Tokyo, Day 1 - Scavenger Hunt

This is our "get-acquainted-with-Japan" day; our language teachers from Tama University are in charge. The primary purpose of the day is to give people a chance to become acclimated to finding their way around in a strange city and culture in spite of language difficulties (especially written language).

Our teachers have put together a short picture-based 'scavenger hunt' - we are to find our way to the large temple at Asakusa, using the Tokyo Metro system (subway) and then find our way back to the hotel. Additionally, several of us have opted to take advantage of an opportunity to view an afternoon performance of Kabuki, so we also have to find our way to the National Theatre of Japan, both to buy our tickets and to attend the performance.

We divide into groups of 5 or so and, with a teacher or mentor in tow, head for the subway station to learn how to buy tickets and read the signs. Since this is my second trip, I've got a reasonably good idea of what to do, so I buy a metro pass (Y1000) and follow our leader as she takes us to the Hanzomon subway line to go the to the theatre. We ride to the next stop and leave the train; the theatre is a short walk from the station.

When we get there, we discover that the box office doesn't open until 10 AM. We have a half-hour to kill, so we walk across the street and down a block or so to the back gate entrance to the grounds of the Imperial Palace. That entrance is not open (it usually isn't) but it gives us a good vantage point for pictures, showing the huge moat and wall system that have been in existence for over three hundred years, and serve as protection for the Palace. I have not seen this portion of the wall and moat - we viewed the grounds from the Tokyo Train Station side two years ago.

Back to the box office, where our teachers confer with the ticket sellers to find a good seating area. We pay our money (Y1500 per ticket - not a bad price for a theatre matinee), and receive our tickets. Some of us also pick up some of the playbills available for patrons - they make excellent wall posters in American classrooms, since they usually have good pictures of Kabuki actors in full costume and makeup.

Then it's back to the subway to find our way to the temple. This involves riding one subway line and then transferring to another (the Ginza line), which is a bit trickier (you have to go through a particular set of turnstiles to avoid paying an extra fare), but still very doable. In Tokyo and other major Japanese cities, the exits are clearly marked with numbers, and station names are written out in romaji (western alphabet) as well as kanji, so as long as you know the name of the station you wish to use, you can usually find your way around. The various subway lines are marked on the maps with different colors, which also makes it easier to figure out when to change lines.

Asakusa is crowded - it's Sunday, which is a day for family outings in Japan. Lots of people are here to see the sights and visit the shrines, and the shops that line the street leading to the temple are busy. I've been here before, so I buy very little, but I do find a clip on watch to get (I managed to leave the U.S. without a working watch).

Before I left the U.S., I had felt that I was leaving something out of my packing, but could not remember what it was. Today, I figured it out - I left my temple book back home. This is a bound paper journal used to record one's visits to the various Buddhist and Shinto shrines; a priest at each facility will sign and stamp a page of your book for a small offering, which provides a record of your visit to that shrine. So, I now have a new book, with stamps from three shrines. One change for this one - you are encouraged to write your name on the front cover of your book, much as Christians write their names inside their personal Bibles, so I ask the first signer to write my name in katakana, and she obliges.

After our temple visit, we eat lunch at a small restaurant at the edge of the temple complex - they have pork cutlets with rice and curry sauce, which is a favorite of mine. Then we head back to the subway to return to the theatre for the performance.

This afternoon performance is designed for Kabuki novices - there is a short lecture before the performance, where basic information about the staging and story are given, and the particular play is a light story, suitable for anyone. There are English-language radio receivers available to rent that have translated dialogue and side comments about the story - many of us take advantage of those, and they were definitely helpful.

The story is a hero-vs-villain type, with an improbable plot, one designed to show that the good guy always wins. I had read previously that Japanese Kabuki plays are similar in style and substance to American melodrama, and this does seem to be the case, right up to the use of makeup to clearly identify the players (white face for the hero and red for the villain, much as melodrama uses white hats and black hats). Having been raised in river towns all my life and being very familiar with the idea of melodrama as a common performance venue on the old paddlewheel steamboats that used to make the river runs, I enjoy the performance greatly.

We head back to the subway after the show; a few hardy souls confer with our teachers to find the correct subway stations to go do some shopping. Most of us, however, are really feeling jet lag (myself included), so our tired group heads back to the hotel for an early meal and lots of sleep.