I bet you're one of the following people:
A) You've lived in a foreign country for a year or two.
B) You're living in a foreign country now.
C) You're planning at some point to live abroad for a year or so.
If you're a C, you're probably full of expectation. You'll make good friends with the natives and other nationalities, learn the language, and have a great experience. But before you go abroad, ask an A or a B how easy they found making friends with the natives. It might save you some disappointment.

Wading through a sea of cafe tables in London's trendy Soho are two B's, Megumi and Rika. Both in their early twenties, they've been living in London for five months, studying English.
"Making friends with English people here is much more difficult than we expected," Rika says. "We haven't made any English friends so far. We have made lots of friends from other countries, like Spain, Italy, China and Greece who we've met at language school and at parties. That is a great thing about being here - you can make friends from all over the world. But it's a disappointment not to have made English friends so far."
I come across Hiro, Akiko, and Yuki outside Camden Market just as they are saying goodbye to some French friends.
"We haven't managed to make any English friends yet. We just don't get the chance to meet them. When we improve our English, things will get easier," reckons Akiko.
People often cite the language barrier as the reason Japanese don't make friends with many native speakers abroad. But that is only one factor, according to Masa, 23, who has just come back to Sapporo after 14 months in Sydney. His English is just about perfect.
"Until the middle of my stay, I felt that I didn't know how to make friends with the Australians. You have to be proactive, otherwise they assume you can't speak much English. I was shy over there, as many Japanese people are. I think I didn't use the opportunities that I had to talk to people as much as I could have done."
Squandering chances to make friends was something that Akiko, a 26-year-old from Sapporo, attributes to her lack of confidence in English.
"During my two-year stay in Sydney, I did a course in jewelry making, and my teacher, who was Australian, introduced me to his friends. Though they invited me out with them, I didn't go, because I didn't feel my English was good enough."
What Japanese people abroad so often forget is that communication skills count far more than actual language ability when it comes to making friends. According to social psychologist Alan Pease in his book "Body Language," what people actually say is the least important thing in face-to-face interaction. When somebody speaks, body language makes up 70% of the received message, tone of voice 22% and actual words a measly 8%.
There are many reasons why people living abroad have trouble making friends with the natives there. People living in their own country have less of a need for new friends. Friendship follows the path of least resistance - people naturally gravitate towards those from similar backgrounds and towards those who will mix with their existing friends with the least awkwardness. And people can be reluctant to put the effort into becoming friends with someone who may be leaving.
When the shoe is on the other foot, how easy is it for foreigners to make friends with Japanese in Hokkaido? Japan's fascination with Western culture seems insatiable, and according to the Management and Coordination Agency there are only 625,000 registered foreigners in Japan (excluding ethnic Chinese and Koreans, most of whom grew up here), which makes non-Japanese something of a rarity. Making friends must be a doddle!
So imagine you're on a plane to Japan for the first time, looking forward to making Japanese friends. You pick up the helpful guidebook "Live and Work in Japan" by David and Elizabeth Roberts, and check the section called "Social Life".

"Most Japanese are still fascinated by gaijin and are usually keen to be hospitable. Nonetheless, you may find it difficult to develop friendships with the Japanese people at the kind of level to which you may be accustomed. Tomodachi are friends who go back to school days. This type of friendship equates most closely to our own idea of friendship, but by definition excludes the newcomer to Japan. Many foreigners find it easiest to make real friendships amongst the expatriate community, where it exists (and that is in all but the most remote areas)."

Does your heart sink? Sure, it's great to make friends with other foreigners, but making friends with the Japanese was a big part of the game plan. Sobbing quietly into the shoulder of the unfortunate person next to you, you are about to ask a flight attendant if the pilot can turn the plane around, when you think, "Hang on, how can a guidebook generalize on something as subjective, as personal, as friendship?"
Perhaps the Roberts's section on social life should have had a blank page with the words "SEE FOR YOURSELF." Whether you judge the book's advice to be accurate or just plain negative is not the point. It's not your reaction, but your action that counts.
We get opinions and advice from each other every day, bundled up in the form of well-meaning generalizations. These are eagerly consumed by listeners with little more than an "Oh, really?" as a validity check. But ask the speaker a couple of questions about what exactly they based their opinion on, and you may find out whether their judgement is valid.
Person A: "People at that gym aren't friendly."
Person B: "How many times have you been?"
Person A: "Once."
The more that Japanese and foreigners understand each other's experience of trying to make friends, the better. Foreigners, when they first arrive in Hokkaido, are struck by how friendly everyone is to them.
"At first, it's great when you get all the attention because you're a foreigner. You feel a bit like a king, even though really it's a false dynasty," says Graham (not his real name), 31, who's been teaching in Hokkaido for three years.
When the honeymoon is over, foreigners often find that making friends is more difficult than they imagined.
"To find a group of Japanese friends that you can really do things with, like call up and go camping is really difficult," reckons Steve, 26, who has been teaching English in Sapporo for more than three years. "Friendships feel very superficial here. I think many Japanese people aren't looking to have a long-term foreigner friend, just a short-term 'fling.'"
Lots of foreigners feel the effort is one-way traffic. Paul, a 26-year-old who has been in Sapporo almost two years, says: "I know some lovely Japanese people here who I really enjoy hanging out with. I often invite them out with my friends, and though they come and we have a great time, they rarely return the compliment and invite me out with their own friends. I don't really understand why. I can speak Japanese quite well. Perhaps they don't think I would fit in to their other friendship groups and it would be awkward."
David, 30, who has taught English in Sapporo for six years, has also been surprised that the Japanese aren't more proactive in their friendships with foreigners.
"Japanese seem to have less of a tendency to follow up on that friendship, to call you up and invite you out. I've made some very good friendships, but it takes a lot of hard work." He wonders whether it's shyness rather than lack of will on the part of the Japanese. Paradoxically, there more than 300 messages a year put on the message board at Sapporo International Communication Plaza by Japanese people looking for foreign friends, according to a rough count.
Being proactive does pay off though. Karen, who has been teaching in Sapporo for four years, has three very close girlfriends, and they all make an effort to meet regularly.
"I'd say that the friendships are as strong as friendships I have back home in Canada."
Sometimes, the actual interaction can be quite different from what people are used to, a difference that surprised Paul when he went camping recently.
"I realized that I hardly know my Japanese friends, and they hardly know me! Compared to foreigners, Japanese people rarely seem to ask each other personal questions, give forthright opinions or talk about personal experience, so it's harder to get to know them. Foreigners want to get to know people that way. In a way, I wish we had found out more about each other and talked less about how good the yakisoba was!"
Compared with abroad, Hokkaido's nightlife offers limited opportunity to meet new people. With izakayas, everyone is fixed in allocated seats, which makes it difficult to mingle. Some of the few bars that do offer the go-where-you-want freedom of bars abroad are Locotonte, Rad Brothers, Gaijin Bar and Salsita.
There are also international parties. The recipe: Take a cafe or bar, add 30 to 60 foreigners and Japanese, marinate in a nomihodai, and sprinkle with snacks. These parties typically cost less for foreigners than for Japanese, so in return there's a mild obligation for foreigners to chat in English, which many of the Japanese attendees want to practice.
A new social dish, however, is about to be served.
How many times have you woken up one morning and fancied doing a new sport or activity, but not had the friends to do it with? Or wanted to meet some new people through an activity that doesn't necessarily involve lifting glasses of alcohol off a table? Great news! Several foreigners have started a voluntary organisation, Sapporo International Friendship Society (SIFS), which will run events open to anyone.
"SIFS wants to offer people lots of different activities and opportunities for people to interact," says Ian Buchanan, 32, an English teacher who is one of the founders. "It could be anything: a snowball fight, an onsen trip, a barbecue, a beach trip, a volleyball game, or a skiing or snowboarding trip."
Ian is running SIFS (s_i_f_s@yahoo.com) along with Ryan Zeigler, 26, who is in the Masters program at Hokkaido University.
"The idea is so simple," explains Ryan. "People give us their e-mail address, and when there's an event coming up we mail them the details. We're planning to have a Web site and bulletin board, so that if someone wants to find a tennis partner for example, they post a message."
The inspiration came when Ian and some other foreigners realized that they had "missed a lot of opportunities to make friends with Japanese and even with other foreigners, because the opportunities to meet them hadn't been there," as Ian says.
"I've noticed that if you just say to a Japanese person, "Hey, I'm having a party with my friends, come and join us,' they often worry about who else is coming and whether they will fit in," says Ryan. "Foreigners throw all the cards into the wind. If they know one person out of twenty at the start, that's fine for them. The grouping element limits the opportunities that Japanese and foreigners have to meet each other. With an organisation like SIFS, Japanese people won't feel so hesitant about coming along."
July marked their first event: a barbecue at Toyohira River attended by more than 100 people.
As Ian says, "You don't even realise the demand for this kind of thing until you start doing it."

Alex Cafe,
Fortnightly on Fridays, 7:30 - 11:30 p.m.
(Halloween party: Friday, 26 October)
Nomihodai and food. Foreigners \1000, Japanese \2000
5F, President Sapporo, 2-chome, Odori Higashi, Chuo-ku, Sapporo
Tel: 011-233-0154
www.geocities.co.jp/SilkRoad-Oasis/2465/

Club Latino
Latin Dance Party, (just talking is fine, too): 3rd Sunday of the month.
2:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. (not October)
\300
Ebetsu International Center (3 minutes from JR Nopporo Station)
Tel: 011-381-1111

One feared drowned in whitewater rafting accident

Niseko - A Canadian man was reported missing after he fell out of an eight-man raft in fast water, hit his head and was carried down river. After spinning sideways and hitting a rock, the raft partially capsized and flipped the man overboard, according to co-riders.
"It was freaky, mate. I mean it seemed as if he was yanked out of the boat by a rope or a bloody big bird or something...oh God! No one could help him and he was a goner. He wasn't wearing his life-jacket and down he went," the rafter stated. The search for the man continues, but hopes of finding him alive are not good, according to a diver on the scene. "People who smack their heads on rocks and go under are usually found, but not alive."

And then I woke up.
Oh, perfect! Why did I have to have this dream the night before I was to go rafting for the first time? This is a true account of the nightmare I really had. It is still clear in my mind as I write this, and I will probably remember it for a long time. I had, in fact, seen a dead bird on the side of the road near my home about a week earlier. At that time, too, I felt it was far from auspicious but put it in the back of my mind where it would later reappear as "the gull," pointing at me with its little feathered wing like a miniature grim reaper.
So, the day of the trip came and where I should have been looking forward to a fun-filled jaunt down a river, I was mentally stressed.
Whitewater rafting had always seemed the mildest of all adventure sports. I mean, compared to jumping off a tower or bridge with an elastic band around your feet or hurling yourself out of an airplane or climbing up a sheer rock-face, rafting with a group of novices has to top the list for "least extreme," does it not? My mind was telling me that it might turn out to be boring, but my stomach wouldn't have any of that. Why was I nervous? It was making me angry. But I would soon find out.
Arriving at the base and prep-centre of the rafting company, we got off the bus and heard a lot of strange noises coming from a bunch of sun-ripened Aussies and Kiwis. "Grab-bu a paddle-lu from the pile-lu!" was what one of the guides was saying. He was obviously trying to communicate the instructions to us, a group of mostly Japanese, after reading a book on how to Japanize Your English in One Day, or something along those lines.
But the guides were ridiculously energetic and after they toseed the rafts onto a trailer and assembling us into rafting teams, we got on another bus and away we went to the starting point.
In the water, we practiced responding to a few commands because, as we were told, timing was crucial in avoiding a disaster. In unison, we moved about the raft and were choreographed in paddling and positioning.
"How ya going, mate?" was what my ever-smiling guide asked as I was retaking my position in the back. "Yar looking a bit crook."
Not wanting to admit fear to this macho type, I blurted something about being hung over or binging the night before, thinking this to be what was needed to stop any further questions aimed at me and still not totally buying the fact that what was bothering me was fear.
"Oh, you and me both, mate. I haven't had any sleep at all and in fact I've only had about an hour's sleep in the past three days."
"Hmmm, jolly good," I thought to myself as we set out.
About a hundred metres down, our guide barked at us to pull into a small inlet. Then he jumped out, reached into the water and pulled up a fistful of black mud. He then proceeded to smear the mud on his face! Then this Rambo challenged me to jump in and do the same, which I did.
We were waiting for the other rafts to catch up with us before we could continue on and since it was getting hot, we decided to go to a deep spot and have a swim. And here is where I genuinely understood the fear that had been trying to reveal itself to me all along.

hy"dro.pho'bi.a n. 1, rabies. 2, morbid fear of water.
Well, I don't have rabies, so...
The water was deep and moving quite quickly, which triggered a vision from my childhood as clearly as the day it happened. At summer camp in Canada, our group of about 10 eight-year-olds were led to a small river where we could swim with our group leader. I hesitated to jump in because there was a bit of a current and I had always been afraid of swimming. All of the other kids were having a good time playing in the stream, but I just couldn't bring myself to make the leap. My leader finally pushed me in, with good intentions, I suppose, and I frantically thrashed at the water trying to get back up on shore, screaming for my leader to give me his hand to grab onto. He didn't, and under I went. That's all I remember about it.
So now I had put a name to my fear and was headed down river to face white water with an exhausted, mud-faced guide with a ghoulish grin on his face.
"How ya feeling now, mate?"
There was only one incident, however, on our tour down the river. I was listening to our guide describing how rafts and kayaks can buckle and maim their riders if they hit rocks dead-on when -- Smash! Didn't we hit our own rock dead-on? I was holding on pretty tightly -- had been from the outset -- but a young girl, the pink Yankee, sitting behind me flipped backwards and just missed the rock that we had plowed into. Luckily, up she popped like a cork in the ocean. She was hauled in before you could say, Law Suit! And just when I realized I probably wouldn't meet my maker on that particular afternoon and was beginning to really enjoy myself, it was over.
The trip was about two hours from starting point to end, on about seven or eight kilometres of the beautiful, winding Shiribetsu River, in Niseko, Hokkaido.
Hydrophobia? Ha! I think I'll go again next spring.

Rafting Info

Niseko & Mukawa
NAC (Niseko Adventure Centre)
Rafting \5,000/ adult.
For details: http://www.nac-web.com/e_index2.htm or call 0136-23-2093

Niseko & Furano
SAS (Scott Adventure Sports)
Rafting \5,000/ adult.
For details: http://www.sas-net.com/ or call 0136-22-3599

At first, they don't seem related: undertaking a unique journey and fighting the serious and insidious social problem of domestic abuse in Japan. However, this May, two women will set out from the northern tip of Hokkaido on a yearlong odyssey to walk the length of Japan. Every step of the way, they will be attempting to raise awareness of domestic violence and funds for services to help victims.
The project, called Japan On Foot (Nihon Toho Taiken in Japanese), is the brainchild of Mary King, a Tokyo-based British journalist, and Etsuko Shimabukuro, an IT systems analyst who has worked with King around the world. The pair will start at Cape Soya at the northern tip of Hokkaido this month and hope to arrive on Okinawa's Yonaguni Island in May 2002. Along the way, they will zigzag through each of Japan's 47 prefectures.
"There were a number of reasons for doing this, most of them pretty flaky," King told Xene. It began, she says, as way to commemorate her fortieth birthday this year. "It's a milestone, a landmark, and I wanted to do something to recognize it."
She said she first considered walking the length of Britain, but instead chose Japan, where she has lived off and on since 1988.
The "what" of the trip itself was decided upon; the "why" of raising awareness about domestic violence came later. King got the idea after reading in the local English media about Japan's domestic violence problem and the struggles of those staffing the country's few shelters.
"It struck a chord and I just thought, ﾔMy God, this is something that needs to be done.' It's a cause worth walking for."
Though only recently interested in this particular issue, King has experience lending help where it is needed. In 1986, while based as a reporter in Cairo, she took time out to work as a volunteer at the Wad Sharif Refugee Camp in neighboring Sudan. It was the height of the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and Wad Sharif was the largest refugee camp in Africa.
King and Shimabukuro will be raising funds mainly for HELP, a shelter in Tokyo for the victims of domestic violence, but they also are hoping to raise awareness across Japan and stimulate discussion about a topic that many still choose to ignore and which still carries a stigma. HELP is one of only 20 shelters in the entire country and needs such basics as blankets and baby formula.
"I don't think this is something a lot of people have thought about," says Shimabukuro.
Attitudes seem to be changing, however, and the timing of the Japan On Foot campaign is ideal. On April 6, the Upper House of the Diet, unanimously passed an anti-domestic violence bill. One of the sponsors of the bill, Yoko Komiyama of the opposition Minshuto (Democratic Party), spoke at the Japan On Foot launch party in Tokyo last month.
The new law will take effect this year. Under the law, an abusive spouse can be made to leave home for up to two weeks and be banned from approaching a victim's home or workplace for up to six months.
These are only faltering steps in resolving the problem, however. King applauds the action, but remains skeptical. It still remains to be known whether the law will have teeth. She is afraid that it may wind up as another of what she calls Japan's "tatemae laws": well-intentioned yet ineffectual measures that are rarely enforced or even observed.
A major hurdle for the law's enforcement, she says, comes in the form of the oji-chans, middle-aged lawmakers and officials who don't appreciate the seriousness of the issue.
"The attitude is that Japanese men aren't violent. Japanese men don't do things like that," she says.
At least that's what male politicos think. A half hour in front of the television or a weekend afternoon watching couples in downtown Sapporo offers plenty of examples of playful slaps and bops on the head - most done by men to women and the large to the small. The head shots are usually intended as joking punishment for various minor offenses.
There was no joking, however, in 1999, when domestic violence in Japan became an international issue. Japan's Consul General in Vancouver, Canada, was arrested for assault after he punched his wife in the face. What bothered police and the public most, was the diplomat's attitude. When confronted by police at his home, he told them the whole thing was a matter of cultural differences and such behavior was common in Japan. He later described it as private affair and said that his wife had "asked for it."
After the arrest, a several-week standoff followed between the Japanese Foreign Ministry and the Vancouver Police Department. The envoy finally pleaded guilty and returned home in disgrace after being relieved of his post. In an editorial at the time, The Japan Times lamented "the prolonged conspiracy of silence" regarding domestic violence and called for laws to protect victims.
That year also saw the first major survey of domestic violence in Japan. According to the survey, five percent of women said they had been abused to the point they thought their lives were in danger.
This was followed by a more detailed survey conducted last year by the City of Osaka. Based on a list of 18 types of abuse, 67 percent of the women surveyed said they had experienced abuse of some kind. Of the victims, 16 percent had been kicked or beaten and five percent said they had actually feared for their lives. Keeping with the cloak of secrecy that shrouds the issue, 14 percent of victims did not receive medical treatment.
The Osaka survey also included men's views. Of the men surveyed, a whopping 70 percent admitted they were guilty of at least one kind of abuse.
It is not only women who are victims, says King. Child abuse rates, she says, are "staggering", and the graying of Japan's population has led to a macabre new vein of domestic violence: the abuse of elderly parents at the hands of their adult children.
Though people may write it off as a private matter, the effects of domestic abuse spread through society, affecting the way people deal with each other.
"All this spills out into the street and into the playground," says King.
Both women have been surprised by the response the campaign has received. King says they have been overwhelmed with e-mails - most of them supportive - offering assistance, kind words and accommodation. They have also received e-mails from overseas, including Australia, the U.S., Great Britain, Canada and one from Turkey which, King says, they have not been able to figure out was supportive or critical.
"It said, 'You should come and see how it is for women here,' but I don't know exactly what they meant by that," she says.
There have been requests for appearances during their trip, and one supporter even asked the pair to present a slideshow of their voyage.
"I can't carry a bloody projector and load of slides while I trundle through Japan," says King with a laugh.
As she did in the Sudan, King will write during her trip. She will write for - among others - the International Herald Tribune, Look Japan and her own website.
Most of the writing will be travel pieces, she says, not stories about domestic violence. Similarly, while King and Shimabukuro will stop at shelters where they find them, they will do so only as interested visitors, not as any sort of authorities in the field. The best thing they can do, says Shimabukuro, is encourage people to consider something they might not have previously.
"We just want to say that, whatever you do, think about the consequences," she says.
To learn more about Japan On Foot, access the website at japanonfoot.tripod.co.jp . E-mail to Mary King and Etsuko Shimabukuro can be sent to japanonfoot@hotmail.com.

Flexible hours. No uniform. No necktie. To many young Japanese, this sounds like a dream job. Tomoyuki Tazawa thinks so. While his peers are at work in offices or convenience stores, the 27-year-old is in his studio honing his craft of samisen-making.
Tazawa was hooked from the minute he heard live Tsugaru samisen playing. "It just grabbed me in the gut," he recalls. He apprenticed with the player who had inspired him. As the son of a music shop owner who makes Japanese drums, Tazawa gravitated from playing samisen to making them.
The samisen (shamisen in Japanese) is a three-stringed lute that arrived from China in the 16th century by way of the Ryukyu Islands. The plucked instrument has spent the centuries since then accompanying narrative songs and puppet theater, and playing folksongs. Tazawa's specialty is the Tsugaru samisen, a variation developed on northern Honshu. Although the samisen first arrived at the opposite end of Japan, Tazawa says the scene in Hokkaido is booming, particularly for Tsugaru samisen.
"You can find the most high-level professional makers in Hokkaido," he says, "and many Tsugaru-samisen players are based here: the Yoshida brothers, Nitta Oyako, Hajime Ishikawa, Tatsuya Kinjo...There are actually quite a few. Some of them from, like Hakodate, have gone to Tokyo and become masters."
Many of the younger musicians have substantial followings, doubtless a result of their sex appeal. Tazawa himself, although not a player, has a charm and prettiness that women definitely notice.

STUBBORN AND SHOWY

Tazawa says the Tsugaru style of playing showcases jyoppari, the stubbornness that characterizes the people of northern Honshu.
"My teacher went to a public bath in Tsugaru," Tazawa recounts. "The sign read 'Tsugaru Hot Spring.' He objected that it was a public bath and not a real natural hot spring. The mule-headed woman who managed the place told him, 'This is a real hot spring! Can't you see that boiling water?' And the whole time, my teacher's hearing the boiler going in the back!"
The second feature of the Tsugaru style is efurikogi, or showiness. "Tsugaru samisen players often think, 'I'm gonna pluck faster than anyone,'" Tazawa says, "or 'I can keep it up even though I should've run out of steam by now.'"
A Tsugaru samisen is not just played differently from a standard samisen. It also is made differently. Crafting the body involves stretching dog (not cat) hide over the soundbox, pasting it in place and giving it a final tuning. Because the plucking is so hard and fast, the skin must be pulled as taught as a possible without splitting it. Tazawa says it is difficult for a maker of traditional samisen to produce a Tsugaru samisen.
Tazawa, who grew up watching his father make taiko drums, apprenticed with a samisen maker on Honshu. But he learned mostly by feel, developing his own methods and tools.
"My father is lousy at making samisen," he says. "He's handled Tsugaru samisen but, just like in the koto shops, all he can make are ones that are stretched slackly. His expertise is in Japanese drums, so there's not much I learned from him about samisen.
"There are about three professional makers in Hokkaido, I guess. But there's only one person, other than me, who can actually make Tsugaru samisen good enough for professional use. This other man is 78 years old. I use his work as a model. You know, we don't have a teacher for our kind of job, so you have to learn from experienced people's work." Ironically, the Tsugaru district is not very good for samisen making, according to Tazawa: "The technical level there is not very high."
His tools, too, are different from those of a standard samisen maker.
"My kisen, the pincers used for stretching the skin, are all custom-made," he explains. "Mass-market ones don't grip hard enough. My chisels are custom-made, too. Stretching the skin is the most important thing for samisen. If it's not stretched taught enough, the tone is really dull."
Each skin takes six hours to prepare, humidify, stretch, paste, dry and finish. He sells to Hokkaido players directly and to Tokyo players through agents. His samisen can fetch as much as 300,000 yen apiece.
Before settling into this trade, Tazawa tried his hand at less refined ones. He painted buildings, solicited newspaper subscribers, delivered kerosene and worked in a Susukino bar. It was there that he met Hiroshi Nitta, his samisen mentor.
"I started to think about becoming a professional. I apprenticed to him, as a player first. After a while, he told me to stretch his samisen. Then I felt I needed more intensive training as a stretcher. I wanted to get serious, to make one even a professional artist would want to play. I had to start all over, to change all the skills I had been using in stretching standard samisen. I didn't have any of the good equipment I have now.
"In the past, a player apprenticed with a master, getting his kimono ready at concerts and just watching his work. After a couple of years, he could finally go up on stage and play. Well, that's not gonna happen now. If you apprentice with someone, you can go straight up on stage but only if you're good."
Another way to get a break is to shine at one of three main competitions in Japan, which are held in springtime.

LIKE JAZZ

Centuries of tradition have given the samisen a stodgy image among foreigners, but Tazawa likens the music to jazz in its emphasis on improvisation and individuality.
"You don't use sheet music or the same old rhythm when you play Tsugaru samisen...It's all ad lib. It's really important for you to improvise on stage. When you play with a singer, you have to change the rhythm, or sometimes cut it short to adjust."
But Tazawa is happier crafting instruments than playing them.
"I used to appear on stage every now and then, until a couple of years ago," he says. "Now, a younger generation of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds is coming, and my work as a skin stretcher is getting really busy. I haven't been playing much recently, except when a friend's band needs someone to sit in. You can't really play unless you play every day. Otherwise your fingers just don't work right."
Because of his youth, Tazawa often surprises people when he explains his profession.
"Well, you know, you meet a girl at a nightclub, she asks you your job, right? I tell her, 'I'll give you a million yen if you can guess it.' I can say that, right, because there's no way someone's gonna guess. When I tell them, most of them go, like, 'What?' Some say 'Why?' There was one girl who asked me to marry her on the spot. Her sister happened to play, so she knew about it. But most people just go blank when I tell them."
The samisen tradition may be thriving, but it is in danger - actually, endangered.
"Most of the materials for samisen are prohibited by the CITES treaty," Tazawa says, referring to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also known as the Washington Treaty. "The pick is tortoiseshell, and barwood (koki), which is used for the soundbox, has recently been added to the CITES list. This is a very special tree you can find only in India. And a traditional samisen uses ivory. Everything is banned, except the dog skin, and even this doesn't make some animal rights activists too happy...
"I personally think the treaty is about American ego. Every time we find something good, they try to ban it. Like whales. Something is wrong. But I hear tortoises have started to be raised in Cuba. What really worries me is the barwood, though. I hear the mountains in India are getting bald. Japanese should've thought about the future before we cut all the trees. We should've started planting trees when we started cutting them."

KIDS HAVE GUTS

As a Japanese who is in touch with the younger generation and older traditions, Tazawa is in a unique position to reply to people who call today's youth lazy and undisciplined.
"I really think people who feel this way don't know the younger generation. I don't think it's right to be so obsessed with tradition. If it's gone, it's gone. I do what I do simply because it's interesting for me, and the jobs keep coming in...
"The younger generation does have guts. I know a high-school student who is trying to spread the samisen all over the world, and lots of other young people are really motivated."
Negative thinking about youth "is common to every age. It must've been the same in the Showa era. Yesterday, a high-school kid I know told me that he wanted to join Kodo, the famous taiko drumming troupe on Sado Island [in Niigata Prefecture]. You know, you have to be self-sufficient for two years to join them. You work the farms and practice drums...If there's a concert somewhere, you can't go there by car. You have to run there if you're young. I told him that's a real challenge, but he just won't give up. Many of the people drop out before their two years is up. This guy says he knows he'll make it. He even promised me that he'll spread the word about my samisen. You know, they think they can do anything, the young generation...Actually, I think they're right!"
Tazawa hopes more foreigners will start listening to Tsugaru samisen.
"I think non-Japanese people can really have fun listening. Tsugaru samisen is not like regular samisen, the one that makes you sleepy. There are lots of concerts out there, but I haven't seen any foreigners in the audience. I'd like them to come and just have fun."

Experience the Tsugaru Samisen

･Tsugaru samisen live bar: Gen
Tsugaru samisen played live by professional, Hiroshi Nitta. Cover charge \2,000. 5･6Bldg. 2F, S5 W6, Chuo-ku, Sapporo/ 011-563-9828

･Hiroshi & Masahiro Nitta Concert
Adult/ \3,000, High-school student and younger/ \1,500 (including one drink). Free seating. April 29 (Sun). 15:00- and 19:00-. Zepp Sapporo. S9 W4 532-6969. One-minute walk from Nakajima-koen Subway Station (exit 2). Tickets: 784-3860. Shinei-geinou kikaku.

･CD's on sale.
Shamisen Kid \2,500
Tsugaru Samisen Oyako \2,000
Contact: 011-784-3860

-- From Hokuden