Kabuki

I had started my stay in Japan with a visit to Bunraku puppet theater, so it seemed only appropriate to end it with a visit to Kabuki. Kabuki and Bunraku are quite similar in some respects - there are even some plays that have been adapted from one to the other. The main difference is that instead of the puppets in Bunraku, the parts in Kabuki are played by actors.

Shinbashi Enbujō theater (the main Kabuki theater in Tokyo is currently under renovation and therefore closed)

As with the Bunraku performance I visited, the Kabuki performance consisted of three plays: Oedo Miyage, Ichijo Okura Monogatari, and Fuin Kiri (from Koibikyaku yamato orai). The total duration was about four and half hours, including a 30 minute break after the first play and a 20 minute break after the second. I already expected this and came prepared with plenty of food and drink - during the Bunraku performance I didn't have anything with me and was pretty hungry at the end.

Again, there was an excellent audio commentary available. The introduction summed it up very nicely:

Kabuki is presentational theater, aiming at the senses, and through them at emotions. Western theater is representational, aiming at the mind, and through it at emotions.

The problem with presentational theater is that the presentation is hard to see from the cheaper seats. So in case you don't have binoculars with you, you miss out on much of the performance.

In my case, the result was that apparently my mind seemed to be not occupied enough, so it went to sleep for parts of the second and third plays. The food (and lack of coffee) after the first play might have contributed to the sleepiness, in addition to the stage being far away and the plays somewhat lacking in action. My consolation was that a large part of the audience seemed to have similar problems. Every time I looked, I saw plenty of people sleeping...

Inside the theater (sorry for the blurry picture... it's the only one I've got): the stage is on the lowest level to the right, so you can gauge how far away it was from my seat (which was a few meters to the left of  the viewpoint)

Anyway, back to my Kabuki experience before the sleepiness set in: a unique feature of Kabuki is that the audience interacts with the actors to some degree. Often when an actor left the stage, people in the audience shouted his name to indicate that they liked his performance.

Note that I wrote "his name". There are no female actors in Kabuki, another unique feature. Of course, there are many female characters in Kabuki plays, but all of them are played by men. As a result, the skill of acting a female role as a male actor is very important and goes by the name onnagata.

Another feature of Kabuki is the amount of make-up used for all characters. Take a look at this page to see the amount of make-up, and how it is applied. The cool thing is that this essentially allows young characters to be played by older actors who may be able to contribute much to the role because of their acting experience.

So, how did Kabuki fare in comparison with Bunraku? Hard to say, in my opinion. What I liked very much about Bunraku is that both the narrator and the shamisen player are visible and very interesting to watch. In comparison, Kabuki seems much more lively, mainly because there is more action on stage - and more characters. In any case, I'm very happy that I could experience both Kabuki and Bunraku in Japan!

Japanese Toilets

I've been meaning to write about Japanese toilets since a friend told me what they can do about six months before I came to Japan. Well, now that I'm back I finally get around to it ;-)

Next to the toilets Westerners have come to view as the standard kind, there are two other types of toilets in Japan.

On the one hand, there are super-modern high-tech western-style toilets that do everything for you: You get a heated seat. They make flushing sounds so you don't disturb your fellow toilet-goers with the noises you're making. They have a built-in bidet functionality that allows you to adjust not only the pressure of the water, but also the temperature. And some of them even flush automatically when you stand up. Here's a picture:

A high-tech toilet...

...and its control panel up close

And on the other hand, there are low-fi Japanese-style squat toilets. The simplest ones have have a deep hole instead of a water-based flushing mechanism and do not even provide toilet paper. If you've never seen one, have a look:

It's easy to get used to the high-tech toilets, of course. But I found that once you figure out how to squat properly, the squat toilets are not bad at all. The best part is that you don't have to worry about the cleanliness of the toilet seat because you don't come into contact with any part of the toilet.

Apart from that, there is another thing that is really great about toilets in Japan: they're free, and they're ubiquitous. Not quite as ubiquitous as vending machines, but there's always one nearby if you need one. It seems to me that what Japan is lacking in public trash bins, it makes up for in public toilets.

Back in Germany

Just a short update from me: I've been back in Germany for about ten days now, and for most of it I've been swamped by a combination of bureaucracy, family and plan-making. But don't worry, I haven't forgotten about my blog. There are still a couple of blog posts coming, most of them about my trip to Tokyo, Hakone, Takayama and Kanazawa, but I have a few other topics in mind as well. I'll start writing right after sorting through the roughly 800 pictures I shot during my last two weeks in Japan...

And after that... well, I guess I'll rename my blog. I already know its future topic, and I have a pretty good idea for a name... but I'll reveal it only after I have completed all the Japan-related posts, so stay tuned! :-)

Fun with Food Allergies, part 2

So, it seems there is more fun to be had with food allergies. As you might recall, about two months into my stay in Japan, I developed a soy allergy.

My initial reaction had been to learn the Kanji for soy and strictly avoid all foods containing even a trace of soy. After a while, I began experimenting with small doses of soy sauce. Luckily, it turned out that small quantities did not cause any problems. So I've been happily eating soy sauce and other products containing soy traces, but avoiding cooked soy beans or tofu.

Then, my allergy was put to an unintended test last week when I unknowingly ate a hamburger made of a meat-tofu mixture. And - surprise, surprise - it seems that my allergy has disappeared again!

There probably won't be too many opportunities to eat soy-based foods in Germany (where I'm headed right now - I'm actually posting this using Kansai airport's free wifi), but always having to keep an eye on the ingredients of each and every meal is annoying anyway. I'm really happy that I won't have to do that anymore :-)

So, the lesson learned is: you can acquire food allergies by repeated consumption of the same food, but you can also get rid of them again if you avoid the stuff for a while.