Appalled, Enthralled and Baseballed!

Welcome friends, kick back, stay awhile. Let me regale you with more stories of the strange and wonderful. I'm trying to punch this blog up a little for those of you who are browsers more than readers. (yes that means pictures as well as text)

As you can see from the title of the blog I've got a few more tales to tell. So let's start with Appalled. I've mentioned, and shown you in the past that some Japanese television shows can be a little different than back home. Well one evening last week we were absolutely shocked when a dance contest came on. Now dance contests on TV are nothing new but this one caught our eye. For starters it sounded like the hosts were saying "sekushi dansu kontesuto " (sound it out, it's "Sexy Dance Contest") which also is not too bad. Then we saw one of the groups of contestants. It was a group of five or six girls and they were all 8 years old! Yes that's right, groups or single acts in a sexy dance contest and all of them between 2 and 12 years old. Later that night I was surfing around on a news site and found that another English speaker in Japan had also seen it, and was also shocked and managed to tape some of it. So if your interested in seeing why we were so shocked or just how much make-up can fit on a small child, click here.

For the next word in the title, Enthralled let me tell you about Kabuki. Kabuki, if you haven't heard of it is traditional form of Japanese theatre. The performers wear elaborate costumes, wigs and make-up and speak in an older form of Japanese that is melodic and often drawn out for effect. Many Japanese people will tell you that they can not understand Kabuki, which is why most theatres have translation headsets. I had studied and performed Kabuki in High School, so I was very interested in seeing how it's supposed to be done. We went to an early performance which started at 11:00am and went to 4:00pm, but like many people we did not attend all of the show. Three hours was enough for us, considering we couldn't understand a word of it. (no translation for English speakers) It was actually quite similar to what we had done in school only far more elaborate and there were shouters. This startled us at first when a character came on stage and suddenly two or three men in the audience started shouting at them. This happened about every five minutes, people in the audience hollering at the performers. We later found out that the shouters are regular patrons, and that they are yelling the actors names to encourage them. As an actor I think this would probably throw me the first seven or eight times. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed of the performances but we did pick up this cute little guy at the souvenir shop.



And the last word in the title, Baseballed. Colleen and I have never really been baseball fans. I played as a child but never watched it on TV unless it was with my dad or my brother. But I had seen a pro baseball game live in Mexico and it was a blast. So knowing how baseball crazy people are in Japan we figured we had to do it. We were not disappointed. We headed of to Osaka Dome to watch the Tigers (my team) play the Dragons. One thing we knew before going was that you had to buy balloons when you got there to celebrate the 7th inning stretch, but more on that later. Many people were wearing team jerseys and they even sold them in a cute pink version. It wasn't long before we were looking like everyone else complete with plastic cheering bats that you bang together to cheer your team.



What we weren't prepared for was how elaborate the cheering was. There were cheer masters situated throughout the crowd to signal to each other and the fans what cheer was about to start. It seemed liked every player on the team had their own cheer when they were up to bat, and there were several others for which everyone seemed to know the rhythms and chants from memory. It felt like we were in a dance show but had missed all of the choreography rehearsals. I managed to take a few short video clips of it with the digital camera and put them together so you can get a glimpse.



Then came the 7th inning where, shortly before, everyone (including us) started blowing up long balloons with whistles in the openings.



They then launched them into the air emitting a screaming noise to announce the start of the stretch.



To see the rest of the baseball pics click here.

And that's it for me, lots more to talk about but this has gone on long enough.

Hope to see you all soon, we'll be back with Joe September 22nd, party on the 23rd from what I hear. Signing off, Carl.

Oh what the heck, here's a few more pics. Click on them to read a description.