Vignettes — Oberlin Shansi

By Risako Beddie ‘23, JFOU Fellow 2023-2025

Home, at Last:

There I was, one overweight suitcase in each hand, stumbling into the Haneda Airport lobby on a hot July afternoon to find my mother, curiously sporting a stylish bucket hat, waiting patiently by a sign that read, Narita EXpress →. I was scheduled to fly a day earlier, but managed to miss my 8am flight out of Cleveland the first time due to a combination of my own stupidity and a hair dye emergency. Punctuality was never my strong suit, but thanks to the grace of Ted Samuels who calmly talked me through the disaster and the kindness of the agent at the Delta counter who rebooked my ticket for free, I made it halfway across the world in one piece. It’s not easy to move your life to a foreign country, but it helps when you have the support of kind strangers, the Shansi organization, and most importantly, your patient family.

Time for a Trip:

After an only slightly overwhelming orientation process at J.F. Oberlin University, my co-fellows Leo, Zach, and I decided to get away from the intense nothingness of Machida in search for cooler weather. We took a scenic train ride out to Chichibu, a city nestled in the heart of the Okuchichibu mountain range. We bonded over a 3-hour hike, a high ropes course, good food, and good beer while staying at a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn complete with futon mattresses and yukata robes. I learned a lot about my co-fellows this way, including Boulderite Zack’s ability to climb mountains like a goat without a drop of sweat while singing to scare bears away, and San Franciscan Leo’s ability to find the most interesting thing to add to your trip itinerary (zip lining in the mountains!).

9/13/2023: Before and and after our hike up to Mitsumine Shrine in Chichibu

New Friends, New Music:

At least once a week, when I am done teaching class, I make the ~1.5 hour commute to the city center to attend jams, concerts, and spend quality time with the family mascot. I hop a 30-minute bus to Machida station and take the Odakyu rapid express train into Shinjuku for about 40 minutes, often while listening to and trying to learn a new tune or solo. My first performance as a vocalist in Tokyo was a duo-set at a Tex-Mex restaurant in Daikanyama, the Brooklyn of Tokyo, with an incredible guitarist, Erika. We first met at another friend’s performance and that night, she took me to my first jam session where I was blown away by her musical skill. It worked out because she had just gotten back from studying abroad in San Francisco, and I had also just moved back to Japan myself, so we bonded over our similar language abilities and our shared experience of feeling marginalized in a male-dominated artform. She can speak about as much English as I can speak Japanese, so our conversations would often slip between languages where she would speak to me in English and I would try to speak to her in Japanese, and we could practice our language skills with each other.

9/1/2023: Erika and I at our first gig together. Our setlist consisted of Jazz standards, a Beatles song, and a Japanese pop song from the ‘80s.

Through Erika, I met Michael: a crazy-talented jazz pianist out of San Francisco who also just graduated and moved to Japan, and is working as a JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) in nearby Ibaraki prefecture. After introducing him to Zack and Leo, we exchanged stories from our respective English classrooms and educational environments. Michael has offered us perspective into what teaching at a Japanese high school or middle school could be like, and how lucky Shansi Fellows are to only have to work at one University. I had my first gig with Michael in October, at my first show in a live house (with a sound guy and everything!) with a full band. We played funk covers of some of my favorite songs, as well as songs that were newly introduced to me via co-fellow Leo’s cooking Spotify playlist. The whole thing was an incredible learning experience for me in communication within the music scene (how to talk to people working in live houses, rental rehearsal spaces, and Japanese musicians) where I learned a ton of new vocabulary and met a lot of new people very fast. A few days after our first show, we played at the British Business Awards at the swanky Hilton Hotel ballroom. This was another great learning experience for me in understanding what price to charge for a swanky event, how to write an invoice, and how to communicate with sound equipment pros at large venues like hotels.

10/28/2023: My band and I after our show. From Left: Naoya (drummer), Yoshiki (bassist), Michael (pianist), Alejandro (guitarist), and Alex (audio engineer)

Wanting to play more jazz, and with the help of Erika, we formed the “kokorisa quintet” and played at 2 more venues: one recording studio repurposed into a live house located in Meguro (my parents’ neighborhood), and one jazz bar that serves as a listening cafe of vintage vinyl and CDs by day and a livehouse by night located in Kichijoji, a quiet and trendy neighborhood in Western Tokyo. I met a few more musicians around my age that are studying jazz through these gigs, and even had my first live-streamed paid concert so family and friends could watch from home. Our set list included many tunes that I learned this fall during my long commutes to and from jam sessions in the city. The people on my bus route may have seen me strangely mouthing words to songs like “Stella by Starlight” or “All of You” while staring out into Machida’s sprawling landscape.

I have truly enjoyed every moment of my time here, even the ones that come with frustration and loneliness. Even though I had lived here before, I still went through a brand of culture shock that happens when you move to any new place. With the help and encouragement of my wonderful co-fellows, I managed to lift myself out of the post-honeymoon-phase-slump through music. It has been incredibly rewarding to put the skills that I have worked so hard at to use. I have learned so much about what I want to work towards in being a better musician and communicator, and I have met so many amazing people that inspire me to do so.