Koto

I was putting the finishing touches onto my Christmas English bulletin board (see above) when Ms. N, the music teacher, came up to me.

“Jaimie Sensei!” she said. “Do you know koto?”

“Um. . . “ (think think think) “. . . no.”

She mimicked strumming a stringed instrument with one hand, facing down.

“Like a guitar?” I asked.

“Mmmm. . . . ” (That means no.) “Do you know ‘Sakura’? Famous Japanese song?”

“Um . . . “ (think think think) “. . . no.”

“Come to the music room!” she said. “One, three or four time.” (First, third or fourth period.)

I didn’t know what a koto was, but I had first period free, so, dropping my bulletin board materials on my desk and putting off preparing for next week’s Christmas lesson for another day, I followed her up the stairs and into the music room.

I am impressed with my school’s music program: three huge rooms take up half of the third floor, two filled with instruments and one a large empty space where the band practices (and where I was serenaded a few months ago). Today we went back into the large room, its wooden floors covered today in large musical instruments I had never seen before, propped up between two chairs. They were long and wooden, with 13 strings made of white twine. They strings were numbered 1-13 on the side. White plastic Eiffel-Tower-shaped legs held up the strings, and, I discovered later, could also be moved to tune the instrument.

(Picture from http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00717/pages/instruments.html, not from my camera. Also, it says the picks are called tsume, which, I want to say, means fingernail in Japanese.)

“Dozo, dozo!” Ms. N waved me in cheerily. A woman I didn’t know, well-dressed but with what looked like exceptionally long claw fingernails, was already inside.

“Jaimie sensei, this is T-sensei,” Ms. N told me, then introduced me in rapid Japanese to the long-fingernailed woman. I caught “ALT” so I smiled and said yoroshiku onegaishimasu politely. She smiled back.

Ms. N shooed me over to the instrument in the back of the room. I sat in front of it, not knowing what to do. I was given three picks, which turned out to be what Ms. T had on her fingers as well: inch-long plastic fingernails fitted into red leather holders. I put one on my thumb and two on my index and middle fingers but didn't touch the koto.

Then the ichinensei (first year, 12-and-13-year old) students filed in. There was a twitter of “Jaimie-sensei!”, some awkward smiles, and a couple of rowdy, “Hello!”s at first, but they got settled in after a while. I sat through my first all-Japanese class like a real ESL student (or JSL student, as the situation would have it). First the bow, then the lecture, then the practice. I understood the word “rhythm” but the rest of the lecture was pretty incomprehensible.

When it came time to play, though, I felt great. We started off strumming up and down to get a feel for the instrument. The strings were more difficult to pluck than a regular guitar string, but the sound, if I played it with the right strength, was clear and strong. We started right off with a song that only used the sixth and seventh strings, written on the board in Japanese: 七六七六六七七六. (seven six seven six six seven seven six).

After that, our class was given free reign to make up our own songs. I composed a nice Asian-sounding melody before class ended, feeling proud of myself. And after class finished, Ms. T came over and showed me the famous “Sakura.”

When I walked into my second period class, I saw that I was teaching the same ichinensei group that I had just learned koto with. The English lesson for the day was the following introductions:

Her name is Jaimie.

She lives in Takasaki.

She is my English teacher.

She is good at piano.

She likes books.

She is 28 years old.

When we got to the “is good at” part, Mr. T wrote on the board, “She is good at koto” and everyone laughed.