Kabukiman

Today we went to see a kabuki play.  By "we", I mean some of the international students (that includes Wesley).  For those that don't know what kabuki is, it's that form of theatre where everyone wears white makeup  and talks funny  Since we took a bus, I took some pictures of the ride there.  It was in Tokyo, so there are a lot of them..

This is the imperial palace, which is six miles in diameter and really nice-looking.  

This is Kentaro's face for some reason.  We all agreed that this picture makes him look like a baby.

There were at least two schools' worth of high school students at the National Theatre when we arrived.  They waved at us as we went by on the bus, but by the time we got out they had mostly dispersed.  I took a picture because there were so many.

That's a balcony with a revolving sculpture on it.  I don't know what this building is, but it seemed to have all sorts of things in it.

There was time before we had to actually take our seats, so Wesley and I found an Indian restaurant.  We still haven't gotten to eat Indian food here yet, and time constraints meant today would be no different.  However, we did have enough time to order lassi (a yogurt drink thing) at the counter.

Here's a shrine that was nearby.  It was really hot so I didn't want to stay long, but it was a nice little spot with lots of plants even though it was in the middle of Tokyo.

The National Theatre looks like this outside, and inside...

It looks like this.

This statue was in the lobby; it's of a typical kabuki actor.  It's actually of a specific role, but it's easier just to say this is what kabuki looks like in general.

Here's how close we were to the stage.  I keep getting pretty good seats to stuff here, even though the school bought the tickets for us.  That's the curtain, by the way.  It was nice.

Here's the crowd behind us.  The play was really interesting, and gave me some new insight about the art of kabuki itself.  Lots of people these days regard it as stuffy an boring, but kabuki isn't like that at all.  it was fun, dynamic, and there is a lot to be said for the skill of the actors on stage.  White people that like to think they're smart will tell you that Japanese people don't understand what the actors are saying (they use older language and funny voices), but that's got to be a total lie because I got about 30% of it without using the English audio accompaniment.  I asked one of the international students who's pretty fluent, and he said he got about half of it.  A regular Japanese person shouldn't have too much of a problem.

Here's more scenery from the ride home.

Japan's a nice-looking country, regardless of what bitter old English teachers will try and tell you.

Anyway, we got back around six and no one but Sasara and Nagatomo were around, so we briefly spoke with them and then went home.