March 6–10 蟄虫啓戸 Hibernating Creatures Open their Doors

I was really blessed in the beginning of March, as I was given a slew of free tickets for things.

I got to use my advisor's museum exhibition opening tickets for an Okina Noh Mask collection at the Miho Museum in Shiga prefecture.

Now, this museum is out in the middle of nowhere, and if one doesn't have a car, it's pretty difficult to find the special bus that would take you up the windy mountain path to the nestled treasure trove. That said, because it was a special "friends and family" opening event, there were special charter buses running from Kyoto train station that day especially for the invitees. As one of my roommates also works periodically with the museum, publishing their catalogues, she also had tickets to go and we went together with some of our tea class members.

While sitting in the charter bus, waiting for departure, we noticed this lovely tourist trap of a

restaurant on a bus. It actually looks kinda fun, but upon looking it up on the website, the information for the restaurant bus tours are only on its English website, and does not appear anywhere on their Japanese website. So yes, just for tourists.

The museum itself was beautiful. It was designed my I. M. Pei, which I kept hearing as "EMP" when my roommate was telling me about him, and has 2 distinct portions. The lower part, close to the parking lot, is a restaurant and shuttle cart stop. You have to walk through a tunnel further into the mountain to get to the actual museum itself. I took a photo of the museum from the tunnel, and then the reverse shot of the tunnel entrance from the museum.

To be honest, what I loved the most was the courtesy umbrellas they had out for their patrons, as it was raining that day, which eventually ended in hail...

The other set of free tickets I got were for A TAKARAZUKA SHOW. This was the final "Japanese performing art" I had yet to cross off on my list, and even though I have tickets ordered for when Nick comes to visit, my landlady had received a set of free tickets from her bank, and sadly for everyone else and luckily for me, none of my other roommates (who arguably have more interest in Takarazuka) could make the show. So I ended up with them, and practically dragged my poor colleague to go with me.

For those of you unfamiliar, Japan's traditional performing arts (Noh, Kabuki) were and are still male-only art forms. The Takarazuka Revue, created to be a tourist attraction, employs only females in performances and wow, does it strike true in its aim. I've had almost 2 weeks now to digest what I saw, and yet I still am at a loss for words. I imagine it's similar to a drag show in its utter spectacle, complete with giant feather peacock trains during the ending curtain call... but the dance moves of these ladies-as-males are pretty much exactly the same as the moves of heartthrob male bands, not to mention their similar builds... I have never been more gender confused than I was walking out of that show.

The majority of the audience was female, and it was funny, since all I needed to do to find the theatre when I got off the train was to follow the crowd of women. There were more males in the audience than I

expected, but I can pretty much guarantee that every single one of them was accompanying a female companion to the show.

The theatre itself is indeed "grand", compete with a giant red carpeted staircase, where you can line up to take a photograph on. There were also queues inside, for which I assume were fans of particular performers, though I could not make out what the goal was.

It surprised me to see that it had a live musician pit, and it was surprisingly narrow...

I also only understood about 70% of the show, since my Japanese language skills are starting to stagnate.

One of my favourite things was that in the washroom, there are flags on the upper corners of the door, positioned so that when the stall door is open (therefore free to use), the flag is visible down the line. No need to peek awkwardly down the hall to see what door is open. Ingenious.