In addition to the musical SHOW BOAT by the Musical Club, one of the Cultural Festival's attractive displays I wanted to visit was the reports of "Kelso Heartland Homestay Program" by some students who visited the United States. Devin Kelso, born in Mount Vernon, Iowa, working for Kokugakuin Tochigi University High School as a communicative English teacher, hosted the home stay program with his family.They arranged the host families in Mount Vernon to encourage them to accept each of the participants.
About a dozen of high school and junior high students took part in this program. They spent about two weeks with the host families, learning English, and taken to cities around Mount Vernon for shopping, camping, barbecuing, and sightseeing. Every picture displayed on the boards showed that the students had been very excited to experience unknown new culture.
They brought back plenty of American items as well as American mind. They are really nice.
According to an article of a local newspaper, Devin Kelso began this program to encourage Japanese youths to have such experiences that he did when he was 15. He visited Mexico with his father and learned many things there. He found out that his Spanish he had learned at school worked well, and that the people were getting along well without English.
I thought the students were very happy to see the world of different culture when they were very young. I hope I could participate in this program some day ;-)
Extra: the pictures of trains from Tochigi to Tokyo.
Today I went to Kokugakuin Tochigi University High School to see the musical SHOW BOAT that the students of the Musical Club of this high school performed. Every year I go to Tochigi to watch Musical Club's performance because they play very well like professional actors, although they are just high school students, and you can see such wonderful shows for free.
I used to drive to Tochigi by car but this year I have no longer my own car so I got there by trains (Subway and Tobu Isesaki and Nikko lines). I arrived at Tochigi station at 8:30 am.
It took about ten minutes from Tochigi station to the high school.
This was the musical SHOW BOAT, the story by a troupe on a boat sailing the Mississippi river.
For those of you who don't know what the story is, here's the synopsis.
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.The show boat Cotton Blossom is a pleasure boat sailing the Mississippi river. There is a troupe who gives performances on the boat. Magnolia Hawks, a daughter of the owner of the boat, dreaming to be a superstar, is now just a staff member occupied with trivial routine duties. When the show boat is anchoring at Natchez, Mississippi, she happens to meet a gambler, Gaylord Ravenal, and falls in love with him. Her mother, Parthy Ann Hawks, is against for her to meet him, but her father, Cap'n Andy, allows him to get on the boat.
One day the leading actress of the troupe, Julie La Verne, who is a daughter with a black parent and white one, is arrested for being married with a white man, because it is illegal in this state that a non-white person marries a white one. Losing the leading lady of the company, Cap'n Andy makes Magnolia the leading actress instead of Julie and at the same time hires Gaylord, who is experienced of playing on stage. The show business results in a big success with them.
Magnolia and Gaylord love each other more and more deeply, and eventually they marry. They retire from actors and get off the boat to live their new life.
However, the new life by a steady-minded woman and a gambler doesn't last long. Gaylord does nothing but gambling instead of working, and they manage to live in a cheap apartment. Depressed and shamed by his inability to support his family, Gaylord leaves her. Magnolia has a baby, and gives birth to a daughter Kim. She gets back to the show boat and begins an actress job again.
The troupe of the show boat is doing a show with another troupe at Trocadero Theatre, where Julie is a leading lady of this company. Julie meets Magnolia again, and suddenly leaves Trocadero so that Magnolia can fill her position. Magnolia passes the audition and is hired. She becomes a great musical star on the Trocadero stage.
Julie, disappearing from Trocadero, joins a different musical troupe and happens to meet Gaylord, who is a member of the company. She tells him how Magnolia is doing, and encourages him to see her again. He is uncertain whether he has the right to ask Magnolia to take him back, but she does. They becomes happy again with their daughter.
Cultural Festival 2006 at Kokugakuin Tochigh University High School 1 (Oliver!)
Cultural Festival 2006 at Kokugakuin Tochigh University High School 2 (Write what you hear)
After I moved in the new house in Fukagawa I'm installing furniture necessary for daily life. Yesterday I went to IKEA at Funabashi to get a tall bookshelf and a table lamp (it was my first time to shop at IKEA!). At the same time I went to COSTCO at Makuhari to look for cool American groceries. After all I prefer COSTCO...
A set-top-box for NTT's optical TV service was delivered to my house, so I have it installed. Now I can watch CNN and BBC World News you can't watch without it.
I can finish setting up my house if I have a washing machine and a writing table today.
The nearest DoCoMo Shop had informed me that a new Blackberry device (Blackberry 8707h) had arrived, so I got there this Monday and bought it. The handset costed 28,000 Yen. Very reasonable.
Setup is very easy. I keep three of my email addresses (including Blackberry-specific one) in this handset. I can catch incoming mails and reply to them, wherever I am. The key strokes are very confortable. Even if you type long emails your thumbs won't get tired.
I'm not saying that I got completely accustomed to this gadget right now, but soon I will. This must soon become the item that I can't do without, as many Americans may think.
Last month I was very busy with moving out of my house at Nerima-ku, Tokyo, because I had thrown my own car in May and I wanted to live where it was closer to downtown Tokyo and more convenient to live with public transportation only. As I got a bonus in June and I had enough money to move out, it was time for action.
The new apartment where I started to live is at the Fukagawa area, Koto-ku. It's been a renowned neighborhood for almost 400 years located only within 5km east from Tokyo station. Plus, according to Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's web site, these areas have relatively lower crime rates than other major areas of Tokyo. It's 22 sq. meters wide with 1 bedroom+kitchen+bathroom. Its monthly cost is 90,000 yen. It's more expensive than that of the apartment where I'd lived before, but totally I have to pay monthly as much money for the new house as for my former one, because now I don't have to pay for parking lot anymore!
I got a key of the new apartment on August 1 and had all of my luggage and furtiture moved into it on August 3. For the first few days I felt uneasy as if I had stayed in a hotel room, but living for one week I feel to be accostomed day by day. The next thing I want to do would be to buy curtains, a brand new mattress, a tall bookshelf, a chest with drawers, and more, to make my rooms more comfortable.
This afternoon I got an email notifying me of the death of a classmate who studied together at our laboratory when we were university students. According to the email, last Sunday he suddenly had a stroke related to type I diabetes he had been suffered from, and passed away. He was as old as I.
It is my first time that I lose a classmate with whom I shared the same memories at school. It is surprising and regrettable.
I can't attend his funeral and say good-bye to him because the funeral hall is too far from where I live, but instead I sent a telegram of condolence with the other classmates and I'll keep his memory in mind for life.
NTT DoCoMo, one of Japan's major cell phone carriers, announced that in August this year it would sell Blackberry devices to public. NTT DoCoMo is the only carrier that has the right to distribute Blackberry in Japan.
Although Blackberry is today an essential communications tool for those from businesspersons to general people in the world, Japan has been the only first-place country where no Blackberry services for individuals are currently available. The only exception is Blackberry Enterprise Service (BES) provided by NTT DoCoMo to corporations only, but BES is closed to private persons because NTT DoCoMo fears that Blackberry may affect the sales of I-mode, one of NTT DoCoMo's core competences. There are no other mobile carriers that can offer Blackberry services, so Japanese people, except some lucky persons whose employer has BES for them, have no chance to enjoy communicating with the device.
This announce means that NTT DoCoMo is opening the door to the world. The mobile services Japanese people are currently using have been closed within Japan. Most of them are cutting-edge, but are useless if you get outside this country. This opening of Blackberry will help Japanese people to get in touch with what people in the world are usually doing in their daily life.
Japan is turning into a really sick country. According to media, a 25-year-old man this afternoon hit the people walking on the streets at Akihabara with his truck, jumped out of it and stabbed the people there at random with his survival knife, causing death to as many as seven people until now. The killer was arrested on the spot, saying he was "sick of life" and wanted to kill whomever he saw.
CNN.com: At least 7 dead in Tokyo stabbing spree
Japan Probe: Stabbing rampage in Akihabara: 7 people killed
Similar attacks have happened increasingly for years. On the same day of 2001, Mamoru Takuma broke into elementary school classrooms and stabbed eight students to death in Osaka. Two months ago a young man suddenly attacked the people walking around the railroad station, killing one and injuring many. Wherever you are, you can be a victim of such kind of crimes here, because this country has plenty of such kind of "sick-of-life" young people with no hope for the future, and such people may cause such kind of stabbing sprees to strangers or kill themselves with hydrogen sulfide.
I wonder if it is the best choice or not for me to keep living in this sick country. If I were more skilled in English and business skills and I had more money, I could move to the U.S. or another better country and settle there, rather than being scared of crimes happening every day.
I've made up my mind to quit keeping my Honda Accord I got last year. By Japanese law, every car must be inspected every two years by nationally authorized inspectors. In the case of My Accord, it should be inspected by May 7 this year. Inspectors have a checklist and the inspected car should pass all of the items of the checklist to drive on the street in the following two years. In one of the checklist, a car should have clearance of more than nine centimeters. According to the inspectors, My Accord does not have clearance of nine centimeters, so I should have it repaired to pass the inspection. It costs more than 100,000 Yen to do it. I can't afford. That's why I have to dispose of the car.
All I can do after abandoning the car is to move to a new apartment with full of public transportation modes and convenient enough not to rely on cars to move around. I'm going to search for a new room in the downtown area of Tokyo when I get a bonus in June.
The town of Nerima, Tokyo, where I live for seven years, is home to Japanese animation, or anime. Nerima has had one of the biggest anime studios, Toei Animation Company, as well as more than 90 intensive anime-related companies since Japan's first anime film was aired in 1958. World's famous animes such as Dragon Ball series, One Piece, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Sailor Moon series, has been created in this place.
The Nerima Ward government hosted today an anime festival, Neritan Anime Project in Oizumi, around Oizumi Gakuen station of Seibu Railway, to which Toei Animation Company is close. Leiji Matsumoto, one of Japan's famous manga-anime artists and a resident of the Oizumi neighborhood, was invited to the festival. One of his works, the Galaxy Express 999, was a great anime series popular among many Japanese kids in 1980s. For those of you who don't know this manga, the story of it is set in a space-faring, high-tech future, where mechanized people with "machine bodies" are pushing humanity towards irrelevance and extinction. A street urchin, Tetsuro, wants an indestructible machine body, giving him the ability to live forever. While machine bodies are expensive, they are supposedly given away for free on the planet Andromeda, the end of the line for the space train Galaxy Express 999. He meets up with a beautiful woman, Maetel, who is the spitting image of his dead mother. Maetel offers him passage on 999 if he will be her traveling companion. Tetsuro agrees. Another notable character is the strict, mysterious alien conductor, that sometimes gets involved in Tetsuro and Maetel's adventures. (See Wikipedia) The Galaxy Express 999 was first published in 1978, so this year is the 30th anniversary.
Today Matsumoto was appointed a "one-day station master" of Oizumi Gakuen station. He settled near the station when he was 25 years old, and created the wonderful manga and anime works in Oizumi. The ward government and the Seibu Railway company granted such a honorary position on him for his long-year contribution to this neighborhood.
He said through his speech, that his habitation in the Oizumi neighborhood was destiny. When he came to Tokyo from his birthplace, Fukuoka, he just "happened to" start living there. One day when he walked around his house he found a former resident of Tomitaro Makino, a Japan's well-known botanist. At that time he began his manga artist career through his first work focusing on entomology. Matsumoto felt as if he had been lead to live near Makino, as a person working with wildlife.
When it comes to destiny, I happened to begin reading his Galaxy Express 999 comic books just two weeks ago as well as Emma, when I did not know about this festival. I think that perhaps it is also destiny that I read this comic these days and come to the festival today.
Anime is now not only a maniac hobby by otakus, geeks or nerds, but is one of Japan's important industries today. As Japan's economy has been in recession for many decades and its technology is becoming less cost-effective, anime industry may be a great messiah for the future Japanese people.
Some of the pictures are uploaded on Flickr.
