Just your run of the mill weekend in Tokyo started with our Friday night Jazz choir where we sing all kinds of Jazz classics in English with a group of uni-lingual Japanese singers and a wonderful choir director/jazz pianist who studied jazz in NYC and has a bit of English. We do really well with the lyrics until we get to the syncopated sections written out in Hiragana.
We chuckle because our choir singing in English sounds very much like the Cottonwood Singers we used to sing with in Nelson singing songs in Spanish or French.
This is a video of our last concert (when Shelley and I were in China).
Saturday we met up with Shelley's wonderful friend Kyoko who invited us to attend the first performance of her son in the Noh training school in Ginza.
Noh is one of those very Japanese experiences that, only by knowing the background, history and context can you really watch the event with a different set of eyes.
Before we set off for this presentation we brushed up on a series of sites to help us understand what we were seeing. Check out this site and this site to help you get the background.
This was a free performance so we could just drop in for a few hours to appreciate the elements of Noh as a casual spectator and see this:
Each movement of the fan represents a prop, an emotion...
Kyoko's son at his first performance...
They train with a very unique form of chanting...
As the performance evolved the plays became more complex and there were different costumes and props.
The culmination comes when the beautiful princess emerges in all of her finery to perform a dance. These princesses are always performed by men and they wear wooden masks that have been used in the same school for generations.
From my Westerner's eyes and ears, the program came across as relatively slow, methodical and very hard to "get"... until I looked at this from a historical perspective.
To realize that this exact form of theatre has been performed without interruption from the early 700 AD years (!!!); to see this performance being put on by a Noh school that has had a lineage of 26 directors, each one directing for a generation; to read that there are some Noh performance families that have had actors in their families to form a continuous lineage of 50 plus generations; to understand that every minute gesture and voice tone has evolved and been refined with a clear significance over these many generations; all of this helped me experience this with a cultural knowledge that enhanced the experience.
If you explore those sites you will see that every play is short but has tremendous history and meaning. It is also fascinating to see that Kyoko's son, a young man, is totally enthralled with this world and taking regular lesson in Noh during his free time.
Do we, in Canada, have this kind of continuity in our culture and this commitment to our cultural roots? This makes me think of some of our aboriginal communities and their histories and dances.
Ah yes, on with the weekend...
On our way we HAD to check in at the Regency Hyatt to see what their next chocolate creation was that you could buy for $5000; any takers?
Then on to the National Art Center, a magnificent modern Tokyo museum that has on-going shows of a whole variety.
This weekend one exhibit was a retrospective of Renoir and his work from the Quai d'Orsay museum in Paris. Here is a link to this exhibit which I went to on my own while Shelley as in China.
For a description of the exhibit click here.
Instead of that exhibit we chose to go to the totally edgy/modern/dramatic/ pushing the boundaries retrospective of one of Japan's most well known fashion designers; Miyake Issey. Here is the link to his exhibit and here is a link to his globe-spanning career. Check out the visuals/ video on the sites.
Once again, a breath-taking experience to go firectly from a thousand plus year old art form to the totally cutting-edge world of high fashion blended with environmental design and an interest in new materials. Here is his 2016 show for those looking for that extra "je-ne-sais-quoi" in your closet.
From there, after a Renoir inspired special dessert at the museum cafe, it was back home Saturday night for a quiet evening together discussing history, culture, taste... and Tokyo.
Sunday whenever possible we enjoy our 40 km round trip bike ride across the city to Quaker Meeting to join with fellow Tokyo Friends in an hour of silent worship and a companionable meal afterwards.
We are usually done with lunch and dish-washing by about 1:00 so that gives us the opportunity to take a new route across the city to discover new areas and/or check out some of the events going on.
So on Sunday our first stop was to the Hibaya Park Octoberfest; yes, Octoberfest in May, why not? We dove into the obligatory crowds of people enjoying a huge range of beer labels and a wide variety of sausages.
We settled in under the big tent with the smallest beer mugs we could buy to fully indulge in the Oompapa Octoberfest celebration with hundreds of other Tokyoites discocvering some of their own Japanese/ Germanic roots (?) with gusto!
Let's see, another 15 km to ride home so how about swinging by the Koshikawa Korakuen, One of Tokyo's oldest gardens built for a Daimyo in the 1600s. See here for the history.
We deaked off the busy main roads, up a little side alley and got swallowed up in this carefully constructed world of greenery surrounded by the tall towers of Tokyo. Every vista, every path, every tree and flower had been thought out over generations to present the most peaceful and the most beautiful site.
Winding stone paths...
Blossoming lily pads.... (with Tokyo Dome in the background which was hosting a huge soccer match)
PEaceful over-looks...
A rice paddy planted in the 1700s to encourage the court ladies to experience how tough it is to grow the rice...
Fields of lilies...
Hidden bridges (the full moon bridge)...
Red lacquer bridge over a waterfall...
With hidden look-out spots over the city...
And plenty of sacred inscriptions.
And then, on our way home of course, a NEW neighborhood to discover that we had never been to called Kagurazaka, known, as it turns out, for its French quarter as well as the oldest site for Geishas once numbering over 600 in this area. Check here for more photos.
A perfect cup of tea in a tiny back alley...
Blooms bursting from all kinds of nooks and crannies...
A bit more exploration of trendy and hip shopping spaces...
And a trendy and hip temple as it turns out, designed by one of the great Tokyo architects!
And yes, then we really DID head home for a hot bath and time to stretch our tired muscles after a 40 km ride around the city.
Now this is where I usually say: "Another amazing weekend in this amazing city!" but I am not quite done yet....
I had to get a good night's rest because I had a very special luncheon date on Monday at the Palace Hotel, the main hotel over-looking the Imperial Palace.
One of the fun parts of my job is to get invited to fancy luncheons as the principal of the first BC offshore school in Japan. So, here is Christy Clarke, the Premier of BC, here to drum up BC/ Japan economic development.
And fun for me to chat with her; lots about the economy, no real time for me to talk education! We had to do the Japanese thing of business card exchange.
I also had the opportunity to be introduced to the Counsel General of Japan in Vancouver.
And then??? Well, it was a pretty regular week after that of teaching and working with staff. :)
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