culture culture culture

I never know how to start a blog post, and today I'm feeling uninspired, so I'm just going to jump straight to the describing-what-I've-been-doing part.

Last Wednesday I went to go see kabuki! Kabuki is one type of traditional Japanese theater; one distinct feature is that all the actors are men, even for female characters (though apparently nowadays some kabuki theaters do have female actors). Ironically, kabuki was initially created and performed by women, but first women then young men were banned from kabuki for being too erotic (or something like that). Anyway, the CJS office at Nanzan gave international students the chance to see a performance for only 3000 yen (a little more than $30), which is really cheap for kabuki, so it was a great opportunity. Before going, we had to attend a lecture given by Watanabe-sensei, who I believe is the theater director at Misono-za, the theater we went to. Apparently even Japanese people need extra background knowledge before seeing kabuki; it's not something you just buy a ticket and go see.

The stage! After this I found out cameras are forbidden.

We met in front of the theater at 3:45 and didn't leave until almost 9:30 (we brought our own dinners and ate them in the theater during the breaks); there were four different acts (unrelated to each other) in the evening, and we watched them all. The theater was very impressive, and also filled with lots of places to buy omiyage (souvenirs, usually food), in true Japanese fashion. We went in and found our seats, which were pretty high up but still had a good view of the stage. The shows were very long and basically unintelligible, speech-wise (there were headsets for rent that explained what was happening in Japanese), and I fell asleep in every one (big surprise), but I still enjoyed the experience a lot. The costumes were very pretty and we had also received (poorly written) English explanations of each of the acts beforehand, so we weren't completely clueless as to what was going on. One thing that surprised me during the show was the people yelling out the names of the actors; after the show Watanabe-sensei explained that this is also a traditional part of kabuki. We also got to go underneath the stage (we weren't actually allowed backstage) with Watanabe-sensei, which was really cool and really nice of him to do - none of us were expecting it. All in all I think it was a very worthwhile experience, though I don't know if I would necessarily go see it again.

On Thursday, five of us went to my friend Evan's house for dinner, which was great. We met his host parents (I'd met his host dad once but not his mom) and chatted and spent some time looking at pictures of their grandson and of the houses his host dad had designed/built (he built the house they live in too), but the real highlight was dinner. There was a wood stove and a fire pit in the house that they used to cook, which I thought was pretty cool. We had aiyu, a type of fish, potato salad, potatoes, sweet potatoes, boiled eggs, pork, and sesame-rice-things-on-a-stick (they have a real name, but I forgot it), all of which was delicious. When we were all done eating and ridiculously full, they brought out dessert: yogurt jelly with mulberries on top and candied chestnuts - needless to say, they were fantastic. And then after that there were pears! Good food, good times. :) I envy Evan his host mom's cooking and the view from his room (he has a giant window that looks out over the city), but not the giant spiders that live in his house (luckily I didn't see any while I was there). :P

Anna and the origami!

And then on Friday, my friend Anna from Carleton came from Hirakata, Osaka to stay for the weekend! It was really really awesome to see her again and hear about life at Kansai Gaidai. :D She got to Nagoya on Friday night, so we ate dinner (after much searching for a restaurant; I don't know where anything is) and then met some of my friends at an izakaya. Unfortunately we missed the last bus to my house (which is at 11), so I had to get my host mom to come pick us up at the station and bring us home (and I still feel bad about it, even though she says her sons did it all the time). On Saturday, we went to Oasis 21 and wandered around the COP 10 station there, which was themed 'the lives that are connected by water'. I made a fortune teller to stick on the wall-o'-origami and held a tiny turtle! We also watched a performance by a Mongolian musician (which reminded me of my friend Helen, who is doing her Fulbright in Mongolia!), which was pretty awesome - at one point he did this amazing thing involving overtones, which I tried to catch on video. After that we wandered around the Sakae area and looked at all the stalls set up for the Nagoya festival! There were a lot of stages and performances and lots and lots of food vendors, but we had to ge home in time for dinner so we didn't buy anything.

A puppet on the dashi, staring right at me.

The next morning, we met up with some of my friends to stake out spots for the parade! We were about two hours early and the parade was late, so there was a lot of just waiting, but in the end we got perfect spots: we were sitting on a tarp on the corner of the intersection where performances happened and had a great view. The parade was pretty cool, but there were lots of gaps in between groups (probably to let traffic through periodically) and it was kind of slow-paced. But we got to see some traditional dashi (shrine-float-things) with puppets on them, which were pulled along by groups of men - they were really heavy so turning them around was a big deal. It was pretty impressive to watch. We also saw lots of little children and the floats they made, Nana-chan, the giant doll that stands by Nagoya Station (only minus her legs and arms, which was kind of weird), a lot of marching bands, and some ninjas, to name some highlights. Eventually we decided we would rather eat food than watch the rest of the parade (it was way behind schedule and past 2:00), so we made our way to the food stalls we saw yesterday and got food! I ate a tornado potato, which was basically a fried whole curly potato on a stick, a stick of yakitori (actually I suspect it was chicken intestines but don't really want to know), and tamasen, or a fried egg sandwiched between shrimp senbei crackers. Like festival food in America, it was a little expensive and probably bad for my health, but worth the experience. :) Then we went to the Higashiyama Zoo because they had free admission (thanks to the festival), but we only had about 30 minutes before it closed and it was also really depressing - unlike American zoos, there was much less space and most of the animals we saw were basically just in cages. This could have been because it was about to close and so they put them in cages for the night, but still. After that, we headed to the Higashiyama Sky Tower, which gave us a lovely view of the sunset around the city. And then Anna had to go home, which was sad, but I hope to go visit her and the other Carleton folks at Kansai Gaidai sometime!

My tornado potato!

That concludes the adventures of this week; thank you for reading. :)