I was out LATE last night, after spending all day at Bunka no Mori. I came home in between for a couple of hours but spent those making a couple of appetizers for Arnim's (the guy I met from Austria) birthday party. I did a couple of easy things - toasted pita chips, Greek taziki dip and guacamole. I also brought the little bit of pepper jack that I had left (in the freezer) from the spring and some sliced vegatables. Arnim, his brother who's visiting and a visiting friend who arrived late the night before must have spent most of the day in the TINY, TINY kitchen, taking turns with the 1 burner, 1 knife and 2 pots! They made Spanish torilla (nothing like Mexican, it's more like an Italian potato fritatta but without cheese). A sweet pancake like thing that they cut into bite sized pieces, proscutto wrapped melon, a delicious cool pasta dish with pesto, Spanish olives, guacamole (I didn't know), potato chips - evidently every Spanish meal starts with potato chips and olives, I think that was it. George had brought a nice bottle of Austrian wine and they had bought another German I think at Jupiter along with hard pretzels. George had also brought an assortment of Austrian chocolate. And there was sake. And then a delicious linzer torte? or some kind of Austrian torte which was chocolate and so good. I saw the bakery they got that from today when I was on the bus. I'll have to ride my bike down there and check it out if I can find the time before it gets too cold. It's not really near anyplace I go, but might be worth the extra effort! There's a picture of the feast below. His apartment is pretty much a studio. You enter, take off your shoes, walk 'through' the tiny 'insert' kitchen into the 1 room. Which really makes great use of the available space - sorry no pics of that. But in this picture, you can kind of get an idea of the size of the room. There are 5 of us in it in the pic. There were 11 or 12 altogether I think. 3 Austrians, 1 Chinese, me, and the rest Japanese. It was a really fun evening. But I didn't get home until 12.
And then another early day. I took the bus to the Culture Center for an all day (10 - 5!) national, traditional Japanese dance performance. Traditional dance teachers came from prefectures all over Japan and did 10 - 20 minute performances. There wasn't even an intermission, just 5 - 10 minute breaks between the performances. People brought their lunches and ate while watching. Sort of like a long airline flight, but of course much more entertaining. The pictures I took were mostly to show the beautiful kimonos, some of which weighed 80 kg (about 170lbs)!!! And some people had layers of kimonos on, a helper (the men in black) would come on to the stage and peel down one kimono to reveal another, and 'hang' the 1st (or 2nd) one down so it looked like part of the outfit. In a couple of the dances the people wore masks.
The dancers were 'telling' stories through the dance, sort of like hula, but the story was also told with the singing (that traditional Japanese singing style) that was accompanied by the shamisen.
Arnim's birthday feast (31). We all sat on the floor around the food.
Not a child, a fairly tall and a very short woman.
Although I don't care for black or white, this was my favorite kimono - striking.
I felt sorry for her though, she danced at 12 and that's when EVERYONE decided to eat there lunch. Lots of rustling of bags, etc.
This group was from Okayama where the story of Momotaro (Peach Boy) took place. the boy in front is Momotaro.
This is actually a man, dressed like a woman, he has 3 or 4 kimonos on, look below.
The helpers are in the black tops, grey bottoms.
They look like dolls but they're people.
Capturing the wind.
They have masks on.
They look like dolls but they're people.
No comments:
Post a Comment