Tohuku: 1 Year Later

A year ago I visited Tohoku (the area most affected by the earthquake and tsunami) as part of a volunteer trip that the school put together. On that trip we spent half a day cleaning out drainage ditches so that water didn't flood the streets every time it rained, and the other half of the day preparing and hosting a BBQ for people who were living in a community center. It was without a doubt one of the most memorable experiences in my life. Seeing such destruction on such a large scale barely seems fathomable, yet it was lying right in front of my eyes. When I left, I felt guilty because everything else I was doing back in Tokyo seemed to pale in comparison to the needs in Tohoku, I didn't want to leave.

It's a year later now, and I've had a chance to go back to the area again. This time we were a little further north in, I believe it was, Kensenuma. We traveled through the night most of which I was trying to sleep through, but when the sun came up we could see things get worse as we approached the coast. It's been a year and devastation is still very much apart of the culture. However, the biggest difference between now and then is that now there is a since of hope.

Last year there was nothing. Everything had been wiped out. Homes, neighborhoods, businesses, life itself was washed away. What I saw last week was very much the same, but there was life. Cars were on the roads, people were in the stores, life was finding a way.

We spent the day visiting with people who were in temporary housing. They were living in units that are small, even in Japan. I had it easy in my apartment last year by myself. There were families of 4 or 5 living in areas about the same size. Yay perspective!

A few of the families were gracious enough to spare some time and chat with us. The family in the picture below were forced to retire when they're barbershop was lost in the tsunami. They invited our whole group in and wouldn't stop until we had all had something to drink and plenty of snacks. I thoroughly enjoyed our time with them and would cherish the day that I'd be able to meet them again.



Another family we ran into (pictured below) was hard at work at there new job. They had been farmers, but like all those around them, lost everything. They had started working harvesting seaweed. I didn't quite understand how it was done, but it was encouraging to see them in good spirits considering all they had been through.



I've got at least one more trip up north before I leave Japan, which I'll have another post about, but I don't know if I'll ever see the region return to even remotely what it was. It'll take years, that much is for sure. If you have any chance the least you could do is pray for those people affected, and those helping out to assist in the relief work. Since I've worked with Samaritan's Purse I can say that the work they're doing is in fact good work. They're clearing out rubble, rebuilding houses, and establishing relationships in the community. I can't vouch for how the money is spent, but I know there is good work being done there.

I'll end this with a few more photos I took from my trip last week.

Until next time, peace out!




Our group.



Some of the temporary housing units we visited.



This was the second floor of the building. The first floor being collapsed beneath it.



This boat was about 3km inland.



A car crushed by the boat.



I heard they're not going to move the boat, instead they will leave it as a memorial.



The desolation between the boat and the ocean. Most of what you see is either a second level or has been rebuilt since.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Kyoto

On Wednesday, March 28th, a friend from work and I got on the shinkansen (bullet train) and went to Kyoto.  We went 300 miles in about 2 hours while making 2 stops along the way, so yeah, the train was moving really fast.  Although the ride itself was super smooth and there was a ton of leg room too! So much better than traveling by plane.

Anyway, Kyoto was a ton of fun, we found a hotel near the central station in Kyoto that acted as our central hub and branched out from there.  One of the reasons we went to Kyoto at this time is because the Sakura blossoms were supposed to be in full blossom at this point, but as you can likely tell from my context, they were only begging to bud, so no cherry blossom's at that point.  The Ume blossoms (plum blossoms, pronounced oo - may) were out and provided for some nice pictures, but they're still no sakura.

We were in Kyoto for about 48 hours total and did a ton of running around in that time.  It was a great time and if you'd like to see more photos I've posted about 200 on my facebook album titled: Kyoto.

The itinerary went like this:

Wednesday:

2:30 arrive in Kyoto, check in to hotel

3:30 head to Kiyomizu

 5:00 went to a museum

 5:45 went to dinner

 7:00 another temple

 9:30 Hugo (movie)

Thursday:

8:00am Head to Ryoan-ji

9:00 Arrive at Ryoan-ji

 10:00 walk to Kinkaku-ji

11:30 head back to downtown Kyoto/ Nijo castle

12:30 lunch

 1:30 Outdoor art installation

 2:00 Botanical Gardens

4:00 Toji Shrine

5:30 Dinner at a mall

7:00 Kyoto Tower

8:00 Bucket List (movie)

Friday:

7:00am Leave for Nara Japan

8:30 arrive at Todai-ji temple

9:30 leave Nara

11:00 find out that the Museum of Modern Art 

11:30 find an insanely long line for the aquarium

12:00 lunch

12:30 Kyoto Tower by day!

2:00 train home.

CHIKURA Music Festival 2012

So as part of my growing Jazz identity I've been playing more.  On April 22 I got the chance to play at the Chikura Music Festival in Chiba with Rick Overton (trumpet), Yusuke Morita (bass), and Ryo Kanda
(drums), and a pianist who I don't remember.

I'll keep this short so I can get to the pictures.

It was an amazing experience.  Rick is one of the top performers in Tokyo and asked me to join him for the festival.  It wasn't a paying gig, but a chance that I couldn't say no to.  You can read up on Rick here. 
He's been very much a mentor to me and a contact I would never have imagined I'd make.  I met him last year at our International School Band Festival where he was an adjudicator and then ran into him again this year when his son was on my basketball team (ended up being my best player).

When he asked me to play the gig I said yes with trepidation.  I don't consider myself to be very good jazz musician at all and I've been asked by a guy who has played with groups ranging from The Four Tops to Branford Marsalis (he's actually really good friends with him).  So it completely freaked me out and I practiced, a lot, like college performance major (almost I do have a job after all).  Even with all the practice though I had no faith and almost cancelled two days prior.

All that being said, it went off with out much of a hitch.  So well in fact that Rick said in an email afterwards that he had fun playing with a tenor since he normally doesn't get to play with one unless Branford comes through town.  Yes, he compared me to Branford, as blasphemous as that sounds (to me at least).

For the event, we played 2 sets with about 3 hours in between so the Yusuke, Ryo, and I went to the beach. Alright enough talk, pictures!

 The Festival

 Ryo

 The band

 Rick

 Me

 Yusuke

 Sand Art! Yusuke said it was poop.

 Ryo thought it to be an ice cream come.

 One man's trash is another man's poop cone.

My beach art. 

They also yo-yoed 

 Two at once!

A certified Pro-spinner.

Spring Break: Kabuki

So spring break was about a month and a half ago and I was fairly busy over the week. On Monday of that week I had a friend invite me to a Kabuki Theater show of which I was in the middle of a rather lengthy post about when it got deleted by me unwittingly closing out of the application.

First, a comment on the style of kabuki.  first thing that will strike you about any Kabuki theater is the production is always beautiful.  The sets are especially gorgeous, but the main idea behind Kabuki is beauty.  The actors, the sets, the costumes, the acting must all be done to portray beauty. The delivery is of course different than any western play.  The dialogue seems very formal and has a lot of style to it.  The fight scenes don't make much of an attempt to give the perception of real fighting, instead it's more of the waving of hands that causes people to tumble, as if the movement was so strong that it caused the air to force the person to move.  Lastly on the style, Kabuki is always 100% male actors, so no female actors playing any of the roles and apparently the best actors are versatile and able to play both male and female roles.  That is to say, there is no relegation for a man to play a female role.  This comment isn't on the style, it's just something that struck me as odd.  After the first play (which was 2 hours) there was an extended intermission that lasted about 30 minutes in which everyone around us got out obentos (lunch boxes) and started eating, right in the middle of the theatre.  Neither my friends nor I were prepared for this.

Moving on here my brief synopsis of the three plays I saw:

The first play was about a man who was the head farmer of a village that is being overtaxed by the lord in charge of the land.  He is asked by one of the farmers to do something about it, and the only thing he can do is make an appeal to the Shogun (essentially emperor) to cease the oppression of the lord who owned the land.  Approaching the shogun without approval meant death without question. So he was basically going on a suicide mission.

The biggest comment from this play was that it had quite a bit of crying.  The main character spent most of his time on stage crying, or at least it seemed he did.  Lots of tears.  THe biggest reason this struck me is that I was told to never cry in public by someone before I came, so to see a main character of a play cry as much as he did struck me as a little odd.  As I think about it though, the notion I had on the matter coming to Japan was wrong.  The Japanese are an emotional people, and aren't afraid to show it as long as the emotion is appropriate.  So, crying at the death of a loved one = appropriate.

The second play I think was called, Tozumo, it was about the top sumo in Japan who went to wrestle in China as entertainment for the Chinese emperor.  After being their for years he asks the emperor to return home as he is getting home sick.  The emperor grants him his wish on the conditoin of one last show.  So the sumo agrees and fights waves of an increasingly large number Chinese people, and all the time getting drunker as he downs nearly a bottle of sake after each bout.  Eventually it gets to the point where the sumo is so drunk he can barely stand and then the emperor challenges him.  Being a Japanese play the sumo has no problem defeating the emperor and he is granted his permission to leave.

The main comment about this is that this play was extremely racist and not shy about it at all.  Almost all of the Chinese characters in the play were more like charicatures and the emperor was the worst of them all, essentially a cartoon.  Also, any of the dialogue that was Chinese in the play was instead non-sensical jibberish.  The last evidence was again, a totally trashed sumo being able to take on what ended up being a dozen Chinese palace guards at once and defeating them with no issue.  All that said, the crowd laughed and everyone enjoyed the play, so as long as no one cares I guess.

The last play was a love story that is too complicated for me to remember.  I apologize, but it's been too long.  ごめんなさい. (Gomennasai - sorry).


More posted soon.  Until then, peace out!

Jazz Identity

To many of the people I come in contact with I'm one of two things, a jazz musician/teacher or Clarence Clemons' nephew.  I've always taken issue with both identifcations but now I'm starting to embrace them. Let me suss this out a little bit more for you.

When I got to Wheaton College in the fall of 2006 no one would have mistaken me for a jazz musician.  I played clarinet and, as I've always said, by default sax as well.  I joined the jazz band at Wheaton because I had done it in high school and they needed a bari sax player.  I never actually expected to be in the jazz ensemble.  I had never really even listened to jazz prior to college.  None the less I joined the jazz band and stuck with it, enough so to the point that more people identified me with the saxophone instead of the clarinet.  This was extremely frustrating to me because I never practiced the sax.  I didn't really care about it and was only doing it because I couldn't play the clarinet in the jazz band.

However, as with everything in life, things change.  In my sophomore year Nicole Mitchell became the director of the jazz ensemble.  She brought a fairly hefty resume with her so we were all fairly anxious to see what would happen.  Unfortunately the ensemble wavered.  Rehearsals were long and not very engaging and there was little support outside the ensemble.  Fast forward to my senior year,  I remember sitting on my couch one day listening to the radio and a tune came on to the radio.  It was catchy, driving and demanding to listen to.  It sucked me in and I had to know what it was.  It turns it out the tune was Moanin' by Charles Mingus, performed by the Mingus Big Band.  I went in the next rehearsal and asked Nicole if we could play the piece and she had already planned to hand it out that day.  I was elated.

Fast forward again to the spring of 2010.  My roommate Zach had moved to Texas leaving an empty basement to be utilized somehow and I had the idea to setup a band in the basement.  This would be the beginnings of "Big Poppa Gabe and the Star Patrollers".  The ensemble featured Kenzie McKillop on trumpet, Ben Fisher on keys, Dan Krall on drums, myself on clarinet/sax and various other musicians made appearances as well.  Don't be deceived, we weren't very good.  There wasn't really any jazz education at Wheaton at all outside of the band and jazz piano/vocal lessons,  but we had a lot of fun and it was pivotal for my development in jazz.  We'd get together and jam for hours.  It was a time I think we all look back on fondly.

When I came to Japan I was told that I would be co-directing the jazz band with a Berklee grad.  If you know anything about Berklee you know it is one of THE schools to go for jazz.  So I was anxious to learn from him and be able to work with him.  Long story short is that, although he is an excellent musician and knows loads about jazz/jazz theory, he's an electronic musician and that's were his passion is. Anyway, continuing with my story I've ended up caring the majority of the weight in when it comes to ensemble prep and planning.  This has provided some great experience and forced me to become a much better jazz musician and director.  I need to know what I want from the ensemble and how to explain how to get it.

This year, it's gone a step further.  Since it's the only ensemble I'm directing this year, I introduce myself as the jazz band director or the jazz teacher.  Also playing at Reno's quasi-regularly and wearing my fedora and "Jazz." period t-shirt have helped solidify my status on campus at CAJ.

Continuing on with the point of the post, many people know me as Clarence Clemons' nephew.  With the death of my uncle more people have been made aware of who he is and my relation to him.  It's not something I advertise on a regular basis because I want to be my own person.  I've got a name and an identity and it's not as Clarence Clemons' nephew, or at least it hasn't been.  However the more I start to play my sax and meet people in various circles the more I find myself embracing the position.  As I'm introduced to more established musicians in Tokyo I've noticed that being his nephew gives me some level of instant credibility, which is weird, but helps.  If performing music is something I ever really want to do I'm going to need every break I get.  It really makes a difference.

I'm still adjusting to the perception that people have of me and of jazz and doing my best to educate and encourage.  For now though things are going well.  Tonight we had our "Jazz is Golden" spring concert which is a concert that I added.  The ensemble normally only plays a couple of tunes for the "Parade of Bands" concert, but I new they were capable of more and so I pushed for this concert.  And I must say, this concert was maybe the most fun concert I've been apart of, I mean, one of my students moonwalked during one of his solos! Just awesome.  (I'll post videos as they are available)

To end, I'm a musician.  I enjoy play many different kinds of music, esepecially jazz.  If i'm ever in your town and have a horn I'd be more than happy to jam with you, just say the word.

Until next time,
Peace out!