Culture Time: Kabuki and Calligraphy!

So until now, I've clearly been living in Japan, but just recently it REALLY started to feel like Japan.

Yesterday, the SANC senseis took us to a kabuki show. I'm sure you all have an image of what kabuki is like--white-painted faces, ridiculously elaborate costumes, ornate sets, only-male actors, and a language you don't understand. Well, that pretty much sums it up!



This particular kabuki show that we went to see was at the National Theatre of Japan, a really gorgeous space a short train ride from SANC. The stage was ginormous and had a runway-like platform connecting it and backstage (but a backstage behind the audience; the "runway" ran from the stage, through an aisle in the audience, and then through a curtain behind us).



For the first 30 or so minutes of the performance, two men (who I'm pretty sure played two of the protagonists) were dressed in what I can only describe as what Rei from Sailor Moon would wear (oh, the ignorance. I'm sorry, Japan) and explained a lot of things to us.



Well, they explained things to those who could understand (i.e. Nick) and then the rest of us would get the summarized English version via whisper. From what I got (because Nick not only translated for me, but also for Adam, and therefore missed some stuff himself), the two men were teaching the audience about the different aspects of kabuki theatre. All the sound effects and music are done by people that are either on stage in a corner, or behind blinds. And there are ninja-helpers (that's what we called them, anyway) that are dressed completely in black (like ninjas) and scurry around the stage to bring props to the chatacters, or take props away. We were told to pretend we didn't see them, haha.

After the explanation (which we guessed was for the benefit of all the school children present), we were given a 20ish minute intermission before the start of the actual performance. So we SANCers kinda milled around in the gift shop area, and when the announcer lady person started talking, I decided to head back to my seat. I walked past a pack of school girls 20-strong, and they ALL STARED AT ME and squealed, "kawaii!!"

...

Now, I will happily take that. Apparently those Japanese school girls found something cute about me. Probably my non-Japanese AND non-White look, haha. But I just found it so odd, you would think that a cute American BOY walking past would get that treatment...I'm not gonna look into that too much, haha.

The kabuki show was cool, especially when the Monkey God took out his red and gold BO (SUGOIII!) and started doing cool stuff with it. I would hit Nick excitedly and be like, "I CAN DO THAT TOO!". It was pretty awesome. Made me wish we had brooms in our apaatos.

After the actual show, we were given special treatment (thank you SANC/Light!) and were taken backstage to see how things work with the sets and the trapdoors the characters sometimes used. It was cool and I picked up some tidbits of knowledge from asking Nick, like how only characters that were divine could use the trapdoor to rise out of the floor, and how the basement area under the stage was referred to as the Japanese word for "hell," and was alleged to have ghosts down there. We even got to stand in the middle of the gigantic stage as someone pulled some kind of lever and the floor started rotating! It was very very cool, an enormous circle of floor in the middle of the stage could rotate a full 360 degrees. I love sugoiiiii things. =]





***

Today was our first Calligraphy class, and it's all thanks to Adam-chan. Adam is kind of a beast when it comes to Calligraphy (he started 3 years ago and is AMAZING at it), and he talked to the senseis about offering a class. We cycle through because there are too many of us that are interested, and I got to be in the first batch because my hand went up the fastest (typical).

After class and lunch, we took the train with the senseis to the SANC office (not located where we have class) where the NICEST little sensei was waiting for us. She taught us the names for all the different types of brushes (which I have since forgotten because I couldn't write anything down), taught us how to pour the ink and hold the brush, etc.

It was an hour and a half of pure bliss.

I'm really big on fonts and handwriting (only semi-artistic thing I can do, haha), and this was like Christmas coming early. I could literally just draw strokes for hours. It was so relaxing, and so much fun, and every time my brush made contact with the paper, it was a new creation. We started with simple horizontal, then vertical, strokes (harder than it sounds), and worked our way up to simple kanji. I must have used 46 trees' worth of paper (I feel bad about it, actually). Our first kanji was 川　(kawa, which means river), and from there we worked our way up to 明日　(ashita, tomorrow).



It was so simple an act, and yet so beautiful. I've resolved to find SOME way to continue this back in the US--I wish I could do this every day, but sadly I can't even settle for every week. Since we're rotating, 4 different people get their turn next week. But never fear oh devout blog-readers: Rene and I realized that if we take out everyone else in the program, we can do Calligraphy every week ^__^



Stay tuned for progress on that one.