I think I mentioned the holiday of 七夕 (Tanabata) a couple posts ago-- on the day itself, a group of us from the dorm (Charles, Colin, Joe, Ryan, and me) decided to go to Koganei Park and see if they had any festival stuff going on like they did for hanami at the beginning of the semester. Unfortunately they did not, but I got to see what the park looked like when it did not have hundreds of trees covered in pretty pink blooms. Basic difference: green instead of pink.
One interesting thing we did see though was a group of people flying the most giant kite (or is it a string of kites) that I've ever seen. There was only just enough wind to keep it up for a couple of minutes, then they had to bring it down again. I checked up close and it was a series of multicolored, star-shaped panels all strung together with wire. Probably the stars had to do with Tanabata, but who knows? Maybe they just wanted to fly a super-long star kite on a non-windy day for no particular reason.
We also found that there was a pretty cool playground there too. We didn't actually get to play on it, since there were real kids there and we didn't want to scare anybody away (the curse of being a gaijin...) There was also a slope with special astroturf that you could sled down. We contemplated buying a plastic sled and joining in, but ended up just on the top of the hill watching Joe do fire-spinning practice without the "on fire" part.
On Wednesday, Cameron, Jennie, Joe, Martin, Mike, Ryan, Seamus, Stephanie and I went to the 日本科学未来館 (Nihon Kagaku Mirai-kan) National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation-- I much prefer its shorter Japanese nickname of 未来館 (Mirai-kan) Future Museum. Just as we arrived, there was a demonstrataion of ASIMO, Honda's diminutive but humanoid robot. He waved, he walked, he ran, he spouted short recorded phrases at the audience in Japanese. Very cute.
Also at the Future Museum there was the best model for the Internet I have ever seen. Forget tubes, the Internet is really a giant contraption of metal ramps, lifts, and spirals, communicating using different-colored marbles. This model actually works; we sent short messages like "HI" or "!" or "ネ" across the room with such unnecessary trouble that I think Rube Goldberg would be proud.
Oh yeah, and there was a floating superconductor magnet thingy with cool smoky liquid nitrogen.
This is the giant LCD screen version of Earth. We watched a demonstration of a number of the globe's features-- you can see Earth with clouds, Earth current state, Earth surface temperature (present and projected), even the Moon and Mars. Ryan and Martin got to control it a little bit, rotating it around to see Japan and the US. The one funny thing about the globe was that whenever you switched between the various views, you ended up with the Blue Sphere of Death.
That same evening, Seamus put us together a trip to 歌舞伎座 (Kabuki-za), a famous kabuki theater here in Tokyo. We went to go see 十二夜 (Juniya), a kabukified adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. I have heard a number of horror stories about boring, tedious Japanese theater, but they must have all been thinking of 能 (Noh) because kabuki is awesome. We didn't get to see the first act, but we did manage to buy tickets for the second and third sections of the performance. After grabbing earphones with English explanations of what was going on, we took our cheap student-price seats in the nosebleed section.
For anyone not familiar with kabuki, it works like Shakespeare's plays used to: all the female roles are played by men. This, according to our headsets, is because the female style built up by 女形 (onnagata) men playing women cannot be emulated by real women-- they are too natural. Since this was a comedy, all the actors totally overplayed their parts, especially the "females" and the yellow-clad comic relief man. After a while I turned my earphones almost to off so that I could listen better to the Japanese-- and was pleasantly surprised to find I could understand a good bit of it. Good fun all around.
Yesterday evening we were treated to an entirely different, yet Shakespeare-based theater performance. As I imagine this picture might suggest, it draws very very loosely from The Tempest-- as far as I could really tell, only the new title "Storm" and the names of the characters had any connection to the original. That said, it was mind-blowingly awesome. Seamus was a natural as the insane asylum head, Dane from choir was his frustrated assistant, and Richard and Dan from our dormitory danced with pink feather boas and executed top-secret missions respectively. In true Shakespearean form, everybody died at the end, but fortunately they came alive again so we could talk with them after the performance. Congratulations, and three cheers for all!
As for today, a huge group of us-- Allison, Amy, Brittany, Cameron, Charles, Colin, Emery, Jennie, Joe, Kelly, Mariko, Michi, Mike, Ryan, Ryoma, Stephanie, and I-- went to go see ハリー・ポッターと不死鳥の騎士団, I mean "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." My review: Doesn't really follow the book much at all. Transitions between scenes are nonexistent. But real wizard dueling is awesome-- Dumbledore vs. Voldemort for the win! That whole battle was totally written for the big screen anyway.
After the show, we headed over to Isetan department store, where they had a special exhibition of Harry Potter movie props and products. Two pictures above is Harry's original acceptance letter and glasses, and this one is the Triwizard Cup from the fourth movie. They also had all the characters' wands, the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone, copies of the Daily Prophet, wizard costumes, broomsticks... not to mention a wide variety of Potterania for sale. Among other things, I bought a Bulgaria Quidditch banner-scarf, so Colin from the dorm had to buy an Ireland one to support his home country against me.
And in closing, here Joe responds to the news that super-typhoon Man-Yi, "the biggest typhoon to hit Japan in July in 10 years," is coming for Tokyo. It seems to be working its way up the Japanese archipelago, going through Okinawa, Kyushu, and Shikoku to the main island of Honshu where Tokyo is located by tomorrow afternoon. Some guys from the dormitory were planning on climbing Mount Fuji this weekend, but the mountain is literally closed due to the typhoon. I was kind of half-hoping for this to happen, in just the same way I am still hoping for my morning train to be late so that I can get an official excuse paper from the train company-- I want to be able to say say it happened to me in Japan. I'll be sure to write about it if the dorm is still standing after it hits.
Just kidding, of course. I think.
1 comments:
I just looked at your face book. I think your photos are pretty good. I wanted to wait until after I saw the movie to read, watch or listen to anything about it. I had to constantly put the "Muffliato" spell on myself so I could not hear Glen talking about what he had read so far on line.
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