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For some reason I always think it's
a better idea just to hit the color
ball with the stick, no need for the
middle man in my game, sorry
mister white ball. |
Let me tell you, the Japanese have the art of taking their hobbies and perfecting them to a tee. Whether it be bowling, pool, guitar, cooking, dancing, or any sort of activity you can think of, these people dedicate themselves to it. For instance; I went out to play pool with some of my buddies the other night after my second interview with Gaba. Now, I failed geometry and therefore fail at pool so anyone who can successfully get a ball into a hole is a pro in my eyes. That said, I don't really know what goes into, or how to become a professional pool player. But let me back this up a little bit; the environment.
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I swear i'm going to loose a lung to
Japan's bad habits. |
The place we played at was on the second floor of this shabby building, and the room was even shabbier. The walls, which I'm assuming where once white were now stained yellow because smoking is allowed, which is one thing that is very hard to get over for someone who doesn't smoke. From coffee shops to game centers, almost everywhere allows smoking in Japan (except for recently, a lot of areas have banned smoking on the street...?) so when I go out with friends, it feels like I end up smoking their pack of cigarettes with them. But it's just one of those things that you have to put up with or suffer having no social life. Anyways, I digress. Yellow walls, grimy carpet, cardboard over some of the windows and the other windows look out to the grey grimy wall of the next building. In America, one would expect to find a bunch of hard-core, hairy bikers (you know the sort) guzzling booze and starting fights. Here in Japan however, despite it's appearance, it is a totally family friendly environment! They had a vending machine that sold coke products, not beer, they played nice music, and it was fairly cheap ($4.00 for two hours or something). The place was pretty full that night as well, and almost all of the other players freakin' had their game on. I had to try and ignore everyone around me as I played so that I didn't get intimidated.
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| picture this guy, except with Ichiro's face. |
I've noticed this a lot with other activities; there are so many amazing guitar players here for instance, as well as a crap ton of dancers that practice in front of the station late at night who all move like pros to me. I wonder if it's because of the whole "work hard, play hard" mentality they have here, or if it's partly due to being raised in an environment where people are expected to give their all when it comes to anything they do (which isn't a bad thing at all! I wish more people were like this, but they don't call it a "hobby" for nothing). I don't know, and I know this doesn't apply to everyone because I know there are a lot of lazy/ordinary shmucks out there too but it just seems that almost everyone I see/meet/watch on TV (they have a lot of talent TV shows here) is completely dedicated to one thing and are extremely good at that one thing. At Waseda alone, there are hundreds of clubs that practice/meet everyday it seems, and these clubs are usually more important than school itself. For instance, the gym at my school is in the basement of this one building that I think is dedicated to music/dance practice studios and it's always packed, which is a little annoying when it comes to the music practices because it's a bunch of different instruments playing different things all at once, creating this awful cacophony of noise that you can hear all the way down to the basement. One problem I have though, when it comes to the preforming arts here in Japan is this; most people seem so concerned about technique and playing/preforming things per-fectly that they lack in passion. For instance;
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| "some people just collect baseball cards" |
After playing pool, me and my buddies were a bit hungry so we wandered around Baba (city name) in search of something cheap and delicious. We eventually found ourselves at this Spanish restaurant named Familia (located near the train station for those who are interested). The food was definitely delicious; the price though, hurt a little bit.This place occasionally has Flamenco shows and it just so happens that this night was Flamenco night (which is why the price was so high because they had a table charge of $15 freakin' dollars!!). There were only my group and a threesome of old people there (hence the table charge) but it was exciting none-the-less. There was a guitar player, a singer, two dancers, and not a Spanish person in sight. They were all Japanese but for some reason (the singer said it was because of the rhythm) they all decided to learn the art of Flamenco. Not being able to speak Spanish, I have no idea if the singer's Spanish was any good/made any sense but, he fooled me either way.
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pfft, I wish this is what we ate! Thanks
to limited understanding on the
Japanese end however, we
ended up eating pasta. lol |
Now the dancers (here's were I go into the lacking passion for the sake of preforming to a tee), one lady I thought had to be at least halfies Spanish or Latina or something, for she was incredible! Full of life, and passion (there's that word again) and just watching her I could tell that this was what she lived for. You could see it plainly in her face when she was dancing, that nothing else could make her happier than that moment. Her movements were one with the music (I know, cliche, but no less true!) and it was all in the hips baby. Just a phenomenal performance. Turns out she's full Japanese and has only been to Spain once for vacation.
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| Like, seriously. The guitar player kinda looked like this too. |
The second lady on the other hand, not so much. She had rhythm and knew that steps but she lacked, you guessed it, passion. Her expression was stony (perhaps concentrating too much?) and her movements where stiff. Perhaps she hasn't been doing it as long as the other lady, perhaps this was her first performance, I don't know. I just know that the other lady was a lot more pleasing to watch. I got this same sort of feeling when I was at that salsa club forever ago. All the people from Central America regions, etc obviously had dancing in their blood, whereas the Japanese people simply just had the steps memorized.
Perhaps you might be thinking "well Jamie, everyone knows that no one can rival the Spanish/Latinos/etc in the art of dance!", or maybe "well, it's (this style of dancing) just not part of the Japanese culture so obviously it doesn't come naturally to them" and you're right, so let me give you another example. Bands.
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You can play his solos, but
can you rock like him? |
I was talking with another friend of mine about this the other night and he was telling me that a mutual friend of ours band was so stressed out about performing perfectly that they lacked character/charisma on stage, which is one of the most important things to have when in front of people (crowds can are like children and can sense weakness...or is that dogs?). I guess they had one show where they loosened up a bit and had a little more fun, but afterwards kept on repeating how much they sucked that night because of all the mistakes they made. I've noticed this behavior with some of my other friends who have done/are in bands and they wonder why their not attracting more fans. The time to play perfectly is when you're recording; all other times just have fun because if you're having fun, then the crowd is having fun no matter what you sound like (well okay that's not entirely true, speaking from experience that I don't really wanna go into but that some of you might recall).
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Do you think they give so much about what they sound like
on stage? No, but look at how many more fans they have
than you! XD |
Phew, that was a long rant. I guess what I'm really trying to say here is that people everywhere (not just Japanese, i'm only picking on them because i'm here), need to learn how to loosen up a bit. Life isn't about perfection. Have fun, and enjoy the moment.
-Jamie
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"Because winning isn't everything. It's
the only thing." |
