Koala's Appendix

Ah, so it's been three months since my last post. Also about as long since I vacuumed the house, or cleaned the bathroom, or a number of other things around here. In other words, things have been busy. Which is not so much of an excuse, but at least gives me plenty of things to write about, now that I have come around to blowing the dust off the old blog and limbering up my typing fingers.

My main occupation for the last few months (outside of my official, real occupation) has been working on the musical, "Alice in Japan." I've mentioned it in previous posts, but never in particular detail. The title, plot, and most of the lines were liberally borrowed from a previous string of performances in Niigata Prefecture, with the full permission and encouragement of the director of said performances.


The basic idea is generally the same as the original by Lewis Carroll-- aka Charles Lutwidge Dodgson for the pedantic. Little girl gets bored, follows a rabbit into a drug-addled world of madmen and talking animals, has various episodic adventures, eventually confronts the Queen of the land to great commotion and disaster, and finally awakens back where she started. In our version, however, some characters speak English and others speak Japanese; some new characters come from Japanese legends; and costumes and set pieces conform more to Japanese theater than Victorian England.

As previously mentioned, I had three roles: Momotarō's Monkey, the Caterpillar, and the March Hare. Monkey was by far the easiest, though his lines were in Japanese; all I had to do was lope around the place, hop in time to some songs, and pretend to eat fleas off of other people. In other words, like a perfectly ordinary English conversation lesson with the elementary school kids... but I digress. Caterpillar ended up being me tiptoeing across the stage encased in my blue sleeping bag, which was generally the most Caterpillarish thing I could come up with for a costume. He was great fun to voice, and the song our music director Jameela picked for him to sing was the perfect blend of bizarre and creepy to make Alice want to leave and find somebody else to talk to instead. Here is the first stanza:

Hi Miss Alice

あなた硝子の目でどんな夢を見られるの？
魅入られるの？
まだあたし心が裂けて、流れ出る
繕った隙間に刺さる記憶たち

Hi Miss Alice.
With your glass eyes, what dreams do you see?
Do they draw you in?
As for me, my heart is still torn, and flowing out of it,
my little memories are stuck in patched-up crevices.

And last but not least, there was the March Hare. The way he was written in the script, he almost could have been the Mad Hatter's imaginary friend, as he almost never spoke except after the Mad Hatter, and no one really interacted with him... except the Queen interrogated him individually at the end, so that's that theory shot. (Unless he was a shared hallucination?) I had fun making his costume as ridiculous as possible, though upon reflection the knee-high bright yellow socks were a mistake. Not because of how they looked, but because of their propensity to slip on smooth surfaces such as stages and auditorium floors. Running into things is fully in character for the March Hare, but I'll danged if he wouldn't wear shoes or something after the first couple of stubbed toes.


Believe it or not, this is the entire cast of the musical. The little girl in green at the bottom was even an extra who we recruited for just one show. From left to right, in the main row we have Momotarō, the Queen of Hearts, me (as the March Hare), the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, and Alice. Up on stage are Two-of-Hearts and Tweedle Dee, and on the floor are Three-of-Hearts and Marimokkori. (Search for information on Marimokkori at your own risk; I will not link directly. You were forewarned.)


Besides the musical, there have been a number of other developments as well. The ski practices eventually built up to the Great All-School Ski Field Trip Extravaganza to Hokkaido's #1 ski resort, Niseko Annupuri, in March... which was then canceled halfway through due to high winds and snow. But not before I was stuck in a gondola with the school principal and a random guy from Hong Kong for 1 hour straight. Once we finally got to the top, it was time for skiing sideways down a fairly steep slope, without being able to see anything besides the principal just ahead of me. But all that just made the plate of hot curry rice I had back at the ski station all the more delicious.

The gym was specially decorated for the 3rd graders' graduation-- I helped hang the birds!

The school year in Japan starts in April and goes through the end of March, so there was a good bit of activity as graduations, teacher transfers, and new inductions all piled up together. For the 3rd graders' farewell party, I sang every song we used in class together, but so as not to take up too much time, did all of them at double speed. If you think it's hard remembering the order of all Twelve Days of Christmas, try doing it twice as fast.

Our principal and vice-principal both left, and soon I was helping their replacements move in as my new neighbors. The math teacher also switched, and it was certainly fun cleaning out an unused house for him to live in with the other teachers-- call them wood lice, pill bugs, roly-poly bugs, slaters, ワラジムシ warajimushi, or what have you, we got rid of hundreds of them from an old place just south of here.

The roads are clear, but the mountains still have some snow. Good times.

All of that brings things up-to-date as of the beginning of May and the Golden Week holidays. There were some other things that happened in there too: the melting of the snow, an epic 75-minute haircut at the local barbershop, my discovery of a delicious fruit called dekopon, a visit to Iwanai from the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, a visit to Tomari from my predecessor's predecessor, the destruction and free repair of my phone line, the distribution of my ¥12,000 ($120) federal stimulus check, and the Japanese DVD release of Wall-E. But they're all pretty self-explanatory, and if not, your imagination is sure to make them much more interesting than I could describe myself.

Pictures from the Golden Week holidays and further updates all the way to the present are on their way, but perhaps I should get to vacuuming first, or cleaning the bathroom. But before that, one more thing...

Best TV Commercial Ever

Having lived here for several months now, and watching at least a couple hours of television a week, one would think that I would be fully inured to the craziness that is Japanese TV. I really thought so myself too, at least until I saw this commercial. It's part of a series called 豆しば Mameshiba, in which people go about their daily lives, grab something to eat, only to find tiny talking bean-dogs nestled in their food. The bean-dogs then tell them rather gross natural facts, causing them to lose their appetite and not eat anything after all. Facts like "flamingos produce red-colored milk," "squids have three hearts," or "a one-second kiss can transfer 200,000,000 germs." Perfectly normal, right? Except this one was in English. Behold the jellybean-dog:

The effect is best appreciated on repeat viewings, so please rinse and repeat as necessary. Also visit Youtube for further examples.

I definitely didn't know that koalas' appendixes were 2 meters long. And I defy anyone to interpret what the commercial is supposed to be selling. Hint: it's not jellybeans.