Sensu and sensuality

A few weeks ago, I was asked to do a team teaching demonstration lesson for the new JETs in the prefectural capital. I wasn't particularly keen on it, since it chewed up one of my long weekends during the summer vacation. However, when the order comes from on high in the prefectural board of education, being a lowly cog in the wheel of the municipal branch means you have to grit your teeth and do it. It was a scary thought, doing a lesson with people who are actually old enough to catch on to all the sneaky tricks I use to get the kids in class to speak English. On the bright side, I got reimbursed for travelling expenses and lunch, and I was able to spend a few hours in the city looking around, and ended up finding a cut price yukata and a matching belt in time for all the summer festivals that were coming up. I'm totally weak for these things, I know.

On hindsight, it was probably a good thing that I was in the capital that day. I walked past a convenience store and spotted a poster for an upcoming kabuki performance featuring a 16-year old onnagata, or female impersonator named Saotome Taichi. I'd missed his show the last time he came round these parts since all the tickets had sold out, so I wasn't going to let this chance go. Convenience stores here truly are convenient, and I was able to get a premium seat simply by walking into the store and ordering it from a handy automated machine in the corner. I do believe I was on a high for the rest of that day with a very precious ticket safely tucked away in my bag.

With all the activity that follows the start of the new term, the day of the performance came surprisingly quickly. It was a mad rush to get to the culture centre in the capital again, since I had a non-volunteer engagement in the morning that required a half-hour drive to get to. Suffice it to say that bullet trains are horrendously punctual, and won't wait to pick up stragglers. I made it into the auditorium just a couple of minutes after the show started, and was glad that they didn't make me wait until the intermission to let me in. It would have been upsetting, to put it mildly. Once I was in there however. any vestige of guilt over drooling after a minor disappeared, since an overwhelming proportion of the audience was made up of geriatric ladies. ^^

The first act was a play called Souma no Sentarou, a story about a boy samurai searching for his blind mother who gave him and his sister away as infants. I got the story since I'd already seen it on a DVD I'd bought a while ago (I know it's fangirling, but I don't care). Incidentally the kanji in the title is identical to the name of a city in the northeast of my prefecture that's famous for horse racing, but I don't know if it's actually related. The story begins in the Edo period, with the title character having searched over a decade for his mother, who has married a rich merchant. In typical tearjerker fashion, Sentarou and his sister are waylaid on the outskirts of the town where their mother lives, and his sister is killed in the fray. The boy then has the unenviable job of breaking the news to his mother, who doesn't believe his story until he produces a keepsake bell that she gave his sister when she was born. I could have sworn I heard a few people in the audience sniffling during the show. ^^

Melodrama gave way to mayhem during the intermission as there was a mad rush for merchandise. The counter with all the goodies was four to five deep in fans, who bought everything from shopping bags and paper fans to chapsticks and terry towel handkerchiefs. I have to admit I was pretty keen on some of the stuff too, so here's my haul from the day, including the DVD I mentioned above:

The photobook was a decent collection of shots, while the metal can contains cookies, each printed with the guy's stage name. Just so you know, the can is labelled "sweet cookie". He sure is. XD

The cheap pair of plastic binoculars in the picture came in pretty handy in the second act, when the star of the show ditched the samurai costume for white makeup, flowing kimono and long black wigs. I'd seen his performances on TV and the internet before, but it's quite a different experience to see it live. More like a rock concert than a traditional kabuki performance, the dances combined fans and flowing silk with modern music and dazzling lighting effects to wow the audience. There was one piece where he performed alone to an English song, possibly called "This is My Life", that briefly took me back to the drag shows in Sydney, but without the sleaze. I wasn't allowed to take photos all throughout the show, so here's a sample:



The seat I got was in the first row of the second tier of the ground level, right next to the exit. At first I thought I'd been gypped because it wasn't as close to the stage as I would have liked, but a few times during the show the backup dancers used the aisle in front of me to enter the auditorium, followed by Saotome himself. I swear I was no more and a metre away from the guy, and that alone made my trip there worth all the effort. He would probably have come closer if it had not been for an obsessed fan who reached out to try to touch him as he went by. I reckon you should never touch a performer unless they explicitly invite it; to do that would be disrespectful and somewhat stalkerish if you ask me.

All in all, it was a great day out, and one of those rare chances to experience something a little out of the ordinary. I think I'll be keeping a close watch on his website from now on. If he ever comes by these part again I am so going to get tickets. I do so love my eye candy. ^^

Manga Marketplace

Somewhere in my copies of the official junior high English textbook, there's a story about the first East Asian Manga Summit in Japan in 1996. By some strange coincidence it was held in this prefecture in the seaside city of Iwaki, about a couple hours drive from Sukagawa.

I don't have to travel that far to get to a comic exhibition though. Turns out that there's an event like the Comic Market in Odaiba, right here in Koriyama just 30 minutes away. The 44th Super Adventures comiket was held in an exhibition and expo centre on Route 4 called Big Palette, and is like a scaled down version of Comiket, complete with art contests, doujinshi vendors, merchants and even a cosplay show. A recent tightening of privacy laws meant that I actually had to register with the organizers before I could take photographs, however. The girl at the organizers' booth did a double take at my katakana name, but after that it was all good, so here are a few of the cosplayers I thought were worth a second look.






Hehe... nostalgia.

A comic market in a totally different prefecture affords me some anonymity to get snap happy, but one so close to home means that the odds of running into someone I know is pretty high. It's even more awkward when the people who spotted me at the event were my junior high students. Most students react to this situation with the same awkwardness, and I know that for a fact because some of my students have actually written about it in class. ^^

It was a pleasant surprise than when my students actually seemed glad to see me. I guess outing my interest in anime and manga does make me less distant to them. One of the girls I saw actually had her own table at the fair and was selling some of her own stuff. As a teacher, I have to support my students, so of course I bought something from her. She might be terminally embarrassed if I posted a pic of her doujin, so I'm not gonna. ^^

Going to Super Adventures spurred me to draw a few pics, and since I have free periods at school sometimes. Kids who walk by my desk in the teachers' room sometimes stop to take a peek, and it goes a long way in breaking the ice, even for a few words of English. The student with the table at the fair just so happens to be in the art club, and so I've somehow become an unofficial member of the club as well. XD

I used to wonder what on earth would motivate kids to stay in school eleven hours a day, but after going to the art room after classes for a few days I realize that these club activities mainly serve a social purpose more than anything else. Kids who might otherwise be quiet and reserved, or generally awkward and outcast find a second voice doing something they're interested in with other like-minded people. "No man is an island," so the tired cliche goes, but I've seen too many quiet and withdrawn kids in class to know that it's vitally important to have someone to talk to when things get rough. After all, everything is rough for kids since it's happening to them for the first time.

At the very least it's nice to gain a little bit of cred with the students. It can get tough when you come up against a wall of silence come English lesson time, and if a few scribbles on a piece of drawing paper can help disperse the apathy, it can only be a good thing. Forget art for art's sake. I'll take purpose over pretentiousness any day.

Another year, another (roman) candle

There's no easy way to confront turning 30, especially when you work with kids and are continually reminded of the excesses of youth. It also doesn't help when the day coincides with the town's famous fireworks festival and the date you start your descent into the age of responsibility and home loans is plastered all over the city. I suppose I can tell everyone that the town put on the pyrotechnics for my special day. Just so I could celebrate in style, or at the very least distract myself from the horrible truth, I decided to go to the festival in a new yukata I'd bought for the occasion. No pics, sorry. Poor lighting and all, you see.

Talk about raining on my parade. The festival was fairly damp from the light rain that continued throughout that night, but that's not going to stop the townspeople from having their festival. Aside from the usual chrysanthemum fireworks, there were ringed planets, pokemon balls and my favourite, goldfish. Yes, literally goldfish-shaped fireworks that were totally cute. I wish I could have taken some decent photos, but the lack of a tripod or anywhere dry to stand it prevented me. The largest individual fireworks were last, but the smoke from all the previous charges started drifting downwards because of the rain, and so all we saw was a diffuse glow instead of the actual fireworks. Shame, really. I made up for it by downing a couple of beers and tucking in to some delicious festival food.

Speaking of food, what's a birthday without a bit of cake, eh? In the year since my last, the branch of Fujiya I got my cake from the last time packed up, so I reckon I'd make my own. So here are the cream puffs I made after scouring the net for recipes.

When I was a kid I thought adults had all the answers, that at age 21 a switch in their brains automatically flips and they all suddenly know what to do in any situation. Over the years that philosophy has mutated somewhat. Now I firmly believe that adults are but children in a larger size. There have not been any illuminating epiphanies or sudden surges in wisdom, only a persistent feeling that nothing I've experienced so far will truly prepare me for tomorrow. It sounds rather trite I know, but right now, it's surprisingly apt. It's not all that gloomy though; after all, I made it this far, right? Based on my own rate of situational survival I suppose the odds of making it out of most sticky spots is in excess of 50%, which is as good as it gets, really.

While on the subject of "as good as it gets", I do sometimes worry that this is all there is to life, and that at 30 I really should have more to show for it than I do now. But it's never too late to start planning I suppose, and since I'll probably be staying here for the next couple of years it's an excellent time to think about all the other things I could get to doing after this extended working holiday. Hopefully I've actually learned something about teaching in the last year so i can deal with the next two better. Good students are a joy to teach, but where there are terror tots (14-year olds also count), it takes a lot of patience, Panadol, and as a last resort, apathy, to deal with them.

Meanwhile, I suppose the goal this year is to get out of my cosy one-room apartment more often and see more of this country's sights before I have to pack up and go back to the real world. Travelling within Japan can get frightfully expensive, but there's no better time than now since I'm actually here. Better start saving.