Takarockin' My Socks Off...

... or もうしわけございませんでした!!
... which means that I am deeply and absurdly-politefully sorry, for so many things: largely not having taken the time to craft a post in over two weeks, but also for mullets, people with allergies, and any person who has never received the blessing of melon soda touching their lips after a long day of doing not that terribly much. In my defense, I am exhausted. Okay, that's a preposterously weak defense, but to put it more eloquently, I have been having far too much fun for my body to handle. Luckily, (or maybe unluckily, now that you have to dredge through my dribble yet again) Spring Break started Friday last, which means that I now have all the time in the world to rest myself and settle in to some serious blog postage... by which I mean go out and have too much fun everyday without the irritation of having to fit in classes on the side. However, I feel much less pressure to get plenty of sleep these days, mostly because I don't have to attempt to stay awake during classes that defy morality in terms of how boring they are. Therefore, here we are, attempting to re-acclimate ourselves to one another, like long-lost lovers reunited, yet wary (and this photo just got OWNED by someone else...)

For the record, I am totally Buttercup (mostly because I am whiney, ineffectual, and irritating to listen to). Now that I got all of my groveling out of the way, on to the juicy sweets I've been storing up for you! The first thing I want to talk about is a beautiful, resplendent trip I took some two weeks ago to see perhaps the most unintentionally campy performance art I've ever seen: the Takarazuka Revue. By way of a short bit of History, Takarazuka is actually the name of a school for music and dance performance, girls only. The few girls that make it through the very rigorous application process spend two years being trained in the Takarazuka bent of singing and dancing, and then graduate into one of four huge performing troupes (made up of something like 60 girls a pop, I think). What's so interesting about all this is that in the various productions that these troupes put on, and throughout the Takarazuka school training, a few of the girls are slated to play male roles, and spend the entirety of their careers performing as men. The administration at the school actually brings in various male citizens to teach these male performers how to move like men, and the male performers sing in male ranges. For instance (and I've no claim to this photo)...

Incredible. Usually a standard afternoon of Takarazuka involves a dramatic show (Hamlet, etc.) which is followed after a brief shopping intermission by a compendium of song and dance numbers with no plot and the single aim of attempting to make the viewer have seizures as a result of all the shiny things they are wearing/dancing under. The show I happened to catch was a reworking of the Verdi opera Don Carlos... which they completely changed so that it was unrecognizable. The revue was called Shining Rhythm, and was not Epilepsy-friendly to say the least. For almost the entirety of the performance there was an enormous disco ball flashing away, and almost every set change (of which there were about fourteen, if I remember correctly) was decked out in obscene amounts of neon and flare. I felt like I was in Flamboy Heaven... here's a small representation (which I don't own) of the splendor and ridiculousness of this artform.

For the curious, the more feathers you have at the end of the show in your plumage, the more popular you are... I assume because it's that much harder to kill the right amount of exotic birds to make said plumages. Unfortunately, the production of Don Carlos (which was entirely in Japanese) was a bit dull, but the Revue had me practically crying by the end of it. The Revue included (but wasn't limited to) a bit set in Spain featuring a West Side Story like knife fight between two matadors; a thirties swing scene, full with flapper girls; a jazz club; a full on eighties Labyrinth-like heavy rock scene, that gave way to a hard-core eighties Egyptian Chic scene; and even featured I Could Have Danced All Night, all in Japanese except for the final lines. I was weak in the knees. (This ain't mine... it's all of ours... or maybe just the guy that put it on the internet...)

To emphasize how awful I am at organizing my thoughts, I should point out I forgot to mention that the complex which contains the Takarazuka Theatre is a marvel in and of itself, which is made up of about twelve Takarazuka themed gift shops, some cafes and restaurants, and some rather impressive chandeliers. And now... the first photo of the blog I haven't ripped from the internet in order to emphasize my obscure pop culture references!

Gorgeous, right? They also had framed photos of shows they were doing...

And who could forget the patented Takarazuka tins...

Suffice it to say that it was quite possibly the best time of my life for that week. I also got a little crazy buying souvenirs for folks, which I realized when I got home...

Most of this is for other people, (and half of it is free brochures and such), but I did keep for me a bookmark, a magazine and a program, and a book of songs for piano and voice, which I should be getting some real good use out of. Takarazuka is apparently something that a lot of my friends here are very much in to, so I was more than happy to hook them up with some Omiyage (which means gifts). And as much as I love capitalism and gift giving, the aspect of Takarazuka I love the most is how genuinely earnest the performers are about what they are doing. There is a frankness and a sense of gravity about them that makes you realize that they don't realize how incredibly campy and cheesy what they are doing is. That is not to say that I think what they are doing is bad or lesser art, it is simply grandiose and over-exaggerated and, in all senses of the term, beautiful. Here is a shot I took as I was leaving the complex, content and a little exhausted but so glad to have done it all.

Even now I can still feel the throbbing in my brain from the overstimulation... I thought I would take this time to throw a little shout out to my Gaijin buddies Maura...

... and Molly...

... who shared with me the splendor that was Macha (powdered green tea) Oreos!

These delectables were more along the lines of little cakes, and they were nothing short of sublime.

Yum yum. This is even more random, but I just found pictures I snapped of some of the more crazy fancy things they had in the building, such as this avant garde flower statue thing...

... and a player piano that was actually playing songs from Shining Rhythm and Don Carlos...

... and even a picture of one of the guys from the massively popular J-pop bands Arashi selling Pocky with alcohol, for some reason...

... and who could forget the adorable bathroom signs...?

Overall a very surreal and beautiful place. Well, I think I've reached my limit for this post, but next time expect perhaps the most exciting post I've ever done... people who don't like Phallic symbols should plan to skip that one. And now, your brief moment of time in which there may or may not exist some Zen...

I would draw your attention to the orange vocab words that say "fucking" and "hilarious", and further inform you that this is in my friend Dina's Textbook. Oh, Japan.


ご親切にありがとうございました、
Alex -..-