都をどり - Miyako Odori!

[[9/28/2010 - I noticed I never finished this post D: I ended it lamely and didn't add any pictures that I took myself... I don't want to alter my original thoughts any! ]]

I've been slow again at posting! My apologies! I guess first I'll tackle the Miyako Odori, "Dances of the Old Capital." Just this last Tuesday, Kaylie and I ventured out to the Gion district in Kyoto to see the Maiko and Geiko of the district perform in the annual spring dances there. After getting lost about three times, we made it safely to Kaburenjo theatre, the exclusive theatre for these performances. For those who have read "Memoirs of a Geisha," the famed Ichiriki Teahouse was located just down the street from the theatre!

We arrived about a half hour early because we paid a bit extra for reserved special tickets that entitle you to take part in a tea ceremony, and also have a first floor seat. You also get to keep a cute little plate that your mochi gets served on at the tea ceremony. I must say -- after having to drink down matcha, the best thing to compliment it truly is mochi!

We tried to take pictures of the Maiko doing the tea ceremony, but all of our attempts were in vain. It was so busy and there were so many people giong every which way that it was impossible to take nice pictures. I pretty much gave up at that point with the photo taking adventures.

After that, we followed the masses into the theatre area. Unforunately for me, I didn't realize that we had passed up all of our options for souvenirs, so I neglected to buy anything substantial, but once inside I bought a nice color program that I think will do nicely as a momento!

The theatre itself was very beautiful! The curtain had this lovely scene on it, full of so many colors. We anxiously awaited the beginning of the performance, flipping through the program and taking in the beautiful costuming presented within it.

The basic concept of the dances is to depict life in Kyoto during the Edo period. There were several scenes, each a separate story of its own, yet connected by that general theme of Edo period Kyoto. To my surprise, I discovered that the dances and songs are newly created each year! For some reason, I always had the impression that the dances were a tradition passed down from year to year, the same stories, the same steps -- it just goes to show that the beautiful tradition of the flower and willow world is still flourishing!

And then, it began! Since I was unable to take pictures during the performance, I found some pictures online that I will share so you get the feel of it. These aren't pictures from this year, so the sets and performers are different.

The curtains on the sides lifted and the musicians for the performance began. All of the music was live, performed on all traditional instruments.

All of these performers are Maiko, apprentice Geiko. They are young, rather inexperienced performers relative to their older counterparts. They wear more ornate kimono and kanzashi (hair decorations). They are also seen playing simpler instruments at the Miyako Odori.

All of the performers shown here are Geiko (the word for Geisha in the Kyoto dialect), known for the mastery of the arts. They play the more complex instruments and do all of the singing. The story of the dance is told through the song, so it's a very important job.

After a cry of "Odori wa YO-I-YASA~" (Let's begin the dances!), the colorful Maiko slowly made their way on stage, gracefully, not wasting a single movement. The kimono pictured above are used every year and are one of the most well known symbols of the dances. These performers are used to depict the changing seasons throughout the dances, the first dance being Summer.

It was everything I could have hoped for -- except I hoped it could have been even longer! I bought a beautiful program that has photos of all the scenes and dancers. I'm really glad I got to experience this!

-雅-MIYAVI

I just got back from probably one of the most single amazing events of my life! I am very into Visual Kei music, and so one of the things most definitely NEEDED to do while in Japan was go to a live of at least one band. Not only did I end up scheduling three concerts, I was able to snag a pretty good lineup of artists that I really enjoy! During Golden week, I will be seeing LM.C, one of my absolute favorite bands.

This Wednesday, I will be seeing SuG! I'm not too much a fan, but I think this band a has a lot of potential. At any rate, the live will probably be amazing!



BUT. Tonight, I saw Miyavi, another one of my absolute favorite artists. Here's a sampling of one of his songs!



He's very eclectic, famous for his many style changes, both musically and visually. He's an absolutely AMAZING guitarist, and based on his stage presence, is just an amazingly down to earth person. Also -- he's a very beautiful man in my opinion!

The poster for the tour! He gets the most amazing photos taken of him!

So -- the play by play!

As I woke up this morning, I checked Twitter (I follow Miyavi on there) and saw this message:

"IM BACK IN OSAKA WHERE I WAS BORN 大阪もどってきたで"

I just got super pumped up, and I couldn't believe that I was actually going!

After getting all nice and pretty and fashionable for the live...

(I had all kinds of chains and stuff on my skirt and tie...can't see 'em though!)


...I caught the bus to Hirakata-shi, and then the train to Kyobashi. I then had to take the JR line to Osaka. The Keihan line (the train line that is around my immediate area here in Japan) is really easy to figure out and use, but it is famous for being expensive. JR is fairly cheap, but there are SO many stations! And there's lots of different options for which trains you want to take, so to me, it's just extremely confusing. Anyway, I had to take the Osaka Loop line. I had never used the JR line by myself, so naturally, I went the complete wrong direction on the loop line and had to back track. But now I know that you do NOT want to head toward Tennouji if you want to go to Osaka ^^;

I met with my lovely friend Sarah and we made our way to the live house. Yesterday, we got somewhat lost trying to find the place so that we wouldn't screw up and miss the concert today. Interesting thing about Japan -- if you ask people for directions, and the person isn't sure, they would rather give you wrong directions than tell you that they do not know where the place is. Naturally and frustratingly, we received two different sets of directions. And then we ended up finding a taxi driver! Those guys are awesome to ask for directions! They're very willing to help and won't pressure you to take you somewhere. He pointed us in the right direction and we found Shangri-La!

To our surprise, the venue was TINY! For some reason, I expected the concert to be fairly large due to Miyavi's popularity among US VK fans, but apparently he's really not that popular here, even as far as VK goes!

So anyway, we retraced our steps and made it once more to Shangri-La where we found, much to our surprise, someone from Kansai Gaidai! It turns out somewhere around 7 or 8 people all went to the concert, so we hung out in line and such. Merchandise was purchased! I got a really yummy photo book, two hair scrunchies of different colors that are all shiny and have the tour name and miyavi's name all over them, a neato pen, really beautiful photo stickers, a T-shirt, and a sports towel.

Why a towel? At lives for most visual kei bands, they sell towels so that you can wipe off your face as you jump around and enjoy the concert, but they also serve as things you can wave around during certain songs, so it's pretty much a must that you get one of them! It was so hot in there...I used mine well!

I shoved all the stuff in my bag and we waited and waited until they finally started calling people in. There are two types of tickets for these sort of things: A tickets, for fan club members, and B tickets, for peons like me! A ticket people get to enter the hall first, and they call you numerically, so if you bought the first ticket, you get the first position. I think it's a really fair and organized way of doing things personally. There were around 200 A's, and then they moved on to B's. I was B 112, so when I entered the hall, I had to push my way through to get to the front area where all the "moshing" (really just innocent jumping and occasional crowd surges for times when Miyavi leans over the stage or puts his hand out to touch people) happens.

The most wonderful thing about Japanese lives -- you can leave your purse in a big area operating on the honor system and no one will steal anything! I wasn't weighed down by anything as I finally found myself a position within the crowd about five rows away from the front.

We waited and waited and waited, and then finally, the lights went red, the music got loud, and the man of the hour walked on the stage, looking as awesome as ever. He really is amazingly attractive in person just in case anyone was doubting!

Song after song went by, everyone jumping and waving their arms. I discovered I had a lot more stamina then I thought I did for this kind of thing! Maybe it was all the adrenaline and excitement. Anyway, I can't really provide a setlist or anything, mainly because I'm just horrible at remembering the names of songs. The coolest thing about the live though was that Miyavi played old songs as well, but he transformed the songs to fit his current style, which has more of a blues influence.

Miyavi's MC moments were quite amusing. My Japanese isn't good enough to catch everything he said or anything, but every now and then, I'd get a joke and laugh along with everyone else! There was one moment where he looked around and said, in fairly good English "There are a lot of foreigners here today!" to which we responded by raising our arms and cheering! Which leads me to a fangirl moment:

Miyavi looked at mostly each every foreigner who had an arm raised and asked us all where we were from. Miyavi looked me in the eye, and I got to tell him that I was from America. Please be jealous now. XD

He said something awesome, about how whether we're from Brazil, or a America, or Russia, or Amagasaki (a really rural area in Japan that someone made a joke by saying they were a foreigner for coming from there), that he wanted us to all have fun and rock out. Which I most definitely did!

And then, some poor Japanese guy passed out during the concert. His friends supported him and were trying to get him out of the super crowded room, and Miyavi was doing his awesome MC thing and trying to get him some help. But the staff couldn't be seen anywhere, so Miyavi is just like: "Can someone help him please? Staff....Staff~♪? Where's the staff? Shangri-La~?" It was actually rather funny! He was concerned about him and you could tell, and so was everyone else, but he did a good job of keeping everyone's spirits up!

Another time, Miyavi starts playing a little game with the support members. During his talking, if he says "ha!" the members have to all play a note/chord/drum beat in unison. But it was unpredictable -- the members were really perceptive though. Then he did a sequence where he held up a certain number of fingers for however many times he wanted them to do the notes and it was super fast paced and fun to watch!

During another MC, Miyavi talked about how Osaka is his hometown, and that because of that, his grandma was there! He motioned over to her, and she was the most adorable teeny tiny traditional old Japanese lady! Miyavi informed us all that this was only the second of his lives that she attended, to which she corrected him that it was in fact her third time -- he laughed and apologized. And then he asked "楽しんでいる？" or something ("Are you enjoying yourself?") and she just looked at him and smiled, obviously not hearing. So he asked again....and again: "楽しんでいますか?" (more formal way of saying "are you enjoying yourself?") to which she replied "あります！" (There exists). Miyavi just starts laughing and asks "What exists?" and he gave up. He then sang "Love me Tender" for her in English, and it was really wonderful. It made me cry a little bit honestly.

More songs happened, and then we moved into this really emotional bit toward the second half of the show. He sang a slow version of Kukuru dedicated to his daughter, and it was really moving. He then sang three or four new, unreleased songs, which were absolutely AMAZING! I can't wait for them to come out. Anyway, during this part of the show, I just got really emotional. Because of Visual Kei music, and therefore partly because of the man performing right before my eyes, so very close -- closer than I had ever imagined I could be to him -- I became a Japanese major. I was able to be there, standing there in that tiny room jumping and sweating and screaming and laughing in Japan. I wonder if musicians ever truly know the effect they have on people's lives? Anyway, so I was crying a bit, but it was a happy crying. Miyavi is really good at making eye contact with each and every person in the room, and he gave me this look during this part that was just very encouraging.

After all of that, I made him a heart with my hands and he saw and said something to me, but I couldn't really make out what it was. But it just seemed like such a personal environment, and I wonder how many people were feeling the same kinds of things that I was feeling at that exact moment.

There was a break, and then Miyavi comes out on stage to tumultuous cries from the crowd, carrying an electic hair trimmer. Then a staff person lays a towel on the stage, and Miyavi motions the keyboardist over and proceeds to shave his head! The clippers were pretty bad though, so the guy's hair just looked like a mess in the end, and he only shaved the top, which Miyavi explained was very Samurai-like. It was rather amusing to watch!

More songs! More emotions! Then it was time for the live to "end" -- we were all showered with water from his water bottle and a lucky fan caught it -- he also spit water all over us, not like we complained or anything! He went offstage, and thus began the cheers for an encore. My abdomen area hurt from yelling so much, but I cried out "An-ko-re!" with everyone and "Mi-ya-vi!" with all my heart until the encore began! We got to wave our towels for one song, then he did the song that I put a video up for at the top, which was really fun because everyone was singing along! I believe the show ended with an awesome, updated version of "Girls Be Ambitious," which I got all emotional during again.

Afterwards, we sat outside and chatted about how awesome the evening was, met some cool people, and then went home! When I got back, I went and checked Twitter:

MIYAVI_OFFICIAL IMMA GETA SOUND CHEK サウンドチェックいってきまーす
MIYAVI_OFFICIAL THE DOOR S OPENIN OSAKA 開場しまーす
MIYAVI_OFFICIAL U READY OSAKA? 大阪、準備はいいか？
MIYAVI_OFFICIAL HAD A CRAZY TIME IN OSAKA 大阪、ただ、ただ、熱かった、、、！！

It made me really happy to know I was a part of that experience!

Anyway, I don't think I'll ever forget tonight! It was the best thing I've done here and I'm so glad I was able to experience it! I laughed, I cried, and I rocked out. I only hope that the next two lives will be as great as this one -- if so, I will probably be the happiest girl in Japan!

Just my luck >_>;

So for those of you that know me, this will be a very amusing occurance. For me, it's extremely frustrating!

Yesterday, I got up from my futon and went over to my desk. My lovely roommate, Miss Kaylie, decided it would be a fun idea to make me freak out over a hair that was on my pants that sort of resembled a spider.

Kaylie: "Woah...turn around."
Me: -turns around-
Kaylie: "Turn around! Turn around!"
Me: -turns- "What...What!?"
Kaylie: -looks at my leg in trepidation-
Me: -realizes that this is the look someone gives you when you have a huge spider on your or something. Proceeds to scream and run across the room.-

And that's when I fall. I'm so clumsy it's ridiculous. I was so freaked out about there being a spider on me that I ran and I sort of just fell! That's when I felt a familiar pop in my ankle and the familiar aching pain.

I'm pretty sure I sprained my ankle. :<

I think I'll be fine. Mom's air mailing me my aircast so hopefully it'll come soon! I can walk around fine and everything, but it hurts a little, so I think just for my own piece of mind and comfort, I'd like to have the aircast to wear.

But really -- third ankle sprain in a little over a year and a half? Just my luck T-T.

Denden Matsuri~!

Yes, I love Japan's traditional culture. Geiko and Maiko are amazing. Kabuki -- it's great! Samurai are pretty cool too. But you know. What really got me into discovering Japan was its popular culture!

Which is why I went to a festival today! The nerdiest festival in existence perhaps? Maybe if it was in America. But in Japan, this event felt very very natural.

Denden Matsuri is a big festival held in Nippombashi, more specifically in Denden Town. They close off the whole street for about five hours or so and let the anime fanatics of Japan take it over. The big draw at the event seemed to be mainly the cosplay (short for costume play -- in short, people dress up as anime characters and have fun acting as the character). There were so many people cosplaying! The remainder of people that weren't cosplaying were taking pictures of the people cosplaying, so that's my only guess. It seems that this is also a way for the businesses and stores (especially maid cafes) to get their names out there and promote their establishments. There were a lot of sales, but I was so busy looking at all of the cosplay and taking pictures that I didn't even step into one store -- which is surprising for me! XD

Here's a glimpse of about how many people were there. I apologize for the bad camera skills. Unfortunately, it's hard to control a camera when you're on your tip toes holding the thing as high in the air as you can.


The event started off with a parade with a marching band and everything. Personally, I thought the marching band was very talented! Here's a video of them playing (weirdly enough), National Emblem, which has a very American flavor. Random trivia - I played this march in an honors band! ^-^ After the band was a parade of officials of the event. And then after that you can pause it because we weren't sure if there was more stuff coming immediately after that or not.


Next was a parade of shops and stuff. The samurai people at the beginning were cool. I really don't know what they were from, but they were in charge of the clean up parade at the end of the event, which I do have a video for. It was super windy so one of the guy's banners totally broke, which is why you hear a bit of a collective gasp. After that, there is a model of a robotic Osaka tower, followed by various other merchants with signs about sales and things.



While we were waiting for the Cosplay parade to start, these random people were up at a window waving at everyone:


Cosplay parade! It wasn't much, and there were tons of other awesome cosplayers that didn't participate in the parade, but it was still nice to see! Vocaloids are super popular right now in Japan, so that was what the big deal with the similar looking characters at the beginning was all about. The bouncing rabbit guy was pretty sweet too! He wore these stilts that had some kind of bouncing mechanism on them, so he was bouncing around the street everywhere. Also -- Tuxedo Mask of Sailor Moon fame was there at the end. Kaylie died! XD



After the cosplay parade was the maid parade. Yes. The maid parade. There are cafes across Japan in niche anime-marketed areas that mix a cute, almost fetish-esque fascination with lolita-style maids with the deliciousness of food and service! The maids themselves, at least the ones in Tokyo, are almost like celebrities, and they have figurines made of their likenesses that are sold in figurine shops. Personally, working in a maid cafe would be one of the best jobs I could think of -- you get to dress in cute clothes all day and have everyone think you're the best thing since velcro! Anyway, here are the Denden town maids in all of their glory, being cute. The part when the wind gusts is hilarious because they all started squealing in such a coquettish way... I'm sure the males who frequent these places enjoyed that bit, as well as the threat of their skirts blowing up... :x



And that was the end of the parade. It was a pretty unceremonious ending for something that got built up so much. After that, people immediately started going around searching for cosplayers to take pictures of! Weirdly enough, we glimpsed a Japanese photographer taking pictures of us. I mean...I did look really cute today, so maybe he thought so too? Or maybe he just likes to take pictures of everyone! Who knows...

The environment was so fun. Everyone got really excited when they would see someone doing a very popular character, or a rare character that everyone loves. It was so nice that the event seemed cool or trendy, as opposed to having a nerdy connotation like anime conventions have in America. Also, the detail that goes into the construction of these costumes is just mind-blowing. I missed pictures of some really nice cosplays, but they'll definitely stick in my mind. I'm inspired to cosplay now ^-^!

Anyway, here's all the pictures I took at the event. There's a lot of them, so hold on to your hats! I didn't know the names of a lot of the series that I took pictures of characters from...

Here we go!

The girl in the front was super cold :x

Ciel Phantomhive and potentially the version of him when he had to cross-dress(?) from Kuroshitsuji!

Can you spy Spider-Man? I would've taken it from the front, but...well...he looked at me and it was creepy.

There's a guy up there -- we joked around that he was a sniper!

A famous Japanese icon of some sort. We definitely saw him on a sign on the train on the way back home!

A friend tells me this is from the Nico Nico Douga website, a site similar to YouTube only saturated with mainly anime and video game content.

Yu-Gi-Oh Cosplay! Seto Kaiba and Yugi Moto. All I have to say is that Kaiba is quite attractive. And so are his pants! XD

Another group of Yu-Gi-Oh! cosplayers. The Yugi has AMAZING hair. Even though it looks plastic, I guarantee you that it was all hair of some sort, whether it be natural or from a wig. The sculpting that went into it was amazing. I never thought it was actually possible to do his hair right, and yet...someone did!

Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is that this is full of awesome.

I missed the nice Hatsune Miku (girl with the teal hair) , but I got a cute maid instead! XD


Tsukasa from Lucky Star. Kagami is next to her, but you can't see her well in the first one. Thankfully I saw them again! My friend and I, who I call my twin, use these two characters as symbols for our twin-ness, so I was excited ^-^!

Sakura and Tomoyo (Madison for those of you who only know the English character names) from Cardcaptor Sakura, one of my favorite anime! The girl who did Tomoyo is so pretty *-*

Epic pose.

Not exactly cosplay...but it's awesome fashion sense! At least in my opinion. The tutus are from Bodyline :P

Vocaloid!

Not sure where they're from -- excellent costumes though ^-^

Some very giggly maids from a maid cafe get interviewed about the event by a TV station.

Kaylie said these are people from Gundam. So here you are -- some people from Gundam.

A hilarious sign -- it says "Welcome" in two different ways with an old lady maid bowing you in. XD

This man was attractive. :3

One of those inflatable bouncing things that kids play in at big events -- Japan is no exception.

Nightmarish kigurumi (literally means wearable stuffed animals) -- p...pika?

These girls gathered quite the crowd -- three guesses why? Apparently they're from Gantz.

Friends of the Gantz girls.
Wall of photographers! Including this really adorable Luffy cosplayer! Go One Piece!

Robot box head girl. Yay? XD

SOLID SNAKE!!! from the Metal Gear series. Oh -- and Bayonetta in the BG.

Final Fantasy XII! The guy as Snow in the middle looks disturbingly exactly like the original character. I find him to be quite attractive... -^-^-;

This is a horrible picture...BUT! This frilly dress is from my favorite Lolita clothing designer, Angelic Pretty. I was so excited to be able to see it in person!

One Piece group! Enemy people in the back! From left to right, Barthomew Kuma, Crocodile, Don Quixote Doflamingo, Blackbeard, Hawkeyes Mihawk. In the front! Hancock and Luffy!Kuma couldn't hold up his costume anymore...so here's a modified group picture ^^.

Daw... :3

Kuma disillusioning eveyrone by removing his costume. People were telling him "お疲れ様！" (otsukare sama), a ritualistic phrase for praising someone for their hard work.

Sad Kuma is sad.

An amazing Ergo Proxy cosplay! Lil's there too.

This guy was playing some kind of music on this mouth organ. He was pretty good at it. Why the mouth organ...I don't know :x

Yes yes yes yes yes!!! Mr. 2 Bon Clay from One Piece! This guy made me so darn happy, along with a whole slew of other people. Everytime someone would notice him, they would get so excited! I'm glad I found him. I'd like to say that kiss in the last one was aimed toward me...but..well...I doubt this is true.

Nyaha. Armstrong from Fullmetal Alchemist! Why the giant boots though...?

She strikes fear in the hearts of all. She is -- Darth Loli.

Maid taking a short break from advertising her workplace outside of an arcade to pose for a picture!

Maids advertising their cafe!

The crowd to get this One Piece group's pictures was so intensely large that I had to resort to the ol' "put the camera up in the air, aim, and hope you got a good one" technique. Therefore, none of these are very good, so I put all of them. Bon Clay made it in again to the joy of everyone around! Law (the guy (as in the girl dressed as a guy) in the yellow) was excellently done!

Don't know the series...sweet costumes!

I think it's a pokemon....

They looked cool :3

Jewelry Bonney from One Piece!

Go! Go! Power Rangers~♪

PONY! PONY PONY!
I'm not even going to attempt to explain this one. Ahahaha...

The version of Ciel Phantomhive when he is forced to cross-dress. Poor Ciel...so many people get enjoyment out of cosplaying his misfortune.

Not sure...:x

It was refreshing to only see two Narutos in a Japanese setting. Thank goodness!


Yep. This is what I'm talking about. A very attractive (at least to me) Zack Fair from Final Fantasy VII/Crisis Core!

These girls were awesome. They cosplayed as gaijin! They were reeeeally good!

It was so cool!

Anyway, at the end of event, there was a "Clean-Up Parade." The police made everyone get to the side of the road so that the samurai people from earlier could go through and clean up the street. It was such a Japanese thing to do! Here's a video:


Bonus:
"Hanagawa forever!"
If you get the joke, you get +10 awesome points.