Kabuki in Tokyo

Today, I went with Yuri-san to a Kabuki performance in the National Theatre in Tokyo. Kabuki is one of the first styles of Japanese Theatre. If you watch the Kanji of this word, you see it contains singing and dancing. Many of the stories, like the one I saw today, are dramas.

Lunch: Soba and Soaked Tempura

Because we had an ongoing Taifun, it was very hard to get there. After a combination of bus, traffic jams everywhere, finally taking a more than full train and a taxi, we were at the theatre about 1pm. It wasn't perfect, because the Kabuki started already at 12:00am, but we could get inside and wait for the 1st break at 1:30pm. In the meantime, we had lunch which was very delicious as usual by Japanese food ;)

Okay, the soaked tempura wasn't so good, but the rest was ^^ This is really something I cannot understand, why frying something and then put it into soup so it got soaked? oO

The National Theatre

In front of the White Lion

Afterwards we watched the Kabuki. Two different stories were told and it was very hard to understand them even for Japanese, as I was told. The actors spoke with many old words, so not many people didn't know them. Nevertheless, so I could concentrate more on their acting part and it was awesome :) It's fantastic how the actors could get into their roles and play them so good that I actually believed they had the personality they played. Of course the gestures and mimic were very strong and dramatic.

The stories were 一谷嫩軍記 and 春興鏡獅子. Because a translation isn't really possible (for me), I just let the names stand ;) Just in short: The 1st story was like a history of a war. Many actors held long monologues, so it was hard for me to follow the story.

Who had thought that
I would be here? ^^

And I had already missed the first half oO The only thing I really understood was that the main person, a Samurai played by 左團次市川 Sadanji Ichikawa , had to leave his home at the end of the story and to live on as a common.

The actor and his son, who played a female role in this story, are very famous. So people from the audience shouted sometimes their names when they were on stage. Unlike in Germany, this is common in a theatre like I was told afterwards. Another proof for the passion of Japanese people ^^

By the way, there were only male actors, so all female roles were played by men. The second story seemed for me like a fantasy story. In this part the actors danced most of the times, unlike the 1st story with monologues. The most impressing was the actor Sadanji again, because he wore the costume of a white lion. Not the animal, more like a man who became a lion ^^ Both stories are very popular in Japan. So if you want to know the full stories, just search for it :P

Maybe I should search for an apartment? ;)

After the theatre, we went to the Ramen street in the Tokyo Station. Or better said under it ;) Again delicious food, maaaaan ... I will miss Japanese Noodles so much when I fly back to Germany oO

Okay, it's not Ramen :D