CLAIR Magazine “JET Plaza” series: Jordan Patrick Lincez (Aichi)
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Each month, current and former JET participants are featured in the “JET Plaza” section of the CLAIR Forum magazine. The May 2013 edition includes an article by JET alumn Jordan Patrick Lincez. Posted by Celine Castex (Chiba-ken, 2006-11), currently programme coordinator at CLAIR Tokyo.
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“Through the people I meet, I feel as though I have a responsibility to share my love and experiences of Japan to strengthen and sustain the bonds that were tied in fellowship and goodwill.”
Jordan Patrick Lincez (Aichi-ken, Toyone-mura, 2009-11) is from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He has been playing various instruments from a young age, first learning the guitar from his father Marc Victor, and eventually making an album with him before joining the JET Programme. Jordan spent two years in one of the smallest villages of Japan and his contributions to the community include recording a collaborative album with local musicians and organizing a charity music festival. He is now studying in Vancouver, BC, to become a French teacher in elementary schools in rural Canada.
After JET – Rural Reflections
Steve Jobs once talked about connecting the dots only after you go through something. Coming to and leaving Toyone was like that. My memories of there are vivid: wet mornings with mists floating above green mountains around Tsugawa Heights; straining to keep my eyes open and my body moving to the drum on Hana Matsuri; watching the evening sun burst in orange and red leaves during the autumn foliage season on my drive to Toyama; listening to my students practice Kendo in the dojo while watching the snow gently falls outside; joining my friends in celebrating our charity festival’s success with the most bountiful yakiniku feast I have ever seen. I have left Japan with a wealth of memories and friendships that I will carry with me forever, and it was only in connecting the dots looking back that am I able to see the impact my experiences there have had on my life and current endeavors.
What brought me to Japan? I wanted a new challenge, and, one day, I met a wonderful teacher in Ottawa who taught me Japanese, but also taught me about Japanese culture—and I was fascinated with it. I had to go experience it. I had to get out of Ottawa, out of Canada, and learn about myself through experiencing life in a different world. JET brought me to Japan and placed me as an ALT in two of the smallest villages in Japan: Toyone and Toyama in Aichi Prefecture.
I remember watching the only people I knew in Japan leave on the shinkansen heading for Nagoya. I remember the long drive through the rice fields and thinking “Where are they taking me?” Before coming to Toyone, my image of Japan was somewhere in between the tall towers of Tokyo and the flashing lights of Osaka. Upon arriving there and listening to the sounds of cicadas and Onyu river outside of my apartment, I knew that was in someplace very special, and that I was lucky to be chosen for this.
Everyone in this village welcomed me openly. The lady at the store, the grandma working on her garden, the local restaurant owner, the grandpa handing out towels at our onsen. They asked me questions about my life and where I was from, they asked me how I was adjusting to life there, and did everything they could to make me comfortable and happy. I very rarely felt lonely, and I very rarely had a free weekend. Reflecting back, I am extremely grateful for this. These good first-impressions, friendly smiles, and invitations for fishing are what kept me there and not running back home.
Being the only foreigner for miles around in such a small community did present unique opportunities. For some reason, instead of being turned off by this popularity and hiding away, I felt energized and humbled by it. I joked about myself being famous, and the people did with me. After all, my name sounds like “joke” in Japanese. Before I knew it, I was running in a florescent green and orange tank and shorts on national television for the Aichi Ediken. Our team of students and adults tried their best, and it did not matter that we came last— we all tried hard. I have never been more proud of myself…until I put together the music festival Anjanai, あんじゃない祭 .
As I write this, I listen to「豊根の心」 a CD project that I never would have started or completed without the help of friends, teachers, students and contributors. It started as an idea to compose an album in Japan and release it there. As I started working with more musicians, I thought it would be a great idea to create an event that would bring all of these like-minded people together. Then I started to meet other types of artists, painters, ‘handcrafters’, cooks, ceramic artists, and so on, and it all blew out of proportion – yet somehow managed to stay together.
It was quite the process. I had less than six months to put together the album before our event for release. I mixed it on my computer through software I taught myself to use, driving back to my village at 2 a.m. on a Monday for my elementary school-day, buying microphones and setting up recording sessions at homes, in concert halls and in Rockwest Studios in Toyohashi. Then I wrote the songs with the students. Students from each class write some lines of poetry, and over a weekend I somehow compiled all their beautiful, pure words into a song on the piano. We called it 「私の古里」, “My Hometown.”
Of course, everyone was touched by the disaster. It reminded me of 9-11, how I was glued to the television set for about a week, feeling caught up in my own tsunami of emotions. It came out as the bonus track, “Tsunami,” one evening in the o-furo. I kept running back and forth from the tub to an increasingly soaked wad of paper, and when I finally sat down on the keyboard to finish hammering it out, another earthquake shook my keyboard and completely blew me away. I get chills just thinking of how that song came out.
There were so many great memories, friendships and connections made during this event. How we rounded up all the kids we could find, gave them our sheet music and sang “Our Hometown” together onstage; how despite me being late, there was a surplus of at least ten volunteers to help put up the tents and setup at 6:30 a.m. in the pouring rain; how we all clapped when we counted up the money and gave each other high-fives and “otsukare sama” the rest of the evening. These memories all stand out. But the one that chokes me up to this day was at our after-party. I managed to find this wonderful cabin-park in Toyone, which also had a large room for yakiniku. It was a feast unlike any I have ever seen. I was sleep-deprived, exhausted from running around all day, setting up, performing two sets myself, and shaking so many hands I lost count. To add to the stress, I was managing the payments for our cabins and the meal that night. My taiko instructor took me aside to discuss the money, but when I walked back into the room they had a cake for me, and they all started to sing for me: “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”. I did not remember telling anyone it was my birthday, but nor do I really remember much after the sake came out.
The festival was a huge success. With the money we raised, we purchased new guitars for the schools and we found a village in Fushima to help out with our donations. Of course the event required some funding – without the sponsorship of National AJET and the Toyone Board of Education, I would not have been able to make this dream of mine come true.
It was very difficult to write this. It is hard to comprehend and be grateful for the lessons one learns, and time goes by so quickly. There are some that I can no longer thank for their kindness, and some that I am not sure when and whether we will meet again. All I know is that I carry them and their lessons with me everywhere, close to my heart. Humility. Patience. Community. Openness. Friendliness. Politeness. Respect. Going to Japan was like meeting these ideas for the first time again. Since coming back, I was able to reflect on how the people I met in Japan have changed me forever. Here in Canada, I joined and rowed in Ottawa JETAA’s Dragonboat team. I played at several charity events for JETAA and joined the Japanese social-group 木曜会. Now, I anxiously await for my former students to go on their yearly trip here to Vancouver. Through the people I meet, I feel as though I have a responsibility to share my love and experiences of Japan to strengthen and sustain the bonds that were tied in fellowship and goodwill. And I believe I will continue to do this until the day I die.
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