Mountain Jazz

Today I went to my special needs school and was treated to a concert performed by one of the most... Interesting trios I've seen. There was a pianist, a tap dancer, and a woman who sang this kind of... scat or blues jazzy thing with lots of Doo-ops and stuff. It was a lot of fun! She sang her songs in English (!) and I really wanted to go up and talk to her after since she said she lived in New York. It was really interesting to watch! Definitely not what I pictured when they first said we were going to have a concert.

I've also learned a very valuable lesson I think, over my years here. For the love of smartphones everywhere, bringing out the iPhone because you're using it as a pocket electric dictionary is a really bad idea in front of students, because they will ask to play with it. And if you let them play with it once... They'll expect to be able to play with it again and again. The one time I didn't bring it, the kid started to cry because he was so disappointed. Mind, this is my special needs school with the elementary kids. Perhaps this wouldn't happen at high school, but I am a lot more loathe to bring out the smartphones in my more serious schools.

I think everyone had a good time though. The singer sang some Stand By Me and something else I'm pretty sure Michael Buble covered. Either way it was fun, and the kids looked like they enjoyed it a lot despite some songs being in English. They also sang that Sukiyaki song; it was super pretty. That reminds me, I need to see if I can get kokurizaka something something by Studio Ghibli with subtitles yet. Hmmm. Really cute movie, and it was actually easy enough to understand via nonverbal communication what was going on despite being able to only understand when they were saying unimportant things like "Shut the door!" and "go to bed!" lol. Oh well.

My goal though, in the next year or so, is to become really freaking good at Japanese so I can go and understand everything. I got a fellowship to do that after all, so they're basically paying me to study Japanese. :) it means I really need to work though and take the most advantage of the following year; brush up on the grammar fundamentals and make sure that's solid so I don't make a fool of myself next year. I feel like generally, I'm mostly lacking in vocab, but I'm still not super great when it comes to generating content in Japanese. I'm okay at writing, given enough time and someone to check it. I can convey my meanings and feelings for relatively basic things and lower intermediate grammar, though spoken Japanese makes this pretty easy since half the time in colloquial conversations you're just allowed to kind of trail off and the other person just intuitively understands what you're trying to say based off of context and intonation.

Mind reading. I wouldn't be surprised if Japanese people develop this ability first.