Jazz and Happy

First Miy-san and I agree to meet at 10 in the morning. But then, Miy-san realises she has a dentist’s appointment and asks whether we can make it around two instead, and she’ll contact me again that day. Around 11.30, she sends me a text asking whether we can make it one. Of course we can.
Unfortunately sending money to my German bank account at Sone yubinkyoku takes ages. On top of that, a woman with bad breath chats me up and asks whether I want a free credit card on my account. I do, actually, as that will mean I can withdraw money even when the post office is closed, which I can’t at the moment. The restricted ATM opening hours in this country are rather annoying at times. I tell her I would love a free credit card, but unfortunately I don’t have time right now. It only takes five minutes, she only needs to take my name and address, she promises.
Of course it doesn’t take five minutes. I’m juggled back and forth between the woman at the counter who is not used to the procedures and makes me fill in one sheet twice because the first time she doesn’t realise I was supposed to put my address into the boxes in romaji, not kanji, and the woman with bad breath who is a salesperson and has therefore lied to me about the time it takes to get a card. I’m not sure what use it will be to her if I sign up for a free credit card, but knowing how things work in the world of sales since I involuntarily entered it working for GEOS, I assume she gets commissions. When the counter woman sends me to the ATM outside to withdraw the cash I want to pay into my German account (why under god they can’t take it off my account directly, as they are the institution where I have my account, I cannot fathom), I give Miyuki a call and apologise that I will be late. Hoping the procedures must be almost over now that I will pay the money, I optimistically tell her that I will be on the next train. Of course I won’t. The ATM spits out a brick-thick bundle of bills that make me flinch in horror. Have I entered a zero too much and just bankrupted myself into a myriad of debt? No. The ATM has simply given me 80,000 Yen in 1000 Yen notes. Fine. I hand over the 55,000 I want to pay into my German account plus 2,500 Yen administration fees. This is always the same sum. It doesn’t change, no matter how much or how little money is transferred.
The woman with bad breath needs to know another zillion details. How much would I like to borrow on my credit card? What do I want to make my one time withdrawal limit? Am I working for a company? Which one? Which branch? How many other people work in that branch? What is my annual salary? I feel tempted to use bad language but I don’t have the vocabulary, and of course I’m always polite.
Finally, she asks me whether I would like a post office money bank, a post office alarm clock, or a post office note pad for a present. I choose the red, old school alarm clock. “There’s a battery in it,” she tells me, “So please just pull off the seal.”
I run to the station. It is raining buckets, but I have the black umbrella with me the kombiniya-san from Friday aikido class kindly presented to me on a morning when the rain caught me by surprise after aikido training, in my working clothes. On the platform, I call Miy-san again. “Don’t worry,” she says, “I’m in a book shop. See you soon.”
I take the Hankyu Takarazuka line to Ishibashi, two stops behind Toyonaka, and find her engaged in what must have been a long bout of tachiyomi (standing up reading). He hair is almost as curly as mine. Naturally. Rare. She smiles, and we walk through the rain across a big street, turning into a quiet residential area. One of those little Japanese neighbourhoods with blue roofs and little shrines and flower displays, where everything looks the same, but everything looks very different at the same time. They are cosy but scary to a direction illiterate newcomer like me. Hōko-onchi - direction-unmusical, say the Japanese. I always get lost in this type of neighbourhood. But this time, I have Miy-san to lead me, with her flowery umbrella and her curly Japanese hair.
Finally, we arrive at a two-storey tall building with a slant roof where some steps lead up to a second floor entrance. It is an average house, but somehow it has an unassuming kind of elegance about it, just like Miy-san. “This is it,” she announces, and we climb the steps around a corner up to her family home. I marvel at her grace as she holds her black and white chequered handbag, disposes of the flowery umbrella, and unlocks the door. There’s a pair of guest slippers waiting for me from the guest slipper stand. White, soft plastic slippers.
A minuscule dog with bulging eyes and light beige spots on short, white fur comes a-running and madly wags its tail. He madly slides around the floor in circles and jumps up at me in enthusiastic curiosity and excitement. But he doesn’t bark, which I appreciated greatly. “This is Happy,” says Miy-san, while she walks into the kitchen that doorlessly opens up on the left, across from the sofa and armchair area living room on the left. Happy indeed. I play with Happy and take him up for a cuddle. I’m not usually a fan of dogs smaller than a kitten, but Happy deeply impresses me with his non-stop enthusiasm and happiness. I wonder whether Miy-san does this to people and dwarf dogs alike, with her mere presence. On the left stands a large electronic Yamaha piano, complete with two main keyboards and a foot keyboard for the base lines. And a multitude of buttons with different functions that remain obscure to me, even when I see Miy-san use them later on. You get books that come with floppy disks that give you the right rhythm and the keys the right sound for whatever sound spectacle you want to create on it. I’m deeply impressed when I hear her reproduce perfectly the sound of the “Pirates of the Carribbean” and “Terminator” title themes.
“Take a seat!” says Miy-san, while she takes up a glass teapot. I sit down on a bench at the longish kitchen table and play with Happy, who can’t get enough of it. I am served hot black tea with orange flavour in a very English looking cup and saucer, complete with blue roses and golden edges. Happy keeps trying to kiss me on the mouth. When I direct him away from it, he licks my neck instead and tickles me into fits of laughter. Finally, Miy-san restrains her hyper little pet and puts a little lead on him that goes across his chest, as if he was a little reindeer. “Now he thinks he’s being taken out,” she says, smiling cruelly, and puts the loop of the lead on one post of her chair. Happy sits there and breathes, without spite. We have some scrumptious, moist sweet potato-cakes, shaped with a big spoon probably, but pointed on both ends. She shows me her “aesthe” room, the room where she makes people beautiful. You get a full “aesthe course” for 4000 Yen. “I would love one,” I tell her. “Great, I will prepare the room then,” she says. But then, somehow in the middle of her preparations, we land on the long piano seat and sing. Miy-san is a virtuoso electronic piano captain. She presses buttons here, and turns little wheels there, plays three keyboards all at the same time, and gets the sound of a whole jazz band out of the machine. It’s very impressive. She gives me the books she studies from. Her singing teacher writes down the songs adjusted to her lower pitch, and Miy-san listens intently to the CDs, to learn how to pronounce the lyrics of which she claims to understand nothing. Pure sound-imitation, but that makes her pronunciation better than most of my students’. No wonder, really. After all, sound imitation is the key to good pronunciation. But it is still impressive to learn such long combinations of foreign sounds when their sequence and intonation must seem utterly random, and void of meaning.
What songs do you know? She asks, and I go through her books and pick a few. Cheek to Cheek, we sing, and Lullaby of Birdland, and Summertime. Happy sits tied to the chair in his little reindeer outfit, his eyes bulging a little sadly now, and sings, too. His size does not allow for dog-like howls. He sounds like a budgie. Also, he is not as musical as Miy-san. Finally, there is a song I don’t really know, so I start improvising. “Hamotteru!” She exclaims happily. We’re singing in harmony. If I practise I can make up better melodies, I tell her, and she is all fire. “Let’s do it!” she says. Let’s practise, and then let’s have a concert here! And invite all the aikido people, plus the Sensei and his wife. His wife really likes jazz, too!”
“Excellent. Yes! Let’s!”
We sing and sing, with Happy chirping along, and Miy-san plays her charming chords and handles buttons that exude sax and trumpet, and brushing drum sounds from the speakers. ‘S Wonderful, Mr Gershwin! What are you doing the rest of your life? Let’s fall in love, why shouldn’t we fall in love. When you walk, let your heart lead the way, and you’ll find love any day, Alfie.
Her son K-kun returns with two friends, and they take Happy into K-kun’s room and play with him.
Then Miy-san calls the kids into the living room and serves juice and chewy rice sweets. The two of us get tea instead of juice, and the strawberries and little purple potato cakes I’ve brought for snacks. The three boys savour the sticky rice balls on sticks and their juice. And finally listen to Miy-san and me sing a few more songs. They are all very well-mannered little boys and listen with big eyes and genuine admiration to the sounds we produce with our voices and the Yamaha piano. Miy-san shows me a poster she has made for a school choir performance. It is a perfect little elf, singing out swirly notes. Clear influences of manga and art nouveau. Finally, K-kun’s two friends leave, and I Miy-san and K-kun give me a lift to Shōsenji, where I train aikido with Jazz lingering in my heart, head, and body, guiding me, swinging me stable in the essential effortless flow of movement the Shihan preaches.