A 2 Part Mind-Feast

The past two weeks have been filled with so much danger and intrigue, I decided to lump it all into one post. So fasten your boot straps and tell Granny Winterbottom to mind the hens while you're gone, because here we go.
Last weekend I, and 10 of my closest friends at I-House decided to go into Tokyo. We had a long weekend so we figured there would be ample time to explore much of what Tokyo had to offer. We took the Shinkansen (bullet train) into Tokyo station on Friday night. The train took about three hours to get there from Nagoya, and I conveniently decided to throw away my ticket in the trash once we got there. So while the rest of our party handed the station attendant tickets as we exited the gates, I made the same handing motion, sans ticket. I was brusquely waved through by the attendant and not even given a second glance, how's that for a GAIJIN SMASH!
The next leg of our trip involved finding the hostel in which we were staying. Because we were forced to wander the streets looking for this place the weather decided to cooperate with us and dumped a category 7 Typhoon on our heads. To make matters worse, while crossing a particuarly windy bridge my umbrella turned inside out. While I fumbled to get it back into working order my Colby hat decided to leap off my head, over the railing and into the briney deep. I couldn't help but stand there and shake my fist violently at the sky while being pelted by ever worsening rain. After a considerably amount of being lost we finally managed to find our respective hostels (the girls were staying in a different hostel very close to our own.) We, like drenched raccoons, were shunned by our "Alien VS Predator" watching hostel mates. It seemed as though their only form of communication was an angry glare. Seeing as staying around at the hostel would be no more fun than getting picked up by your mom at the police station, we decided to saddle up and head out into the wild Tokyo night. Our destination was Roppongi, the bane of my life from months past. Needless to say many a drink was drank, many a song sung, and many a boogy booged. We turned up back at the hostel at the respectable hour of 7 in the morning and proceeded to hit the beds with startling force.
During the days in Tokyo we went to various shopping, gaming, sightseeing and just plain interesting areas. One of my favorites was a trip to the top of a government building in Shinjuku. From there you are able to see the entire sprawling expanse of Tokyo. The city literally goes on for as far as the eye can see. It's really incredible to witness. Also, while there, I found a small toy that shakes its hips to a beat. So no matter what song you put on this little plastic man will dance in time. I expect him to be the life of the party once I get back to the states. So those were a couple of the more memorable experiences I had in the land of the rising price.
Unfortunately for my liver, sleeping patterns, body, wallet, brain and soul the next two nights followed suit. We would go out early, come in early, sleep until mid day and then go out shopping. It was an incredible time that I will most definitely not be able to replicate in the near future.
Actually, the most exciting part of the trip for me was exploring my ever developing Japanese skills. This time around I was able to have conversations with people in bars, restaurants, and our hostel. Also, with the group, I was able to easily find our way around to any place that we wanted to go. It always comes as a shock to me when all these words that I learned in class actually amount to something in another language. Just from that weekend I'm feeling much more confident in speaking with Japanese people, especially with kids my own age. Younger people are always harder to talk to because of their use of slang and intonation, but those interactions always led to a greater sense of satisfaction than comes with just talking with a language teacher or host mother.
So that was my trip to Tokyo.
The second awesome thing that I did this week was go to Kabuki. For those of you not in the know, Kabuki is a traditional form of Japanese theater that, at one point, was thought of as crude and vulgar by the nobles. The most traditional form of theater is Noh, which involved characters, mostly of high descent, wearing masks and weaving tales of more noble matters. Kabuki was created in the pleasure districts of early Tokyo and entertained the lesser people such as merchants and peasants. Kabuki unfolds in more of a soap opera style with Dr.s named Chad realizing their unknown twin brother artificially impregnated their cousin Esmerelda, the son of a duke and fiendishly good canasta player with an embry stolen from the cryogenically frozen body of their long dead, war hero father, and other stories of the like. The particular one we saw was about an ex-con hair dresser who steals a family's daughter and riches only to lose them all in the end. The best part actually came before the story started though. There was a 50 minute prelude that involved a whole lot of dancing, costumes, shamisen wailing, and men yelling "WUH!" in high voices. It was incredible. At one point I expected the lights to dim and one spotlit shamisen player would strike out a vicious solo while sparklers exploded from under his ceremonial garb. But alas, it was not to be.
Another really great part of Kabuki is that if you know the actors it is not only proper, but encouraged, that you yell out their name when they either: enter the stage, exit the stage, act particularly well, or process oxygen with their lungs. So you can only imagine that people were randomly yelling "KUKURO!" or "KIZAYA!" about every 5 seconds. I thought about joining in, but the harsh glares of my hostel mates stuck with me more than I had imagined.
So that pretty much sums up all the cool events that have happened in the past two weeks. Other than that it's been a lot of thinking, speaking, writing and living Japanese. Sorry about the length of the e-mail, but I really wanted to capture all the interesting parts. I hope you enjoyed it and you can expect my next installment to come next Sunday.