The two days before, however, there were some interesting tidbits worth mentioning. On Saturday I had nothing to do, and as the weather was nice I decided to go to Akashi park. I have done a blog entry on Akashi before, and it has become a favorite spot. The large and lush greenery of the park stretches around a lake and up to a raised vantage point atop a castle wall, offering a vantage point of the Akashi-Kaikyou Bridge and the Akashi cityscape. After going to the park I headed back into the city area toward the major department store "Aspia", and on my way I spotted a coffee shop with an indiscreet sign titled "Terakoya". In the doorway of the shop was an old man with maroon-tinted sunglasses sending off a customer. My friend from the Folk Song Club (I think I called him "Mr. K" once in this blog? His name is Katsura) who introduced me to several hidden spots around Kobe had once told me about a cafe in Akashi with a master who smokes from a wooden pipe and is a real character, so I thought this had to be the place. I went up to the door where the master was still standing and he told me to come in, asked me where I was from, and told me all about how he's a hippy and his son had studied at the University of Illinois and in Los Angeles, and how he'd been to Seattle when I told him where I was from in the United States. We didn't speak too much after that, and he didn't smoke from his wooden pipe. I wasn't there to stay too long, so the experience wasn't too fleshed out. A woman who seemed to work there or at least be a regular customer came and asked me to listen to an instrumental she had produced, and if it would be well-received in European countries (she thought I was from Europe at first, and was shocked when she found out I was American, as if that was reason not to show me the music she had created; I insisted on listening either way). I listened to her music from her cellphone, and it was a pretty standard piano progression, but what made it different was the harmonies she produced vocally, without lyrics, to make it seem somewhat avant-garde. Although the quality of the recording made some of the higher ranges of her voice sound grating, it was an interesting listen, something up Katsura's alley, and I told her that anywhere, Europe or the US, it would probably appeal to people with an interest in music. She seemed satisfied with this and didn't say anything else about it before she left the room. I got up to pay for the coffee I drank and a younger girl who had been sleeping on a couch, apparently working there, took my money before the master of the place called out that she's interested in English. After paying I sat and talked with the girl, who turned out to be the same age as me, about her interest in English (she had failed once and trying again to get into the Kobe University for Foreign Languages, which is the college near my campus that I talked about in the blog entry on gakuensai) and foreign music (mainly 60s and 70s Brit-Rock). I let her listen to my album a bit before I headed out. I went to "Aspia" to use the restroom and as I came back out there was a stage set up in between the two buildings of the department store, promoting the debut of some new Japanese pop-guitarist. Without any interest, I decided to stay a bit and watch. The young man fit the mold of every other Japanese pop-folk singer, sporting shoulder length hair under a full-rimmed hat (I think it had some kind of feather decoration on it) and a plaid-button-down shirt (might've been wearing a blazer over it too, but the point is, his look matched the trend down to the pointy-toe shoes on his feet). The promoter putting on the event announced the details of the singer and his performance (no pictures) to the moderately-sized crowd before the singer took the stage and applauded himself as he asked the crowd to applaud even more. He immediately went into a Christmas-themed number (to remind people to buy gifts, perhaps even his debut album, hint hint!) and into a standard ballad after that. The chord progressions and melodies echoed every other song in modern Japanese guitar pop, the kind of music played by street buskers in Sannomiya that likely never catch a break, except for the ones with the right look, which the guy singing before me apparently had. I walked away before the second song closed and compared the musical tastes of the people in the Terakoya Cafe, particularly the woman who showed me her piano piece, with the cookie-cutter pop music in front of the Aspia department store. The latter is poison to people like my friend Katsura, and merely a matter of going through the motions for the people outside Aspia who clapped along to the music. In Japan, just as anywhere else, pop music fills its necessary space in most peoples' lives, regardless of its quality, while people who think about music differently (Katsura, the people in the cafe) may look at alternatives, whether it be from Japan or abroad.
To continue the theme of music on Saturday, I went to the Galop bar later in the evening to see a live performance by a middle-aged Japanese songwriter that I'd met through patrons of Galop before. I originally learned of the event through a guitarist, also playing with the songwriter, a 46-year old father and grandfather with a vast knowledge of rock music who comes to Galop on a regular basis. The night opened up with an acoustic set by the headlining songwriter, who played a Christmas song (strangely coincidental with set opener of the pop singer in Akashi), a cover by a foreign group I forget the name of, with lyrics describing the birth of Christ though I'm pretty sure none of the players of the night were religious. He played some other foreign and Japanese covers, singing remarkably well, before letting the other aforementioned guitarist cover some songs in the same vein, such as The Beatles' "In My Life". The main set of the night was made up of the two guitarists, a bassist, and a percussionist. Along with original songs there were other covers, with two more Beatles' songs ("This Boy" and "I Saw Her Standing There") and some other Japanese songs interspersed throughout the set. The vocal harmonies of the players were completely spot on, along with everything else; truly, they were on a professional level. It showed how Japanese people of any age will throw a lot of passion into their music, whether it be college students in the Folk Song Club or out on the street in Sannomiya, largely influenced by modern pop and rock or the middle-aged fathers (and grandfathers) at the Galop bar playing 60s and 70s influenced music. Without making a concentrated effort I have been lucky enough to view music in Japan in several different ways.
Aside from the show at Galop, there were two foreigners who came in, an American-Brazilian and a French man, who I started speaking with. They warned me of the perils of teaching English in Japan, and how it's easy to be fooled and jerked around if you don't find a proper way to teach. The conversation was enough to make me reconsider the thought of teaching English in Japan altogether. Both men were married to Japanese women and had lived in Japan around ten years. We started discussing welfare benefits for foreigners in Japan, and I wasn't aware that there was regular government aid for foreigners who lost work in Japan, and apparently foreigners in Oita prefecture in Kyushu are not eligible for welfare (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare#Japan). This must be a contentious issue with the poor state of the economy, and the conversation on Saturday night provided a lead in to what I saw the next day.
On Sunday morning a caravan of right-wing activists drove by my apartment building, and instead of the usual blasting of war anthems there was a man shouting from a loud-speaker about the role of the Japanese people and matters of the like. Of anything in Japan, the right-wingers tend to hit a nerve with me the most, as I'm sure they do with most foreigners. However, my contention with them isn't just based on their opposition to foreigners coming to Japan; it's that they carry on an ultranationalist ideology that caused some of the worst destruction in war that mankind has ever witnessed, not only for countries that Japan waged war on but for the Japanese themselves. I went to Sannomiya by bus later that day to look for a new digital camera, and was dismayed to see the caravan had made its way into the heart of the city. In the Motomachi area, the caravan had stopped to give a speech outside the high-end Daimaru department store. The vehicles for right-wingers look military in nature, usually jeeps or trucks painted dark green and the right-wingers themselves, usually young men with threateningly muscular builds dressed in fascistic clothing, appear easily enraged and have been known to lash out at foreigners on occasion; behind the parked caravan were several police cars who watched and waited silently in case of any disturbance. As the young man shouted from a loud-speaker about how right-wingers are misrepresented and not associated with the Japanese mafia, and how the government cares more about foreigners than Japanese who work hard without any break (ironic as the crowds who passed by seemed entirely concerned with shopping on a Sunday) while foreigners have it easy. Most people who passed by looked to be ignoring the speech, often with a mildly amused or nervous look on their faces, sometimes with a person explaining (a man to his female partner in this case) what exactly right-wingers are, saying something along the lines of "Oh, they're people that think violence is okay to get what they want...". Two or three older Japanese men were standing by to listen, and I stood and listened as well. One of the old men looked over at me occasionally, curiously, and I don't think he was necessarily buying what the right-winger was saying. One old man listened for maybe two or three minutes before shaking his head in disapproval as he walked away, clearly irritated. At the end of the main part of the speech one old man clapped enthusiastically; he was the only one clapping. Clearly, right-wingers are not very popular and generally considered unfavorably even though many Japanese might share some of their conservative views. The old man who had glanced over at me gave a slight bow of his head to which I returned the same, and he walked off as the right-wingers started to play clearly fabricated recording in Chinese that was supposedly the captain of the ship who rammed into the Japanese vessel near the Senkaku Islands. Though the content and ideas of the right-wingers aren't too out of line with what conservatives in the United States tend to preach, the direct connection to wartime fascism makes it much harder to swallow, and considering that the very same ideology had led to Japan's total defeat in the war, it comes off as nothing more than the still-lingering ultranationalism after Japan's defeat, sustained both by the surge of nationalism following Japan's incredible economic revival and the frustration and anger as Japan's global position continues to decline.
Overall, a very educational weekend.
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