So, yesterday, we packed ourselves up and went out to Takarazuka, where it was my incredible pleasure to meet Komatsu Mikikazu-san, the writer of the ULTIMO Spalpeen blog. Komatsu-san and I have been corresponding for some years by email, but to be able to bridge the ocean and meet him face to face was a incredible pleasure.
We went to the Tezuka museum, which was edifying and interesting and quite a lot of fun. I was about the only one in the group who had *not* grown up with Kimba or Astro Boy, and had only started to be aware of his works as an adult. It gave me a completely different perspective of his writing.
From there we went to the Takarazuka Theater and had a special lunch created for the show we were about to see. I took a picture. :-)
We parted ways with Komatsu-san and went in for a Chinese historical piece (虞美人, Yu the Beautiful) that, while it was indeed colorful and shiny, and well executed, the story was a snooze. ^_^With my inadequate Japanese, I was just able to follow the story. Mari understood it just fine, and poor wifey and Bruce sat for 3 hours guessing.
At the end, I had wanted to turn to them and say, “So, now, which one was the good guy again?” (Because it was Chinese and therefore both sides were ambiguously good and bad and everyone died at the end) but when I tried to talk, nothing came out. They all started to make fun of me and I started laughing and couldn’t stop. As people were filing past us – I was in the aisle seat – there I am laughing so hard I’m crying, while the three of them are cracking jokes about the gaijin who was moved to tears by the performance. It’s good to have friends.
We then went to Osaka for dinner where we met Geoff Tebbets from Anime Boston. I instantly liked Osaka in a way that Kyoto has not touched me. I’ll definitely go back to visit more.
We have to pack up and head out to the Abe no Seimei shrine this AM, so..see you later!
You should see the show Takarazuka has going on in the Bow Hall theater instead (same location, just a smaller theater in the Grand Theater building). It stars some of the best talent Takarazuka has, the tickets are cheaper (5,000 yen for all seats) and available (it’s sold well, but some weekdays are still very open), it’s a smaller theater with better visibility…etc.
The play is called “Je Chante” and it’s about the life of Charles Trenet and Gigi, a revue star.
(By the way, this is off topic, but do you have any idea of the circulation numbers for the Yuri magazines? It’s easy to find numbers for regular shounen/shoujo/seinen/josei and even erotica figures, but yaoi and Yuri don’t seem to have any numbers I can find…are they doing all right?)
Totally agree with you about Osaka. Kyoto is pretty and all, but Osaka is more down-to-earth.
Oh, and the food just rocks.
This is going to sound grammatically awkward, but I couldn’t not find good food there. Even in places where I expected to find bad food, it was great. Just a block away from my little hotel was this place that had the most amazing Korean barbecue ever… ahh, now I went and made myself hungry.
@michiru42 – That’s the kind of comment that’s really impossible to respond to. We didn’t see Je Chante, we saw something else, because that was what we saw.
No, I don’t have any numbers to hand in regards to circulation for the Yuri Magazines. The last timne I saw numbers they were very low compared to any mainstream magazine, but that is to be expected. “Doing well” is an entirely relative concept.
@sarcastic weasel – we wnded up in a pub called Aregre (which I believe was meant to be Argyle) and we had iro-iro (turned out to be Camembert) cheese pizza with honey. It was great – we ordered a second one, because it was so good.
Erica, I didn’t say you should have seen Je Chante, I said you should–as in, in the future, which is why I mentioned prices and that there were tickets available–see Je Chante. I was trying to make a suggestion for something I thought you might enjoy, as I didn’t realize you had so little time left in Japan.
@michiru42 – I don’t have any great desire to see a second show while we’re here. It’s fun once. There are other things I’d like to do.