Noh, Host Families and Disney!

---

I never had enough to warrant a whole entry until now, so I'm covering the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th of December. On the 7th. Ha.

On the 2nd, I went with Okasan to hear a shanson concert, which was enjoyable. They did all these weird Christmas songs in Japanese. Songs I've never heard of that were not traditional and sort of like a lounge act. My okasan's friend's daughter, Eri, was singing, so we had free tickets. It was a really small thing, like in a tiny restaurant that happened to have music equipment. The pianist was quite good and they're not bad. The headliner was some guy who's apparently a semi-celebrity who has a good voice. He does have a nice voice, but I was having a hard time not laughing at the gold lame brocade jacket. The kind that looks like it belongs in the bottom of a costume chest in Vegas. It was a good time and I'm glad I got to go.

The 3rd Okasan and I went to see a han Noh, called Mochizuki. Noh is the oldest Japanese theatre, considered by many to be the most aristocratic. It's a way of honoring the gods, which is why you'll often see Noh stages at shrines. Essentially what you have is men and boys chanting, wearing masks that don't entirely cover the face, performing highly stylized pieces. Each lineage has different things they're known for and Noh families are pretty common in Noh. Honestly, if you don't understand Japanese, you'll probably fall asleep during a performance. The one we went to was a "half-Noh" so it was onyl half as long. It was an hour and a half. Mochizuki is a story of revenge and all the big stuff, but for that hour and a half, three people were on a stage standing there, chanting. Occasionally one of them moved a few feet. The last 10 minutes was high-energy because it had some almost-dancing. I enjoyed it, but again, it's definitely not for everyone. And for the record, I did in fact fall asleep for a few minutes - my Japanese isn't THAT good.

On the 4th, my okasan's other son came to see us for the night. I had sort of despaired of meeting him. If people have talked with me at all, they're aware that I have a low opinion of the host brother who lives with us. He's the younger, for the record. Masato is....sort of spoiled. A laundry list of why I don't like him that much would read like this:

• He does not pick out his own clothes. Seriously. His mom lays out his clothes every day and then he bitches about how the tie isn't the right color.
  
• He earns a salary but doesn't pay for anything of his own. His mom buys his clothes for him, he doesn't pay rent or give money for food.
  
• He helps with nothing. He doesn't even clean his own room. For contrast, I clean my room, set the table, clear and clean the table every day and cook once a month. By the way, he doesn't eat what I make.
  
• He has the manners of a five year old. Instead of asking his mom to move her chair like a human, he bangs on the back of it for about 7 seconds.
  
• I have yet to hear please or thank you exit his mouth.
  
• He never talks to me or his mom.
  

That's a run-down of Masato, the younger son. So on the day that the older one is coming, I get beeped to come down for dinner. I've heard Okasan say her older son, Tomonori, is a little "hen" - it's like bizarre or strange, with slightly negative connotations. Like she doesn't understand him at all.
When I come down, he's in the kitchen cooking dinner. All by himself. He brought the ingredients, made beef and bell peppers, soup and salad. He studied English a while back, so he says as soon as he sees me "Hello. Nice to meet you!" to which I think my jaw dropped. Partly because he's cute, but mostly because he appeared to be a decent person. He sat with us all through dinner, fed the bird (acknowledging pets gets you on my good side, be they feathered, furred or skin-only) and made conversation. After I went up to my room, a little while later I heard some noise outside my door. There's a hallway with a metal guard, and a 10 foot drop to the tiled floor below. What do I see when I open my door? Tomonori hanging off the guard above the floor, trying to change an obviously-out-of-reach lightbulb for his mom. His response as soon as he sees me is to smile and say hi. I wanted to tell him to just worry about himself as the drop was a little bit dangerous. The next morning, he was just as pleasant. On the way to the train station, Okasan and I talked about him, since I didn't see anything strange about him. She said Masato is normal, because he wears a suit and works for a company. Tomonori is strange because he has a "part-time job" teaching at a cram school (where he makes about $200 a week), lives on his own, doesn't wear suits if he can avoid it, and someday wants to own his own store. I had no idea how to respond to that, since I think the older son is the better person, but hey, different cultures have different priorities.

On the 5th, we went to Tokyo Disneyland. There's also a Disney Sea, but Okasan likes 'Land better. We got in with stockholder's tickets. Her friends Inukai, Ueno (who made my yukata), and Murakami came too. My Okasan has fun friends. We got there, and it's their Christmas whatever-they-call-it. I'll call it a bonanza. There was a huge tree, and all in all I enjoyed the sights. Snowflakes were ubiquitous, and their "World Bazaar" is a bunch of stores with English names.

We decided we wanted to go on some rides, and we'd use the Fastpass. Tokyo's fastpass is different from in America because every ticket is one, and you sign up to go on a ride and it tells you when to come back. The downside is that you can only do this one ride at a time, and it's usually an hour to 3 hours away. There weren't many people there since it was a Tuesday, so our waits were never longer than 40 minutes. We signed up for the Haunted Mansion and then went on...you guessed it. It's A Small World. I hate that ride with all the fires of Hell behind me. I hate the song, I hate the puppets, I hate the whole thing. OF COURSE I went on it first. The Japanese women loved it, and I guess a lot of people do. Ok. As a side note, that song was EVERYWHERE. In the ride, in the 3 parades we saw, in medleys for other rides, as backround muzak at restaurants. I think that's the work of the devil.

The Haunted Mansion was awesome. Disney bought the characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas a while back, so they did the ride on that. Ghosts and Tim Burton I can do! I almost bought ridiculous souveniers. The next thing we went on was Splash Mountain as a fastpass. Until we got on, we took a ride on the riverboat. It was very cold that day, and we had a slight sea breeze so I didn't really want to go and get wet on the ride, so they went without me. Apparently Splash Mountain doesn't involve massive amounts of water in Japan. The worst drenching I saw was a woman whose hair was damp. I don't get it, but hey, I should have gone on. We went on a roller coaster, which I could do because there were no hills, only curves, which I like. We did a Buzz Lightyear ride, a Star Wars ride, and a Winnie the Pooh ride.

I've never seen that ride in America, and we need one. I don't like that they call him "Pooh-san" because that equates to Mr. Pooh. Pooh is not a Mr. anything. Anyway. The ride centers around the plot of Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. I used to have that on tape (I still do, actually) and was pretty excited. The cars were Hunny Pots that were magnetic, so each one went a different way and there was no track. The first room was the Hundred Acre Wood, with all the houses and characters. The next room was Pooh looking for hunny, and then a scented room (like honey smell, not real honey) and Pooh eating it. The last room was the Hephalumps and Woozles dream, and it was pretty trippy. Weird lights, a car of the nightmare critters and holographs. If anyone gets the chance to go on this ride, do it.

We saw the holiday parade, which had the princesses, cartoons, and Santa. I have an interesting observation. Every important character was a white person. All the princesses and princes, Santa and some of the dancers. Think about that for a minute. My host mom was so excited because "Santa's last, Santa's last!" but...no. DoCoMo was last. That's the equivalent of saying "Santa's last!" "No, VERIZON is last." Gotta love those sponsors. Japan needs a new idea of sexy too - girls in brown bodysuits with what are essentially furry diapers masquerading as reindeer are not sexy. They are geriatric.

We ate dinner at a restaurant which was ok, but nothing worth writing about. Afterwards, we saw the Illumination Parade, which was almost the same except with lights. Interesting nonetheless. Last we saw fireworks, which honestly were a letdown. They had 2 kinds, the kind that go boom and the kind that puff out. They were gold, red, green, pink and blue. Some middle-aged woman dressed younger than her children would be was excited saying "Christmas colors! They're Christmas colors!" to her boyfriend over and over. Since WHEN are pink and blue Christmas colors?! Silence, idiot woman, I wanted to say. But they lasted about 8 minutes, with no shapes or variation other than color. America is still best at making things that go kaboom. When I told Daddy about it, he goes "Well, that's a good start..." and then was amused when I told him no, that was the whole show.

I saw middle-school guys who thought they were the toughest guys on earth wearing Minnie Mouse ears, with earrings. Manly indeed.

Speaking of merchandise, we are so lucky that world supremacy is not based on money sunk into Disney enterprises, because if it was, we'd be the proud United States of the Great and Glorious Empire of the Land of the Rising Sun. They'd call us "Nishishima" - "Western Island."

Lastly, today we had a speech contest in Japanese class. I did mine on my host mom's mother who wanted to marry me off. I won!! My class and the 5 Japanese vistors voted for who they thought had the best speech and I won! My prize...was an extremely large bag of cheese curls. Of which I have a picture I'll gladly share.

---