Diary 4: Christmas Choir

I was invited to Christmas Concert by my landowner. Her daughter is a member of one of the big choirs in Vancouver. I sometimes heard her happy singing voice through the ceiling of my basement. She was going to perform on the stage as a member of youth choir.

On the same day, I heard there was big parade downtown to celebrate the days coming close to Christmas; consequently, some streets to the Orpheum Theatre were closed. My landlady said she took Skytrain for the first time in these few months. She usually uses a car. Arriving at the theater, I was surprised to see and enter the inside of the building. It looked proud of European architecture.

Our seats were on the third floor; the landlady said she was sorry because it was far from the stage. She had ordered the seats closer to the stage, but the family tickets seemed to be disadvantageous in the priority. I felt ashamed because I had joked in my mail to say thank for the invitation by writing that I couldn't find her daughter on the stage, I meant, because she might not be the same on the stage as usual. To my embarrassment, actually, we were not able to find her on the stage! I used my camera's enlarging function to find her among more than three hundred singers on the stage. Finally I found her standing near the stairs to take care of children on the stage.

The youth choir of about twenty members including her sang three songs: "Fum,Fum,Fum", "Christmas Lullaby", and "African Noel." It was beautiful sound. She sang impressively in the middle of the front line.  I took videos for her. The choir and chorus were by all generations from small children to senior citizens. The audience seemed to consist of their families, friends, and neighbours. I'm sure that it must be one  of the great events until Christmas as every house in the neighbour decorates the house with colorful lights. I enjoyed again an important part of West American culture.

There were a lot of kids with their parents, but no one made interrupting noises; they were all surprisingly in good manners as listeners. I thought they might get more used to participating in this kind cultural programs in churches than the children in Japan. I took a tour in the theater during the intermission. Kids were running around; I saw more kids in number than I had expected then. I saw a mother telling her child not to touch the mirrors on the walls with his hands.

Between the performances on the stage, the whole ordience stood up and sang Christmas songs such as "The First Nowell" and "See, Amid the Winter's Snow." I only stood up and hummed to the others.It was surprising and a lot of fun. It was a good way to feel religiously united as if we were in a church. It was my first and unusual experience to me. We stood totally six times.

Since moving to West Vancouver, my experience in the Western culture has been getting comperetively deeper.

Diary 3

I was invited to Halloween dinner by my landlady. She and her husband wanted me to experience children's activities in the Halloween night. During having dinner, a group of children from neighbourhood visit the houses to say "Treat or trick!". We welcomed seven or eight groups during the dinner, which were totally more than twenty children. Among the groups, there were teenagers who asked for canned food for Food Bank instead of asking for candy. I had listened to the lecture about Food Bank in the Friday workshop at ELI. The children were dressed up for a various characters, which made me enjoyable. Their parents were walking with them and enjoying watching them apart from them and sometimes instructed them what to do. They had spent so much for their children's clothes for this time of the year. In this areas (Dunbar, Vancouver), I feel strongly that people in this area (Dunbar, Vancouver) have tried to keep and develop their  community more friendly and comfortablly. My landlady's family, who are from diffeent culture, also try to get involved in the community. After dinner, we walked around the houses which were decolated humourously. People were dressed up in scaring clothes and making tricks  for children. They were talking happily until late at night. I had only known the facts about Hallooween from books or media so far, but I was lucky and happy to know it directly here.

Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet": Individuals and Families

In the period of Renaissance (14c-16c), lots of Giants like Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) were turned out and made a lot of creative jobs. They were not only experts of limited fields, but also multi-talented geniuses who were excellent in many fields at the same time. The free and liberated atmosphere of that age enabled humans to make extraordinary human development in such huge scale. I am interested in the description of humans by Shakespeare because he himself was one of the great playwrights in this period.

The love story of "Romeo and Juliet" has continued to be remembered among people and performed on stages or screens around the world as well as other works by Shakespeare(1564-1616). That is because it treated one of the comprehensive themes in terms of marriage or love, especially, the problem between the individuals and their families. This problem has been deeply rooted in religion, culture and succession of the family around the world.

The Western cultures were basically originated by Greece and Rome. However, they made revolutionary changes at Renaissance, and since then the importance of individuals has been swinging back and forth, and coming to the present situation. In such a process, the following words spoken by Juliet were truly significant and epoch-making and the words still sound new in some parts of the society.

'O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name! ...

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy.
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor any other part
Belonging to a man...

Here, she wants to liberate the individual (Romeo) from his family (Montague). She stresses the physical body of an individual compared with the family which has no body parts, but is an abstract and heavy pressure to the individual.

In the modern society, the word such as "family" and "love" seem to be talked softly and comfortablly. Ironically, these are now considered to be the last forts to protect humans from the dangers of the highly industrilized society. It seems that "the forts" have been getting more and more faragile in the excessively competitive societies.

Thanks to Romeo and Juliet, the problems between family and individual are no longer the severe obstacles to develop the freedom of human beings. However, some people insist to such old-fashioned, momentary ideas, which often causes serious problems to individuals around them. Other people only enjoy watching them expecting the happy endings.     

Happy?

Unexpectedly, I got confused and reconsidered my happiness while listening to his lecture. On the stage of “TED Talks”, Prof. Daniel Kahneman talked under the title of ” The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory,” which was very interesting to me because I had been thinking recently that I felt the happiest at the present in my life.

He says that there are two selves in terms of perception of happiness: “experiencing self” and “remembering self”. Between the two, “remembering self” is much more dominant when people feel happy. We keep what we are experiencing only for three seconds, and forget one after another; we can’t keep in mind every detail in the end. On the other hand, we remember a few things that are impressive in our experience. Therefore, when we consider whether or how we are happy, it depends only on what we have remembered. What is happiness? It varies from person to person; however, there are, at least, some basic conditions required from economic or public point of view, for people to feel happy as a whole. His idea of two selves would be useful to improve policies along with the development of polls such as Gallup.  

In my case, I said that I felt happiest now, which means that only my “remembering self” was judging so. In the end, he said happiness couldn’t be measured because people feel very differently concerning to how they feel happy.

I wrote a memoir of nineteen pages at the previous session. On that process, I reflected my life leading to the present situation. A memoir is a typical work of remembering self! A few months later, I noticed that I had written about the poverty of my family and of my life without using a word “poor”. Afterwards, I had chances to talk with my wife and my children while  travelling in Canada in August about moving to the apartment near UBC in September in order to completely change my way of life. I have spent time much freer than before. I have enjoyed doing my favorite things much more than before. I think I am living the happiest life now!

"2001: A Space Odyssey" : The Power of Symbolism

We have been learning some pieces of the stories that have based Western literature.

Without having the least basic knowledge, I would pretend to understand it only by touching

 the fragments of European culture. All I can do is nothing but to stand still in front of the

huge high mountains of the cultural works.

The power of symbolism! This is what I have been overwhelmed when reading some pieces

of Western literature here in North America. (Canadians look happy when they use this word

 instead of saying ‘Canada’.) They have the Bibles (New and Old), it’s preceded stories such as

the Epic of Gilgamesh, Ancient Greek Myths, and many classical works descended from them

 such as “Beowulf”. We can’t be momentarily careless even when reading titles of a piece of

poem. We recently read a long poem titled “David”. Here is Dr. David Bowman again, who was

also very brave.

This time, we watched “2001: A Space Odyssey” directed by Stanley Kubrick, I was at a loss

again in front of the black giant “monolith” on the moon, where the six men posed smiling to

take memorial photos. The bone thrown by one of apes, the origin of the mankind is also

symbolized, maybe, as the origin of the tools, which made human apart from other animals

distinctively, which also meant machines, computers, HAL 9000’s.

I remembered the picture of the fetus, the baby in the uterus, taken by Lennar Nilsson,

I had shown the pictures in his book when I taught my students at sex education. I had never

 thought I met him here again on the screen.

 I should have brought the book about Nietzsche from my bookshelf to Canada, which I

started to read just before I left Japan, when got interested in his philosophy saying “God

died” I had been looking for the firm theory of nonviolence which doesn’t rely on religions;

the theory without using the words of religions! I think humankind has not succeeded in

constructing the theory of nonviolence yet, except for some great religious people. On that

way, I met Nietzsche, who I heard criticized Christianity. Though I didn’t have to criticize

Christianity, I had been seeking for how we should deny violence completely in this society

and in this world.

Hal was not a complete machine after all: he read their lips in the dialogue between David and

 Frank; killed Frank; and rejected to let David into the station. In the battle between David and

Hal, I thought man defeated the machine for a moment, where I felt a hope. I thought human

beings still rely much on a small number of people who have been continuing individual efforts

 for the truth, or justice we have called. The movie showed us a lot of symbols in Western culture.

The more we learn, the deeper we would understand this movie.     

Diary 1

I was invited to Halloween Jack-0’-Lantern carving by the daughter of the landowner. She is a very lovely eighteen-year girl. She kindly expected me to contact with a part of Western culture. I liked this kind of activity.

We got in the car with her parents. The car driven by her mother arrived at the Kerrisdale Public Centre soon. There were no participants except for us yet; we were the first to arrive. While some women were preparing for the event, a few families entered the room one after another. There were five long tables covered with paper in the hall. On the desk at the wall, there were some sheets of paper with typical designs such as bats, cats, ghosts or skeletons. We could choose some among them and get photocopies of them.

What I was interested in first were the tools for the carving. I satisfied myself that Canadians had invented their specific tools for making it easier and enjoyable. Every culture has developed its own specific tools as we can see in the ethnic cuisines.

We chose two bigger sized pumpkins. Each family was allowed to use two ones. I had had an idea of a bat as my design; however, I found there it was too simple. I changed it into putting two bats diagonally. First, we had to cut out the top of the pumpkin. I cut it into a star shape, but the size of the star was too small to take  pumpkin seeds and other stuff easily out of the top!

Anyway, I enjoyed my first experience a lot like a little child.  

Diary 2

I was too late for the meeting with other students at fixed time at Granville Island for Writers and Readers’ Festival. The others had already entered the hall. There were no tickets sold there.

I gave up soon, and changed my mind and dropped in the farmers’ market. I was really lucky eventually because I found Korean chestnuts there, which I had never thought I could see in Vancouver. (Read another article about the sweet)

We call it “kuri” in Japanese. The quantity of the chestnuts of the year affected the number of the times of bears’ appearance to human areas. Recently a lot of bears have appeared in front of humans and people are scared when walking around mountain villages. Bears eat a lot of nuts including chestnuts before the hibernation. Depending on the weathers, it was sometimes harder for me as well to get chestnuts at the supermarkets in Japan.

Around this time of the year, I want to cook chestnuts in a traditional way I showed the other day. Japanese traditional sweets, wa-gashi, is strongly connected with its season, because it has something to do with tea ceremony (sa-do).

My mother learned how to cook it for the first time in my family from my co-worker’s wife many years ago. The couple had been already dead, and my mother has been old and ill for a long time. Instead, I tried to remember the recipe a few years ago and made it sure by checking websites. I tried at home kitchen over and over again until I completed my recipe.

When I found the chestnuts labeled “Korea chestnuts” in the market, I was already imagining their soft and sweet taste spreading in my mouth. “Oh, I can do it here!”