Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002
Subject: Kyoto report #1

Hi there folks,

I've been procrastinating about writing but I feel it's time...

I'm pretty much settled into Kyoto/English teaching/part-time musician life now, so I'm going to write very briefly about my impressions and experiences after 2 months here...

NOVA - NOVAcation, NOVAlue, Network Of Voluntary Alcoholics
I'm teaching 40 hours a week, 8x40 minute lessons a day with a 10 minute notes/prep time in between, which at first was quite stressful but is now just routine and from experienced teachers looks potentially boring. For now I'm having fun and trying to make the most of it for me and my students, who are a great bunch of people. There are high school kids, college students, part-time workers, office workers, bus drivers, housewives, salarymen, retired folks and everyone else who can't really be categorised. They speak English at all levels from complete beginners ("Hello, How are you? I'm fine, Nice to meet you.") to very advanced speakers, with whom we do skimming & scanning exercises, tricky turns of phrase and idioms, and have "focussed discussions" and so on. The acronyms above refer to :
: NOVAcation - I'll get 10 days paid holiday/year after 6 months service and no paid sick days;
: NOVAlue - it's quite expensive for the students and it's very much factory/routine education (but we do the best we can with what the company provides);
: Network Of Voluntary Alcoholics - after 5 days of being really cheerful and putting it out there you feel like a drink!

MUSIC - Hooray!
Yes my weekends have been pretty great. I've been playing lots of Indian classical music, although I'm missing the cross-cultural stuff we were getting up to in Brisbane; hopefully that will come with time. My first musical comrade here was Christophe Rossi, a French sitar player of 8 years experience who was also a Munna House, Varanasi, resident (long-time readers of this list will know that I stayed in the same place in Varanasi last year). We've done one concert together so far and I usually play with him every week, which is very refreshing. He has a very peaceful style. I've also met 2 other sitar players from Osaka - Tanaka Minehiko, who's been playing for 20 years and likes to play in every taal (rhythm) other than good old 16 beat teentaal, and Junichi Osako, who's also a Varanasi boy and plays quite fast and intensely for his 6 years' experience. Last week I also had the pleasure of playing with Carlos Guerre, a Spanish Kyoto resident Bansuri (bamboo flute) player of 20 years experience - wow what a musician! Really beautiful music! He was very complimentary to me which was quite an ego massage coming from such a talented and experienced musician.

I've also attended a couple of Indian classical music concerts in a local Buddhist temple - a really beautiful setting for this type of music, with its Zen garden and ornate altar. The most recent concert was amazing - Carlos Guerre along with a couple of Varanasi musicians on pakhawaj and sarangi. Really inspiring!

On the other hand I've also been checking out a bit of the local experimental music scene and one of the really big things here, it seems, is loops & effects. One guy I've seen a couple of times is Ryusei, a 6 string fretless bass player who builds up layers of sound into a diverse range of soundscapes and jazzy/funky grooves. I've also met an American electronic musician with whom I may produce some stuff - he's also been on a recording mission to India so we have some ideas in common.

KYOTO
All up Kyoto is a pretty nice place to live. It's surrounded by forested mountains so unlike nearby Osaka (1 hour away by train) you don't feel swallowed up in an urban nightmare. In my first week I took a walk in the mountains and it was really beautiful - I was surprised to find such a beautiful natural place so near to my home. BUT I've been too busy since then to repeat the experience.

What else - trains that run every 7 minutes and are always on time, hordes of office workers, cool college students and "freetas" (part-time workers with free time) wearing great clothes, school girls in short skirts and makeup that would never be allowed in Australia, lots of Japanese food and a real shortage of Thai and Vietnamese food... Things don't seem as expensive as I expected although that's because I'm earning enough to live easily - and in fact Japanese food like miso, umeboshi plums, seaweed, tofu, etc is all cheaper than in Australia. I'm still eating heaps of fruit for breakfast! The weather is getting very hot and humid, just like a Brisbane summer. The thing is when I got here in April the weather was just like Brisbane winter! So Brisbane's year of weather happens in 2 months here!

I've been studying Japanese hard and I'm quite proud of what I've achieved - I'm now exchanging emails in Hiragana with the help of a dictionary and having short conversations here and there. I reckon I'll be somewhat fluent by the time I leave next year, and I can get back into Hindi again with some good language learning/teaching experience to help me out when I get there. I'm hoping that within 10 years I'll be fully fluent in both languages. :-)

Enough for now,
Love to all,
Shen
Aum Mani Padme Hum