Kasa/Mix 2008

I don't even know how to begin to recap my wonderful trip to Sado Island to study dance, song and taiko drumming with the folks at Kodo. It was an amazing experience. It was a dream. It cannot be encapsulated in a blog post. Everyone I talk to says they can't find the right way to describe the trip to those who weren't there. There is so much internal reflection that needs to happen before coherent thoughts can get put down on paper, er, I mean, on the internet. But if I don't post something now, I won't ever get anything down. It's taken me three days to get this post out. So, I will just post my pics, and hopefully get thoughts down somewhere along the way. Pics are worth a thousand words, right?

We landed first in Tokyo and the were immediately whisked away to Kanazawa, a city on the western side of Japan. It took us 24 hours to get there, when all was said and done. The following day, we stopped at the Asano taiko factory, birthplace of my shime, home to great taiko craftspeople for 400 years. Here is a pic of some trees being seasoned for a few years before they are formed into the more familiar drums:
And a pic of one of the biggest drums I've ever seen, along with my RCW peeps and Toni, one of the tour leaders:
We got to take an unprecidented tour of the factory (no cameras, please). Then it was a short stop at the Asano drum store where the Kasamix participants cleaned out their bachi supply:
Our first real meal was at a noodle place, where we got to cook our noodles ourselves at tableside stoves. This was a real treat to me since I live for noodles:We spent a day in Kanazawa and we got to see the Kenrokuen park. And yes, that is me eating GREEN ice cream. I could have gotten chocolate, but chocolate is not green.Less than 24 hours later we were on the ferry to Sado Island, off the western coast and in the Sea of Japan. Isn't that a lovely name, The Sea of Japan?As I was standing there in the back of the boat I thought of my Dad, and what a great opportunity this would have been for him to troll for fish off the back of this big boy. Too bad I didn't have a good reel and a sturdy pole.

Welcome sign to Sado:
It was a long travel day, getting to Sado. After train and ferry, we where taken to an onsen in Ogi, a seaside town on the island of Sado. OMG, if I die and go to heaven there will be an onsen. An onsen is a Japanese hotsprings, or bath. You get right down to your humanity, stripping down to your birthday suit, bathing and soaking in hot water with the rest of your brethren, or your female ones anyway. It was the perfect way to strip away our modesty and shyness (since there would be little privacy during our stay on Sado anyway). I've decided there is nothing better in the world than a good, hot bath. After all that hot water, tour leader Crissy said the best part is sitting in the tatami room afterward with cold tea and ice-cream. Your body is relaxed, your soul refreshed. This is what absolute relaxation looks like:I'm telling you: this is heaven.

As if it couldn't get any better, we were taken to Hananoki, an inn owned by the same people who ran the onsen. This is the next stage of heaven. Clean, calm rooms with the sounds of insects chirping. People pay good money for recordings of those insect symphonies. We got to hear it live.Yes, that's the waxing moon up there in the sky.

The best part of the journey was yet to come, since we hadn't arrived yet at the Kodo Apprentice center. But before that, we arrived at the Kodo welcome center, which is the contact point between the public and Kodo proper. There they had demo drums and they let us pound away as much as we liked. I've never played such wonderful, authentic drums before.Oh, we could have stayed there for hours.

But if we did, we would have missed a very brief visit to Kodo village. They were rehearsing for their concert tour, so we could only stay a minute. They even played a song for us! (No cameras, please)
And then we needed to get to the kenshujo, or apprentice center. This is where apprentices train to audition into the Kodo taiko group. Much to my surprise, they were outside when we got there, playing music and giving us the warmest welcome I've ever received.
The kenshusei, or apprentices, were the ones who took really good care of us during our stay. They were responsible for housing us, for feeding us, for entertaining us, for protecting us (from man-sized insects, among other things), for making real life connections with us. Yes, the Kasa staff organized this trip, yes the Kodo staff made it happen, but it was the kenshusei who made this trip the worthwhile experience it was. Special props to Joe-san, our native English speaker and fellow countryman from the states. Hi, Joe!!! You are my most far-off reader of this blog. Thank you thank you thank you for welcoming us into your home, for making us feel a tremendous sense of welcome, for translating for us, for leading our excercises, for giving us the time of our lives. Thank you Joe-san. And thank you to your brothers and sisters. From my heart. Truly. Thank you.

Here is my room, one of the two ladies' rooms. What a great welcome:It's the little things, you know?? Actually, they put in so much time and effort to make things so perfect for us. I cannot imagine how much hard work that went into just feeding us 3 times a day. There were teams of people making sure things went right. All we saw was the love and the seamlessness of it all, but they were up when we were asleep. They worked while we played. They were working for days before we even got there, and probably days after we left. I felt a little bad because we wanted so much to connect with them and spend time with them and I saw that sometimes they weren't able to eat because we wanted to talk and they had to run off to work or practice before devouring a mouthful of food here and there.

We had a workshop our first day with the venerable Eiichi-san, legendary Kodo player and really great taiko teacher. You see this guy on stage and he is a god, and that's a little intimidating, but he made it so easy for us. Personality transcends language barrier. He kept saying, this is just a game! and then we would all relax and he would do his little Eiichi-dance and then we would stop stressing and have fun with our playing. We played kenshujo drums. Janet has a drum like these and I don't even want to touch it or even help her move it because I know its her most sacred baby. But we got to play them as joyously as we wanted:One of the most memorable experiences for me on this trip was that first night. As we were settling into our strange and new futons, Toni came in and said we ought to take advantage of the free drum playing time they had offered us. I grabbed my bachi and went out to where the drums were. It was joyful and free and lively and happy. Someone started playing matsuri basic beat, and everyone joined in. I started goofing off with my student and a former SJT player, and oh what fun it was! We traded drums and jumped and danced and soloed. Great fun. All spontaneous. Pretty soon the rest of the group was playing matsuri, and I said to my student: See! I told you! If you know how to play matsuri, you can play with any taiko player in the world! So true!And with that, the next days were filled with song and dance and taiko. Yoko-san had us singing our hearts out. I never sing in public! There were major breakthroughs in that workshop. Many of us (me included) were non-singers before the workshop, but with Yoko-san's gentle guidance, we became singers that day. One of the kenshusei, Shingo, just broke down with how overwhelming it was. His goal in life is to bring his passion for the arts to the rest of the world, and he saw it at work that day. Sniff.

Chieko-san taught us Hachijo style taiko and dance. Beautiful. I think one of the most basic, yet profound things she taught us was how to bow and greet each other. I think that is so important. Before the trip I had asked Crissy and Janet to teach me how to bow, but we never had the time, but Chieko-san's workshop showed me how and I am so grateful. I decided that I wanted to make that part of my own classes, and I think it's so important to show each other that sort of respect. I bowed when I was a student before, but I never felt like I had learned what I was doing before Chieko-san's workshop, and didn't feel like I could ask my own students to bow to one another without me knowing how or why.

I was given the great honor of being part of the Kasamix team that taught people the song Issho Ni, which Crissy, Toni and Janet composed to give to the Kasamix participants and kenshusei, and also to the rest of the world. We had to perform it in front of everyone and I was a tangle of nerves, but we pulled it off:Then I had to teach it and I felt really bad because there was hardly any time and Crissy and Toni said to just plow through it and hope for the best. I had the hardest part to teach. I don't like it when people get lost or left behind, but I had no choice. So, sorry to anyone out there who left my workshop frustrated. I would never do that in real life. But I think enough people got it, and everyone got to play and dance Issho Ni, which means together.

Sigh. I wish I could recount all the things that happened, but if I just sit here and try to think about how to write it down then I won't get any blog posted. Ok, moving on. . .

Crissy playing fue at a kenshusei rehearsal:Crissy is awesome. Have I ever said that? When Janet said that this Crissy-person was going to join Maze I felt a twinge of intimidation because after all, she is a former Kodo apprentice and former SJT, and I was a peon. But the first moment she walked through the doors at RCW she ran over and plopped down beside me and started chatting with me like an old friend, and before I knew it we were giggling away. We're still like that. I've always had so much respect for her experience and accomplishments, but going on this trip has made it so much more clear why I respect her.

Another one of the great honors was being able to watch the kenshusei perform for us. You could tell how much they loved to perform, and having 30 enthusiastic and supportive fans in the audience was probably great for them too. But not as great as getting to see them. They were so precise and simultaneously beautiful, it was hard to take them all in. I needed more sets of eyes:
This is shime tightening. Look at how badass they are:The last night they threw a giant party for us. We stayed up late taking goofy pictures, enjoying sake, each other's company, and eating!I took so many pics of food there are too many to post here. I tried everything, no matter how dubious it was. From the guts in steamed crabs, every kind of raw thing pulled from the sea, to natto (fermented soy beans). In fact, I ate natto almost every time they served it. People say it's gross and stinky, but I didn't notice any smell. The stringy consistency is a little weird, but mostly because you wonder if you still have cobwebs hanging out of your mouth after you take a bite. But I did good. Here is natto with some mustard and mystery green-goop:Also dubious were the bugs. Big ones. From praying mantises to dragonflies, to beetles to centipedes. There were horribly mean and gigantic wasps (Crissy got a nasty sting. She said it hurt, and you can drop a dumbbell on her head and she wouldn't say it hurt, but this bee-sting must have killed her because she admitted pain), as well as these babies, which scared me more than anything. This one's for you Alex:They have funny smiling goblin faces. That's not my hand. No way I'd ever get close to one of those. And this is a small one!

On the day we left we had a session for people to reflect on their experience. It was an emotional day. This trip meant so much to everyone. I would feel bad commenting on comments, since this was such an intimate and personal session. But there was love and appreciation. I don't think anyone left that session without a deep appreciation for our experience there at the kenshujo, and a deeper apprectiation for our lives in general.

We rushed to take as many pics as we could before we left:

And again the kenshusei pulled out their drums and played for us as we left. They even chased the bus all the way down the road until we were out of sight. Sigh.We visited the onsen again. As we were all sitting in a large circular tub, someone started singing, and we all joined in, our voices swirling together in the steamy air. It was beautiful. We had one more night at Hananoki, and were joined by the Kodo folks. Chieko dancing:At the port we were joined one last time by the Kodo folks. They played and danced and waved goodbye, waving long after the boat had left the port, until all you could see were streamers dancing in the wind, far off.Strangers at first. Friends now. What a wonderful opportunity. Thanks to Janet and her staff for their vision. Thanks to the Kodo folks for their wisdom. Thanks to the kenshusei for their wide-open hearts. Thanks to all the participants for their energy and comraderie. Thanks to everyone who believes in taiko as a vehicle to bring all walks of life together, Issho Ni.