Opera singer, Osaka College of Music
My homestay experiences
The country that we visited, Brazil, is on the exact opposite side of the world from Japan and is the country the farthest from Japan. Despite the fact that there are many Japanese-Brazilians living there, we Japanese know only the tiniest bit about the country of Brazil.
We on the GSE team did not get much detailed information to prepare us before our departure, and we also received little information from Brazil. So with a good bit of uneasiness and trepidation about the schedule, the language and a number of other things, we boarded the plane at Kansai International Airport on May 17 and departed for Brazil.
We spent about 30 hours on airplanes, and spent a night in Miami before entering Brazil in high spirits. The plane was delayed due to fog, and we all arrived rather tired, and I remember being a bit apprehensive about the following day's study schedule.
Apart from our time in Rio de Janeiro and at the Iguacu Falls, we spent every night with homestay families. During the first week, I was lucky to have my homestay with the same Japanese-Brazilian family as Ms. Sada. No one on the GSE team, including our team leader, was familiar with Portuguese, so we were always a bit apprehensive before going to a new homestay, but because the host families were Japanese-Brazilians, we soon stopped worrying. In fact, I actually began to take a great interest in the lifestyle and customs of our host families.
My homestay during my first week was with Mr. and Mrs. Nozaki, who are both second generation Japanese-Brazilians, and they understand Japanese quite well. But the environment in which they were raised, their way of thinking and eating habits are completely different than those of Japanese. Their children, who understand almost no Japanese, are living the life of a typical Brazilian child. What struck me most, however, was the fact that they called non-Japanese Brazilians "gaijin" (foreigners), the sons want to marry Japanese-Brazilian girls, and they still think of themselves as being Japanese.
I spent the second week with the Inoue family, and it was the same there. They are second generation Japanese-Brazilians, and they too are not like typical Japanese, and they and their children speak almost no Japanese. In order to get to know each other, we had to overcome a rather large language barrier. Fortunately, since I am a musician, we were able to become friends (faster and deeper than we could have just by speaking) through my playing the host family's piano while we sang together.
I'll talk about my vocational study later, so let me say something about the host family I stayed with during my third week in Brazil. This homestay was the only one at which I was completely unable to communicate with the host family. They are pure Brazilians (there are so many immigrants and their descendants living in Brazil that it is hard to say just what a "pure" Brazilian is...), they spoke nothing but Portuguese (even English), so it was very hard to communicate with one another. It seemed that the family members felt the same way I did about this problem, and they asked a Japanese-Brazilian friend of their daughter's to come and translate for us. When this girl was there, we could communicate to some degree, but when the daughter and her friend were at school, all we could do was try to communicate using gestures. Even though I am involved in opera and many of the songs are in Italian (which is relatively similar to Latin), it took quite a long time for me to get an idea of what they were saying in Portuguese.
Despite the difficulty we had in communicating, the interesting thing is that of all the host families I had, I think I had the deepest heart to heart communication with this family. And, of all the people I had to say good-bye to at the Sao Paulo airport, it was hardest for me to say goodbye to this family.
During our fourth week, all five of us stayed at the second home of a Japanese Brazilian named Mr. Gyotoku. As a result, we weren't able to have direct contact with his family and their lifestyle. Still, we received a very warm, family-like welcome from all of the Rotary Club members in that city, Susano, and we were treated as very special guests while we were there.
Our 4 weeks in Brazil passed very pleasantly. I think it was a very valuable experience for me to be able to meet so many Japanese-Brazilians in a country like Brazil, which has so many different races living there. My time with my host families caused me to think about the importance of heart to heart communication, and I realized anew the importance of what we tend to forget in our busy lives.
What I learned during my vocational study
In the video we all watched about Brazil before we left Japan, I got a glimpse of a gorgeous opera house, and I left for Brazil kind of expecting and looking forward to experiencing the music world in Brazil since none of my associates in the Kansai music world knew anything about music in Brazil. And if possible, I was hoping to have the chance to attend an opera in Brazil.
So when I arrived in Brazil and saw how little interest there is in classical music, I was quite disappointed. It might be that the lack of law and order makes it hard for people to go out at night to enjoy entertainment, but almost all of the people I met in Brazil didn't know if there were operas performed in Brazil or not, if there were associations of musicians or not, or if there were even schools of music in Brazil or not. Also, it seems that those who put together my schedule did not know that I was an opera singer who had studied music formally in university, and they had no understanding of the kinds of places I had hope to visit during my vocational study.
I think the level of music in Japan, both theoretically and technically, is more or less the same as that in the West, with music being taught in universities and music education similar to that in Europe. I wanted to learn what level theoretical music education had reached in the economically developing nation of Brazil (of course, my interest was only in the area of music education), and I was hoping to visit some music schools and universities.
There is a music department at the Sao Paulo State University, and I had heard that there were some highly skilled students there. Unfortunately, I was unable to visit that university, but I was able to sit in on a voice lesson of a young opera singer at a private music school. That helped me a little to get a feel for the level of Brazilian singers, but I was totally unable to gain any knowledge of music education in Brazil at the university level, and I could learn nothing about its influence on musical performances in Brazil.
At a state-run music school in the city of Guarulhos, I was able to visit a music class, and as a result to imagine that perhaps Brazilian music education is fairly high in regard to musical theory. It was more helpful than my previous trip to the private music school, but because of the language barrier, I was disappointed that I was unable to become knowledgeable to the degree I had hoped.
A number of people worked hard to make arrangements for me to visit a state-run theater, but from a vocational study standpoint, it was not very helpful. All I could do was imagine from the beautiful Italian-style architecture of the theater itself that perhaps the level of music there was about the same as that in Italian opera. Unfortunately, the Brazilian opera season is in July and August (in the West there is an opera season as well, and one can only attend operas during that time), and as luck would have it, I was unable to learn anything about opera in Brazil by seeing an opera either.
But I thought to myself that they must be using the theater for things other than operas, and I learned that just three days after the day I visited the theater, they were hosting an orchestra. I was able to attend that concert along with the person who took me. The performance was very good, the music for that night was composed by the Brazilian composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and my being able to attend the concert erased all the discontentment I had been feeling about not being able to have fruitful vocational study. What really surprised me about the concert was how inexpensive the tickets were. I was told that since the concert had been produced by the city, it was considerably cheaper than one produced by a private music producer, and the tickets that night cost 8 real (about 800 yen).
It was amazing to me that even though tickets are so inexpensive, Brazilians are not taking advantage of such entertainment, and I wondered why. The number of people studying classical music and going to listen to classical music concerts in Japan is very small, and things are similar in Brazil. The young people, as well as the population on the whole, doesn't seem to be interested in classical music. Of course, the people like samba music, but that's not the only reason classical music is not popular. People certainly prefer more down-to-earth music over classical music, and even in Brazil one can see that, like young people the world over, Brazilian youth are interested mostly in rock music and new music. I felt a sense of crisis because it seems like classical music is dying out.
So, I wasn't able to get a good feel for just how much classical music has permeated the musical life of Brazilians, but I still feel the trip was a big success. At the D-4330 district conference, at the suggestion of our team leader and as a means of nurturing friendship, I sang two songs. One was the Japanese song "Sakura" (Cherry Blossoms), and the other was "Ave Maria." The people enjoyed these songs more than I had anticipated, and those who heard the songs (especially the Japanese Brazilians) came up and told me that they wanted us to visit their Rotary Clubs too, and from that time on, I sang at every club meeting we attended.
These chances to sing turned out to be a very meaningful form of vocational study for me, I think. Brazilians are very emotional people, and the fact that the majority of the population is Roman Catholic made the song "Ave Maria" particularly meaningful to them. I was very surprised by the fact that starting with the district conference and wherever I sang, many people were deeply moved to tears by the songs.
I don't know if it was because of how I performed the songs, or if it was the beauty of my voice, or what, but I was very happy that no matter who I sang for, whether Rotarians, children in the slums, or elderly Japanese-Brazilians at a nursing home, it brought joy to their hearts. I am so thankful to our team leader and to my team members for allowing me so many opportunities to sing like this.
Through these various experiences, I have come to think that one of my missions in life will be to help spread the news of Brazil's classical music world among my fellow members in the Kansai music world, and I think it would be wonderful if we could develop ties between us and Brazil through our sending people to Brazil to perform.
In conclusion
My being able participate in this GSE program, and to meet a variety of people (even for just one short month), and be able to taste the culture of Brazil (which I had known nothing about), was a wonderful experience for me. Before I left for Brazil, I had thought of it as a poor country, but through all I encountered there -- the rich variety of food, the abundance of natural resources, the vastness of the nation, the multitude of races --I came to see Brazil in a new light, having experienced many things that we Japanese, in our economically advanced nation, know nothing about.
I am grateful to all the people I met during my visit to Brazil, and I am very thankful to have been able to participate in the GSE program because of how it has expanded my vision of the world. If I have the chance, I surely would like to visit Brazil again, and I am very grateful to everyone in RI D-2660 for giving me the opportunity to go to Brazil. Thank you all very much!
