A Southern Expatriate: Japanese Slumber Party!

Japanese slumber party with Black Jenga

Riza's favorite train station because it is so close to her house

Outside the Kabuki theatre

We woke up this morning and had a quick breakfast, then

Random massage chair in the hotel room

headed to Osaka. I had my first experience with Japanese public transportation and it was a pleasant one. I will tell you though, they are extremely quiet. One train we were on, not a soul talked, so of course I had to start laughing uncontrollably, Valerie would have been proud. The seats on the trains were this very interesting green color and were cushioned, which I find weird because most public transportation in other cities have to have plastic because homeless people pee on them, but to each his own. So we finally got to Osaka and were headed to the theatre to see Kabuki, and let me tell you, Kabuki is an experience. I had no idea what is going on, I laughed when people laughed and clapped when they clapped. The guy in front of us was LOVING it because he was clapping very aggressively. I asked Riza what was going on and she was just like, "I honestly have no idea". The best way I can describe it is that it sounded like in Finding Nemo when Dori talkes to the whales. In Kabuki they don't dim the lights in the theatre, so I felt like I had to act extremely interested because everyone could see me, even though I couldn't even take an educated guess as to what was

Celebrating Marina's birthday

going on. All the parts were played by men, because in Kabuki no women were allowed to perform. The most I got out of one of the acts, pertaining to the plot, is that some lady had this crazy hair that when she took her hood thing off it stood up and danced and it made her sad, then some dude cut it off and she was happy. At one point in the second act, there are four, I was STRUGGLING to stay awake, but then I look all around me and pretty much everyone is asleep, except the guy in front of me who, like I said earlier, was eating it up. Right behind where we were sitting there was a guy that kept screaming this stuff and we had no idea weather he was a part of the show or not so we went and asked the lady and she told us that he is what they call omuko. In Kabuki theatre, it is common for fans in the audience to shout the stage name or "yago" of their favorite actor just at the right moment during short pauses. Especially when the performer executes an important gesture or strikes

Sobagara pillow

Crazy Baby Riza

a traditional pose. This is very important to pile up the atmosphere of the play. It is also said that the actor's feelings rise when they call it. Honestly, it just added more confusion to an already extremely confusing form of entertainment. The show was four acts but we only made it through two. The intermissions between the acts were so long so people could eat and you could eat in the theatre when the performance was not going on. The area of Osaka that we were in was called Dotonbori, it kind of had a Time Square feeling to it. It was really busy with lots of stores and things like that. At one point, I caught some lady taking a picture of me, probably because I was the only white person in a sea of Asians, and it was extremely awkward because she knew she was caught so I just acted like I didn't notice, but it didn't work very well. While walking around I saw billboards for Ted, which apparently comes out this month in Japan even though it came out last summer in America, I should probably tell everyone not to waste their money on it. On this bridge there was this huge sign for Glico Cookie Company of their logo which is a guy with his arms in the air and
standing on one leg and every single person was getting

pictures with it. I guess everyone is obsessed with this cookie company because every Asian within in a 20 mile radius was getting a picture in front of it, so I had to get one as well, obviously. Also on that bridge, Riza told me that when one of the baseball teams in Osaka, not sure which one, wins a game, people come and jump off the bridge. Then Riza told me that people sometimes die, so I looked down expecting to see a huge drop, but it was like 30 feet, so not really sure how they died. We then walked by a Billiken, which is a statue of this little charm doll, and if you rub the soles of his feet then your wishes come true, I rubbed them for a couple of hours so I think I'm set. What is funny, is that the Billiken originated in St. Louis from an art teacher and illustrator that said it appeared to her in her dream, sounds pretty legit. After we ate, we headed back to Itami, when we passed the Kabuki theatre the show was not even over yet, I would have died if we stayed. When we got back, we headed to the mall to buy our train tickets for Tokyo and a song was on the radio. I am obsessed with the songs that have english in them because they just repeat the same thing over and over and over again. My personal favorite is, "Hot girls make the world go round." It is deep and really says a lot about the current economic climate, not only in Japan, but the world that hot girls make go round. Riza is going to be so mad at me for putting this up, but it has to be shared with the world. While we were in the car, Riza had to sit in my lap, and she straight up farted on me, so yea, that happend. So we went to the train station to pick up some of Riza's friends because we were going to celebrate her 23rd birthday and all sleep over at this hotel. We went shopping for groceries and then went to the hotel and ordered pizza. The pizza here is so weird, they don't really have red sause on it and they have the weirdest toppings, but it was pretty

DANCIN

CAKE

good. The birthday girl was a little late, so we went and got little cakes and candles so when she got there we could sing happy birthday and stuff like that. We picked her up from the station and walked back to the room. We walked in and they all started singing happy birthday, but in Japanese, so I just kinda awkwardly stood there, what is new. We hung out and watched some TV, which like I have said a million times, am obsessed with. A lot of the shows are subtitled with this crazy cartoon font in Japanese, even though they are speaking Japanese. I think my favorite show is the one where they film little kids going out and shopping on their own for groceries and things like that for the first time. These kids are like 3, and it is the cutest thing you will ever see. Then we watched some home videos of Riza when she was little, and she was a little devil. She was loud and always had to be the center of attention, so not much has changed. There was one video where it was the first day of Kindergarden at this Buddhist school, and a monk came and talked to them. He held up this statue and asked the kids what the statue was doing in the pond, like what is the

Singing happy birthday in Japanese

significance, but Riza took it literally, and stood up and imitated what the statue was doing. Another video was of her spinning around when she was maybe three, and then looking at the camera and saying in Japanese, "I'm drunk", I know, kawaii. All of Riza's friends who were sleeping over were friends that she danced with and they had just done some little dance concerts for senior citizens during the holidays, so I had to make them do the dances for me. One thing that I still have not gotten used to is the taking your shoes off before going inside. With these big boots on, it is not easy to go in and out, so next time I come to Japan, hopefully it will be summer so I can just have on some flip flops. We played this game called Black Jenga where when you pull out a Jenga you have to do what it says on the Jenga block. A lot of them were like, tell a time someone betrayed you, or something like that, nothing crazy. What I thought was funny, was the fact that Riza would have to translate everything because none of her friends spoke english. I am also really bad at interrupting them when they are speaking because I have no idea what they are saying. I will just start talking, not realizing that they are in the middle of a serious conversation. It still doesn't really register to me as speaking when people speak in Japanese because it sounds nothing like english. It just sounds like a bunch of noise, but I can pick up on some little words here and there. I also can recognize a couple of Japanese characters, and am sure to point them out whenever I see them, I am like a baby learning to read, they all love to laugh at me whenever I point out a character I know.
One thing that I have noticed is, there is a real lack of napkins and

All our shoes at the front door

trash cans in Japan. Even at restaurants, they never have napkins, so if you come to Japan, bring some paper towels with you, they are like gold over here for tourists, or at least for me. Later that night I had to take my multi vitamins, and when they saw them they freaked out. Compared to the vitamins they take, mine are enormous. I uploaded a picture of one of my huge yellow pills next to Riza's medicine. Also, a random thing that came up was about their coin that is worth 5 yen. I thought it was for 8 because there is this symbol that looks like an 8 but apparently it is not. They have the worth in Kanji, which is useless to people who don't speak Japanese, so I have been using it like it is worth eight yen, so that is great. The rest of the night we just talked about random stuff and I sat there and listened to them speak in Japanese. I would have no idea what was going on, but whenever they would laugh, I would laugh, so I felt like I was a part of the conversations. I finally fell asleep around two on my little huton and my sobagara pillow, which is a pillow filled with buckwheat hulls. At first you pick up the pillow and will think you will never be able to fall asleep on it, but it is actually pretty comfortable. I also had a big first today, I sent my frist Japanese text, I said thank you with some smiley faces, keeping it classy. My Japanse lesson for this post is "happy birthday", otanjobi omedetou
お誕生日おめでとう