Today we had no classes and instead went to the Takasago City Hall. There is a city amphitheater there – our students were going to watch a “cultural performance”. It’s called Rakugo, a cross between stand-up comedy and storytelling.
A long time ago people traveled from town to town, making a living by telling stories to anyone that would listen – kind of like a bard, I guess. This is considered an integral part of Japanese culture, and I was looking forward to checking it out.
We all entered and sat down, and after we were settled in, they started the show. The performer sits on a pillow on stage in front of a small lectern, and he wears a special outfit. At a certain points during his performance he raps a metal object against the table to emphasize a point, and it is loud enough to get your attention. Also, each performer at some point took off their outer jacket, and there was some symbolic meaning to this, although I’m not sure what.
I couldn’t follow their stories very well, because the Japanese was rapid fire and very colloquial. They also switched characters very quickly in mid-stream, so it was really tough. I was able to catch the drift of the story, and the personality of the characters from the tone of voice and the body mannerisms, but really I was just lost.
There was a magician that came on stage in between performers, and she played terrible 70’s disco music that was certain to have come from a 100 yen shop CD. It was terrible, really. Appalling in it’s mediocrity.
However, her show was quite good, and she had some good comic moments. She had one of our teachers come onstage, and played a few jokes on him.
The final performer is supposedly well known – he’s often on TV and some of the teachers were interested in seeing him. He did a very non-traditional performance – there were stage props, and he did a scary story instead of a funny story, which I guess is unusual. He did have a scary voice, and at one point somebody squirted blood on the paper wall behind him. Suddenly, a figure burst through and ran into the crowd, and the reactions of 500 screaming schoolgirls and maybe 100 screaming schoolboys was classic.
Afterwards, the main performer came up and accepted flowers from the school body president. He made a speech about following your dreams and doing what YOU want to do, not what people say you should do. Interesting.
The students overall seemed to enjoy it, if only for the chance to sleep in their seats in the dark for an hour or so. Even some of the teachers were sleeping – I was surprised at that. I couldn’t understand much at all but I was still awake. Some students were checking for my reactions, so I wanted to be a good example.
After the show I hit the road – arriving at home around 5 p.m. Today the post office was delivering a package, and they had said they would arrive between 7-9 p.m. I made a big Korean dinner of BBQ beef and rice, and I tried to make a Korean soup but I chickened out on all the salt that the recipe called for. That’s way too much – I don’t want to die at sodium poisoning.
Nine p.m. came and went, and still no sign of the post office. I gave up and went to bed around ten o’clock. How very un-Japanese to not show up.
I was rousted out of bed at 11:15 p.m. by the doorbell, and I stumbled in the dark to the door. There was a postal service guy there, and the first thing that came out of my mouth in Japanese was not “good evening”, or “oh, hello”, but “it’s late”. Not very polite – but then again I was still kind of asleep. Here’s this poor guy delivering my package after 11 p.m. and what thanks does he get? “It’s late!”
Anyway, I signed for the package and went straight to bed.
