Out for Battle

It was1:38pm on the Sunday of a holiday weekend and I was writing a paper for a class on modern Japanese politics. The beat of a drum and the sound of voices broke what little concentration I had managed.

It was a cool afternoon, another cloudy day in the late Japanese summer, and beyond a bordering building, the source of the commotion was revealed: a local festival. Like the Kichijoji omatsuri I had seen a week ago or so, there was a crowd, albeit much smaller, encircling a traditional drum and an omikoshi, portable shrine.

It should be noted that near my parents’ home in New Jersey it is odd to see roving festivals. Even my apartment in North Philadelphia has yet to yield a spotting of Americans dressed in Revolutionary War clothing swaggering passed.

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Ingoshira Park

Not too long ago, I walked into the Ingoshira Park, a quiet walk-in closet away from the buzzing room of Kichijoji in Tokyo, with a Japanese friend.

There, under the ceiling of fawning trees, hid more street performers than I have ever seen in any American city. On the warm Sunday I was there, I didn’t go more than fifty feet before I saw another musician or painter or magician. One tune floated in the air before being consumed by the next song, from the twang of a traditional Biwa to covers of Beatles songs.

We sat on a bench looking out onto the small pond, heavily trafficked in the sun with rowboats and giant, paddling swans, analogous to their famed cousins that live in the Boston Public Garden.

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Professors

Professors are funny things. They are directing one of the most important tasks in our land, educating the leaders of our future. They give the type of intensified and specified bases of knowledge that have been pursued the world over by the most powerful for millennia. For $10,000 U.S. a semester you can have that type of access at a major American research institution.

Part of that education is learning from a professor or two. The way they’ll smile after saying something they find particularly eloquent. Or how they chuckle when they’ve bested a classroom with a powerful question; meanwhile their students are debating whether they should stab themselves with a pen or not.

It has become a rule of mine. I don’t trust or admire professors. David Horowitz was derided for his academic purging, but what university student can really say they haven’t seen any indoctrination by over-zealous scholars. Opinion fills the gap of fact. It is worrying that more haven’t realized it.

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The Grand Sumo Tournament

Sumo and sushi, that’s what Tokyo does, right? Alright, well maybe not, but they are perhaps the two most readily invoked images of Japan and, after having already gotten some Japanese sushi, yesterday I finally got a glimpse of the former.

It required 360 yen ($3 U.S.), three trains and forty minutes of travel, but I made it to Ryogoku, just northeast of my South Tokyo apartment. Just as I walked out of the station, beside me was a beautiful stone sumo wrestling statue. I wasn’t bashful enough to stop and click a few photos, only for my pictures to be blocked by the busy crowd, including the occasional kimono-clad sumo star.

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Yasuda and Jikoin

Ryogoku is, by many standards, like so many other countless towns in Tokyo. It has tall buildings and is crowded, with its own claims of interest (i.e. the Kokugikan arena and Fukagawa Edo Museum).

The East Tokyo town has another quality that likens it to, not only Tokyo, but towns throughout this main Japanese island of Honshu (I need a line over the ‘u’, thanks): beautiful gardens and Buddhist Temples.

These are calmer, but just as recognized with Japanese culture as anything, so they remain must-dos for any extended stay in the country. It is thus that I followed a street map and came upon the former Yasuda Garden and the nearby Jikoin Temple.

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Languages

Learning a second language is clearly one of the hardest, most admirable, and most rewarding learning experiences I have found. This, I say, knowing no more than a few scattered phrases in a few scattered languages. I say this as I say not learning a musical instrument has been one of my great regrets: without knowing, without really trying.

I can gurgle some Japanese, stumble over even less Twi, trickle clichés in Spanish, and barb with buzz phrases in German, leaving French the only language that I can even fake conversational ability. The phrase, “I dabble,” comes to mind. I haven’t done well, but I have done.

The world around the United States has so many amazing opportunities for people to learn language. Americans clamor about it: how the U.S. is monolingual, leading a multilingual world. The stars and stripes are leading a parade with snickers in languages we can’t understand following us the entire way.

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Pledges

Before you travel, study abroad or not, you have to have goals. No one is questioning that. But, it doesn’t hurt to readjust, reaffirm, and re-list those goals once you’ve settled in. You’ll learn more and doubt less. So, here are a few new pledges for my time here in Tokyo.

1.I will grow my hair. This may be less a pledge and more a premonition. While I do like the idea of walking into a Tokyo barber shop and getting a trim, in my favorite game of trying something new, I am going to abandon my military-shave for the long hair that is fashionable in Japan. (I may only have half a year, but we’ll see what I can do when I will grow my hair.)

2. I will sing karaoke with Japanese girls. Karaoke and sushi are pretty much the meat of American perspectives of Japanese culture. So who could disagree that I should get pretty Japanese girls to sing the American country music that I love. I am thinking there could be some fantastic footage if I will sing karaoke with Japanese girls.

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The News

The news is different here. It is a funny bit of social science to be reminded that there is no harder goal than objective news. It is harder still to find comprehensive international news. There are nearly 200 (technically) independent states in this world, all with their own events, crises and triumphs. Your local newspaper, increasingly stuffed with revenue-pumping advertisements, can’t quite fit that story on civil war in Cote d’Ivorie.

Studying abroad is as much about seeing the world differently, including its political, social and religious strata, as it as about trying different foods and wasting a different kind of money. Different news, with its different worldview, may be of a paramount importance.

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Kichijoji Omatsuri

(SEE VIDEO FROM THE KICHIJOJI OMATSURI IN EPISODE FIVE)

If you ever travel anywhere, from a neighboring county to a faraway country, will you find yourself a native? Put down your AAA Travel Guide and ask a local where to go, where to eat, what to do.

Thank you, Kyle Cleveland, Professor of Sociology at Temple University-Japan, for being just that for me. An American who woke up and found himself a longtime resident of Tokyo and avid researcher into Japanese culture, he has been instrumental in guiding my travel, experiences and decisions here in Japan.

It was he who directed me to Kichijoji Sunday morning. One of Tokyo’s most desirable suburbs, Sunday was the conclusion of the district’s annual Fall omatsuri, festival. There, one of Cleveland’s former bilingual students greeted me at the train station, poised to be my very patient tour guide for the day.

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Yokohama

(SEE VIDEO FROM MY TRIP TO YOKOHAMA IN EPISODE FIVE)

Excuse me Yokohama Tourism Board. I was less than enthused with my time in Yokohama.

As bad travel tends to go, I followed some bad advice and made some poor decisions. My first stop was in Shin-Yokohama, home to two sights, the 70,000 seat Nissan Stadium and my destination, the Ramen Noodle Museum. Well, if you dream of the thought that someday you might walk through those turnstiles into 10,000 square feet of noodle soup paradise, I hate to disappoint you.

It sucked.

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