arigato go sai mas to Tokyo, my wonderful hosts and students and friends, the Ryokan owners, Japanese baths, udon noodles and the legacy of Zen Buddhism. And on to India, where it all began.

My Career Mulligan (Not!)

The Sawanoya Ryokan that has been my home for these last 10 days is committed to educating its foreign guests about Japanese life. Yesterday it offered a kimono-wearing shamisen-playing experience at a house a bus ride away. A host came to meet myself and another guest from Switzerland and we ended up conversing in Spanish walking to the bus—our Japanese host had lived in Colombia, the young Swiss spoke five languages and I got my stripes teaching workshops in Spain these past 20 years. Still, a bit odd to walk into the home where other tourists were being dressed in kimonos speaking Spanish!

After the kimono-dressing, our hosts gave a short demonstration on the shamisen, the Japanese three-string equivalent of the banjo. They then invited us to learn the song Sakura, a pretty hilarious music lesson without knowing anything of our musical background. Not surprisingly, I emerged as the Spanish-speaking San-Franciscan shamisen-Sakura superstar and even plucked out a little blues. In many places, there would be a punch-line—buy this kimono, our CD, join our mailing list—but this was simply a sincere delight these five women took in opening their home and sharing a bit of their culture.

With some time before my 2 o’clock class, I wandered around Ueno Station looking for lunch. Time to confess. A bit weary of trying to decipher Japanese menus and wonder if there were fish or pork in the pictured dish, I went to —gasp!—Starbucks and got a sandwich. I can report that Japanese Starbuck “talls” are significantly smaller and more interesting, when you order, the person sings it out, another down the line echoes and then all the workers sing it yet once more. Really quite lovely and just as I decided to record it, there was a lull in the ordering.

Off then to my friend, the subway, arrived 15 minutes before 2 o’clock happy to meet this group again, and the first person I see says, “Where were you? We’ve been waiting since 10 am!!!” I was stunned. I assumed the schedule was the same for all three days, but apparently not. Imagine my shame. Never in over thirty years of giving workshops and Orff courses had this happened. I told them that when I used to play casual golf with my brother-in-law, we agreed that each was allowed one “mulligan”— a flubbed shot that you could do over and wouldn’t count on your score. So here was my career mulligan. Never before and never again!

We quickly scrambled to see where we could add time, I walked around the circle with my hands out inviting people to hit me for punishment (all very timid, except one!) and off we went. I gave an extra hour to about half the group that could stay and we had a class with the Orff instruments. Half the instruments were the usual, but the other half where just the chromatics (ie, black notes on the piano). So we did an entire session based on bi-tonality—Stravinsky would have loved it. And a good example of what I’m always stressing in workshops. We’re trying to model what it’s like to encounter every situation with a flexible mind, meet novelty with the full range of our imagination, listen and respond to what’s happening in the moment with every skill we have prepared so diligently. That is to say, it’s good and in fact, necessary, to have a plan and prepare yourself accordingly and equally necessary to know how to adjust and respond when the inevitable surprises come. A class mixing Gb and C pentatonic scale was certainly new to me—and we managed to make some pretty interesting music.

The next day, I arrived at the appointed 10 am time, ending the day with the students applying new ideas and techniques they learned to Japanese games or folk songs and creating little performances. They results were impressive and a perfect summary of the three days. A closing circle with two songs, the usual moist eyes, and off to dinner with four students I had taught in Salzburg in 2003. Such a pleasure to get to connect with former students, especially with such musical names! Ayako, Ikuko, Noriko, Nobuko. Say it out loud and you’ll see what I mean.

My last subway ride back to Nezu, my first taste of light rain and packing back in my room, I found the printed schedule. Imagine my surprise—it DID have all three days listed as 2:00 to 8:00! Perhaps there was another more updated sheet somewhere, but that indeed was the one I had glanced at. So I still have a mulligan coming to me. And I hope I never need to use it.

The Little Bunnies College Preparatory Preschool

This just in! A National Association of Independent School conference for administrators  reported that since “private school consumers (parents) do not understand the term ‘independent’ school, NAIS is now encouraging all schools to describe themselves as “college preparatory schools.”

What a great idea! Consumers (ie, Parents) aren’t nearly anxious enough about whether the corporate institution (ie, School) and their Learning Technician Employees (ie, Teachers) are preparing their customers (ie, Children) for Corporation Preparatory School (ie, College), so I agree that the CEO’s (ie, Principals) should change all titles effective immediately. They should also begin building the portfolio resumes of their three-year old customers and document their sand-castle building, fingerpainting and cooperation in the nap room to beef up their curriculum vitae and begin the college application process. It’s never too early to induce stress, anxiety, fear of failure and other such tactics that insure that Laisha and Tyler will understand early on that there is no time in this life for curiosity, questioning, exploring, investigating, celebrating or enjoying the present moment when your future is at stake. No time to be a three-year old—get to work! So by the time you’re ten, you’ve completed your college visits and just might be on the road to getting into a college that can aim you toward Retirement Preparatory School (ie Work). Then if you’re lucky, you can get into the Afterlife Preparatory School (ie, Old Age Home) to get through the Pearly Gates and then, you can finally enjoy the moment at hand. Or if you’re Hindu or Buddhist, you go to Rebirth Preparatory School and step back on the wheel of always-preparing, but never-arriving, once again.

People, people! Have we gone mad? Has NAIS not seen the Race to Nowhere film? Have they considered that they can explain to parent that Independent Schools means independence from the mindless bureaucracy that has effectively strangled just about any possibility of effective teaching in public schools? Might "Independent" mean that private schools have the luxury to choose the kind of community they want to create to genuinely serve children’s needs? 

And don’t misunderstand me here. That luxury, one I have enjoyed for over three decades, is born from a privilege that is not to be taken lightly. All the more reason to use that responsibility to model the kind of place all schools could and should become, whether private, public, home-schooled or out on a bus traveling around the world. Using corporate language (those parent consumers) to describe a spiritual undertaking (and I defy you to find me an enterprise more spiritual than the raising of children) is bad enough, but jumping into the Race to Nowhere with both feet and advising all independent schools to follow is…well, why beat around the bush? …insane!

Meanwhile, I just finished my three-day course in Japan filled with so many moments of breathtaking beauty that I’m lucky I’m not in the aesthetic asthma ward. Then I showed slides of the SF School kids in the Spring Concert and asked the teachers to comment:

“They look so happy! They’re so concentrated and focused. They’re so alive and alert. They’re so connected with each other. They look so happy!” And that simply means that instead of burdening them with stress and worries about their future college preparation, we’ve simply let them be kids. And given them a few fabulous tools for expressing their joy yet one notch higher.

Behind on my entries here, but with an early morning flight to India tomorrow morning, I’ll hope for a catch-up when I can, complete with a grateful farewell to this remarkable place. 

No Kangaroos

Mentholated masks

Keep out germs— and the fragrance

Of the plum blossoms.

It really is Spring! Ducks on the pond, two lovers in a rowboat, bright sun and warm air at Ueno Pond. My winter clothes are beginning a four-week journey to Austria, courtesy of a post-office transaction that took the best miming skills and communication ingenuity the Postal Worker and I could muster. Fact is that there is less English spoken in Japan than most anyplace I’ve been recently—and I’m finding it mostly delightful! Back to the language of gesture, inflection, props and beyond. For example, I was worried my box would end up in Australia, so I shook my head no while miming kangaroos and then found a better solution when I spotted a little map and I pointed. And so it went, until all forms were properly (I hope!) filled out and I bid my winter clothes good-bye. At the end, my postal worker smiled and said, “I enjoy that!” “Me, too!” I smiled in return and bowed out the door and into the day.

After a refreshing walk through Ueno Park, I descend into the subways like the Master of the Underground I’ve become, gliding effortlessly down long escalators to the ticket machine, through the turnstile and on to the always-waiting train without missing a beat. I ascend and meet my good friend Wolfgang Stange exactly at the appointed time. Wolfgang is one of the most down-to-earth human and extraordinary people I know, working his incredible magic with his London theater company, Amici, whose members create mesmerizing work and just happen to be a mixture of Down’s syndrome, blind, deaf, wheelchair-bound and otherwise differently-abled. We first met at the Orff Institut Symposium and Summer Course in Salzburg in 1990, a most extraordinary two-and-half-week gathering that set the course of my life in the 21 years that followed. And meeting Wolfgang was one of the highlights of a time filled with a bounty of highlights.

Last night, he took me to Shinjuku, Tokyo’s downtown area that is a mix of New York’s Broadway and Las Vegas. I imagine it is completely unoriginal to call Japan the land of contradiction and contrast, but to spend the afternoon in the spacious tranquility of Nezu Shrine and the evening in the electric assault of Shinjuku is to know the two baffling faces of Japan that are both clearly present in the national character. In the space of three blocks, seven different young men approached us asking us if we wanted to go to a strip club. My replies ranged from, “I’m shocked!” to “Are you hiring?”

Today we went to Asakusa Temple and looking at the Festival Calendar, it seems like every month there is something to do that will bring you luck, merit and/or make your wishes come true. One such festival said that if you came to the temple and prayed on July 9 and 10^th, it would equal 46,000 regular visits on other days. Who makes this stuff up? 

I bid farewell to Wolfgang after a refreshing Thai lunch and met my host precisely on time at the appointed subway platform to begin my new course, this one with fifteen people—three that had come last weekend, one American and one Australian who came from an International School seven hours away and an assorted group of Japanese college students, preschool teachers and a few music teachers. Off I go again, with a new spontaneous beginning and looking forward to trying out the Tokyo Subway Stop composition I worked out walking from the post office. But we got involved in other things, including some of the most moving dancing I’ve witnessed recently to Adagietto by Bizet (little know piece, but exquisite) and Besame Mucho by Diana Krall. Too involved to explain here the process of arriving at the choreography, but it all begins with a dance from Denmark called Seven Jumps and ends at this unexpected—and in this case, beautiful—result. Wonderful communication amongst the people in the group, great connection to the music, including reaching their final shape precisely on the last note, and an overall sense of being in the body and moving with such grace and style. My final words to them for the day were, “You spoke so eloquently in your movement that any further words are unnecessary. Thank you and good night.” People who know me will know that something special must have happened to shut me up like that!

Riding the subway home, I remembered two more “Japanese seeds” planted in my childhood. One was a judo book my parents got me that fed my every-boy fantasy of being strong and powerful and got me as far as signing up for judo lessons, complete with the white robe outfit and probably learning my first bows to the teacher. I have a vague memory of going to four classes and then fighting some boy with really bad breath and deciding that was enough. I still remember one of the flips.

The other was listening to the record of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado that we had in my home and then eventually, going to see it in New York. In fact, it may have been the first such show I ever went to (the other two I remember are Fiddler on the Roof and Carmen). I remember the feeling of being swept up in a magical world and have always had a soft spot in my heart for that music, regardless of absurdly politically incorrect it may be. (There’s a telling scene in the movie Topsy Turvy when Japanese people are brought in to help the directors achieve more authenticity and the cultural divide yawns so wide, they end up being dismissed).

Two more full days in Japan—I think I’m going to miss it here. 

59 Roasted Soybeans

Young children jump                            Throw handfuls of beans

With open bags held up high                 To cast out all your devils.

Elders throw down fruit.                        Is that all it takes?

Today was Setsubon Festival, a kind of farewell to Winter and welcome to Spring. Seems early according to the weather, but actually it was somewhat Spring-like and plum blossoms are increasingly visible. I went to Nezu Shrine and by 2 pm, the crowds had gathered. This was the travel I loved and remembered from my epic year-long odyssey around the world in 1978-79. Besides studying music and documenting it wherever I went on my old Sony cassette player, I went to every festival within shoutin’ distance. The Festival was—and is—the gathering of all the cultural energies—the music, dance, drama, artwork, food, religious practices and more. Indian festivals were simply extraordinary—men waving flags atop elephants while drums, cymbals and horns charged the air, processionals with thousands chanting carrying portable shrines, all-night dance dramas and shadow puppet plays. Likewise the Balinese (also Hindu) festivals that we witnessed that same year. When my wife and I arrived in Kyoto at the end of that trip, we happened into the Gion Masturi Festival. It had the same type of colorful display of the Indian Festivals, but we couldn’t but help note that orderly procession on streets with police controlling the crowd—quite a contrast to the India!

If I am to be remembered for anything from my time at The San Francisco School, I hope it will be my contribution to, creation of and long-term commitment to the school ceremonies and celebrations, much inspired by that year of travel. The opening ceremony, a unique Halloween ritual, the St. George mummer’s play, the powerful Martin Luther King ceremony (see 2^nd entry in this blog), the Samba contest, the Cookie Jar contest, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Mud Pie song, closing ceremonies, graduation and more. These community gatherings bring together the core school values in a memorable pageantry of color, music and just plain fun.

So back to Setsubon. My blood was tingling with anticipation watching the children gather under the raised walkway while the flute player and drummers sat down. Finally, a roll from the drum and high-pitched whistle of the flute and out come two masked devils. They approach the walkway, where the elders in the community walk down carrying bags filled with oranges, peanuts and other goodies. The devils run away, the elders face the crowd and throw out the treats to the screams of delight from the children. Kind of like a mass Halloween trick-or-treat, everything given at once. The bags are emptied within a few minutes, the elders wave to the crowd and return to the temple.

It was fun, but I thought, “All of this anticipation for five minutes?” Quite a contrast to the all-night Hindu ceremonies. But then a new group of elders came out and the whole thing was repeated. And repeated and repeated. I finally went for a walk around the neighborhood and returning 45 minutes later, it was still going on!

What values were being enacted in a ritual way? I was moved by the metaphor of the elders throwing down their blessings to the children from above and the parents letting the kids be the closest. (I caught a bag of roasted nuts and though the kid in me wanted to hoard it, I gave it to a little girl next to me.) This all seems the proper order of things and one elderly man in particular was so happy to give his bounty away, shouting in delight with each toss to the crowd. I thought that if America were to enact the actual values we are living at the moment, the festival would look something like this:

Adolescents are on the platform showing off their perfect bodies. The children are down below screaming and copying their sexy moves. The parents are waiting in the car to take the kids to soccer practice when the festival ends. The elders are sequestered away from it all, watching bad TV.

The setsubon I had been told about was a bit different than I witnessed. I expected to see children throwing beans at the devil while chanting “Oni wa soto!  Fuku wa uchi!” Apparently, that had happened at my Ryokan with the owner’s son, but I missed it. But the last part of the ceremony is that you’re supposed to eat as many soybeans as your age. When I returned, the owner’s invited me to do just that and laughed at my laborious counting of the roasted soybeans. It was a tough job, but anything for a little extra luck. Happy Spring!

The Sound of Two Hands Clapping

What do I have to show after 38 years of Zen meditation? Certainly not the flash of enlightenment I was led to expect in my younger years. Indeed, the Zen koan (those pithy unsolvable riddles that the Zen student must solve) that I most relate to is the one that goes something like this: “You have a hot iron ball in your throat. You can neither swallow it nor spit it out. What do you do?” Well, that’s a good part of my life, a few unsolvable problems that I can’t ignore nor solve. And if I thought I was signing up for instant revelation and a constant state of bliss back in 1973 when I sat my first Zen sesshin, all I needed to do was read the First Noble Truth in the Buddhism 101 manual—“Life is suffering.” No way to get around that hot iron ball.

But meditation practice helps me grow large enough to hold it without getting burnt. It really is quite remarkable that a combination of posture, breath and a certain kind of attention can start to soften the prison walls of our small worried self—and occasionally dissolve them altogether, ushering us into that promised land of being one with all things. The enlightenment we young drug-induced hippies expected, some permanent sense of oneness, never quite came to us, but for those who took it seriously as a practice, a commitment to daily renewal has paid some dividends.

So on a glorious Spring day at Nezu Shrine, I can begin to feel the generosity of space and largeness of time that the ancient Japanese aesthetic cultivates. Amidst a tranquil morning silence, the clink of a coin and the clapping of two hands (to send one’s prayer to the Spirit World) takes on a significance lost in the rush and noise of modern life.

This is one of the by-products of meditation practice. Once we reduce the sensory input and settle down to some ground of being, each thing that than appears takes on a shine and wonder beyond the ordinary. The clack of a woodblock. The crunch of a rice cracker and explosion of taste on the tongue. The smell of early morning air, the caress of a small breeze, the feel of bowls cradled in the hand. My teacher might scold me for paying too much attention to mere sense impressions, but this is not a Buddhist lecture. I’m merely recording my experiences and having lived too busily for my own good lately, it’s a blessing to soak in the quiet of the temple and just listen, like that wise old owl in yesterday’s poem. Two tiny dogs chase a pigeon. The crows keep up their raucous chatter. The heels of the passing women’s shoes click on the stone. It is enough.

Clap, clap. 

Armpit Music

I have become the master of the Tokyo subway system. The Chiyoda line, the Nambuko Line, the Ginza Line, the JR Line. I glide through them all with ease and familiarity. No need for going to the gym—the constant up and down the stairs is enough aerobic workout to keep me healthy. Yesterday, boarded the Tokyo Tokyu-Toyuko train (say that five times fast) and got off at the Motomachi Station (say that five times fast) in  Yokohama. I was puzzling why the name Yokohama felt familiar and realized it as the answer to a frequent Crostic word-puzzle clue—“Japanese port” Indeed, it is the port where Commodore Perry landed in the mid-1800’s and kick-started Japan opening up to trade with the West. There’s a European cemetery there and several European-style houses on the hill where the St. More’s School is. 

There I taught two 2^nd grade classes of some 35 kids each.

Teachers often throw tomatoes at me when I confess at workshops that my average class size at my school is 12 to 15 kids, but though far from ideal, there is plenty you can do with 35 kids. We began with patting the beat to a nursery rhyme and then I invited them to make up their own way to express the beat, watch others and copy their idea at my signal. To demonstrate, I asked the kid next to me to show his idea and without a moment’s hesitation, he stuck his hand under his shirt and played some expressive armpit music. Of course, I had to copy. Kids. You gotta love ‘em.

After the two kids’ classes, the teachers were supposed to come, but even though this was announced a long time back and it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to taste a different way of teaching and at least return to the kids with some fabulous activities that will brighten everyone’s day, they decided that they shouldn’t give up their weekly elementary staff meeting. Adults. You gotta wonder what the hell happened to them.

How do we choose what we do each day? What we read, what we listen to, what we practice? I think we’re driven by an intuitive sense that this will be useful someday and that won’t. We prepare ourselves for how we will be needed. Guest-teaching three middle school classes at the Nishimachi School yesterday made me grateful for the choices I have made. Taught a Ghanaian xylophone piece to 6^th grade, complete with percussion parts and simple dances that they created, With 7^th, gave a summary of the history of the blues that ended with kids playing Sonnymoon for Two on the Orff instruments with a clearer understanding of how the chords worked and growing confidence in their first attempts at solos. Then 8^th and 9^th graders, who I had observed in an earlier music class sprawled on the floor plugged into their computers with headphones on doing some music program, now playing simple drones and ostinato patterns on the xylophones and improvising melodies in each of 7 modes—so happy, so involved in their rhythmic bodies, so connected to each other and so excited about the group sound. How they need this. ( A teacher told me about going on a retreat with her high school chorus to a place in the country where the kids camped out dormitory style. When she went to check in on them at night, the room was aglow with the light of cell phones—they were texting each other in the bunks five feet away. Sigh. )

After the three middle school classes, 25 teachers came to chant the rhythms of their names and make music with their starting sounds, to spell letters with their bodies, to play evocative music on the Orff instruments to the poem, “A wise old owl sat in an oak, the more he heard, the less he spoke, the less he spoke, the more he heard. Why can’t we be like that wise old bird?) The room buzzed with excitement as classroom teachers realized they were more musical than they ever thought they were and that there are thousands of ways to animate language arts and math programs so that children feel the beauty of words and numbers, the power of their own imagination, the fun of creating with others and the satisfaction of understanding things with bodies as well as brains, with the heart as well as the paper test.

Out to a dinner of Japanese pancakes (Okonomiyaki) cooked at your table and I remembered a recipe from the Tassajara bread book that I used to make. Also remembered the custom of pouring your neighbor’s beer and keeping an eye out for refills. A wonderful structure for exercising your awareness of your fellow human beings. So simple, so eloquent. These the kind of things that get me up in the morning, the simple practices that give muscle to our capacity for empathy. Like the beanbag game I play with kids. They walk around the room with beanbags balanced on their head and if it falls they have to freeze. The only way they can move with it again is if another child notices and stoops to pick it up and place it back on the frozen child’s head. But in so doing, there is a risk that they might drop their own beanbag. Try it sometime! Fascinating study and lots of fun.

Today is the festival of throwing beans at the devil. Just my cup of tea. So off to the local temple—but first, have to practice my armpit technique.