I'm getting ready to move out of my guest house at this moment. Procrastinating while the cleaning lady who comes every Friday does her job. In two days time, I'll be back in Chiba with a family I have yet to meet.
This neighborhood I lived in and these past two months feel like a turning point in my experience. I started thinking about it when my friend asked me if I had gotten accustomed to Japanese life. 「東京の生活、慣れた？」This was after I was somehow appointed captain of the University Boxing Club (I believe it's very rare for a foreigner to be given this sort of responsibility) and had to attend a meeting for the Kanto region boxing clubs regarding some upcoming tournament that we won't be participating in. He came along since I don't have the comprehensional abilities to really understand the content of the meeting. Plus, Coach Tanaka told him to anyway...
Thinking back to the days when I first got here I remember the thick summer air, heavy typhoon rain, and all the other exchange students ready to take on Tokyo without abandon. It all seems like a dream back then. Remembering the state of mind I was in, you could say it was awe...
Time went on and I started spending a lot of time in various places. Band practice was always in Shinjuku, every morning I'd change trains at Akihabara, I spent a few late nights wandering around Shibuya until the first train arrived (Karaoke at 7:00am after a long night of revelry is a trial most men cannot endure), and going to campus in Yotsuya. Lots of time spent right smack dab in the middle of Tokyo.
But I feel like my 'awe' has... changed places so to say. Maybe it was that day I saw Buddha sitting on top of the hill while I was running, or maybe just everyday life here in the Tokyo suburbs. To me, the suburbs back at home felt disconnected. With big driveways, wide yards, and tall fences, everyone was effectively hiding themselves from their neighbors. Not only this, but each new development is given it's own name and special borders. It wouldn't be unusual to take a long walk and not see another soul on the road.
No matter what time of day it is here, I'll always see someone else walking somewhere. I see and hear kids playing outside constantly. Every clear day there is laundry hung up on the verandas. Walking through the convoluted streets inbetween houses, I hear someone practicing piano in one house, flute in another. Strange as it seems, you can tell there is life in these homes. I can't remember a time I felt that back in the states.I decided to meet that Buddha today. I walked around the Temple, took some pictures. Typical stuff you do as a foreigner. But what really got me were the houses built around the premises. Imagine everyday you get up for work, walk out the front door, and there it is: a giant Buddha. Always there every day to greet you with your morning coffee or whatever. After a while the surprise wears off, and it becomes a simple fact of life. I think there's some sort of beauty in that. Sometimes I'll walk by strange traditional Japanese structures and pathways and wonder if they're private property. The proximity between these things (be it relic or replica) and the houses of civilians is strange to me. Sometimes I wonder if it's really okay to be stepping where I am. But then I see someone walking with bags of groceries down the same path I am hesitant to cross. I wonder what I'm hesitating for, and remember that I always take a shortcut through a Temple in Shinjuku to get to practice...
In the midst of tall buildings and heavy machinery there remain pieces of a deep and humble past. The beauty is that it lives side by side with modern society, and continues to remain so.
Outside the city, but not quite the country, there are many people living quietly and very closely together. Although they may have different names and live in different houses, I have a feeling they recognize each other and say hello when they pass eachother on the street.

Five hundred and some odd steps

I've just passed the halfway point. A little less than 5 months to go for my scheduled stay in Japan. Right now is the interim break. I live in a guest house located in the suburbs outside of Tokyo, just a few stops from Ikebukuro. It's quite different from my previous location. The suburbs are like a maze, and the elevation varies from block to block as if it were confused. I feel minor earthquakes every so often and can hear my neighbors sneeze from inside their living room. The cramped suburban landscape really does make me feel like I'm another country though. The Tokyo Daibutsu (not very famous large Buddha statue) is also near my house. It was a little startling, during a typical morning run, when I spotted out of the corner of my eye a large Buddha sitting atop a hill. This place still manages to surprise me. At 4:30pm every weekday, a melody plays over all the neighborhoods. At 5:30 another melody plays, and then a short announcement follows, telling all the children playing outside to make sure their parents know where they are and that it's about time to go home for dinner. This would've seemed invasive back in the west, but being here it reminds me that there is a world of people in these buildings built so close together. It works in it's own way, and is reassuring. I am not alone.

Alyosha played it's first two performances at the beginning of February. One in Yokohama, the other in Shinjuku. Japanese venues are a lot more expensive than American. I believe admission for the second show was 2000yen (about $20.20 as of this posting). The sound is fantastic though (this goes for each Japanese venue that I've been to so far). The Yokohama show was all pop punk bands, and we were third to last. Despite being the odd-band out, it was an extremely cathartic and satisfying experience. I had a little difficulty at the Shinjuku show being able to explain to the sound guy what I wanted, so I ended up with a lot of bass and no guitar coming out of my monitor. None of us were too pleased with the outcome of the latter performance. Well, actually I had no idea how it really sounded since I only heard bass... The bands I played with were all very impressive. Compared to the lot of well-known live acts in the US, it's surprising to see 'local' Japanese bands play with the vigor and precision that usually had been reserved for big headliners. Maybe it's the fact that to play music in this country you have to make large sacrifices. You have to pay for each practice, if you don't choose to work as a salaryman directly out of college you cannot simply jump back into the workforce, there are no garages, no basements; even at it's most humble roots its still a significant financial burden. But the bands that do stick it out seem to get some attention overseas. It's a shame most of the west will probably never hear or experience the music that goes on over here. And I've only had just a taste...

Since coming to Tokyo I've begun to feel severe bouts of anxiety. Sometimes I become completely xenophobic. Maybe it's the buildings, the crowds, all the high fashion, advertisements, and solicitors. People yelling on the street "buy this! see this!" Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton everywhere. After a while I started feeling contempt towards these people, covered in these brands, and these stores advertising sales for $500 suits (that's the sale price) as if it were a simple necessity. Some old Japanese authors relate similar feelings during the period of modernization in Japan. It seems they were afraid of growing capitalism and materialism. I wonder how they'd feel now, wandering through the neon lit metropolis seeing people covered in their salaries. Everyone looks like upper middle class, despite Japan being in the middle of recession, with a growing number of people sleeping in parks and train stations. At 5am in Shinjuku on my way home from a long night, the stairs of the station in each of the hundreds of exits and tunnel ways looked like a makeshift hostel. Of course, during the day one sees no evidence of this; maybe just the lonely vagrant slowly shifting through the crowd. For me, it's intimidating. Sometimes I feel so small, so inferior to everything here. I unknowingly wear a scowl and try to fight some crippling self consciousness while walking in as straight a path as I can to whatever destination I may be headed at the time.

This is what I've been dealing with on a daily basis for some time here. I'm not sure when it began, but with the free time I've had in the past few months I've put to use a very valuable gift that only human beings have been granted; the gift of introspection. It's easy to tell yourself "clothes don't matter, it's whats on the inside that counts, etc etc" but to really mold the core of your being; to stabilize the matter that is constantly shaking your foundation has come to be a difficult task. Before I came to Japan I feel like the person I was then was someone much bigger than who I am now. Of course, the circumstances were different. I was in my comfort zone, had a very big adventure to look forward to; the future up to that point, albeit always uncertain, seemed very likely to hold wonderful things for me. I've come to understand that it is me, simply me, that allows this sort of thing to disturb my conscience. When I walk through the street trying to ignore the imaginary eyes constantly watching and judging me, I begin to think things like: What if I were pursuing a Master's in composition at Juilliard? What if I were a World Champion Boxer? Would I feel so afraid of every stranger that walks past me? I imagine feeling like a different person one day.

And maybe that is the simple driving force behind everything I do. The music, the fighting, the language. All of it so that one day I can say "I became the man I wanted to be." Although, when that day comes, what I really hope to say is

"I became better than the man I wanted to be."

I move in with a Japanese family on March 28th in Funabashi-ku, Chiba-ken. Until then, I'll fill these empty days with more reasons why I became better than the man I wanted to be.

In the meantime

As my first term comes to an end sometimes I wonder where all the time went, and sometimes I wonder why the days aren't moving.

As far as sightseeing goes, I went to Hiroshima and Miya jima for a couple days. It happened to snow during the first part of our tour at Hiroshima. I remember some mixed feelings. Shame, regret, and empathy. The atmosphere in Hiroshima some how feels heavier. There are very few spots in this world where human tragedies of such magnitude have occured, so there's something inexplicable about the feeling that invades you when you enter the 平和記念公園, (Peace Memorial Park). The falling snow and bitter cold added to the effect.

Aside from that, time itself has continued. I sometimes forget that I'm here, and sometimes remember that I don't look too much like everyone else.

From December on, I met and lost a girl, started talking to Bach again, and began putting back the effort into boxing that it needs.

My boxing practice is kind of a strange scene. Only on Saturdays do I have a regularly have someone to come and train me and recently none of the other members (including the club captain or whatever) come to train. During the weekday sessions, I pull out the equipment myself. Sandbag, gloves, etc... and do just about the same routine I worked on in the states. The only difference is I'm sharing a room with the girl's hip-hop dance team, G-splash. So, while I'm pounding away at the bags, getting sweaty as hell, there's anywhere between 10-15 or so Japanese girls practicing their dance moves next to me. I'm not sure how they feel about it, and I try to ignore them while I get to business. But every now and then I look over and feel somewhat bashful... I wonder if they recognize me around campus now.

I'll be spending the nearly 2 month long spring break in a Guest House for foreigners. From there on I'll be fighting the good fight against poverty, idleness, and the various oddities this country has thrown at me. I'll also be playing two shows in early February. I'll be getting a peek at the DIY scene here in Japan. I promise a long, book sized entry in the near future regarding that and other things...

一ヶ月ぐらい

It's been about a month since I arrived at Narita airport. In that time I've met many new people, made many new friends, and experienced so many new things that it'd be impossible to compile all the new memories and experiences into this one post.

Japan is a different place.

Truthfully, this is my first time overseas. Living in America, I had never even been to the east coast. The majority of my adolescence was spent Portland. The only other 'big city' I had visited in my lifetime was Seattle, and that was usually only for a day or so at a time. So, unlike most people I've met here, my first leap overseas and my first visit to a real megalopolis was Tokyo.

So how does one explain like me explain their view of Tokyo when they first dive into it? Was I overwhelmed? Homesick? Culture Shock? For me, Tokyo had been a dream long manifested in my mind ever since I first watched Godzilla. At age 4, I was enraptured by this monster and thus grew an obsession of immense proportions. From this obsession also grew a more substantial interest in Japan and Japanese culture over time. I can confidently say that I've been wanting to go to Japan longer than I've wanted or done anything. Longer than music in fact.

Regardless of this desire, the final days before leaving to Tokyo were filled with excitement and melancholy. For one, I knew I was about to realize a childhood dream that had so long been apart of me. But along with this was the thought "Will this be it?" Once I go to Tokyo will I have finally completed a part of me that had been missing for so long? Once that part is done, what else is there to look forward to afterwards?

Saying goodbye to my mentors, my friends, and my family members was also very difficult. On my last day of violin lessons in the states, I remember shaking my teacher's hand and saying "Thank you." This simple gesture was one of the most difficult and meaningful moments in my entire life. I don't think I'll ever forget the feelings I had that day. I feel that, even though starting the violin only two years ago, my passion for music has grown tenfold. All due to picking up such a difficult instrument with all the things working against me (time and age, to be specific). My last day at the boxing gym filled me with similar feelings as well. These places and things, where you've experience such frustration, where you've worked so hard toward a certain goal, where you feel like, at this special place with these people, you've grown immensely as a person. These things were the most difficult to say goodbye to.

But now I'm in Tokyo.

The first days here were filled with all sorts of orientation type activities(since I entered through a study abroad program). For a while it all felt like some sort of dream. I was riding on this wave with all these other new people who seemed have just as little an idea what to do or what was going on as I did. So, we got to know each other. Lots of drinking, hanging out, making friends. It seemed like our group of exchange students quickly turned into a little family. I think, when you go so far away from home, especially a foreign country all on your own, it's natural to want to build a sort of support group; people that are in the same situation as you are. It's interesting how quickly the friendships and trust are built in that situation. But when you're in a very different place, it's possible that you're more open to embracing a powerful friendship than you are back at home.

Once I got settled into my dorm, everything kind of fell on me at once. I felt completely lost and alone. I was in this weird place. I could not speak smoothly or understand everything quite well. I don't know where anything is. Just going to the convenience store (conbini;コンビニ) was a difficult experience. I had to ride these crowded trains. I felt like a nuisance. The odd one out. This is the first time in my life I was conscious of the fact that I am White. All of this was overwhelming at first. I had some serious second thoughts the first couple nights in my dorm. I knew beforehand that things would not be as simple here as they were in the states. But as I grasped the situation, I began to acquire my bearings.

Day by day, things became simpler. I was figuring out my rhythm, and feeling more confident in myself. I began to have fun in Tokyo.

Before I came here, I met a guy named Sho. He drove up to my house from LA to jam, then we saw Boris. The day after next, I drove down to Berkely and saw Portraits of Past with him. He wanted to start a band when he moved back to Japan and had a friend here (Take) who he was going to play with. I was very excited about the fact that I would have people to play music with when I came to Japan. It was like my body and spirit were recharged with it's former zest when I had my first jam over here. From then on, things felt right. I went out with my new friends from the program many nights. Lots of Karaoke, drinking, and having fun.

The Tokyo that had once felt strange and awkward, had turned into a very exciting and interesting place. The memories I've made in the past month have been some of the fondest and happiest moments of my life.

Summer vacation is over, school has started, and real life has begun. I joined a club at the university called The Walking Club (歩こう会). The club activities generally consist of going on a long walk somewhere in Tokyo and then ending the day with a 飲み会(nomi-kai;drinking party). I figure this was a good chance to meet Japanese people and explore Tokyo. My first walk consisted of an exploration around Ebisu, Roppongi, and Akasaka and turned out to be one hell of a blast. I had a lot of chances to speak Japanese, and feel like I've made lots of new friends. It is worth mentioning that when Japanese students drink they probably have more fun than anyone else in the world.

Before I came to Japan, on multiple occasions I had met people who had previously spent a substantial amount of time here. Coincidentally, each time I had mentioned that I was about to spend a long time over here, each one of them said "You're going to have a great time and meet a lot of great people." My last few months in the states were not a happy time for me. The simple idea of having a great time and meeting great people seemed so... so beyond anything at that moment. But their worlds held true. I really have had a great time and have met a lot of great people. And I'm very grateful for these moments and meetings.

So my first month is almost over, about ten more to go. It's been somewhat of a roller coaster ride; many highs and lows. But at least once a day I think to myself...

Man, I like it here more than I did yesterday.

Kita

So, I've finally arrived in Japan. I've been here about 5 days or so. Although, I'm not really sure where to begin. I'll post a more detailed entry later, with some pictures and the like.

But, for the record, it is very different here.

I ordered my plane ticket to Japan today... the days are counting themselves down.

See You Tomorrow

I thought I'd make an update on my progress so far.

As of now, I'm officially accepted to study at Sophia University in Tokyo for the 2008-2009 school year. When I received the official confirmation e-mail at work, I couldn't concentrate at all for the rest of the day. Even accidentally crashing patients into a wall at times (I work at a hospital, pushing patients and specimens around). Although, as I learned from before, being accepted is only half the battle. Until I've boarded that airplane to Narita, and settled into my seat with my violin at my side, will I feel like I truly have made it. Although, if my plane does end up crashing... well, at least I was finally on my way towards accomplishing one very significant lifetime goal. Who would've thought showing a boy Godzilla when he was 4 years old would have bloomed into something like this?

I love boxing. I love the atmosphere. I love the mentality. It's hard not to be motivated when you walk into that gym door. Everyone is there to train hard, to become stronger. It's the kind of environment that just motivates you to continue fighting, even when you feel like you've spent up all your energy. Also, for the past few weeks I've felt a new sort of vitality. I have a lot more energy than I used to, and just feel stronger overall. There's something about boxing I can't quite put my finger on... but it's really something good.

I started playing music with Night of Fungi. This is very interesting music, that I really enjoy. Although we're just babies right now, I hope Night of Fungi matures into a nice healthy mushroom one day. We intend to record this summer before I leave. I've also been talking to a couple guys from Japan, who I may end up playing music with as well. That's something else to be excited for.

The future is mysterious and exciting right now. Most of all, I wish for luck as I apply for Financial Aid to be able to pay for this trip abroad. Otherwise, I'll just try again next year.

Until next time...

また明日！