The Indians have come! Or rather came and left again.
I have put the pictures up in the wrong order sorry but I cannae be bo'ered deining it again.
So here are the Indians in Nakijin resplendent in their full regalia.
The deadly sword fighters face off, these fellows were fan-taby-dosy!
One of the 4 (?) classic dances of India, this being the Mulipur one.
I with my lower lever english conversation club, just a random pic.
The drummers performing their high energy routine at Izena primary school.
The sword fighters in action!

What an unexpectedly eventful week on Izena! First the Kobe homestayers and then a troupe of Indians, both of which my Junoir High was completely unaware of and uninvolved in. I had planned to write about Cameron Diaze, the industrious nature of the Japanese and my anarchistic world view. However the Indians came.

I am going to give as objective an account of the events as I can manage so don’t be too harsh on the Okinawans. Remember this place, Okinawa, and especially Izena are amongst the most remote and rural in all of Japan. The are some such places in the USA and UK that I would be disinclined to send the Indians to for fear they may face something considerably worse than mere non-malicious cultural blunders.

Right, well, disclaimer aside on with the tale. The first I heard of the Indians was when the Kyotosensei of the primary school told me that some Indians were coming to the school that day at 2pm. I was a little surprised. He also gave me an egg that day, from one of the school hens. However the previous week he had given me two eggs, had I only put in a one egg performance that day? Maybe I am reading too much into it, I would hate to think that up to then I had not even been achieving even one eggs worth! Either way, a country where one gets eggs randomly given to you is a good one.

So! Back to the Indians, I am not sure what I was expecting but what ensued blew me away! There were about 15 or so Indians and their performances where stupendous! First a high energy drum performance, followed by an even more high energy and blindingly fast sword kata/dance. It was two chaps with bucklers and swords against a sole fighter wielding dual swords. The strokes and parries came so incredibly fast it was almost just a blur of action, I was amazed they didn’t hurt each other. The martial art is called Malipur Thaing Ta I think. Needless to say my children were also blown away. Then an Indian woman performed a beautiful solo dance and as the grand finale all the Indians started dancing. Then they invited (grabbed) the students to join the dance and then everyone. In a few minutes everyone was dancing in a number of big circles. I think the dance was supposed to form one large circle but there were too many people and it was kind of messy for a while before it formed into 3 or 4 concentric rings, one within the other (is that what concentric means?). I was in the centre ring and it was pretty cool. Afterwards my children were quite evidently hugely impressed and were trying to emulate some of the drumming and sword fighting moves. I hung around to speak to the Indians after all the students had been herded off, of course they spoke perfect English and we chatted for a while until their bus came and they had to go.

As I was walking to the shop I was passed by Yoshiaki and a car load of Indians, “My house, party!” he shouts. Alright I think. But first I shop and go for a run so I rock up late. In fact I was relaxing in the cooling breeze of my air-con when I get a ‘haiaku kite!’ email from Yoshi, mmm they really want me to come.

When I arrive I first wonder where the Indians are for around the table in the garden are a few Japanese and a noticeable lack of Indians. I sit down and receive my awamori. I am disappointed by the apparent lack of any food, usually parties have food! I hadn’t had dinner! There is some small talk and then I ask, so…..where are the Indians. Yoshiaki makes a face, “cards,” he says and motions to his house. Ahhhh, I remember how many Indians do not drink alcohol. I mention this to Yoshiaki and he makes a pained, exasperated expression. At this point two of the Indian women appear, Yoshiaki san motions for me to call them over. I hesitate because I remember from the reading up I did for my trip to India that it is commonly not considered appropriate for a woman to talk to strange men. But I yield and call them over, they come and sit down and my fears are confirmed when the first thing she asks me is, “are you a bachelor?”

I groan inwardly and tell her no but I have a girlfriend! She then tells me “I have a baby.”

'Great' I think, but after that they don’t seem to mind talking to a strange man and are perfectly polite and nice. They call over the other Indians and soon they are all sitting outside too. Yatta (woohoo!) I think. However it is apparent there no communication going on between the Japanese and Indians, none of the Japanese present spoke much English and the Indians did not speak any Japanese. I am happily talking to the drummers when an older lady comes out and sits next to me. She is introduced as the group leader so I give her a combined bow and namashite (or rather my approximation of the Indian greeting) and we chat. She has been going on cultural exchange trips like these for a number of years, her first trip was in 1984 to germany, one year after I was born! Ah I forgot to mention, this year is a friendship year between Japan and India, hense all these shinangegens this troupe is one of many and they have been travelling Japan for a month now and have a further month to go! At this point several members of the BOE (board of education) appear including none other than the boss and vice boss. The vice boss is carrying a large box of beer on his shoulder. He gestures at it and says “Beer?!” to an Indian woman, she wrinkles her noise, he is momentarily perturbed before realizing she quite obviously disdains beer in favour of stronger alcohol, “ahhh Sake!” he proclaims with a smile. After an exchange of worried glances three of the Indian men accept beers, over the course of the night two do not open their beers and one does but does not drink from it. I ask them if it is perhaps not common to drink alcohol in India, they assure me that some people do, so I tell them EVERYONE here does. They accept this with much aahhhhhh-ing and head nodding. So I continue to chat with them as the their hosts make a few more blunders. I was quite disappointed in some aspects of their behaviour as one of the things I particularly like about Japan is the high level of courtesy. I really appreciate that people are more often than not looking out for each other so as not to inconvenience or embarrass each other here. However perhaps it only really works if they are all reading from the same page. The only effort the BOE staff made to speak to the Indians was during their speeches. Blunder number one: none other than the head of the BOE simply takes out his phone and takes a picture of the Indians without asking permission in any shape or form. He, sitting only a meter or two away, without a word, and without any attempt at communication (even a gesture or eye contact) simple aims his phone straight at the Indians and take a picture. To make it worse he takes his good time and the poor Indians just sit there rigidly, not knowing how to react. If the Okinawans had any sense of how uncomfortable this was making the Indians feel they don’t let on. Then! The head of the BOE half stands out of his seat and leans forward to get a closer picture of the Indians further away, still the camera cant be much more than a meter from their faces. Whether this is not rude in Japan, or whether he was too scared to ask permission I don’t know. He then just sits down without acknowledging the Indians and chats to the Japanese around him, still apparently completely ignoring the Indians. Not much later three more Indian women arrive, an Indian man explains that they have been making food (being vegetarians I think they found it easier to make their own food). This is translated to the Japanese who then eagerly ask “can you cook us some Indian food!”

The Indians politely agree and apologize as there won’t be very much. The Japanese graciously accept this. Soon the food is brought out and boy is it spicy! I forget what it is called but it is essentially chilly mooshed up with potato. It came as a side to some rice and Dahl. Later the Indians tell me the super spicy food was hotter than currys and something they eat when they want something extra spicy, where they getting a little revenge on the Okinawans? Next the emboldened Okinawans ask the Indians to do some performances, so we are treated to another incredible sword dance and several songs. The singer has a beautiful voice and it was pretty special. The Indians ask the favour to be returned and after a period a sanshin is produced. I get the feeling the Okinawans are a little shy and perhaps overawed, as the singing was a little lackluster and not up to their usual standard. One song is sung and then the Indians ask for “iiya sasa please!” So Yoshi starts belting out the Orion beer song. Now this is a song to dance to. The vice head of the BOE motions me to dance but I tell him no I am shy, I expect them to start dancing soon as they often do to this song. But nothing happens. I see that the Indians are literally squirming in their seats with a barely suppressed desire to dance. So I pop up and begin doing the Okinawan dance (kajashi?), all the Indians immediately join in and try to copy the dance. Still the Japanese won’t join in, so I eventually grab Kamiyama and pull him up and he in turn drags up one of the PTE members. 'Yes!' I think, 'now we are cooking!' But no, after a short while the two Okinawans retire and it is left to me and the Indians to dance out the song, which we do with verve and pip. I can’t help thinking that it is a bit funny that only the Indians guests and a resident foreigner are the only ones willing to do dance an Okinawan dance to Okinawan music. Meh. Like I said they were probably shy they usually dance. I count that as a blunder by the way. So you remember the hosts requesting the guests food? That was around 10pm and I should point out that there was not very much and none of the Indians ate. At something past 11 the leader of the troupe asks me if it is alright if they go and eat dinner? I suddenly dawns on me that we (I was guilty too) just ate their dinner and then let them sit their politely for over an hour with their stomachs undoubtedly rumbling. Naturally I told them “yes, go!” without consulting the Japanese. To help understand this you need to know that here in Japan, or at least Okinawa, it is not required to excuse oneself. People just come and go from parties or dinners, often for extended period of time. The okinawans probably just assumed if the Indians were hungry they would have gone and eaten. However I can’t help feeling it was a gross breach of hospitality. The sword fighters returned and I chatted with them for a little while longer, their English was not so great but certainly good enough to communicate. I discovered from them that not surprisingly the Indian education system closely mirrors the British and that in Malipur (the region these Indians herald from) all schooling, from kindergarten onwards, was done wholly in English! I was getting tired so I told them I was off to get some shut-eye and advised them to do the same if they were tired. Which they were unsurprisingly as they have been performing every single day of their trip so far! They immediately agreed and left with me. Goodness knows, they might have stayed up out of politeness to their Japanese hosts if I had not been rude enough to bale out of the party early. Part of the behaviour of the hosts I think can be explained by A- the low uncertainty tolerance of this culture and B- the hosts were all older prominent men of the community. Who are all haughty and very attentive to their face saving. They were probably too scared to try out their English on the Indians or engage them in any way that might lead to an unpredictable situation that might result in embarrassment or loss of face. That is my take anyway.

Luckily I have the luxury of not giving two hoots about my face and quite enjoying unpredictable circumstances. Ah yes, the wife of the PTE head did come and try to talk to the Indians and between my Japanese and her English we managed quite well. The Indians, I think, appreciated her efforts.

So the scene was set for stage two. The Indians told me they were going to be performing in Nakijin the following day so as I would be going to Okinawa Honto too I was quite keen to see them again, especially as they would be doing their full show as opposed to the half show they did on Izena. Actually I must admit I was also keep to cycle down to Okinawa city which would have meant missing the show but Kelly was also keen to see them so I was persuaded to cycle around up north (near nakijin) and meet Kelly up there. Good call Kelly!

I shared the same ferry ride with the Indians to the big island. When they first saw me in my lycra cycling get up I think they were a big shocked, these was definitely some hard, verging on staring, looking but they soon relaxed. They were very cute and wanted lots of pics with me. I must admit here I am rather fold of the way Indians use English, one of my favourites from the ferry ride was;

“I vant to snap with you.” To which I readily replied “OK! Lets Snap!”

He of course mean; “I want to take a picture with you,” in bog standard boring old plain English.

My Bike ride was quite pleasant and I and Kelly picked up some pineapples and flowers as a gift for the Indians. Kelly (being attentive -unlike me- to that sort of thing) remembered how when we arrived in India there were lots and lots of flowers involved in our welcome ceremony. This whole episode brought back many memories of India, I am not still sure if I enjoyed myself there….but it was a wonderful experience if that makes sense. When asked by the Indians how I liked India I found I could not lie and just told them it was intense, that it had been wonderful but also the poor people made me sad - they seemed to accept this. I also realized that I didn’t really get to know let alone befriend any Indians on the trip so it was very nice, to say the least, to meet this group of Indians and to find them all charming and most agreeable. I have had Indian friends back home, but I always felt, perhaps unfairly, that they were different as they lived in a western country.

Well, as usual my blog entry is getting horrendously long, I appear to be unable to write with brevity and I apologize. If you have made it this far you are near the end! Promise! The performance at Nakijin was splendid with much fancier costumes and a few new acts including one of the 4(?) classic dances of India. It was quite neat to have Juhi (an Indian ALT) there to explain it all. After the Indians performed there were a number of Okinawan performances which apart from the eisa seemed somewhat….of course this is highly subjective - but they didn’t press any of my buttons. Perhaps my buttons were suffering from being overly pressed during the Indian music and dance? Two of the sword fighters came out and sat in the audience and I joined them, I think they felt the same about the music as when the eisa performers came out one commented “ah, this is more interesting.” The finale was the group dance and when the dancers came down from the stage to engage the audience they came straight to me, I felt honoured. Unfortunately my dancing skins were lacking and I had to be bumped down to number two in the line so the lead lady could lead the dance. Now here is the final event by which I was disappointed by the Okinawan conduct. Upto this point the audience had been very appreciative, apauding and cheering with wild abandon! (Kind-of). But when confronted with this group dance many of them baulked, in fact most of them did. Many sat with stony faces and tried to either ignore the dance (or perhaps they were just not impressed by it)? Well regardless, between the Indians and the ALTs and the Eisa dancers (who did eagerly join in – kids are always the best) there were enough dancers. After the dance one of the sword fighters embraced me and told me meeting me made him happy, I told him “me too,” and I meant it. Oh I forgot after the Indian dance we had one more blast of okinawan dancing. I and Kelly had time to present the flowers and pineapples to the group leader before they were ushered on stage for a group photo. Not being a fan of protracted goodbyes and assuming the najikin people would have organized some sort of party (with alcohol no doubt) I make my exit. I waved to the Indians on the stage and to my delight they all waved back, I gave a combined bow and namashite and off I went. It was good to say goodbye on high note I think and I have the leaders business card should I ever find myself in Malipur.