Adventures in Osaka

Andy and I had some crazy times in Osaka during Golden Week. It was interesting to suddenly turn into a tourist after living here since late January. But that did mean that I got to take Andy to my favorite spots, and discover some new ones.

On our most action-packed day, we went to check out the Osamu Tezuka Museum in Takarazuka (which I made a post about over here). Tezuka is the creator of Astro Boy, etc, aka one of the most influential manga-ka ever. The museum was really cute, and inspiring. It reminded me how when I was in 1st and 2nd grade, the thing I wanted the most in this world was to be a cartoonist.


That's Astro Boy's hand and footprints, btw. He's a small dude.

From Takarazuka, we went to Namba, which has the iconic neon sign Glico man view of Osaka.



We went to karaoke on a whim and had a grand ole time. Big Echo has a fabulous 飲み放題.

The next day, we had a picnic in 大阪城公園 Osaka Castle Park featuring food we bought at the supermarket and bakery by my station. Here I am with cheese.






Guess why I'm smiling.



One more for the road:

Spring

So today the weather was beautiful, and I hear it's supposed to be nice all week, and thank god. Although strangely enough, warm weather made me miss Oberlin in the spring, because it's so lovely when everything is green and you can hang out on the grass and all that stuff. I register for classes next week. Oh, Oberlin.

But anyway, Japan. Here's a picture of the front of Kansai Gaidai:


The sign says, basically, "Congratulations, Freshmen!" or new students, or more literally, accepted students (the new school year starts in April in Japan). The big building in the middle is administration, the one on the left is the library, I'm not sure what the one on the right is, but behind it (you can't see it) is where the Center for International Education is, which is where I spend all my time. I just thought it made a nice shot.

Before our Takarazuka adventure, Jess and I ate tonkatsu at a restaurant on the 28th floor in Umeda. We had a lovely view of the Ferris wheel at the department store HEP, which I rode last week but did not publish pictures of in the blog, so we'll play a little catch-up.


Me and Ryoko




You board the Ferris wheel at the 8th floor or something, so you're really high up.




And here's the view from the tonkatsu restaurant.

Aside from the sun, the other thing that comes out in the springtime in Japan is sakura. Jess and I had our own version of 花見 (flower-viewing) in Takarazuka, which I will just commemorate with these photos.


Jess is alive, I promise!






First time I have ever used the macro setting on my camera.



Hopefully I can take some better shots before they all disappear, which I hear happens fast.

Takarazuka

(I never take enough pictures!)

Yesterday, Jess and I made the pilgrimage up to the town of Takarazuka, which is coincidentally where Osamu Tezuka is from (probably the greatest mangaka of all time, he created Astro Boy), and that's where the Tezuka Museum is as well. But that's not why I was there (although chances that Andy drags me back there for the Tezuka Museum: very high). I was there to see a musical version of Zorro put on by one of the famous takarazuka troupes.

If you are not familiar with takarazuka, it is an all-female troupe that performs gaudy, sparkly musicals for the benefit of their legions of obsessed fans, who are mostly middle and high school aged girls and housewives. The subtext here is incredible, but I don't really feel like going into it right now.

Ever since I learned about takarazuka when doing my independent research project over Winter Term my freshman year on Japanese queer identities, I've been pretty fascinated by it. It's highly competitive, and of course like any other mode of entertainment, once you get too old, you're out, and it's time for the next wave to come in. We watched a documentary on it once in Wert's Modern Japanese History class, and that said that former otokoyaku (the women who specialize in the male roles) are supposed to make really good wives, because they understand a male perspective.

Before Zorro, we were treated to a dance performance centering around wind and woodblock prints, and Japanese things, which is kind of rare for takarazuka (although I did see some posters for some Japanese-looking plays coming up). Mostly they tend to stick to very Western themes. They're big on historical romances. But I was thoroughly impressed with the technical elements of this performance, they clearly have quite a LOT of money to spend. I think my favorite was when a giant circle in the middle of the enormous stage began to rotate, with dancers frozen in male-female couples wearing nice hats, while the main male-female couple (in their nice kimono) wove between them and the lanterns. It was like they were on a lake, it was very stunning.

Zorro was pretty fabulous but needed more sparkles. The costumes were very nice though, I liked those a lot. I can't say too much for the music--the chorus to one of the main songs was, Viva Zorro 今から, and in case you don't speak Spanish and Japanese, that means, "Long live Zorro, starting now!" which just doesn't sound that great, let me tell you. But it was still really enjoyable, and there was lots of dancing, and when there were sparkles, oh, there were sparkles. After the story had clearly ended, they segued into Jazz Zorro, where every main character got to do one last huge dance number in more modern-looking outfits with a more abstract feel.

So I mean, I would go again. I'm really sad that we missed the Phoenix Wright one, I don't think anything in the world will be able to make up for that loss. But I'm glad I got to go. And you know, it was all in Japanese, but I understood the most important parts (though I did get lost when the fancy Spaniards were talking). Hooray listening comprehension?