ahem.

Hello dear readers, if you are still reading. It has been a little over two weeks since my last post. I blame partly my laziness and mostly that I am so damn tired from all the stuff going on. Please forgive me. Anyways, here is an updated account of my life here in where the deepest hot spring of Japan resides and the salmon are all caught with your hands -- well, one a year that is.

But more on that later. Now, I will rewind my memory to two weekends past, within which I was swept over 1400 kilometers in a single day, without ever leaving the surface of the Earth. Yes, you guessed it, I took a ride (well, two) on the legendary Shinkansen! Jeez that sounds like a Pokemon... For those of you who didn't guess that, or don't even know what I'm talking about, that would be the Bullet Train. To where, you may ask? Well, to Tokyo, of course! And you'd think I would be so excited form that that I would want to post immediately! Well, dear reader, you must remember that I took the good 'ole Shinkansen there and back in a single day, barely leaving time for the true reason I went, to see the beautiful, and oft outrageous Kabuki theater. Yes, and what a show it was! Some key points of the 5 hour long performance: there are only male actors, even for the women's parts; men who specialize in women's parts are called "onnagata"; in order to become a Kabuki actor, you must be born into it, therefore, I was watching the great-great-etc-grandghildren of the original actors of the 1800s; there are usually four shows; there is often music, dancing, singing, chanting, and odd poses; it uses old Japanese, and many younger Japanese can't even understand it, fortunately I had a benri (convienient) headphone set with an English guide.

The first show was about a princess who had to move from Kyouto to Edo (modern-day Toukyou) to marry a prince, but she didn't want to. So, her handmaid brought in a young horse driver to play a game about Edo for her. Turns out this boy is the abandoned son of the princess's handmaid, but she must shun the boy out of duty to her princess, in order not to ruin the girl's reputation.

The second was about a dancer who came to a temple to celebrate a new bell. Really she was a demon who wanted to destroy it. So she was accepted into the temple (even though women aren't allowed, the priests were corrupt) In the middle of the dance, she is reavealed as a man, and at the end, he climbs up the bell, reveals himself as a serpent, and crushes it.

The third was about a man whose sister had been unjustly killed by her master, a samurai lord. He has taken a vow of sobriety, but in his distress drinks a whole keg of sake. He drunkenly storms into the samurai lord's palace in an attempt for revenge. He is stopped and tied up, and after falling asleep by his drink, put in the very same garden his sister was killed in. He was extremely lucky that he was not killed on spot for his behavior. When he wakes up he is sober. He is greeted by the Samurai lord, who admits that he had killed her in a drunken rage, and offers a hefty compensation. How ironic.

The final show was a dance to the fuji flower (not the mountain) also known as the wisteria. It shows the growth into maturity of the Wisteria Maiden through costume changes. Very impressive and interesting, but hard to explain in detail.

Ok, so I don't want to leave you hanging, but I'd rather give you little by little whats been happening. So I'll finish this post now and send the next one hopefully by tomorrow. if not, Please look at the pictures and you'll see most of what went down. .... Sorry!!!!!

Dakota M. Benjamin, JTD ダコタ　ベンジャミン Rotary District 7850 - Vermont, USA Hosted by Rotary Club or Rokkasho, Japan District 2830 - Aomori, Japan dakota.benjamin@gmail.com