Japandamonium!!!

Good week so far. I really like being part of this office, I’ll be sad to leave it come September. But there’s exciting things happening outside the office soon – tomorrow I go to Matsuyama for the new-JETs orientation and I’ll get to see the other Ehime JETs I met in Tokyo and hopefully learn some job skills (oh please god). That’s for tomorrow and Friday, and Friday night we’ll have an enkai (2 hour all you can eat/drink party … it’ll be like 3,000 yen but I think it’ll be worth it for the enormous meal and imbibing and people time … and I’m supposed to get payed today so it should be okay to blow a bit of it too quickly, but they haven’t said anything really about it in a while; still, they’re kind of amazing at keeping stuff in mind without actively prioritizing it, like a super-attuned compartmentalization sense: on one of my first days here I asked Katcho san if I could take October 13^th off (Yom Kippor) and he kind of said “maybe,” and then almost two weeks later came over to my desk and told me it was okay) so there’s some fun to be had in Matsuyama. I get to take my first train trip and first foray into Matsuyama and see friends and learn things about my job, so I’m pretty excited about it. Ooo, also, there’s the big Matsuyama summer festival over Thursday, Friday and Saturday, so I’ll be able to be there for some of that.

BUT! I have to be back on Saturday FOR the BON FESTA!!! That’s the annual Festival of the Dead, and in Tamagawa it’s a big deal. We’ve been doing all kinds of preperations for it, and I’ve gotten to do a lot of stuff to help. Last Tuesday morning was the most utterly dull clock-ticking morning I’ve ever had, just sitting at my desk trying desperately not to look like I was sleeping with open eyes. On the same page in my japanese textbook for an hour and the whole office was dead, no conversation and no activity, and then suddenly there’s a whipcrack burst of life and everyone in the office is crowded around my chair in a kind of excited and hopeful, unintelligable frenzy: they want me to do something. Is it okay? Will I do this thing? With Taeko san? Will I go with Taeko san to do something? Is it okay?

Yes, of course I will do whatever the thing is you want me to do. I’d be happy to. With Taeko san? Wonderful. Iiii desu yo!

I get in the car with Taeko san and we drive to pick up another teacher named Keiko from one of the elementary schools, Kambei, and then we drive to a different school, Kua. The car is a Fa-mi-rii-caa, a Family Car, what the japanese call anything bigger than a coup, and it’s cool as hell. It looks like a slim sliver box, tall and narrow like a half a Zippo lighter stood on its side, but inside it’s like being in one of the shuttles from Star Trek. It doesn’t look or feel big or bulky in any way but there’s tons of room inside; several rows of collapsable cushy bench seats, curtains to screen the windows and separate the rows of seats from the cockpit, lots of visibility and more leg and head room than I had on the flight to Tokyo. And Taeko san and I have a nice time talking in the front while we wait for Keiko san; she’s apparently got a son my age in Osaka and a 19 year old daughter at school somewhere else, and she was reverantly surprised like everyone at my parents’ age (I think there’s a general idea here to have some kids pumped out by the time you’re 30 or so), and she thought Ellia was a pretty name for my sister who lives in the unheard of and mysterious Brooklyn, somehow like New York but somehow different. Taeko san speaks no English really; I guess she understands a lot of the vocabulary I use to describe things or she follows my gestures really well but she’s a joy to talk to, and has totally taken to mothering me while I’m in the office; largely a result of this trip.

Keiko san gets to the car and I get out to let her have the front seat – it’s very weird feeling not only like the foreigner, but still so much like a kid in a world of adults, and all my etiquette instincts kick in and overlap in overdrive sometimes. But I get out and Keiko san blushed as bright as she has in all her 60 years I’m sure, and she and Taeko san start talking about how nice of a boy I am and tittering to each other in the front while I lounge in the back of the shuttlecraft. When we get to the school we have a little while to wait before whatever it is we’re there for starts, and we sit in green folding chairs in the shade next to the gym. Taeko san and Keiko san commisserate for a while and then turn to me with a question, Taeko san leaning forward to ask in English while Keiko waits with her hand hiding her mouth: “Joshua san.

“Is it true that in America, it is ‘ladies first’?”

Keiko seems not to notice the fact that I speak no real Japanese and she owns not a single word of English; with Taeko san as a go-between she’s making me converse as rapidly and deeply as if we could understand each other perfectly. And thank god for Taeko san, who not only helped translate Keiko’s questions, but somehow helped me find the best answers for most of them to keep the conversation running until it was go time.

Go time: when the kids who were in the gym emptied out and a new crowd of them showed up from nowhere, a whole mess of kids of all ages, each in a drab little uniform and a bright sunburst-yellow hat, fishing hats for the girls and ones with little blue brims for the boys, and they all made a messy straight line in front of me so that each one could introduce him and herself before running into the gym to play. They were the cutest things I have ever seen. I particularly liked the group of shy boys who started to pool at the front of the line like a small tributary broken off from the main current, each pushing the others to go first and all squealing when I waved at them, and also the tiniest little girl I have ever seen. They would all walk up and would giggle or squeal or sometimes reply when I say “hi!” and when I asked, “what is your name?” they would all say something like:

"Myyyyy naaaamu iiiiis ...…… mastubayarashimanashigirichoshakuchan!"

And I’d say, “what? Could you tell me again?”

And they’d say,

"Myyyyyyyyyyyy naaaaaaaaaaamu iiiiiiiiiiiiiiis ...……”

And then we’re all in the gym together and I have to make my self-introduction to the group, and Taeko and Keiko say that we’re there to teach them something together: we are their three sensei for today. And we get the kids in a big circle around us and Taeko san tells me to stand behind Keiko. Who begins to dance. Not terribly slowly, but with a fair amount of repition and instruction in Japanese; and then we’re up and dancing! We came, apparently, to teach the kids the special tradtional local dance for the Bon Festa, where they will compete against other dance groups in a gigantic dance off I can’t even begin to visualize. Especially since after we taught them the basic pattern in a circle, we got them into lines behind each of us and paraded around the gym to music from a PA, around and around and around again. I was brought along to help teach a huge group of Japanese kids the tradtional dance of their local annual festival: and the next day we did it again. At a different school! And the next day too! Me and Taeko san and Keiko all together, and pretty soon I was a pro. The story that deserves more fleshing out is how I got to be part of a team myself, but I am, I’m part of the Tamagawa town office team and that’s why I have to be back from Matsuyama on Saturday, so that I can dance the dance of the dead in Tamagawa town for my first Bon festival in Japan, and a milestone in this new life.