Conclusion
Enjoy!

A Gaijin in Tokyo

Friday, September 20, 2002, 08:06 a.m. :||: meet tama-chan
Apparently for a good month or so now the Japanese media have been following Tama-chan-- a seal-- as he makes his way out of Japanese rivers back to the sea.

.....

I guess it's less depressing than most news you'll see on tv now.

But I wouldn't be surprised if the media (as well as people who get to see the seal as he makes his journey) make sure that Tama-chan stays safe. Because the viewers would be most upset if one morning they tv and papers announced, "whoooops, tama-chan got shredded in the propellers of a boat!"

In case you're wondering, they already have bumper stickers and such boasting the cute face of Tama-chan the Seal who Got Lost in Japan.

Thursday, September 19, 2002, 01:53 p.m. :||: Many Random Observations
I must have been more high on pain that I thought when I came back a few days ago, but I didn't notice until yesterday two really big changes at the Mejiro station. One, the construction on its left side is finally finished (now there's a bicycle parking lot!), and two, construction has started on its right. Meaning, one of my favorite restaurants here-- a stand-up place serving the most nummilicious ramen and curry you could ever wish for-- has been torn down.

Nooooooooooooo! I tried another restaurant's katsu karee, but it just wasn't the same. -------- Warning: This will be of interest only to those who study kanji! And maybe not even to them. You know the kanji for niku, right? And you know the kanji for tsuki, ya? They don't really look alike, don't you think? The radical that has the same stroke order as 'moon' is derived from the kanji of niku. This, my friends, boggles my mind. I cannot get my brain to jump over this concept. Though it does explain why so many of the kanji for body parts has the moon radical in it. --------

The new scholastic semester has started. Three months left in Tokyo! If I love you and you think you deserve me to get you something, speak now or forever hold your peace. Because, dude, I am SO not running around looking for gifts and such during my last couple of weeks here. Not during hellish exam-and-moving time, nuh-huh.

Thursday, August 1, 2002, 01:17 a.m. :||: I Hope This Improves Their Business
Yesterday I met Miss Guam. Or at least I assume she is Miss Guam. She was, after all, wearing a banner round herself proclaiming that fact.

I always thought that someone who was declared to be most beautiful person in their country would be able to do more glamorous things than stand on a street-corner in Tokyo offering travel pamphlets to people walking by, but I was apparently wrong.

Thursday, August 1, 2002, 12:01 a.m. :||: Encounters All Make Sense in the End
Let us flash back in time, back to when I was a Wide-Eyed [relatively] Innocent junior in high school. One of my best friends, Leila, had just come back from a three-month stay in Japan, and I was dying to hear about her adventures.

She told me about kabuki; at the time I cocked my eyebrow and said nothing (how boring, kabuki!). She told me about this weird troupe of actors consisting entirely of females; I declared that I must see this as soon as possible.

Fast forward to four or so years later. Funny how things work out! The situation is rather opposite, now. I smile fondly when I hear of Takarazuka (the afore mentioned All Female Actor Troupe) but am not terribly interested, and if someone mentions Kabuki, I'm all ears.

I'm not quite sure how it happened, but in the six months that I've been here, I've gone to see Kabuki... *counts* at least six times (seven if count Tamasaburo's dance recital). Takarazuka? Once. I went yesterday. And I've satisfied my four-year long curiosity.

A few comments about the performance itself: it was named Lucky Star, and I was rather blown back by the plot (or at least its subject). I was not expecting a play about the grass movements to make Checkslovaki indepedent. My vocabulary was desparately useless here; I understood so very little of what was going on. I'm still trying to understand why one of the main characters was a Japanese diplomat.

Lots of singing, dancing. I was really jarred at the performance style! This is the sort of stuff I've grown up: broadway/ American 40's musicals material. So I shouldn't have been so jarred by it. But I'd be watching, and someone smack me if I deny that the actors weren't talented dancers, but they would do small mistakes, like tremble when they were meant to be perfectly still. At things like that, I thought, "Heh, Kabuki actors have better control than that." Help me, I'm being brainwashed.

And none of them could act. Thank you very much.

More interesting than the play itself were the fans and the building itself. Once you enter the theater, there is a huge European-style grand staircase decked in red velvet, roses, and sparkles. The floor in the main hall is that of a ballroom, and the whole place was just so girly I felt as though I'd walked out of the pages of a shoujo manga.

And the fans... oh boy, the fans!

I was walking around in Yurakuchou, not lost because I knew where I was, but aimless, because I didn't know where the theater was. So, little aimless Isabel is walking about, when she spots a highly attractive female with an old lady. "How nice," I think, "she's out with her grandmother!"

The grandmother pulls out a camera, and starts taking pictures. I find this mildly odd, and mildly suspcious (I start to suspect at the truth), especially after the attractive female says goodbye and leaves.

What if, I thought to myself, this attractive female just happens to be a Takarazuka actor? If she were, she could lead me to my goal!

So I followed her. But not for far; less than a block later the attractive female was, erm, attacked?, by five other females. The five females, one by one, give the attractive one small bags (holding presents, one can only assume), take pictures, and say a few words. And they part.

By this point I'm fairly sure that she's a Takarazuka star.

I follow her for another few feet, see a CROWD of women, panick slightly, and join the crowd. I watch the attractive female walk into a door labeled, "Takarazuka Actor's Entrance." I guess that's pretty much all the confirmation I'll ever get.

So, yeah. There was a crowd of women standing in front of the actor's entrance, waiting for a glimpse of their favorite stars. This is the point where I pulled out my keitai and wrote a quick email to my friend: "takarazuka fangirls are WEIRD."

I thought everyone there would be middle-aged, but no, there were some really young girls (ten or so) in there, too. And some grannies. A fairly mixed group of ages, but not of sex; I saw a grand total of two men in the theater that day.

You betcha the ladies' bathroom was crowded at intermission.

Saturday, July 27, 2002, 12:38 p.m. :||: If I Can Cook, So Can You!
[I apologize to Wan (of the "Wan Can Cook" cooking show program) for stealing his most famous line, but I'm afraid that it's more true in my case than his. Dude, he can cook AND by witty at the same time!]

Some of you know me well enough to know that I'm hopeless at cooking. I look at the ingridients, I look at the tools, I look at the cook, and then I sit down and wait for the food to be made. This frustrates me-- I want to help, damnit! But even when I offer, the cook tends to wave their hand, saying that they've got it all covered.

Which is why I was so happy at yesterdays's barbeque.

A friend of mine-- here, I'll name the people for once!-- Beppu, invited me over to her house for a barbeque. Also there were Gina, Alisa, and Ookuma. We stopped by the supermarket, got the ingridients, started up the fire, and started cooking.

I was expecting myself to be waved off, as always. But I found my experiences at all the okonomiyaki restaurants I've been going to paid off-- because I knew exactly what to do. And it's not rocket science, either! You just stick the food onto a surface, get a spatula, and flip the food often enough to make sure it doesn't get burned. Not to say that nothing got burned, or that nothing fell onto the grass, but those were the exceptions. And the exceptions were still tasty, so there!

At last part, when we were making yakisoba, I did most of the flipping. Afterwards Gina told me that the other girls commented that I looked like a professional. Yay!

(Maybe being Brazilian and all, barbecue stuff just comes to me instinctively? I've certainly watched it be done enough times. Or maybe it's genetic!)

The others amazed me. Gina and I, we were nearly dying from the heat, so we took occasional breaks, but the other girls just went on and on, cooking without stopping. I don't know how they didn't just melt/spontaneously combust on the spot.

If I may say so myself, it was absolutely delicious. Especially the watermelon (which I insisted we get) we ate afterwards. Mmmmmmmm, tasty.

Thursday, July 25, 2002, 11:02 p.m. :||: Running in Geta Takes Skill
Again I'm being more Japanese than the Japanese themselves! It's a trend I seem to have set for myself. Yet even while going through all the motions, at heart I remain my clumsy clueless self. Yay!

One of the Japanese images I have in my mind is of summer-- people walking in Yukatas, fanning themselves delicately while watching fire-works. And munchin on watermelon, of course.

There was no watermelon, but there was yakisoba (yum!), okonomiyaki, takoyaki, kouri, and such. And that's plenty Japanese in and of itself.

Oh. I forgot to say so explicitely, but I went and watched fireworks today. In my bunny-decorated yukata (my friends helped me put it on~. And they did a beautiful job of it, even if it did take them over seven tries to figure out how to tie the obi). Without a fan. But with a smile.

for some reason, everytime I wear a yukata, I get a pile of comments on how big my breasts are. My friends even took a stab at against my size. I could say 'yay'! but I shall refrain on this occasion. ^_^

It was really crowded at the event. I'd guess a thousand or so people came over. But, luckily, we all stayed in another place (standing on a bridge, instead of the greenery in front of a river)-- so we had a prime view as well as of plenty of space.

There was apparently some filming going on for tv (non-live, I believe). My friends speculated that one of the ladies was a famous person by the name Maria (Japanese), but they weren't sure, and I've never heard of this before. Still, I'll see if this name pops up again.

Was there a point to this post? No. My feet really hurt, you want me to be coherent?

Thursday, July 25, 2002, 01:13 a.m. :||: Birds in Osaka
People always say that the folk over in Osaka (and the kansai area in general) are friendly and open. In my small number of experiences, I've found this to be true. The story I'm about to tell is just one more example.

This past weekend I jumped onto a night bus that took me from Tokyo to Osaka (to play with and say goodbye to a departing friend), and so at six am I found myself at Shin Osaka station with four hours to pass through before my friend showed up. How to spend the time?

I found a miniature park next to the station, where I sat down and started to doodle in my notebook. Nothing I drew felt particularly special, so I quickly lost interest in that. So I diverted my attention over to an elderly man who was feeding a flock of pigeons. Well, to be more accurate, I was watching the pigeons. Cute animals, really.

In this small way a half hour passed. The old man closed the bag, arranged the things in his bike, and came my way. I was fairly surprised. "Here," he said, holding the bag of bird feed to me. After asking if it was okay, I took the bag, threw some feed, and tried to give the bag back, but he refused it, saying that he came here everyday and he had plenty more at home.

So that was Random Unecessary Kind Action number 1 one of the Morning.

Now with a bag of bird feed, I had new entertainment! I threw and threw and threw food, happy to give and give. I watched the pigeons bob their heads up and down, watched them peck at the food, watched them be bird-like. I watched one bird wave its feet in the air--

Wave its feet in the air? Did pigeons do that?

Curious and worried, I walked over to the said pigeon. And, to my horror, I realized that the reason it was waving its feet in the air was because it had somehow managed to jab its head between to slabs of cement.

I admit it-- I panicked a bit here. I considered grabbing its body and pulling hard, but I was scared of getting scratched by its claws and of squeezing the bird so tight that it woudl burst. I tried pushing down on its head, but its skull was stuck in VERY tightly.

Well, I didn't know what else to do, so I gave the situation up as hopeless, and I started to walk around in frantic circles, close to crying.

About to take place is Random Kind Action number 2.

At this point an old man on a bicycle rides my way, and asks me what's wrong. I pointed to the bird, "atama ga denai mitai." (anyone who wants to scold me for being so informal: Osaka people don't seem to mind :D). Even through my panic I smirked when he said, "honma ya!" (osaka dialect for "really!"). This old man goes and picks up a stick, sticks the stick under one of the cement slabs, pushes the cement slab up, and within less than a second the bird is GONE.

That man was my hero of the day. I couldn't thank him enough.

I didn't feel like feeding birds anymore, so I wandered over to another section of the miniature-park, where there was a bench and a swing set. I swinged some, got tired, sat on the bench, and started reading. I noticed that the previous old man who saved the bird rode by a couple of times. Perhaps he was excersizing. At any rate, I waved and smiled at him.

The third or so time he came by, he stopped the bike, and gave me a can of a mineral drink. And never did I see him again.

As happy as I was for that can of drink, though, I wasn't able to drink the damned thing until hours later when my friend arrived and I had her open it for me.

Sunday, July 7, 2002, 06:17 p.m. :||: When You Least Expect It
I think if L.S Jordan had heard this conversation, she would have burst into tears out of pride. Or at least half the students who studied Japanese with me would. Nah, they'd more likely laugh, just like Giuliana and I did.

A few days ago Giuliana and I were prowling the Harajuku streets (where I found cargo pants for 390 yen! And a double cd set of gothic punk hilarious visual jpop for 250 yen! ...moving on.) when we came across a second-hand clothing store. The stuff there was good, and we stayed there a long time because the owner of the store had taken a great big liking to us. :D

At one point in our conversation, the subject of furoshiki came up. I forget why-- maybe it was Giuliana's pretty European one, or maybe while poking at the shelves I discovered a set. And with hardly any prompting, the store lady said,

"Furoshiki wa benri mono desu ne."

It was close enough for Giuliana and I to burst out laughing.

Now, admitedly I can no longer sprout random Core Conversations (I've thankfully gone beyond the point where I can make conversation without the aid of pre-set memorized phrases), but I can recognize most of them, and the furoshiki is one that I'll never forget.

A: Sore wa nan desu ka?
(What is that?)
B: Furoshiki desu.
(It's a furoshiki.)
A: Furoshiki to iu no wa nan desu ka?
(What's a furoshiki?)
A: Totemo benri desu.
(It's very convinient.)

I imagine this won't amuse anyone but us students who memorized half the L.S Jordan textbook, but there ya go. LS Jordan wasn't completely on crack, after all. Those phrases do occasionally pop up in natural speech.

Saturday, July 6, 2002, 10:44 p.m. :||: Our Most Favorite Onnagata in the World
When I got back to the dorm tonight, some ten minutes before it closed, I went to talk to the girl who was on phone duty for the night. She asked me if I had been out doing anything in particular, and when I giggled slightly, she raised her eyebrow.

Nothing, really. I just went to see what Giuliana and I had been looking forward to for two months-- Tamasaburo, onnagata extrodinaire. And, oh yes, is he beautiful. Too beautiful, you could say, but why say that? Beautiful things and people are good.

There were three acts in total, all disapoitingly short. The location was over at Theater Ginza (or teratoru ginza, if you're spelling it in Japanese) a quaint tiny building some fifteen minutes from the kabukiza. Again I paid great attention to the audience-- it says so much about what you're about to watch, you know? Anyway, the great majority was female, but there was still a great male porportion. I'd guess that 60 to 70 percent was female. Most of them were older than I, from forty year olders to grey-haired grannies. There were some younger people (I saw a couple of young girls, and some other kids my age), but most of them were older and obviously rich, judging from the beautiful kimono they came in. Me? The usual flip-flops, khaki pants, and a pretty shirt that is suffering with a few stains of curry. But, you know, you have to look pretty close at my shirt to see the stains, and if you're looking close enough to see them, then you're being ruder than I am!

Now onto the performance itself.

The first piece had a single shamisen player to the stage, and Tamasaburo dancing in a kimono (holding a bamboo umbrella) while sakura fell onto him. It was a very slow piece-- I think he made two full turns during the whole thing. Beautiful, of course. Beautiful.

The second piece was the, oh great, I always forget the name... the famous story with the bell and the spurned woman who turns into a giant serpent in anger. Hanamusume Doujo, I want to say, but that sounds ridiculous. Anyway. There were lots of more shamisen players and chanters this time around. More dancing. Of course there's more dancing! It's his specialty.

I've actually seen Tamasaburo do this before-- Prof. Kominz played a tape of him doing it over at the kabukiza. Needless to say, the real life version is far better. But as I was watching it, I wondered if there was going to be a rapid change of clothes. In the kabuki version there's at least three on-stage change of kimonos, as well as changes to the dancing props. But here there was no stage-guy to help Tamasaburo with the change/carry the clothes off-stage. But when a guy walked as inconspicuously as he could onto stage, I knew there would be clothes changing. :D It was very slow, but well done in that the guy was for the most part unseen. After the black kimono had bee shed in favor of a white one, the stage guy ran off-stage with the original kimono, looking almost pregnant. :D

Sadly, though, there was no appearance of the serpernt form of the woman, nor did he do the seven-hat dance (a favorite of mine). Oh well.

The last piece was by far the best-- there was some story to it (which I didn't understand, exactly, but pierced together by the character's movements, actions, and clothing). The story concerned Meiran Fei, a beautiful chinese woman who supposedly caused the fall of some dynasty or other. So Tamasaburo was painted up in traditional peking chinese opera make-up (those of you who know me, you know the photo where I'm in chinese clothing and have my face painted white? Well, it was just like that, only more beautiful).

The shamisen players were kicked off the stage and had to play in the pit (in kabuki they'd be put up on the second floor of a building on the stage, with the blinds pulled down). I could have sworn that there was a keyboard hidden amongst the shamisen and chanters, but Giuliana tells me it was a koto. I'll take her word for it, for that makes much more sense.

There was a guy with the funkiest square pants, and he walked around a lot, danced some, and talked. He was holding a gift, and after some more talking, the curtains behind him parted to reveal... tadadaaaa! A small chinese house, surrounded in mist, and, um, what do you call it, beaded strings serving as a door. (There were two layers of curtains, and the last set kept flittering open and closing. Amusing). Inside, of course, was Tamasaburo. After some lines of dialogue Tamasaburo came out and (you can guess what comes next) danced. He danced with a fan, he danced with the messenger guy (with a piece of string held between them), and danced as he played with long sleeves.

(This is all about beauty, people. Forget deep meaning and plot. :D)

The music here was great. I'm still sort of weak to shamisen music. I've gotten used to it over the years, and I suspect in due time that I'll actively want to hear it. I don't know what they did in this piece that made me like it more-- but it sounded more... musical. Unfortunately, I really am clueless when it comes to music, so that's as much as I'll be able to say about it. I wish I could hear it again-- it was calming and beautiful.

All things must come to an end (sadly enough), and so did this-- but it took quite a while! After the piece ended, people clapped even as the curtains were closing. But, yay, the curtains opened again! Tamasaburo bowed to us for a bit, motioned to the guy who was in the last piece wit him, and then bowed down deep. We clapped more and more. The curtains closed, and we kept clapping a bit more. The curtains opened again. Yay! Giuliana and I stood up this time, along with a handful of other people, and clapped. This time Tamasaburo waved to the shamisen people, so we clapped for them too. The curtains closed. We kept clapping. The curtains opened again. Giuliana and I sat down this time because the people complained.

This went on for some ten minutes. I think Tamasaburo was waiting for a full standing ovation. He deserved it, too, but afterwards Nana-chan (a kendou sempai that came with us) said it was the first time she saw people standing at all in the audience. At any rate, he loved the attention, you can tell. :D I loved how he always deeped down, his head touching the floor, as the curtains closed-- as though, of COURSE he's the humblest guy in the world. Whatever! XD The reason he could keep this up for ten minutes is because his fans all love him to pieces, and his fans are rich. He's vain, I guess, but a good sort of vain. :D (Giuliana's host grandmother has apparently met him. She says he's a nice person. I am jealous). Yay Tamasaburo!

This may not have sounded all that exciting, but how can you express something with purely visual appeal in words? If you get a chance to see Tamasaburo, if on tv or at the kabukiza, do so. You'll see at once what I mean.

Wednesday, July 3, 2002, 11:06 a.m. :||: tsuyu
The rainy season (tsuyu, or literally plum rain) sorely tempts my integrity. On the days that I forget my umbrella I'm so very tempted to go to a store and pluck one of the umbrellas that people leave outside while they're buying stuff inside. I have yet to do it, though! And usually I end up getting an umbrella from Mysterious Kind Strangers. I think I have some five now, as opposed to the one broken Wellesley umbrella when I first came here.

Wednesday, July 3, 2002, 11:00 a.m. :||: Tamasaburo!
This weekend I am going to go see the cross-dresser extroadinaire Tamsaburo. He is more beautiful than I am, I'm afraid, but that's okay, because I'm not like the goddess venus who gets angry when people are better than her.

Speaking of cross-dressing, it appears that the paper I'll be writing next semester will be on that very same subject. I think I'll go around interviewing people here and ask what they think of Takarazuka, Kabuki, J-Pop Visual Kei, etc. Things that I'm very interested in, so is good.

I forgot to say so, but last month Japan was a bit rowdy. A bit? No, more like a whole lot! If you ask why, it's because of the World Cup. On the days Japan was playing a game everyone would crowd into bars and restaurants to watch it, and when they won, they ran around the streets wearing Japan Soccer jerseys and celebrating. I heard that extra police people had to be placed at the train stations. Not that the atmosphere was dangerous-- it was all so eagerly happy-- just as precaution.

Wednesday, July 3, 2002, 10:49 a.m. :||: Giuliana!
Yay! My partner in crime now has her own diary thingy. For all of you who have heard me ramble about her at great length, you can go hear her yourself now. :D

Also, it turns out that the Wellesley Japanese Department has linked me, which is a happy thing indeed. Maybe it'll kick my lazy behind into writing in this more often.

Monday, June 24, 2002, 10:04 a.m. :||: money, must be funny in a rich man's world
In converting yen to dollars, I tend to just hack off the last two 0s. Ie, 700 yen because 7 dollars, 10500 yen becomes 105 dollars, and so on. It's not the most precise method ever, but it's approximate, and it's fast.

The only problem is, I've started doing it to dollars, too. I see $700 and think, "now that's actually 7... 7 what? Dollars-dollars? Dumb me." Habits be hard to break.

Friday, May 31, 2002, 09:16 a.m. :||: sign of progress?
When I first came to Japan (Nagoya, specifically), one of the things that struck me was how much English was in Japanese. I felt like I could say ANYTHING in English with a Japanese-y accent, and people would understand me.

Now, in Tokyo, I feel the complete opposite. I'm hoping it's because I know more Japanese and I don't need to rely on English anymore (or at least, not as much).

Friday, May 31, 2002, 09:15 a.m. :||: long time no see, buster
Archived the last few entries because they were pitifully old. Decided I should whap myself on the head and write in here again. So, no, I haven't been hit by a train, been eaten by rabid squirrels, or been the victim of any other cruel fate. I've just been lazy.