Cross-cultural communication （96）　

96) Alice's Memories
The sixth installment of a series in the Asahi Newspaper's morning edition on January 15th, 2020, in the Culture and Civilization section, talked about the history of former Alice of Japanese Pops, Shinji Tanimura. This installment talked about an anecdote from the summer of 1970, when he was still unknown, and he traveled with several Japanese bands for 40 days, performing in Canada, the west coast of the United States, and Mexico. 1970 was the year of the Osaka Expo, and it was also the year I was preparing to take the entrance exam for medical school. At the time, the exchange rate was 360 yen to the dollar, and you could only take $1,000 out of the country.

He asked a friend in Japan to send him money to tide him over while he was traveling. When he arrived in Mexico, that friend had disappeared with the money. At that time, he went to a Mexican friend's house to sing for his birthday, and he was invited by dozens of people. Everyone knew that Mr. Tanimura and his friends were in trouble, and they put money in his hat. When he refused, saying “We don't sing for money”, he was told, “No, we put the money in because we were moved by your singing”. The scene where he was forced to hold the hat with the money in it, and walked home to the motel in the middle of the night, crying, was a very big event in his life.

There are bad people in every country, and there are also many wonderful people. This later became the basis for him leaving Japan and going to Asia. As I read this passage, my eyes became tearful. I think that it is only through experiences like this that we can truly understand the importance of cross-cultural communication. I felt that this was a version with several times the impact of the 91) Nice story from a trip on this blog.

By the way, after failing the entrance exam once and then entering Osaka Medical College in 1971, Alice came to perform at the college's cultural festival when I was in my third year, I think. At the time, Alice was a band that was becoming fairly well known in the Kansai area. Even so, they were still a professional band, so they really livened up the cultural festival at our college, which was a rather plain and unremarkable place.

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