Japan: Week 15

15 - Opera. Week ending Sunday 23rd June

I need to catch you all up, I think. To anyone who doesn't know me in "real life", I'm terribly sorry if you thought I'd fallen off the face of the planet. No longer in the incredible place I write about, but still here, nonetheless.

The week-days at this point were filled with studying and felt-pens and re-living exam stress of the like I had not experienced since the GCSE years. It's the sheer quantity of subjects you're supposed to be able to be interested in and theorise about which always got me.

However, as any perfectionist student will tell you, upon glancing up from their textbook, the way to study to the extent that it is feasible for you to hold yourself to such ridiculously high standards is to give your mind a break once in a while. Appreciating the beauty existing in so many places and ignoring the futilities of your worries for a few short hours is a wonderful way to gain some distance from those revision notes. Enough that when you return you'll realise how much you learnt from what you were trying to.

To arrive at the point, the appreciation of beauty which soothed my soul and calmed my fraying nerves was 'The Marriage of Figaro' by Amadeus Mozart, performed by Basel Theater, a Swiss company, at Aichi Arts Centre on 22nd June. This had been arranged for us by the university many weeks previously, and I was at once excited at the prospect of seeing the opera again, but this time in its original Italian. At the time it was merely from a cultural perspective; I will always enjoy an event held at a theatre. I hadn't calculated that this would be the weekend before deadlines would finally creep on top of us, and how necessary the performance would be to my sanity.

We were invited along with Japanese students taking culture classes in Global Studies at NUFS, and instructed to wear formal attire and bring opera glasses... I arrived in the closest dress I had to 'formal', but unfortunately sans opera glasses.

As it turned out, they were unnecessary. We had fabulous seats, ones I would have chosen if I could have my pick of the auditorium. The very front row of the first tier up, but not dead centre so that I could soak up the atmosphere from the viewers as well as the performers. Perhaps it was the fortunate acoustics which made this production so beautiful.

But I doubt it. It had been a while since I'd heard an orchestra of such a high standard play music by one of the most talented composers the Earth has ever known, and it could be needless to say that I was moved. I struggled to remember the plot-line (my spoken Italian and written Japanese not being up to much, and that being an understatement) and cursed myself for not looking up a synopsis before I left, as had been my intention. But in the end it mattered very little. The story is one of love, and all the tribulations which go along with it. This is how great minds become immortalised, they were the ones who figaro-ed out how to write down the stories the human mind obsesses over (Sorry. Not sorry). The plot contains jealousy, multiple story-lines, and the only truly confusing bit in the end revealed its meaning to me because I know the Japanese character for 'mother'.

So, the plot was sufficiently under control in my mind. It was unimportant, compared to the talent of the musicians. I discovered the perfection of orchestral music all over again that evening. Memories of all the ensembles and people I had played with often filled my mind, and these, coupled with the clarity and beauty of an orchestra in full voice tugged on my heartstrings and brought a tear to my eye more than once. In that place, 'Cherubino's Aria', sung by Franziska Gottwald, and her voice as pure and crystalline as water was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.

I'll be forever grateful that music has no language barrier. Not English, nor Italian, nor Japanese can mask the unadulterated joy caused by the soaring notes of the like of Basel sinfonietta.

And that, friends, is how a heart, tattered from stress like mine, can find its peace in music. And so we go home, and carry on revising.

Japan: Week 5

5 - It all begins

This week I had a small insight into what term-time's going to be like. On Tuesday, the four of us TEFL students met up with the teachers we'll be working with for lunch, at an adorable restaurant close to the university. It's a bright blue shuttered house, back from the road a little with an elaborate front garden with a stone path, complete with archway. The couple live upstairs, and the restaurant is downstairs. Lunch was delicious (even the sea-snail) and I was surprised how easy it was to relax into conversation. Afterwards we went back to uni to receive the timetables of lessons we'll be observing, and lessons we'll be teaching (!!). Thankfully we have just a couple of weeks to prepare ourselves for teaching, but our first observation was on Thursday.

'Observation' is a term used lightly. Although there was a teacher taking charge of the class, we were put into four groups with one British student as a team leader, and were very interactive with the students. I experienced trying to explain and define really quite difficult English terms, and having everyone look to you when they didn't understand something. Daunting, but will no doubt be practice I'll be grateful of once I have to start taking classes of my own.

I also signed up to be a tutor for Language Lounge sessions; rooms where students can go to learn a language from native speakers, and no other language is allowed to be spoken in the room. I feel any practice I can have at this teaching thing will only do good.

Something to make me very happy indeed was my first frisbee training session in Japan. Nagoya University is split into several colleges; I'm currently studying with Nagoya University of Foreign Studies. Well, Nagoya University of Arts and Sciences is located very close by, and students often join each other's cross-curricular activities.

So when I spotted NUAS students recruiting for frisbee, I positively squealed with excitement and promised to train with them, 5.30 - 8 pm on Wednesdays and Fridays. The rules are the same and I've got the head-start on height, so it was pure relief to get back outside, running after a plastic disk, doing something I really know how to do, and not have to worry about the correct grammar structures to use whilst doing it.

This weekend I've taken a bit of a break and relaxed, including a trip to Aichi Arts Centre which I've been promising to myself from pretty early on. This Saturday there was a concert given by 'Rainbow Chorus' and as far as we could tell, would be of traditional Japanese songs and Nursery Rhymes. There was definitely one I picked out quite a lot from, on the subject of a bicycle.

Music never needs to be fully understood though. The way a choir moves just a little as they breathe, the way voices fill a concert hall, and the feeling a conductor puts into their direction is not restricted by a language barrier. It was relaxing and enjoyable. In addition to all that, when a concert invites you to sing along with the final piece, thoughtfully providing music and lyrics on the back of your programme, it's always going to get my vote.

Lessons start in earnest tomorrow, wish me luck!

Yours,

Abby