Japan: One Beat at a Time

Kim Bartos

Before coming to Japan I gave myself a few “must dos” in hopes to motivate myself to get involved with whatever community the JET Programme placed me in. Some of these included: starting a penpal service at the school, taking the JLPT, getting involved with local events, and joining one of the endless school clubs like martial arts, archery, or taiko!! I foolishly assumed these would all be available and more. So, you can imagine my surprise when I got my placement for Kosaka, a town with less than 5,000 people; subsequently placed in a school with a whopping 87 students and a total of four clubs. Ping pong, track and field, basketball, and band. At the time, if you googled Kosaka, not much appeared save for a pixelated image of Nanataki Falls. My mind started to short circuit. Would I be able to succeed in reaching some of my goals in such a small town? Why don’t they have an English club that I read about other ALTs being a part of? Every situation is different?!?!? Is there even Wi-Fi there?! Where am I going….?

Albeit a bit hazy and jet-lagged ridden, most of my worries subsided within the first week of arriving in the hot, blistering summer of 2018.

When asked the ultimate question, “Why did you come to Japan?” I made an effort to mention some of these goals, one of which seemed to catch on quickly and became the talk of the town. Kim-sensei wants to play taiko!! The Japanese drums! Much to my surprise, there is an active taiko group that plays at local festivals in Kosaka called アカシア太鼓 [AcaciaDaiko]. It’s a small, humble group mostly of middle-aged and older women who want to keep the traditional music alive in their town. Evidently they were thrilled to have fresh, young blood. The leader of the group, who happened to be the supervisor of the CIR in Kosaka at the time, came to me directly at work and asked me a million questions. One of

which sounded like an invitation to play. I had just arrived in Japan so my Japanese level was not at “Akita oba-san level” yet, so I just blinked like a doe caught in headlights and agreed to join. And I am so glad that I did.

Through this taiko group, I have been able to play at multiple cultural events and festivals, at nursing homes, at Korakukan (the oldest wooden Kabuki theater in Japan), and even at Kosaka Junior High School’s school festival. The latter is my most recent and by far most emotional performance. members were 6th grade boys. My students. Two tiny little beans that were too shy to look me in the eye. They are now taller than I am, openly crack jokes with me, and are preparing to take entrance exams into high school. Watching them grow while playing taiko together every Thursday has been a memory I will treasure in my heart for as long as I live. I already look back at photos of them and get all teary-eyed.

Being the grade they are in now, they have to switch their focus to studying for exams and whatnot. So, the performance at the school festival would be their final. Due to COVID-19, many of the performances we’d normally do together were cancelled, so opportunities and time to showcase our hard work were growing thin. Thanks to the efforts and strong-will of our leader, she was able to convince the school to let us play on the same day as the school festival.

A small notice about the performance was passed around the teacher’s office, surprising some when my name was included in the list of performers. What started off as just a small way to give these boys their last send-off, quickly became a bigger event with many people planning to come and watch. Due to the uncertainty of which events will be

cancelled and which will be held next year, as well as the strong chance I wont be renewing my contract, I took this opportunity to invite my friends too!

Our group played 7 songs in total during our performance. They were a variety of play-styles which require different positions and directions of our stances as well as the drums themselves. For some reason, my taiko leader thought it was a good idea to have me perform all 7 songs. For anyone who doesn’t know much about taiko, it isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to do for a long time. To create robust sounds against the drum head with the bachi, straight wooden sticks to play with, you must use great force and quite a lot of physical stamina. Needless to say, any photos of myself are going to be red-faced and sweaty. So, apologies for that. As if fate was trying to say “look at how hard I’m working!” my bachi split in half down the middle during the second to last song, and quickly forming blisters decided to flare deep, almost fakelooking, red.

When the performance came to an end, I looked out into the small but decent crowd and saw their obvious delight. I imagine many people were basking in the short return to normalcy. I had many people come up to me later and

THE AKITAN congratulate me on a great performance too. The support I got from my coworkers and friends filled me with confidence and pride that I haven’t felt in a long time.

I owe a lot to my experiences through Acacia-daiko. Thanks to this group, I was really able to truly become a part of the community. Even though Kosaka is a small town, it’s helped me grow so much as an individual, and I couldn’t be more thankful for that. I gained confidence in my Japanese, learned endurance and time management, and even learned how to take time for myself and when to say no. I hope to continue taiko wherever this grand adventure called life takes me next.