A World Full of Music

I found out from Hiruta-sensei yesterday that there will be two special classes for exchange students this semester: Japanese Language with Kitamei-sensei and Japanese Comprehension with Abe-sensei. These are two classes I was taking last semsester. The former is going to be at the same time slot in the week, Fridays at 1 PM. The latter will be decided when we all know what classes we are taking.

Right now, the classes I know I am taking are those two, Japanese History, Harmonics, Choir, and Voice Lessons. :D I got approval for all three music classes, which makes me very happy (and prompted the blog post's title). That's a total of six, so I need one more; I think I am gonna spring for Kendo.

Yesterday at sadoubu we had three new members. One already seems to know quite a bit about sadou; one knows absolutely nothing; and the third is a girl whose mother also came to this school and was in sadoubu in her day. The one who knows absolutely nothing is a guy (and a guy who's face reminds me very much of Paul's -- like how Paul might look if he were Japanese) who recently moved into the same boarding house as Tolia. Looks like Tolia told him about sadoubu. It also looks like Tolia will be able to come to sadoubu more regularly, but... I dunno.

Anyway, Ikushima-sensei spent about 20 minutes instructing us on the traditional ways to move around (sit, stand, walk, open and close doors) in a tatami room (which was nice, because I've been bumbling through that stuff with very little instruction so far). Tatami, in case I've not mentioned this before, are the mats in tradtional Japanese-style rooms. Most Japanese rooms don't even have carpet, much less tatami. That, combined with the fact that young Japanese folk no longer live near their grandparents, has resulted in most young Japanese folk not knowing this stuff, either.

Ikushima-sensei actually talked at length to the assembled club members about that. This was at the end, so a few people who had had to leave early were already gone, but she talked about how the traditional Japanese stuff -- sadou, kadou (aka ikebana aka traditional flower arranging), tatami rooms, kimono wearing -- is being learned by fewer and fewer Japanese youngsters these days. There's no going back to the old ways, she said; all that can be done is to teach it to those who will learn to try to keep it alive. She also talked about how even though most Japanese people don't know this stuff anymore, this is still how the outside world views Japan. And it's true. It seems sometimes like foreigners know more about traditional Japan than Japan as a whole does.

(I'll tell you what, though, some of the misconceptions I had before coming here... I dunno what I was smoking. Some of them were just retarded. Some of them were so retarded that I can't even remember what they were. Anyway.)

So yeah. I have voice lessons in the morning and a long walk in the dreary weather today has made my voice scratchy. Oops. But I have more fruit now. Oranges that are good enough for candying and bananas that are still a bit green. I bought some cheap honey, and it's so cheap that I now need to find something to cook it intp because it's so cheap it doesn't taste good.

Anyway, off to homework. Gotta get that done before tomorrow so I can get a photoshop done tomorrow so I can play FFXI the day after that -- new expansion that adds Blue Mage and Pirate (they call it Corsair, but I know better!) to the mix, as well as a Puppetmaster job and new areas and new PvP combat and new Player vs. Beastmen combat and just a whole SLEW of really awesome-looking stuff. I think everyone is most looking forward to the Blue Mage job, though. Bad Breath? 1000 Needles? Oh, hell yeah. Hell-bloody-yeah.