Kabuki

We had a field trip to see Kabuki yesterday. It was a special program for students to be learn about the traditional form of theater, so it started with an introduction to teach everyone a little bit about Kabuki and it's origins. This also meant that the theater was filled with hundreds of high school kids. We had special receivers to get English explanations in our headphones. After the introduction, they performed a play. It was really cool. The sets and costumes were amazing. The narration was crazy. There are guys that sit in the corner of the stage, some have instruments and some have scripts. The narrators spoke in such a strange, singsongy way that even Japanese people wouldn't understand so there were screens with subtitles in Japanese. I could read some of it along with what they were saying and sometimes one sound would last 5-10 seconds with several pitch changes and flourishes. It reminded me of in Finding Nemo when Dori speaks whale. This was one of my favorite things I've done so far.

I got 146 lines in Tetris. I'm getting much better.

This is a link to our Happyokai film. Our Japanese narration isn't provided but I thought you might want to at least the silent movie part. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFVbHtQ9oAI

JSP is over in 2 weeks! Time flies when you're having fun.

I'll be putting a lot of new pictures up soon, so take a look. Pictures from Asakusa, Yaskuni Shrine, Yokohama and the Ramen Museum.