Bunraku

On Wednesday night, I went to a bunraku performance. Bunraku is basically Japanese puppet theater, but the puppets are 3/4 lifesize and are operated by three men. The first man is wearing traditional Japanese clothes and he operates the head and right hand. The other two puppeteers are dressed in black hooded outfits (like black KKK capes). One operates the feet, and the other operates the left hand and props. The puppeteers are silent throughout the performance. A narrator and shamisen player sit off to the side of the stage and provide all the sound.

The sets were beautiful, as were the puppets and their costumes. The stories, however, were incomprehensible. I did a bit of online research beforehand so I would understand the plot, but found very little information on the internet. It was even more difficult to follow because the puppeteers did not do the voices for their puppets. The narrator did all the voices and emotion, so I had to constantly look to him to see what was happening.

I think we saw two short plays and a third longer play, but I'm not even sure of that! The first short play had the same scene as shown this picture from the wikipedia bunraku webpage.
I have no idea what was happening in the third play. Something about a blind girl who could play the koto (Japanese harp). I caught the words "samurai", "dangerous", and "vacation/rest". Then at the end someone committed ritual suicide, and the blind girl might have drunk poison, I'm not really sure. (Love stories that end in suicide are classic bunraku plays.)

But even without being able to follow the stories, the 2 and 1/2 hour performance flew by!

Photos were not allowed during the performance. The photo above is from a website. And here are a couple more websites with more information and photos: http://www.bunraku.or.jp/english.html

http://www2.ntj.jac.go.jp/unesco/bunraku/en/index.html

Last weekend - and upcoming events!

This was finally a quieter weekend for me. I went to the Himeji Museum of History with Mr. Matsumoto, my co-teacher for the monthly kids' classes I've been teaching this year. He brought along two of his adult English students who were looking for an opportunity to practice English. So I had three tour guides! That in itself attracted a lot of attention, and a few other museum goers stopped our group to find out why we were speaking in English (and to encourage me to learn Japanese! But if I learn to speak Japanese, then these people don't get a chance to practice English! So the way I see it, I'm being very altrustic by not being conversant in Japanese!)

I got a lot of attention from the museum staff too, who pulled out an expensive fan and a samurai helmet for me to try on! The helmet was very heavy (about 5 kilograms) and was used only for ceremonial purposes, not for battle. Two kids at the museum presented me with origami ninja stars, and the way was cleared for me to take a photo of this boy dressed in samurai gear.

Tomorrow is graduation day at junior high. It's a big deal since the students have been together since 1st grade, but will go their separate ways to high school. And tomorrow night I'm going to a bunraku performance (Japanese puppet theatre). I should have lots to tell you about tomorrow night.

And this Friday I'm going to a sumo match! I'm very excited, although I suspect I'll get bored within about 20 minutes! (My attention span when it comes to sports - spectating or participating - is notoriously short!) But I really want to see a real live sumo match - so I can say that I've been!! How cool is that!?! In keeping with my academic (rather than athletic) tendencies, I've been researching sumo and found this official website with some history and explanations of the sport. Study along with me, if you'd like! I'll fill you in on the actual event next weekend! http://sumo.goo.ne.jp/eng/ozumo_joho_kyoku/shiru/kiso_chishiki/beginners_guide/origin.html

Ethnology, Plum Blossoms and Modern Art

Since I just can't seem to take a day off of sightseeing, last Sunday I went to the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka. (Ethnology is what I like to oversimplify and describe as the study of cultures.) The museum was incredible!! From the website, it didn't look like it would take too long, but it was huge and full of interesting artefacts. And the admission price was only about $4!! There was a corridor of these spaceship-like booths where people were watching videos. Very futuristic!

The museum was organized by geography, so there was a large room on Oceania, another room on the Americas, (you get the idea), etc. and then a room on Ainu culture (that's the native culture of Hokkaido (the large northern island of Japan)).

Ainu culture is fascinating! The people look more caucasian (but apparently aren't) with lots of body hair. Women used to have tattoed mustaches. And the Ainu people practiced a bear cult! They would capture a bear cub and rear it, sometimes even nursing the cub. When the cub was a few years old, they would kill it in a festival, and eat the meat, and somehow also worship the dead bear.

The last room also really caught our interest - the exhibit on mainland Japanese culture (of course!). A couple of things in particular -

this large paper float for the Nebuta festival. The festival is held in a couple different cities in August, and floats like these are paraded through town to get rid of the spirits that cause sleepiness. The floats are lit up from the inside and are really beautiful!

I also took note of these traditional straw mittens and boots. Somehow I don't think I would have been very happy to be a Japanese person hundreds of years ago.

After the museum, we wandered through a plum tree grove where lots of people were taking photos of the blossoms, picnicking, and working on their laptops. (You can see it's still cold here - everyone is bundled up, but that doesn't stop the diehard plum blossom enthusiasts from sitting on the cold ground under them.)

This park also contained a contender for the world's ugliest sculpture. We couldn't figure out what it was supposed to be...

Back at Osaka station, we found a store selling cookies! How exciting!! They were a bit expensive, but sooo worth it! I opted for the chocolate oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies instead of the tomato cookies. At least there weren't any seaweed or fish cookies...

Hinamatsuri

March 3rd was Girls' Day (or Doll Festival), called Hinamatsuri in Japanese. Families with daughters display beautiful dolls of the Emperor and Empress.

When a baby girl is born, her maternal grandparents give her parents a set of these dolls. They're REALLY expensive, easily $1000 for a basic set! Every year in the middle of February, her parents will display them, but always taking them down on March 3rd. If the parents miss this deadline, it's said that the daughter won't get married!

I went over to my friend Chiaki's house to see her display (she has an 18 year old daughter). It was very large, taking up as much space in her family room as the piano!

On the top shelf sat the Emperor and Empress in front of a gold screen.

The second shelf had the Empress' three ladies in waiting. Then a shelf of five musicians with traditional Japanese instruments.

Next were some diamond shaped mochi (the ubiquitous rice cakes) and two advisors to the Emperor, one young and one old. The next shelf had three men cleaning, one was happy, one sad, and one angry. And the bottom shelf had displays of furniture and candy. What a beautiful tradition to celebrate daughters!

(PS. I have changed the format of the photos, so if you click on a photo, you should be able to zoom in on it)

Sign Says... huh??

I haven't had much time to blog this week, so I hope you'll be content with a few photos of funny signs. Hopefully these will hold you all over until the weekend, when I should have time to update.

(they meant "3 pieces for 1000 yen")

Sake Factory Tour

Yesterday a group of us took a tour of a local sake factory, Tatsuriki. (Sake, as I'm sure you all know, is a Japanese alcoholic beverage made from rice. Japanese people often describe it to us foreigners as"rice wine", but it tastes more like a hard alcohol like vodka).

The first half hour of the tour consisted of a video in Japanese of how sake is made. (Check out the link about for details on how it's made because the only word I understood from the video was "yukuri" which means "slowly".) We watched men wearing nothing but a pair of shorts hefting the half-finished product around the factory, sampling it and spitting it back into the vat. Apparently the Japanese Health Department is a little more liberal than its counterpart in the US.

After the video, we all put on hair nets and rubber boots (apparently there are some regulations after all) and stepped into a solution of disinfectant before we entered the factory.
Here is some sort of machinery. One person was trying to translate for us - this has a computer...

This little shrine was on the 2nd floor of the factory. Sake is often used in Shinto ceremonies.

After the tour, we had samples of sake! We were told to bring snacks. We Americans and Australians decided that meant snacks, like peanuts, and chips, etc (Trisha brought a tangerine and banana!). However, all the Japanese people pulled out entire meals of raw fish and octopus dumplings, and who knows what else. We looked like the poor relations at the end of the table! We sampled six different kinds of sake. Kampai!!

Ocean, You Meet Whale Shark

Yesterday I took a day trip to Osaka with a few friends. We woke up to a couple inches of snow but we thought nothing of it as we got on the bus to go downtown. At the train station though, it was a bit chaotic, people were running out of the station, clearly in a great hurry. That was our first clue that the rail system was upset by the snow. Sure enough, the special rapid train wasn't running, so we had to take a local train (think "takes twice as long to get anywhere because it stops at every little station") for about a half hour until we could switch to a special rapid. Those were trains #1 and #2 of the day. Finally in Osaka about an hour and a half later, we caught the loop line, but managed to get on the one train that wasn't exactly on the loop line. Unfortunately we didn't notice that until the end of the line. We had to hop off, and wait for a train returning. Trains #3 and #4. Last we caught what was called a subway, but it wasn't underground, so it was Train #5. Finally, we had made it to the aquarium!

The aquarium was great and had a theme: the Pacific Ring of Fire. It had lots of creatures other than fish: otters, seals, octopus, jelly fish, penguins and of course dolphins. For reasons known only to the museum staff, the otter habitat had a huge skeleton of what might have been a mammoth.

Here is curiously Japanese service - if you want a picture of yourself next to a plastic whale shark, you get in line. When it's your turn, you hand your camera over to the museum staff who shoot your photo for you. It's a really cool service and they've got a very efficient system for it. I've seen it at lots of places and think it's something we should adopt in the US.Of the aquarium creatures, I was most impressed by the octopus. They had clay pots (traditional octopus traps) in the tank, and the octopus (octopii?) were moving in and out of them. I love to watch their weirdly graceful movements.

Here we have some squid or cuttlefish (couldn't find a sign to tell me which) and kelp.
Giant spider crabs! Sardines swimming endlessly in circles.

And beautiful orange jelly fish

After the aquarium the afternoon was still young, so we rode the ferris wheel next to the aquarium. We had a birds eye view of a cruise ship and the aquarium and the urban sprawl that is Osaka.

Those of you interested in more aquarium and ferris wheel photos can check out the webalbum. Some of the photos are out of focus - couldn't get the seals, otters, and penguins to stand still for a photo!