The fourth week started with some more work for my independent study project. I walked about 20 minutes to a jazz cafe right after class, where I was met with a cat at the door. To my surprise, the cat (nya-kun) immediately made a break for it but the proprietors appeared out of nowhere and captured him without any trouble. It was a husband and wife pair, I assume, and from the looks of the place it had been open for decades. I explained my project and ordered a milk tea. While the tea was being made and even after it had grown cold I was briskly shown around the cafe. The husband in his younger days had attended a lot of jazz concerts in Tokyo, and had plenty of pictures and autographs of famous American musicians like John Coltrane and Ella Fitzgerald to show for it. Unfortunately my Japanese hadn’t really progressed to the stage that I could understand everything I was being told, so I did a lot of head nodding and most of my conversation was comprised of simple exclamations like “Wow!” and “Is that so?”
Still, I took a lot of wonderful pictures and videos, got a book recommendation, and I think they had a fun time showing a youngster like me their jazz relics.
The rest of the week I had my head in the books, studying for our semester final and memorizing a four minute book-recommendation speech. I gave the speech on Wednesday and took the final on Thursday. We had Friday and Monday off, so myself and some friends from the program rented a house in Sapporo for our little break. The views on the train going north were really fantastic.