Roundabout
Last Wednesday "Roundabout" premired at the TUJ campus. The show went wonderfully and it was so much fun to do live, the audience really made a difference. Friends and classmates came out, it was great! Here are a few pictures from the show (Thanks Stefano!)
Centerfold Star!
So in tokyo I have:
Been interviewed by the news
made it on YouTube
and now I am a center fold star in a popular womens magazine here in Japan!
Oh Japan, you are treating me so well...
Tokyo Theater!
Hello everyone, now I know if you are reading this from anywhere besides Tokyo, you may not come, but if you invest in a plane ticket it will be greatly appreciated and I will have a place for you to stay!
**Warning I did not write this flyer**
Scenes from "Roundabout" by Arthur Schnitzler
Wednesday November 22nd at 7:30pm
Mita Hall Room #503
Directed by: Robert Tsonos
Starring; Sara Van Buren, Mario Acito, Bryan Mathews,
Stephanie Flanagan, Tina Brunner
Join us for a selection of scenes from "Roundabout".
A tale of love, obsession, and pleasure staged in turn-of-the-century Vienna.
At times droll, romantic, or bittersweet, "Roundabout" is as charming and as fluffy
as fresh whipped cream on a Viennese pastry!
Oh Mama! Kanazawa!
Beautiful!
Samurai districts, Noh museum, artificial heart galleries, geisha stables, Ninja inspired temples (fully equipped with trap doors, hidden stairwells and get-away passages), kimono design processing, gold leave processing, fish market, contemporary art museum, castles, gardens... you name it, I saw it, did it and preformed a couple of kart-wheels around it.
This weekend was a 3 day weekend, and I think I did a good job of taking advantage of it. We left Thursday night, and traveled 7 hours on a painful over-night bus, to awake at 6 am Friday morning in Kanazawa. We found our hotel, and then started our day. I soon learned that anything you that you think about Japan, or that Japan makes, is in Kanazawa. Gold, kimonos, geishas, ninjas, parsails, silk... We spent 2 full days wandering around to certain special "reservation only" hidden spots that we would have never found on our own if TUJ did not plan this trip for us, or with out our great personal tour guide Koyama Sensee. We had special tour guides from the city of Kanazawa and we learned about every cool nick and cranny of that place. We say a Noh stage and precious Noh performance masks. A really cool modern museum that had a whole display of artificial body parts, very interesting. We made our own gold leaf chop sticks that we personally designed! We explored the gardens of Kanazawa castle, in addition to the annexes of the futual lord's wife. The Kanazawa castle was the most beautiful thing, with its acres and acres of beautiful gardens, needless to say I filled up my memory card with pictures that are priceless. We we showed the ins and outs of this amazing Temple that was designed with ninja style (imagine: 25 rooms, but has 29 stair cases!, Saw and went inside of Samurai houses. We were showed the Geisha district and their stables/stores. The famous pine trees of Kamazawa were prepared for winter with their string protection, which is something that is unique to Kanazawa. I went to a public bath. And when all this was done, Saturday night we jumped back on the over night bus and headed home. We were back in Tokyo by 6AM, and had a full day to tell everyone about our amazing weekend. I am soo glad I was able to be apart of this trip. And in the end, it was very relaxing and I discovered a little bit more about this interesting balance that Japan holds of being calming all while being extremely enrapturing.
From the future,
Stephanie
Tokyo: The Time Warp
Time here in Japan is quite interesting. It seems as if you can do so much in a short amount of time, but when you go to refer back to those moments you realize that they are several weeks old (and you still haven't updated your blog!)
If you ask me my favorite holiday at any point of the year, even on my birthday, I will tell you it is Halloween. I love the feeling of being scared, candy, costumes, hay rides, cider.... but I was afriad that Japan wouldn't be able to offer me any of these things. And, thank God, I was wrong. Halloween has a new level to met next year, and I still can't believe how much fun I had celebrating a western holiday in the east.
It all start with what could have turned out to be an urban legend: The saturday before Halloween, all the Gaijin (foriengers) and interested Japanese observers "secretly board" a specific car at a specific platform at a specific station on the Yamanote Line dressed in costume and throw a party on the train, attempting to make it the entire length of the railway, which is a giant circle hitting most/if not all of the major sections of Tokyo (it is about an 1 1/2 hour circular ride). Of courseour good friends at Wikipedia.org were the ones that informed us of this and the exact time (9:07 PM, Car 10, Headed east, platform 13, Shinjuku station), and soon- with the power of computer and mouth- our entire dorm already had plans to join the scene.
The friday before the train ride, our lovely local bar threw a costume party for us at Sakura House, and it was so great to see all of our friends from the town dressed up!
Saturday night, after meeting one of our new friends, Fumito, at Yoyogi for a free concert, Pasha, John and myself headed to Shinjuku, we were 20 minutes early and were scared when we didn't see many costumes, but we did see plenty of officers, we were expecting them to breakup the party before it started. While getting closer to the time more and more people where coming out of the wood work, soon our dorm was there along with PowerRangers, Mummies, bloody bodies, dogs, cats, and witches, including our Japanese artist friends we met from sake tasting night who were so excited that we introduced them to something new that they didn't know about in Tokyo. Soon we found ourselves at another platform with even more people, and right before we boarded the train about 4 party cars were formed. When the train came everyone on the platforms rushed the cars, and there were plenty of unexpected bystanders. We protected most of them, including an older lady until the next stop came, strangers were handed beers from other Party Car go-ers, including the older lady! After all the bystanders were gone, songs were being sung, every stations name was being chanted, party car hopping started, and it was so packed you could barly move so some people found seats on top of the lugage racks or even swang by using the hand rings! Words, and even pictures, can't do much for this experience. However, if you have the time, google the yamanote party tain to read up on this newly formed tradition (it has been happening since the 90s). I was personaly interviewed by an english speaking Japanese news caster and crew while on the train!
On actual Halloween night it was our friend Sara's 22nd birthday. The plan was to go to a costume party at a club in Roppongi (a night distric in Tokyo in walking distance from school). However, after school Kaebea, Abe, Nick, Laura and Leanne and myself bought candy and gave out treats to little kids that were dressed up and walking the streets with their mom's near school and Roppongi. It was so cute! I think we enjoyed yelling Happy Halloween and trick or treat jsut as much as all the kids! The costume party was also amazing, another one for the books.
So to conclude, I still had my thirlls, i wore a costume, the hay ride was substituted for a subway ride and cider became ashai- true japanese style.
I am also producing a Podcast segment about the Yamanote Halloween Party Train for my Podcasting class, so look of for that on my other production blog!
*Pictures:
Masa our Cheerleading bartender
Me with Suzuki at the Pearling Cafe- I am from the 70's
One of the party cars on the Yamanote Line
Everyone outside of Vanilla for Sara's 22nd on Halloween
