FAST FORWARD: 7/27/07

Just back from our whirlwind east coast tour. For those of you who don't know us, we have two kids (hard to call them "kids" at this point since they are 33 and 29). Both (well daughter Johanna and son Eli's wife Melissa) were due mid-summer, one on July 25th and the other on Aug. 8th. That's really all the background you need to continue so please do....

The key thing here of course is that Mickey Mantle was number 7 so it was critical to have as many 7's in the birth dates of these two grandchildren as possible. Thursday morning the 26th we got two calls in a row. One was from Johanna in Albany (due August 8) who said she was having contractions about 5 minutes apart. The other was from Melissa Zeserson in Swarthmore (due July 26) who said hers were about 10 minutes apart. At around 4, Johanna's husband Tom called to say things were progressing and that Johanna was expecting to go to the hospital sooner than later. Alas, I had a gig that night and hence couldn't leave until about 9:30 that evening, but on second thought (and I came to this conclusion all by myself!) we decided that getting to Troy (where Johanna was to be giving birth) was probably more important than playing for maybe 10 people at the Lost Dog Cafe in Ithaca. So when Tom called around 5 to say they were going to the hospital we packed up and jumped into the car and arrived at the hospital in time to be told that Johanna was deep into it and in fact wasn't too eager for any face time at the moment. Tom assured us he'd call us when the baby came and then went back to work in the delivery room. Sure enough at 4:15 that morning, they had a daughter, Lyla Thiessen Stebbins. "Thiessen" is Jan's mother's maiden name and Lyla was Johanna's first kitten...of course.

Meanwhile things had also started to move rather swiftly in Swarthmore where Melissa was having some powerful contractions by early Friday morning and they too were thinking about going to the hospital sooner than later. Back in Troy, we went to the hospital around 8 in the morning and there was Tom proud as punch but looking like a little ragged as indeed one would. On the other hand, Johanna who had just had a 19 hour labor with no analgesia and had screamed so hard she broke some blood vessels in her eyes, looked like she was ready to get up and do 5 miles. Cutest of the bunch by far was Lyla, a beautiful baby girl 6 lb. 10 ounces (no idea how long but probably not record breaking considering the genetics). She is very calm and though we know she can't do it yet, it seemed that she greeted us with slate blue eyes and kind of a half smile. She is VERY strong and absolutely adorable and looks a bit like the baby Johanna.

Anyway so we were passing her around, watching her feed and just enjoying the hell out of the situation when the phone rang at 4:05 in the afternoon and there was Eli announcing the arrival of Declan Kenneth (aw shucks....!) Zeserson, 7 pounds 10 ounces. And so Mickey Mantle was paid his due as both kids came to the plate on 7/27/07 and will be united by birth for ever more. With Princess Lyla in good and loving hands and her maternal grandmother on the scene, we left Albany about 4 in the morning of the 28th for Swarthmore to meet Little Lord Declan. The lad has his father's dimples including one in his chin probably courtesy of his Grandpa Fred's with a little assist from his mother Jan. He is not going to be bored in the next few days, weeks or probably forever because in addition to all the attention he will be getting from us, Melissa's family takes kids very seriously. They should because Declan is about the 65th born just to HIS generation in this far-ranging crew. At the moment two aunts and a grandmother are on the scene and the cousins are coming, the cousins are coming! Grandpa Joe Burkhart and I aren't quite sure which one of us young Declan resembles but Winston Churchill seems a better bet at this point.

So that's about it. Here they are. All involved are doing fine and something tells me we are going to be putting a lot of miles on the cars in the next few months. Grandparents 'R Us just can't wait.

Misty Day in Uwa-cho

Saturday was glorious and sunny. Jan and I had devoted the afternoon walking to little temples in nearby hills so we had nothing to complain about when Sunday dawned cold and rainy. In fact, the weather was perfect for what each of us had to do that day. Jan was giving a speech to a group of local business leaders intent on promoting opportunities for women, and I was off to Uwa-cho about an hour away to play a jazz concert. We both had awakened with that “how-did-I-let-this-happen-to-me” feeling. I mean over-reaching is my specialty but falling on my face in public wasn’t too appealing. As for Jan, she had not only conceived a 45-minute oral presentation over the past few weeks but, with the help of her erstwhile assistant Tomoko, had written most of the talk in Japanese. The fact that she actually insisted on giving me the speech in Japanese to see what I thought was indicative of her nervousness about presenting it. That is kind of like reading Finegan’s Wake to a monkey, and I did the obligatory head and armpit scratching punctuated by a few, “Ee…ee…e e…Ahs” just to indicate I was listening.. (Actually, I must say it is AMAZING to hear Jan speak Japanese, especially now that I know a little bit about what that entails. And to write it? Truly amazing….)

I had a much less rocky hill to climb but I was a bit apprehensive too. It’s one thing to try to play jazz in bars where people may or may not be listening and quite another to play a jazz concert to people in seats they have paid for. In America we throw tomatoes at posers. Here I think it might be dead fish…. So we drank our morning tea and coffee apprehensively, wished each other luck, and set off our separate ways into the misty Matsuyama morning….

*********************

“What does “misty” mean, Mr. Ken?” asked my musical mentor here, Hiroshi Igaue. Somewhere out there in the blackness more than 300 people were waiting for the answer, but for me there was only Igaue, all slicked back in a tuxedo bathed in the white spotlight that surrounded us both on the stage in Uwa-cho. Perhaps a little digression is in order. After all, you didn’t get a program…..

Hiroshi Igaue is an eclectic piano player and all-purpose entertainer—jazz musician, magician, radio host, emcee, jazz club owner, martial artist, etc.—who has taken me into his musical family in Matsuyama, namely his traveling band which at present comprises Igaue, a wiry old drummer named Sakurai-san, and me. The bass players, singers, percussionists, and other horns change depending upon who can make the gig. This Sunday, the Igaue Show was playing the Ehime Prefectural Historical Museum in Uwa-Cho, an ancient town near the Inland sea not far from where the ill-fated Ehime Maru set out on its last voyage.

One of the reasons I think Igaue likes to work with me is he gets to be Buffalo Bob to my Howdy Dowdy, asking me weird questions like, “What does “Them There” mean in Kay Starr’s cooking version of “Them There” eyes? (Answer: I don’t know. Ask Gary Cooper or somebody who might have ever said, “Them there.”) Or, what does the “Rain” represent in Credence Clearwater’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” (Answer: I think you’ll have to ask their pharmacologist, Hirosh. I haven’t a clue….”) But right now, I am wrestling with, what does “misty” mean because I’m about to play it and he thinks the audience would like to know, straight from an American. Since accentuating the obvious is my specialty, I noted that it had been raining during our entire drive from Matsuyama to the concert hall in Uwa-Cho but when we got out of the car, the rain had stopped and it was, well, MISTY, and that’s the way the singer of this song feels when he thinks about his girl, “…misty…and so much in love.”

As a wise man once said, talking about jazz is like dancing about architecture and I like to think the audience understood the concept of “misty” a little better after the band finished the tune. This was some band—the bass player was from Osaka (read Chicago) and the trumpet player from Tokyo (read, well, Tokyo). The singer was from Matsuyama but she’s the best I’ve heard yet and just delightful to behold, frankly, in a slinky red dress, diamonds glittering. The drummer is an old pro originally from Tokyo who came here 25 years ago and never left.

Once again, it’s obvious, but I am always floored by how quickly a disparate group of musicians can come together and become a band. This group had never played together as a unit, at least in person, but then again I guess we really HAD rehearsed together for years—by playing these tunes in all manner of settings with all manner of other players. This is not to say the rehearsal wasn’t without some bumps. Actually, the trumpet player, a husky slope-shouldered guy with a long blond pony tail (yes, a LOT of Japanese people dye their hair these days) and an impassive face was at best stand-offish throughout the warm-up. For him I probably represented, for lack of a better term, a pain in the butt. As the reigning pro on the stage, he, not I, was going to have to determine which notes to hit when we played fills behind the singer together and unlike many people I’ve met here, the idea of having to deal with an inarticulate foreigner didn’t seem to appeal to him. He rarely met my beseeching eyes. The conga player/percussionist—a woman from Tokyo-- had the same kind of haughty air. But, well, what can you do…

Needless to say, the trumpet player was correct in some of his apprehensions. During the rehearsal, I missed some cues for solos, blew some notes on fills much to his obvious displeasure and, never having played “Night in Tunisia” in anything but an Ithaca living room before, I turned that one into Night in Bedlam. (The standard jazz “literature” is available in fake books more or less in the same keys for most instruments. But when you play with a singer, you can throw your fake book out the window because she will always have a favorite key for everything and that is NEVER ever the key in the fake book. If you’re a pro, you just transpose but if you’re me, you can’t do that so my only shot is learning the song in her key (D flat for me if you care about such things) by myself in a little room off the stage. I just hope the trumpeter can’t hear me as I stumble through the changes.

I was still a little jittery during lunch in the dressing room. I tried to hurry through it because I needed to practice some more and besides many people—especially musicians—tend to smoke while they eat here and the room hung with cigarette haze. I was carving my way through a delightful obento (box lunch of fish, greens, tofu, chicken, pickles, etc.) when I chomped down on something hard and suddenly realized why I’d had a touch of tooth pain on the right side recently—my zillion dollar cap on the bottom right had come off. None of the smoke-wreathed musicians sitting around me looked like his hobby was dentistry. Thank God I hadn’t swallowed the cap so I picked it out of my mouth pretending it was a stray chicken bone and when no one was looking popped it into my pocket. Meanwhile, the right side of my mouth felt like the Grand Canyon and I wondered when it was going to start to hurt. The one thing you don’t need when you are trying to fake your way through a jazz concert in front of several hundred people with an unpleasant trumpet player on your left is a toothache. A few minutes later in my little practice corner, my first foray into dentistry was successful. I was able to pop the cap back on.

When I got back to the dressing room, everybody was getting into their tuxes and spiffing up, the major problem seeming to be how you hold a cigarette while you are adjusting your bow tie. And then suddenly it was two minutes to show time. We were standing in the hall off-stage together when…we started to become band. Igaue looking splendiferous in his hounds-tooth tux was joking with the stage manager. Sakurai the wizened old drummer, was literally bouncing up and down on his toes and throwing punches into the air with a drum stick in each hand, psyching himself up. The singer was staring off into space just looking great in red. The bass player was smoking his umpteenth cigarette and looking for a place to snuff it. The trumpeter was fidgeting with his horn…but he gave me a friendly thumbs up as we walked on stage and a sense of camaraderie started to smolder.

I am always amazed at the difference between the way pros play in rehearsals as opposed to on stage. The bass player and trumpeter were obviously superb musicians based on what I had heard in the warm-up but on stage they were simply astounding. They were having fun and it was infectious. The trumpet player bounces up and down as other people play solos occasionally shouting approval (even for me). Two songs into this three-hour program I realized I never wanted it to end. The highlight for me was a duet between the bass player and the singer on “Someday My Prince Will Come.” She sang the song in a breathy fashion as he laid down an intricate bed of rhythm and notes for her to rest on while she waited for her prince. Igaue eventually came out to join them softly on the last chorus. The trumpeter and Sakurai and I stood in shadows backstage. At the end, Sakurai, the veteran, just nodded, as if to say, “that’s it!”

Igaue saved what has become my signature song here for the end—Stand By Me. You know, I’ve played rock and roll for 40 years and there are a lot of songs I’d take to a desert island before I picked Stand By Me, but for some reason, it’s the one he likes best and when we are in that white spotlight again and he asks me, “Mistah Ken, what does “Stand By Me” mean?” I put my arm around him and say, “it’s when people have friends like you, Igaue-san….” (That’s one of the nice things about talking to 300 people who can’t understand you. You can be as soppy as you want and nobody even snickers.) Then the bass player started that classic introductory line and I’m alone in that white light piercing the blackness with this crackerjack band behind me and I realize how perfect the song is for this situation: “When the night has come and the land is dark and the moon is the only light you see…no I won’t be afraid, no I won’t shed a tear, just as long as you stand…stand by me….”

If they want an encore, Igaue always has us do “When the Saints Come Marching In” which a LOT of Japanese people know. This is one thing I AM an expert in—teaching Japanese people the words to “When the Saints” and this crowd all get “A’s”. We start playing and they sing along. The trumpet player is in Dixie heaven playing every lick Louis Armstrong ever invented. Sakurai the drummer, who always plays as if in a trance with his eyes half closed is wailing away and Igaue, a little half smile on, is doing a pretty good impersonation of Fats Waller. Meanwhile the singer and I each take a mike and stroll down the aisle offering audience members a chance to sing into the PA. Have you ever tried to offer anybody a wriggling scorpion? That’s the kind reception the mikes are getting. You can see people swaying and clapping but as you approach one who seems like a good candidate, their eyes freeze and they look very intently at the back of the seat in front of them. So the singer and I start to shout verses back and forth to each other over the audience and one thing leads to another and suddenly we are jumping up and down together in the front wagging our index fingers in the air shaking our heads seized by the fever this song has inspired for more than a century…and the saints came marching in, by God!

Later, I am standing alone in the Uwa-Cho train station. I am waiting for the last train out of town after a riotous dinner with the band and many of their friends at a local hotel where they are all spending the night. The highlight for me was a guitar pass-around and lots of English/American rock and roll, and the steak wasn’t bad either.

At the station, the mist that has wreathed the old town all day has thickened into a fog. The lights that govern the tracks are wreathed in pale red or green penumbra.

It is dead quiet. Nobody else is around. A song comes to mind…”Misty”… I almost take out my sax on the lonely platform but settle for whistling the tune in its entirety. I kind of missed the trumpeter’s solo in the middle. And now, a few years later and a continent away, I can still hear it.

Why We Run....

Rain was pelting the narrow streets of Dogo as my friend Kurihara and I left the local high school gym where we had just played volleyball in our Saturday evening PTA league. "I sink race cancelled," he said looking at the sky as a howling wind turned his umbrella inside out. The next morning we were both to run a Sunday road race in nearby Iyo City. This was an event substituting for the one I had really wanted to run---the Shikoku 10K championship--but alas, the registration deadline for that had passed and so Kurihara had somehow dredged up this local race as an alternative. He had entered the 1K and I had opted for the "long run"--a 3K. I was surprised to hear that weather might cancel a race. In my experience anyway that never happens in the U.S. (especially Ithaca) where races are run in every conceivable condition. So as the wind shook the glass doors of our apartment that night, I went to bed thinking that Sunday would be a vastly different day than I had imagined.

It was. The day dawned cloudy in Matsuyama but a bright blue sky was clear in the south over Iyo City. Sure enough, Kurihara called at 8:00 a.m. to say the race was a go and off we went--we two aging stallions plus our support team, Jan and his wife Fumi Kurihara. Since the race was to be staged about a mile from our zen temple Fuku-den-ji, Jan and Fumi walked to the temple while Kurihara and I jogged to the race staging area. It was a junior high school with no obvious porta-potties in sight. As any runner reading this knows, elimination strategy, as it were, is a major pre-race concern, especially if you're like me and drink at least 5 big cups of strong green tea before every competition. The matter had become quite, well, pressing, as I waited in line at the registration tables. Kurihara had disappeared as is sometimes his wont which was a big problem for me since as a Jewish person I have trouble even acknowledging the fact that people have to, you know, go to the bathroom or whatever and I'll be damned if I was going to go up to a Japanese person I didn't know and act out my request. Fortunately he reappeared just as I completed registration and I was able to mumble, "Kurihara-san, toilet, one-gai-shimasu!" It turned out to be about 10 feet away from me and THAT is yet another reason why I am finally trying to learn how to read basic signs around here.

That duty completed, as it were, it was time for my next pre-race ritual--peering at people likely to be opponents, namely the bald, the gray, the lame and halt at this point for me. There were more than a few likely customers, most of them wearing running suits, plus a bunch of kids wearing baseball uniforms. Obviously there was going to be a "fun run" for the kids before the main event. (I've always balked at that term "fun run." I mean if it's fun, you aren't running hard, right!) A few of the competitors were smoking prior to the race, something I've seen before in Japan and it's something I love because it probably means I get to do something I rarely have a chance to--kick BUTT in a road race(!)

A horn sounds and Kurihara motions me into the gym where the entire field is lining up in rows single file. I've only been to a few Japanese races but what always seems to happen is everybody lines up to hear ringing speeches by officials and then the entire group including the speakers who are always nattily attired is led in a series of exercises by a coach in a gym suit. Today was no exception. After 6 speeches (the last one from the principal of the school, Mr. Kurihara informs me), a supple-looking young lady in a white exercise suit leaps to the stage and leads us all in stretching exercise climaxed by about 10 minutes of Tai Chi which was just glorious. It's so much fun to see the school principal doing all the exercises next to little lads in
baseball caps and uniforms doing exactly the same thing.

But now it's time to run and I'm getting excited. The first race, Kurihara's 1K is in 10 minutes. We walk out to the staging area and there is the usual bustle of people roping off the finishing area, a loudspeaker being set up, a few runners warming up. About 25 kids who couldn't be more than 10 are at the starting line. Something is weird. I look at Kurihara and jokingly ask him if he thinks he can beat any of these little guys and he is looking serious and suddenly I realize this IS his race. There are 4 adults in his heat and 25 kids. Obviously the more serious people like me are waiting for the 3K. The gun goes off and Kurihara at the back of the pack follows 25 little fellows in baseball hats on to a road winding up a hill. (I hasten to add for the
edification of any runners reading this. that Kurihara is not a "runner," in the sense that he trains. He does jog a few times a week and is a terrific athlete, but running is not his thing. That would be golf and more on that in a subsequent posting.) Anyway, that said, I'm at the finish waiting for the leaders to round the bend and then there are about 10 little tiny kids followed by a huffing puffing Kurihara who has, indeed, copped First Adult.

I meet him at the end of the chute, congratulate him and then ask him to hold my sweats because it's almost time for my race. I mosey over to the start and see about 25 kids (about 12-14 years old) wearing baseball uniforms. There a few other men, but that's it.... Nada. Nobody home. Like it or not, I'm in...God help me...a FUN RUN!

It turns out just about all the "competitors" I had been sizing up during the warm-ups were just parents wearing running suits which are ubiquitous in Japan. I look around for a hole to crawl into. Perhaps aliens will abduct me at this moment. Wait a minute, wouldn't this be a GREAT time for an earthquake? But, no, it's me, 4 other men, two of whom are smoking, and 25 kids in baseball hats! I am 54 years old. I am the ONLY person in the race wearing shorts, not to mention a High Noon singlet. There is one other guy with gray hair but he is putting out his pre-race cigarette when I shoot Jan who has just returned from the temple a horrified smile. She in turn looks at me like I am wearing a Little Red Riding Hood outfit or a Godzilla suit at a Presidential Reception. There is just NO way out of this...no way but to run.

So I did. The gun goes off and I follow 25 boys in baseball uniforms up the windy mountain road. I'm wondering how to finish this thing with at least a smidgeon of honor intact. I mean I could just drop out and run home, but Iyo City is about 15 miles from Matusyama and frankly there are NEVER any 54 year old men wearing little running shorts and racing singlets who can't speak the language and don't have a single yen in their pants at any given moment in this area. I might well have been arrested on suspicion of being a nut (okay, no comments!)I decide the least embarrassing approach is win my age group and finish 4th behind the first three ballplayers. Well, I've won my age group about 25 yards out of the gate so, that rather modest goal accomplished, I pick my way ahead through the pack of fledging Ichiro's and pull in behind number runner #5. The leader really is a pretty good runner with a nice stride. He is bigger and stronger than his teammates and he has the look of a winner. (Ironically it is a BEAUTIFUL course, snaking through rice fields, beds of daikon and cabbage, and some of the prettiest broccoli I've ever seen. You knew this was going to be about food at some point, right?) The wind has blown the clouds away and you can see the roiling Inland Sea about 5 miles away, the islands masking Hiroshima looming in the bright blue distance.

Things are working out for me as planned until about the end of the first mile when suddenly it appears that runners #2,3 and 4 have each just been handed a piano, as a legendary runner Rick Cleary once put it, and they are now kind of staggering instead of running. I really have no choice but to put myself about 15 yards behind the leader and just enjoy the scenery. Then this kid puts a move on and it starts to get fun. I get within 10 or so. He hears me behind him, shoots me a startled look, and surges again. At about 300 yards from the finish, his right shoelace comes untied. Having made this mistake myself about 24 years ago in a race (and now I ALWAYS tie triple knots)I felt sorry for him and backed off. To his credit he kept up his pace, just widening his stride so he would lessen the chances of stepping on his shoelace. About 25 yards from the finish, I figured I might as well push a little and make him earn his victory. But as I crept up on his right side, damned if he didn't move over and even poke an elbow out at me to keep me back. Now of course if this had been a real race, I probably would have stepped on his trailing shoe lace, (well, not really, but you shouldn't elbow people in a race). However this was, after all, a FUN RUN, so I backed off and we finished a few yards apart.

He turned around to me in the chute, said something that I couldn't understand (probably,"Old men shouldn't look so foolish, you should be terribly ashamed!") and bowed to me slightly. I bowed back and then tried to pass through the finish area as quickly as possible so we could leave before the awards. But Kurihara would have none of that. Any race that starts with speeches from school officials takes its awards ceremony pretty seriously I guess and sure enough, we both had to trot up there, Kurihara for First Adult in the 1K and me for First Adult in the 3K.

And when I think about it, this race really did live up to its name. It was a run...and it sure was fun.

Mr. Kurihara's Volleyball Party

"Many New Year's parties tonight. Matsuyama very busy," explained my friend Kurihara as he threaded his way through a maze of cars, pedestrians, bikers and shi-den (trolley cars). Indeed downtown Matsuyama, neon blazing, was doing a pretty good imitation of the West Village in New York on a Saturday evening. Kurihara's English is very limited but he always seems to be able to convey what he means if not in words then through a mixture of words and gestures punctuated by laughter. I learned that this was the evening that many groups such as teams or businesses had their annual parties which is why Kurihara, his friend Fuji-san, and I were on our way to the banquet of our Women's Volleyball League. He explains this will be a two-stage evening--dinner from 7-9 and then something fun that involves music from 9-12:30.

Actually, I thought it was a Women's Volleyball League because 80% of the players are women. But it's not. The league I joined turns out to be an offshoot of the local PTA and, not unlike PTA's in the U.S., the majority of members are mothers. The league is supervised by "Coach," a rollicking mountain of a Japanese man who clearly has some volleyball experience. He leads the intense one-hour work-outs prior to the games and then joins one team or another during the competition. I'm happy to report that my play so far, if not artful, has been acceptable and I can
still outjump some 5' 2" elementary school mothers (okay, not all.

Kurihara, still a virtual child of about 45, is the best player on the court. Having played softball and golf with him during my previous stay, I knew he was like a cat, very quick, strong and flexible. He hasn't lost too much over the intervening years even though he had a bout with stomach cancer in the interim. He lights up the volleyball court with his spirit. It is clear that the other PTA members adore him. As we enter the banquet room above a popular restaurant, people cheer when they see Kurihara come in. Alas, I see the one thing I don't like about Japan, a traditional low Japanese dinner table which means I'm going to be in pain one way or another for the next two hours or so. There is NO way I can get comfortable sitting on the floor; not even a cushion can solve the problem. However, I am buoyed by what I see ON the table--gyoza, fresh tako (octopus) fried chicken tenders, tofu in all sorts of guises, about 6 different kinds of vegetables and a squadron of Kirin Lager Big Boys. And that's just for starters....

About 25 PTA volleyball players wind up seated around this table. I should note that nobody's spouse is present. This is apparently more the rule than the exception in Japan. Apparently, you tend to socialize wth your friends, male or female, and you generally hang out with your spouse in family situations. The little I know of Japanese social customs, at least in Matsuyama, there seems to be a great premium placed on being a "team member," whether that be sports, games, or social groups. But I digress...and food is on the table. Forgive me...

In what I am learning is classic Japanese style, I am well taken care of, seated between Kurihara and the one woman in the league who can speak a little English, Ume-san. The meal commences with a few speeches, one by the league President, one by the Coach and as we all toast his words, the President is looking directly at me and Kurihara mutters, "Mistah Ken, speech now!" As Ume-san translated, I thanked them for the joy of letting me join and apologized profusely for my poor play so far and then, well, let the gyoza begin!

New platters appear every few minutes, some heaped with sweet and sour pork, others with tempura battered shrimp and vegetables. The Kirin Big Boys are decimated quickly but reinforcements arrive and many people are ordering strange-looking orange or blue or chartreuse drinks disguising Japanese vodka, my new friend Ume-chan informs me. Kurihara is enjoying a plum wine spritzer while the Coach at the other end of the table is turning rather red gesticulating in front of a team of empty Kirin Big Boys. Meanwhile, the people around me are asking me to guess their ages. Now there's a high-risk game--publicly guessing the ages of women whom you don't know in a foreign culture. They all look to be in their low 30's so I always guess high twenties and they turn out to be almost 40, most of them.

But before anybody grows any older, the party ends abruptly at 9:00 sharp, just as billed. Apparently two groups are forming. I ask Kurihara what's up and he says pointing to the Coach and a cluster around him, "Drinking group!" He then points to himself and says, "Singing group. Mistah Ken which one?" I ALWAYS choose music when confronted with this conundrum (I mean you can drink while you play, right?) And about 15 of us walk through the bustling streets towards the Four Roses Karoake Palace. I've passed this place dozens of times but never gone in. It is a building several stories high just filled with Karaoke studios Our group has rented a "VIP Lounge" which is a comfortable room containing a huge table in front of couches lining the
back wall, all aimed at a very large TV/sound system unit. There are several well-thumbed volumes of song titles, all numbered and one of them, Thank God, is in English. We have two hand-held wireless mikes and some gizmo that summons up the desired song. This thing has
another nice feature. You press a button and a waiter magically appears. This works pretty well because all of sudden there is an array of snacks on the table, lots of pastel colored drinks and some more Kirin Lager Big Boys.

It is situations like this that have finally gotten me to confront a small problem I have here, namely that I can't speak the language. It is really easy to enjoy life as what amounts to a music-playing sports monkey, but ultimately it is frustrating. So I'm taking my first official Japanese lesson tomorrow. I just want to be able to say a few things that come to mind here just about daily such as, "Temple, Shmemple, where is the fried Tako stand?" or "Thank you so much for this garish and useless trinket commemorating the lovely afternoon we have just
spent together" or "I am so unlucky man because my wife refuses to dust now that I have arrived," or perhaps, "Mr. Kurihara, why are you wearing bug antennae?"

In characteristic fashion, Kurihara has pulled out a headband to which are affixed long black antennae crowned with red balls. Look, I don't know either, so don't ask. He has also produced two "Chicken Shake" samba eggs that get tossed around the table depending upon who is
singing what.

Kurihara says, "Mistah Ken first song." I had been feverishly leafing through the English listings to find the PERFECT song. To my horror, there was no Beatles section, but there was the blessed Clapton in the "C" section, so I choose "Tears in Heaven" which I know many Japanese
people like. The screen flickers to life and there are the obligatory crazy images that characterize the videos that accompany the lyrics in Japanese Karaoke systems, a hallucinogenic mix of couples walking on sandy beaches being pelted by blue cartoon rain, people staring
wistfully at sunsets, butterflies all over the place, race cars, cows.... The familiar acoustic guitar lick kicks off "Tears in Heaven" and we're off. The system has super reverb (which of course is very forgiving if a singer goes a little flat or sharp) and you can sing as loud as you want because the little gizmo that orders the waiter also has a volume button. Everyone seems to like that song and I hand the mike to Takafuji-san, an ex-Buddhist monk who is now some sort of
businessman. He sings a very nutty Japanese hit that everybody (except me) knows all the words to. Then one of the women sings a wistful Japanese love song and hands the mike to Kurihara.

"Now Unchained Melody togezzer," he says as he takes one mike and hands me the other. He has a rich baritone voice right from the heart and he sure doesn't need me to sing this song which is his wife's favorite, but I think I know what he wants, namely for me to help him with that one really high note which blued-eyed Bobby Righteous hits in the end when he sings, "Are you still mine....? I-eeee NEEEEED your love." It works great. Kurihara sings, "Are you still mine....? I-eeeeeee......" Then I hit "NEEEEEED your love" right on the nose or close to it thanks to the reverb and he comes right back with "....God speed your love...." almost as if we have rehearsed it.

Everybody has sung at least one song when the door bursts open and the Coach lurches into the room bellowing. Everybody is delighted to see him. The gizmo is pressed. A huge orange drink appears and he throws me a mike, keeps one himself and starts a song that is in Japanese but
has English words in it. Everytime an English word appears I sing it and the Coach just thinks this is the funniest thing, shouting out, "Engrish coming. Engrish coming, Mistah Ken!"

With the Coach definitely in my corner I fulfill a lifelong dream and sing "Can't Help Falling in Love with You," the whole song, not just the first verse which is the only one I usually remember. Finally, it is time for the last song and I have a request. When last I was in Japan, Kurihara used to always sing "My Way" in Karaoke or live music situations. I had waited 8 years to hear this again. He looked serious all of a sudden and crossed his arms in front of his face in the universal gesture that means No, but with a little arm twisting, he agreed. The room quieted down, even Coach.

And Kurihara began to sing.... I believe we all were thinking the same thing, how he had fought cancer, "took the blows," as the song goes, and won. He rips off the bug antennae and throws them in the air as the music swells and he hits the final, triumphant, "I did it MY Way." And the room, silent throughout, erupted in applause as Kurihara, a little smile on his face, gently puts the microphone down. He's the kind of person you want on your team.

A Beginner in Matsuyama

There is something to be said for going through life as a chronic beginner (as suggested by D.T. Suzuki in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind). Living in Matsuyama and recognizing only a few Japanese words presents obvious problems, but on the other hand it opens up a lot of doors. Unable to communicate with words, I’ve been forced to explore some previously undiscovered territories, you know, bizarre concepts like politeness, patience, listening with my ears instead of my mouth…strange stuff indeed for me. And my charades skills have become downright astounding.

Not being an expert in anything, I can’t tell you unequivocally that being a beginner is at least as enjoyable but something tells me it is. For example, I went to a lecture by a Japanese zen master visiting from Catskill, New York, of all places. Jan was busy that evening so I had resigned myself to soaking up the atmosphere as opposed to understanding anything except the initial Kom-baa-wa, but a friend from our zen group had, unbeknownst to me, enlisted the aid of a local English teacher to sit next to me and softly translate as the monk spoke. Bottom line: I actually understood a lot of what was said and wound up offering my “services,” such as they are, to this nice guy the English teacher and so I’ll be visiting another school, guitar and sax in hand, soon. Oh, that’s my new career, by the way.

On Monday I went to a junior high school for children with various kinds of disabilities. I “taught” English to three teenagers in wheelchairs, one with hydrocephaly and something else going on that had withered his body, one with what appeared to this beginner as cerebral palsy and another with something in between the other two. These kids who can barely speak Japanese due to their disabilities are learning English, slowly, albeit, but they are.

Sometimes it took them a long time to answer, especially Takeshi the one in the middle chair who had trouble forming words. And when they didn’t know the answer to the questions (e.g., Does your mother like chocolate?”) we’d all laugh, just like they did when I attempted to introduce myself in Japanese. We finished the session with some songs. They know ALL the words to the Carpenter’s “Top of the World “ (so does EVERYBODY else in Japan, by the way) and then a music teacher stopped by to play “Yesterday” on the piano while I played sax. We finished with “When the Saints,” the kids playing tambourines and rattles. I was just exhausted at the end of the hour and now have at least a glimmer of an understanding of what a teacher has to do to keep momentum going in a class.

Then I “taught” a music class for about 20 older kids, all in wheelchairs, some wearing helmets, I guess indicating intractable epilepsy or some other nervous system disorder. I’ll spare you the note-by-note transcription but suffice to say “Country Roads” was a big hit, once again just about everybody especially the teachers (there was about a 2-1 ratio in this school) knowing all the words. At the end, a little guy who had been clutching a plastic guitar throughout the class was wheeled over to me. One of his hands was nonfunctional. He had intelligent eyes and a big smile on his face and the teacher said he wanted to speak with me. I knelt down. It took him a long time to form the words but he said, “I…love…you…guitar. Please. Come….back.” And then he offered me his good hand to shake…. At that moment I learned something else about teaching--why I want to go back to this school next week and why I learned a lot more from these kids than they did from me.

Yesterday, Igaue-san, my musical Svengali who runs the Moonglow Café, one of the places where I play around here, took me and his trio “on the road” to a Reform School on the outskirts of town. The boys at this facility are not hardened criminals. They are kids who made stupid mistakes and got caught (“Ooops, how did I get into stolen car?” or “Wait a minute I thought that was my handbag, I can’t believe it belongs to that hysterical shopper?”). Contrary to what some of you may think, prior to yesterday I had never been in a reform school so I have nothing to compare this too, but frankly, the gym looked like it was filled with a bunch of valedictorians instead of a captive audience. Each boy was wearing a fresh blue blazer, crisp white shirt, red tie, gray slacks and white sneakers perfectly tied. They marched into the room and sat down on command. But they didn’t seem stiff and really got into the show.

And it WAS a show. I never know what is really going to happen when I do something here if only because it’s impossible for people to tell me, even people like Igaue who does have some English. The trio started with a straight classical air. Igaue gave the crowd a short explanation, sat back down at the piano and suddenly the classic piece was swinging and he was improvising. He had been trying to explain what jazz does to a tune.

Then he introduced me (always as “Mr. Ken from New York,” which, though it hasn’t been the case since 1971, sounds a lot better than Mr. Ken from Ithaca. Igaue then asked me to “teach” some English. We had discussed this before and come up with the idea that I should teach these kids how to say “How are you?” and “Good bye” in two ways, one using the classic phrases above and the other in the vernacular used by kids their own age in the States, tu whit, “Wassup” and “Later, Dude.” Five minutes later, 100 Japanese juvenile delinquents dressed like American prep school boys were shouting, “Wassup” at me. I wish my Japanese teacher experienced success anywhere near this quickly… (Heta desu!)

We played a few more tunes and then Igaue, who always has some tricks up his sleeve, motioned the rest of us off the bandstand and demonstrated just that--actually chopsticks up his sleeve which disappeared to the befuddlement of the two reform schoolers who had been summoned to the stage to serve as his assistants. Coins emerged from their ears; he guessed the cards they were thinking about, and in the last trick, a boy pushed a pen through a 1000 yen note in plain sight and, lo and behold, the hole disappeared and the note was unscathed at the end. This trick was preceded by what seemed to be a serious soliloquy by Igaue. Later I asked him what he had said. “I tell them their heart is the 1000 yen and bad judgment is the pen and they must make their hearts strong to prevent bad judgment from piercing their heart….”

The magician returned to his piano seat and we finished the set with some more jazz, “Stand By Me” and finally “When the Saints” (the refrain to which the reform school authorities had printed meticulously in the program) and the whole gym rocked as 100 plus Japanese juvenile delinquents pleaded to “be in that number when the saints come marching in….”

As we ended, the entire audience bowed to us as 4 of boys, each bearing a bouquet, walked slowly to the stage and with great dignity presented each entertainer with flowers. Then the principal motioned to the boys and with one voice they shouted, “LATER, DUDE….” Gee, and I was expecting Sayonara! (By the way, I should point out that it is quite natural here for men to receive flowers after performances or speeches. The Igaue band played a big department store this afternoon and at the end of the concert one of my volleyball teammates ascended the stage and presented me with a dozen pink roses. After the second show, another woman presented me with chocolates. Actually, they were quite good. I could get used to this!)

The next night Igaue invited Jan and me to be special guests on his weekly national radio show “Embrace Jazz,” which is kind of a potpourri of music and talk. There is no room for a piano in the NHK studio allotted to this show since it is slightly smaller than a baby grand from wall to wall, but he does bring a little plastic keyboard powered by a tube through which the player blows. It only has about 16 keys, severely limiting his technique and it cuts out if he plays more than 3 notes at once but somehow we managed to play “Route 66” live, accompanied by the show’s producer Nokata-san who did a very nice scat singing solo. The highlight for me was introducing a Stan Getz tune just like a real DJ. The low point: playing “Route 66” live AFTER the Stan Getz tune. Talk about a tough act to follow. I did NOT get flowers this time.

Jazz is Igaue’s life and not surprisingly he is always improvising. Since the “riff” on American teenage slang seemed to have gone over well at the reform school, he tried it live on the radio. I mean if 100 juvenile delinquents in a Matsuyama reform school think something is funny, the entire Japanese nation should too, right? So we run through the “Wassup” and “Later, Dude” routine on the air live. The next morning at the tennis court, two ladies to whom I have only bowed hello in the past greet me with “Wassup, Ken-san?” amid much tittering. And as I’m leaving, an 85 year old guy and his partner (who had just beaten me and my friend Iwata-san in doubles!) bow and say, “Later, Dude!” I guess it is never too late to be a beginner….

########################################################################