The only constant is change. We like to think of ourselves as somehow inevitable or crucial, pivotal, that the past was a time when we were missing, and the future will always have us in it. But that is an illusion. We are ragdolls made out of many ages and skins, changelings who have slept in wood nests and hissed in the uncouth guise of waddling amphibians. We’ve played such roles for infinitely longer ages than we have been men. Our identity is a dream. We are process, not reality, for what we call reality is an illusion of the daylight, the light of our own particular day. Loren Eiseley” The Unexpected Universe”

The spring flowers have come and mostly gone and I am here on a mid spring night, past my bedtime writing to all corners of the globe. Wisteria (藤) begins its spectacular bloom and the winds of spring begin to kick up the dust from farmers’ fields. I believe a proper place to start would be my birthday, on which I turned 27 years old. That particular day was quite unremarkable as it was the first day of classes and happened to fall on a Monday. That night, Chika made me a very nice dinner and gave me wonderfully thoughtful little presents and I assumed the celebrations were all over. But alas, that weekend I was urged by Chika to leave Saturday open as she most definitively wanted to have a date with me on that day. I had no other real plans for the night so I did not fully understand her assertiveness but I nevertheless arrived at the scheduled meeting spot that night at 7PM. We walked into my favorite restaurant here, which I have written about many times before, Sama Sama, and lo and behold all of my best friends were sandwiched into the corner and provided the prompt and proper “surprise” to kick off the night. I truthfully had no idea something like this was in the works and it was a wonderful night. As always, Hiroshi provided fantastic food with lots of new additions specially made for my birthday dinner, complete with a bottle of champagne and an entire plate of my favorite deserts from the restaurant. One unexpected gift was from a friend and fellow ALT from New Zealand. I was handed a paper bag and was instructed to first look at two pictures which were towards the top of the package. The pictures were somewhat hard to decipher at first but quickly my brain registered snake head, then coiled snake body and finally a mason jar. To my astonishment, the bag contained a small bottle of homemade snake moonshine. A poisonous deadly viper is apparently killed and then left to steep in alcohol for several years; in this case 25 years. Upon drinking this alcohol, your boy bits apparently get a little more lively than normal. I will not discuss any experiments conducted with the secret sauce but I will say it tasted and continues to smell exactly like you would expect 25 year old snake juice to taste and smell. It was undoubtedly the most unexpected gift of my life. I am genuinely grateful for all of my friends for coming out that night and for my marvelous girlfriend for arranging the whole thing.

That same weekend, in a city near here called Narita, Chika and I were able to attend the city’s taiko drum festival. Taiko is a Japanese drum which is normally played in a big group with other drums ranging in size from a little handheld drum to giant 6 feet tall drums. We arrived at the festival just as a couple of local groups were starting up. The one we were particularly attracted to was a group that seemed to be a community club with members from junior high school age to senior citizens. It is incredible what they do with these drums, especially how complex of rhythms they are able to maintain without any sheet music in front of them, completely from memory. I especially liked this group because they all looked like they were having the time of their lives and would shout out in joy big loud animal cries while doing solos. It is an amazing and very rare thing to see someone that happy now a days and I think that that energy is quite infectious. Next was a taiko parade which lasted about an hour. For some reason, the two of us were a magnet for all of these groups to stop and do a special dance and pose just for us. Every group was costumed in intense and beautiful colors and with the driving music one could not help but be moved and inspired. One woman even had a sound asleep baby strapped to her back while she danced and banged away at her drum. The parade ended with a Brazilian samba band and finally with a Jamaican steel drum group which everyone couldn’t help but follow and dance behind all the way until the end of the parade. It definitely ranks among the best parades I ever seen.

From there school began and I am so happy to have started this new year. I work with four new teachers and each have their elements I really enjoy. I especially enjoy my Wednesday class because I get to lead the entire class to third year students who really understand English well and I am instructed to try and challenge them with their language skills. It is taught lecture style so I get to play the college professor and it is such a change from my normal puppet, repeat after me job description. Last week I talked about differences between Japanese and American schools and brought in a bunch of pictures of me from prom and other high school events. The students loved seeing me with my long silly hair. My other classes I have to do a lot of repeat after me activities but the teachers seem willing to allow me to do more fun games and activities with the class. We will see how the year progresses. The only thing I am not looking forward to is that this year all of my classes are doing a conversation journal where the students write a page about their lives or their weeks and then I read and respond to them. This was a lot of work last year with 40 to do, and this year I am doing 160 of them every week, so I think my carefree days of spending my school day studying Japanese are over for the near future.

Besides that, lots of small events that don’t need a full paragraph of text have also happened. I made bagels by myself for the first time which was surprisingly easy and a great skill to know because bagels for the most part don’t exist in Japan. I did my second 2 hour speech at an English club for older people and I talked about sewing and mate. It was really fun to revisit all the stuff that I have sewed in my short career as amateur sewer and to tell the story of how I went from sewing a pillowcase for my first girlfriend, to flaring old rock star jeans, to learning to quilt, to lugging a sewing machine to Denver to sew recycled coffee bean bags, to learning how to sew bike bags recently. The never ending sewing journey. Also one of the women at the talk, who looked like the sweetest possible old Japanese grandmother, asked me if the effect of drinking mate was similar to that of marijuana. She seemed disappointed when I told her no.

And lastly tonight I attended a meeting at a café because I will be playing my guitar at an event soon and this was the planning meeting for it. I was the only non-Japanese person and it was so flattering because they conducted the entire meeting in Japanese and did not switch to English every time a question was directed at me. This does not mean to say I understood every word at the meeting and most of it was pretty simple first time conversation things but it felt really great to be able to follow everything that was going on. This can be contrasted with this past weekend when I led children’s games for the grand opening of the building where I take my free Japanese lessons. I wanted to teach the kids this song I had learned in Puerto Rico which is a call and response song called “la familia zapo” or the family of frogs. I taught them in my very broken Japanese and when it came the part where we all make the funny action, I went for it big and the response was a resounding silence and blank stare from their end. Luckily Chika was there to help encourage them along and fill in the gaps of my poor explanation.

I hope that spring is arriving in full force to you all in the Northern Hemisphere and that fall is intense and vibrant to you all in the Southern.

Love and peace and patchouli,

james