I can be a bit of a fangirl, yes

I finally, despite having had it on my faithful external hard drive for some time now, watched the Takarazuka La Mariposa. It's Snow Troupe, starring my most loved Mizu Natsuki, and it takes place in some unnamed Latin American country complete with a song or two in Spanish. It also features a possibly unprecedented number of scenes with Mizu in a fierce suit looking pimp. So, really, how could it not be awesome? It doesn't have a ton of music, unlike the big Zuka shows like Elisabeth, so it's very dialogue-heavy, which could make it difficult for a non-Japanese speaker to follow. Except it's so full of sexy and Takarazuka-ified machismo that it'd probably be enjoyable regardless. It also has a plot!

In brief, Nero, a night club owner, smuggles political prisoners out of his unnamed Latin American country, and does other smuggling operations to fund hospitals and such. He and his friend Escobar do this because, apparently, they were part of a revolutionary group that failed. Anyway, Nero teams up with a plantation owner, then falls in love with the plantation owner's daughter, Selia. Selia's brother then clumsily aids an assassination attempt made on the president. Turns out he's part of a rebel group and he goes missing. While this is going down, there's a mobster from Miami just sort of around trying to do business with Nero, an American journalist hangs out annoying people, and finally a showdown happens. The end.

How's that for some summarising skill? I'd share video, except there's nothing on youtube. I looked. So, instead, I'm going to make note of something, complete with visual examples.

If you are Mizu, you get to wear fierce suits and hang out with your best friend drinking beer, discussing the CIA and just generally looking badass.

If you are Kimu, on the other hand, you get to look slightly ridiculous standing next to a suave Mizu.

That is a very unfortunate suit. But I guess that's what happens when your character is a college student/night club singer. Kimu just isn't cool enough to get Mizu-quality costumes.

In related news, I finally gave in to almost a year's temptation and bought Elisabeth. I'm not going to say how much it cost me through the very nice, convenient shopping service, but rest assured that it will be awhile before I let myself buy another Takarazuka DVD. When I do, it will probably be Lucifer's Tears. Either that or The Brothers Karamazov. They both look pretty fantastic.

This is an expensive hobby. I love it, and there's nothing else quite like it, but the cost hurts. If any of y'all ever want to watch some of my Zuka, just let me know. As soon as my DVD arrives, I'll have a collection of three (two were given to me in a trade, so I didn't pay for them) and I will happily share the awesome.

立ち上がれ！

Silly title is silly. It reads tachiagare, which basically is like shouting 'rise up!' and has no significance whatsoever to this entry. Well, actually, it kind of does because I'm going to be talking about Takarazuka again and they shout that a lot in Elisabeth, particularly in the parts that take place in Hungary.

Before I dive into fangirl land again (come on, y'all had to know this was going to happen again at some point), I'm just going to say that I am so glad term's out. I got all my crap turned in on time and I got a B on my Japanese exam, which is acceptable. You can really see what I'm good at if you look at this test: speaking and listening got perfect scores, reading and writing demonstrated high-end mediocrity. I'm not bad at anything, really, even the kanji was okay, but it's so obvious what aspects of this language really click in my brain.

As for my papers, the best one was probably for Shakespeare (Foucauldian bio-power in Measure for Measure), the final philosophy one (critiquing an aspect of History of Sexuality) was the worst because I didn't care anymore by that point and, if it sucks, it'll be dropped out of my grade, anyway.

Now I'm chilling for a couple of weeks, then I'll try finding a job. I really crashed at the end of the semester, or I'd get on the job thing a little quicker. I need a break. So I'll watch things, and read things, and do more cleaning of my room, and it'll work out. I cleaned out my clothes today and have a big bag of things to donate because I will never wear them again. And a slightly smaller bag of things to throw out because they aren't in good enough shape to give away in good conscience. What I really learned from this is that I own a lot of clothes. I felt really good about my closet/dresser after putting together the discard piles... then I put the clothes that I had in Salem away and it filled up again. I think I just hold on to things for way too long and forget about them. But I do feel good about how much I'm giving away. The clothes are still pretty nice and I know other people will be happy to discover them in Good Will (or wherever I decide to take my donation).

Anyway, time for me to be a fangirl again because I've been watching Silver Rose Chronicle. It's a Yukigumi production about vampires/vampire hunters/vampire romance that I'm now kind of in love with. It doesn't have my beloved Mizu Natsuki (it ran in a secondary venue, not the Grand Theatre), but Ouki Kaname (aka Teru) is the vampire Christopher and she's one of my babies. Speaking of which, I'm really unhappy that she's been transferred to Hoshigumi, because I don't follow Hoshigumi at all, but it is a promotion and she deserves the recognition. Takarazuka fandom, for the record, is hella complicated. Everyone, and I'm definitely no exception, has that one troupe that they love and follow. For me it's all about Yukigumi, which is not the most popular troupe among foreign fans, and I was so upset when I found out that, yes, Teru really is being transferred.

I'd share a clip of SRC, but Youtube sucks and doesn't have any of the really good ones. The best they've got are focused on Elliot, which makes sense given that he's the protagonist, but I like Teru better than Ayabuki Mao. Anyway, if you read my blog regularly, you've seen Teru before. She was Rudolf in Elisabeth, so that one video I posted awhile back that has Der Tod dancing with Rudolf, Yami ga Hirogaru? Yeah, that's her.

I am, however, going to post a different Takarazuka-related video. You don't have to watch the whole thing, 'cause it's kinda long and full of talking, just watch the first minute or so. It's a clip from a TV thing (the title reads Takarazuka Kageki Tokushuu, which means Takarazuka Theatre Special) and the first part, after some guy talks, is Mizu Natsuki getting up and winking at a girl on the panel, who is basically a walking Japanese stereotype, as a demonstration of the sexy power of otokoyaku (or... something). I don't know what the real point is, but it's funny because the girl just melts. Which would probably be my reaction to Mizu Natsuki winking at me like that, but it's really funny because she doesn't seem to know what to do with herself.



I'm picking up tips on how to be a sexy, slick drag king from my fangirling Zuka, true fact.

I swear I'm not dead

I did slightly sprain both feet (no, for real), but I am still alive. Spring break is just wrapping up and I spent most of it just sitting around with ice on my feet. But they're really much better now, and I actually went into Seattle today to go to the International District. I wanted to go to Uwajimaya/Kinokuniya, so I took the bus down. I bought some Mitsuya Cider, a Pocari Sweat to share with my family because the name still cracks me up (it's a sports drink), and some MeltyKiss chocolate because it's delicious. I didn't buy anything in Kinokuniya, but it's always fun to poke around. Even more so now that I can eavesdrop on the Japanese customers.

What I am going to buy soon, somewhat related, is a book about Takarazuka. It's called Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan and I've heard some good things about it. Its primary focus seems to be on how the Revue sheds light on issues of sexuality, nationalism and imperialism in modern Japan, which is a really interesting topic. Takarazuka is very strange - a little old-fashioned, but also massively progressive. They actually do proper stage kissing and some pretty extensive groping now, which is amazing given that they used to just take the fade-to-black approach. Of course, they were formed in 1913, so the fact that they existed at all was pretty impressive. People (me included) think Japan is pretty male-dominated now, just think about the pre-war period and then this all-female theatre company managing to hold its own when traditionally theatre was all-male.

I also want to buy Mizu Natsuki's new photo book FEVER, mostly because she's really hot and the book (according to a little review thing I saw for it) focuses on her dandyism. So basically it's a book of interesting photos of a really hot drag king, interspersed with interviews and such. Come on, you can't beat that.

All of the above aside, I've been super busy lately. We had powwow on the 14th, which is where the extensive damage was done to my feet because I've started learning fancy shawl dancing from Nikki and did way more than I should have without any down time. But, it was so much fun. I love powwow - I know most of the vendors now and am treated almost like family by some of them. I was given a couple of gifts and I bought a pretty necklace with turquoise. Phillip took some pictures, and I snagged a couple of them off Facebook to show it off a little.

To the left there is part of the grass dance competition. That's Josh (Nikki's fiance) in the blue. He didn't win, but he's pretty out of practice and some of the grass dancers were crazy good.

And to the right are jingle dancers. Not part of a competition or anything, just one of the dances during the course of the powwow. There were more jingle dancers than fancy shawl this time around, and their regalia makes fun noise.

And in both of those photos, you get to see a bit of the lovely Willamette University gym. It's not the best venue ever, because we don't have a good place for dancers to change into their regalia, but we make up for it (according to the vendors, anyway) by being massively helpful and welcoming. The vendors don't make much money at our powwow, because we're so small, but we're inexpensive to vend at and we do a ton to help them out and make them feel wanted. The big comment we get is that we're really sweet and it makes them want to come back every year. It's nice to hear, considering that we run ourselves ragged organising and running this thing.

This year, I'm just the NAEA events manager, since I was in Japan and there's this weird co-presidency thing going on, thus negating the need for a vice-president, but it's looking like next year Nikki and I might be back to President and VP. She and I do most of the work for NAEA regardless, so we'll probably be back as the official heads for our senior year. As some of you will be able to attest, I wasn't a club person at all in high school, but I got roped into NAEA because Nikki really needed my help and it's sort of become my thing. After Nikki and I sort of made things up as we went for a year because neither of us had run a club before. Yeah, it was pretty special.

And that's really all I've got. I'm getting into the last six weeks or so of term, which is scary, and then I have to find some sort of employment in our fail job market. I guess, if I don't find work I don't find work, but I'm a little nervous about the whole thing.

To close this up, I'll give you another Zuka video. I searched youtube and found Ai to Shi no Rondo (also the subtitle of the show - The Rondo of Love and Death), from the beginning of the musical. I'm running out of stuff from this show, though, so I'll be forced to move on soon. But, fear not, there are plenty of Takarazuka clips on the internet.

College Experiences?

At about eleven o'clock tonight, I helped heat up a kitchen fork with a borrowed Zippo lighter in order to get a tick off the back of someone's neck.

It was not my favourite thing ever.

Unfortunately, Josh does not have health insurance, so he refused to go to the ER to get his neck looked at properly. We're 97% sure we got the tick out whole and everything's fine, but he can't afford proper medical care, so that slight possibility of a problem is sort of looming in the shadows. This, to me, screams a need for universal health care. Because, when someone can't afford to go look into the (however remote) possibility of Lyme Disease or some other nasty shit, you know there's something wrong with the system.

Our health care is so beyond broken.

Putting that aside, today I went to Uwajimaya (the big Seattle-based Japanese grocery store) and bought things like Kirin Lemon (a soda) and plum wine and yakisoba-making supplies. The Uwajimaya in the International District up in Seattle is nicer than the Portland one - much bigger, with a great food court and a two-storey Kinokuniya Bookstore - but it was still really nice to get some Japanese things I'd missed. I'm definitely hitting up the Uwajimaya in Seattle at spring break, though. For the Kinokuniya, if nothing else.

I wish there was a Book-Off in this area, but the closest one is in Vancouver, BC. If we had one in Washington or Oregon, I'd be all over it. Or, equally, Book-Off's counterpart Hard-Off. Hard-Off, despite the really funny name, is a used electronics store. Why they called it Hard-Off, the world may never know.

And... now I really need to get some sleep. Sleep is good.

But, I have another Zuka clip to post! This time, the Epilogue to Elisabeth. I'm gonna have to start seriously searching Youtube for new stuff - I can't let you guys down on the video posting front.

誕生日〜！

Yes, it is my birthday - I am now allowed to legally do what I have done anyway because that's how college is. I went with some people to The Ram, which is a restaurant across the street from Willamette, if you live somewhere other than damp Salem, Oregon. There was tasty food and some alcohol and then they gave me a mile-high mud pie because it's my birthday, which was shared with everyone because it was appallingly huge.

Annie and I dressed up for fun, which meant we both ended up in black and red because that's what we have that fits the 'sexy' label. But I had red patent leather heels, so mine was just a little sexier. It was a lot of fun, but my legs didn't appreciate the cold.

Speaking of my legs, this skin thing I got on my arms that the clinic said was prickly heat (basically, caused by the weather) spread to my legs and is driving me insane because it itches like hell. I've actually given myself some nasty bruises scratching/rubbing at it. As in, massive patches on my legs are yellowy-brown. It looks awful and somewhat like I'm being abused. I'm going back to the clinic tomorrow to ask them if they're sure it's prickly heat, because it's getting ridiculous.

But, in general, I had a good birthday. I got a lot of money, which was good because I was broke, and except for the fact that I had to write two papers this week, all was well. I actually finished the Shakespeare paper 12 minutes before it was due - the farther along I get in my undergrad experience, the more acutely I suffer from English Major Syndrome. Occasionally, Damned Drunk English Major Syndrome. I will have you know, though, that I am currently sober. A beer sampler thing (only two were actually worth drinking) and a vodka/triple sec martini adds up to very little alcohol. Mostly, I ordered them because I could. Exercising my rights and all that.

And currently, I am putting off reading a Freud essay on infantile sexuality. I felt like updating my blog would be a lot more fun. But, since it's about 9:30 and I actually do want decent sleep, I'll just close this up with another Zuka clip. I'm running out of Elisabeth clips (or, at least, ones that have Mizu Natsuki), so soon I'll be switching over to other Mizu-centric Takarazuka videos. There are other musicals with her, as well as AQUA5 (the 'boyband' five Snow Troupe women formed - with Mizu as the lead) PVs and random videos with her talking and looking hot in dude clothes with her normal short hair.

Anyway, this clip is Watashi ga Odoru Toki (When I Dance) from the very end of the show. Mizu has very beautiful hands and there are sequins. That's... about all I can think of to say about it.



Oh, wait! I also found, for the hell of it, the equivalent of Yami ga Hirogaru (the clip I posted in the last post) from the original Austrian musical. This is a revival cast, from 2005 (I think) with Máté Kamarás as Der Tod. I don't speak German, but I do know that the lyrics don't actually translate the same as the Takarazuka version. The Takarazuka text is similar, but not the same.

The first chorus of Yami ga Hirogaru (if you speak German better than Japanese and want to offer a comparison) translates more or less to:

The darkness is spreading
People can't see anything
Someone is screaming
Their cries fade away
The darkness is spreading
The end of this world is near

Anyway, I like the Zuka version better. Mizu totally owns Máté.

Well, this sucks

I can't help but feel that having to write two papers due within two days of each other right after a weekend that wasn't really a weekend because I was busy the entire time is not quite fair. Even less so considering that my Sunday was taken up predominantly by seeing Merchant of Venice with my Shakespeare class, for which I have to write one of the aforementioned papers.

Merchant, though, was pretty awesome. It was in this little black box theatre in Portland that we had trouble finding because Portland is impossible to navigate unless you've lived there. It never fails - every time I go into Portland for anything, I get lost. This time, we ended up on the wrong side of the river after somehow getting back on south-bound 5, like we were going back to Salem. No, we're not sure what happened there, either, but we eventually found the Hawthorne Bridge and got over to the Shoebox Theatre with ten minutes till the play was due to start.

A brief note on Merchant - I actually don't like it very much, and find most of the characters boring, but this production was really well-done. Shylock was fantastic, really sympathetic and compelling. There was this one moment where he hugged Jessica and then paused before leaving to look back and smile at her really lovingly, and it was just heartbreaking because that's right before she steals a bunch of money and runs away with her boyfriend, totally betraying him. It was great.

I wish I could say more for the woman playing Antonio, but she wasn't very compelling. She had a couple of moments where she really stood out, but overall was just sort of eh. This may be because Antonio is an eh character no matter how you play him, but her performance didn't wow me.

And that's really all I have to say there. If it had been a play I really love, I'd probably have more commentary. As things are, it was enjoyable, but nothing spectacular. I never walk into plays like Merchant with many expectations, because I don't care about the piece enough to have a favourite performance to hold new productions against. Now, Much Ado About Nothing or Julius Caesar or something like that? Then you'd better be awesome because I do have That One Production to hold up in comparison.

I'm funny with theatre - I'm either very particular, or anything's good. Like with my recent fad of adding a Zuka clip to the end of each post - I love Elisabeth in general (though I haven't seen the original Austrian musical for comparison), but I'm only posting clips from the 2007 Snow Troupe production because Mizu is my Der Tod. Some of the other top stars are considered better than her for varying reasons, but Mizu's portrayal is the one that really clicks with me. Her Der Tod is a little more sinister than the Takarazuka norm, which I really like. Because, come on, the character is Death. This is a dark little story, despite all the glitter and sequins.

So, without further ado, have your Elisabeth clip of the day - Yami ga Hirogaru (the darkness is spreading). Der Tod and Rudolf, Elisabeth's son, with Der Tod first reminding Rudolf that Der Tod was his childhood friend, before going on to convince him to try to start a revolution and take the throne. Is that some homoerotic tension there? Why yes, yes, it is. And it's even thicker in some other scenes, which youtube doesn't have.

I want that black coat. That is all.

"What could trump the dumpster?"

Right now, the choral department here at Willamette is doing a photo scavenger hunt contest. Each choir is its own competition, pitting the sections against each other. Today, Team Alto 2 (also known as the Alto Liberation Front) went out for a second round of photo-taking. Basically, we wandered around downtown Salem for an hour and forty minutes, trying to take creative photos to fit kind of lame prompts. The best one, though, was for the prompt "least likely place to be found."

We climbed in a dumpster.

Okay, it was less disgusting than it sounds - the dumpster is strictly for collapsed cardboard boxes - but it's in the sketchy alley next to a restaurant called Pita Pit (where Frieda, our section leader, works) under a set of metal stairs. We got her boss to take the photo for us. It was pretty epic. If another section gets more points than us for that prompt, I'll be pissed. Because, seriously, what could trump the dumpster?

Another pretty good one was us on a carousel. There's this old carousel down by the river and we got the teenage boy working it to take a photo of us on some of the horses while the ride was stopped (for "ride something"). I have a feeling our being college women was what convinced him to let us get on the ride for a photo without paying the $1.50 charge. He looked like he was maybe 15, and we smiled and were very nice about asking - working sexism to our advantage.

In other school-related news, I submitted a Japan photo to this campus study abroad publication thing, as the last bit of my "Maximizing Your Study Abroad Experience" course, and they sent me an email today telling me that they really want to use my photo, but my caption is too short. Now, me, I think a long caption about what the photo means to me and why I took it is kind of awkward and boring. So I originally gave them something pithy and interesting. It identified the place and gave a reason it's awesome - something about Shinto and Buddhism peacefully coexisting, if I remember correctly - but that's apparently not good enough. So now I'm trying to make up something that's still clever and well-written, but also includes crap about why the image is significant to me and my study abroad experience.

I hate things like this. Just saying.

Also, I have finished more books in my quest to read 50 in 2009. So now the list is:

1. Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil - Inga Muscio
2. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
3. Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman

All of the above come highly recommended. I am not counting The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall because, well, it's for a class. It is, however, a novel.

And, to finish this up, I leave you with more Takarazuka. This time you get Miruku (Milk), in which Lucceni (the Italian who assassinates the Empress Elisabeth) is selling milk, but there's not enough, so Der Tod comes through and 'whispers' suggestions into the crowd of hungry Austrians to push them towards a riot. I have to say that, while Mizu Natsuki is always my favourite, Otozuki Kei (Lucceni, with the striped shirt) is pretty hot.

Something has come to my attention

I suck.

Yeah, that whole blogging while living back in the good old US of A? So far kind of a fail. I could go off here on a long and ultimately pointless and slightly whiny explanation of why I suck, involving minor breakdowns and insomnia and migraines, but... let's just sum all that up with the following: I'm not really rocking the whole life-as-a-college-student thing right now.

Putting that aside, because I doubt anyone really wants to read about how tragic my life is at my affluent overpriced white school, the one thing I am being awesome at is talking to Japanese people. Yes, friends, the 2009 TIUA students (all 147 of them) are here at Willamette and I am doing surprisingly well at reaching out and being friendly and likable. I also seem to be very memorable, possibly because I've fallen back on the lame pun you can make out of my name in Japanese (Lexi becomes Rekushi, which sounds like rekishi, which means history - I've probably explained this before). It seems to have spread, because now TIUA students are telling their friends, after I've said my polite "I'm called Lexi" bit, that in Japanese my name sounds like history. I'm not sure if this is really a good thing or not, but it is what it is and they think it's funny. Lexi as a nickname seems to subsequently be spreading to my fellow Willamette students, as well. I'm taking this in stride.

More to the positive, we also are having success at spreading "daijoubs" to the TIUA students. Daijoubs is a nonsensical word we JSP students started using in Japan - daijoubu means okay/all right/fine and somewhere along the way it got slangified by the Americans into daijoubs. The TIUA students are very amused by this and have started using it when talking to us. Score one for Team Gaijin? Corrupting our foreign language of choice on two continents.

I don't actually have all that much to write about, as it turns out. We're reading The Well of Loneliness in my Literature and Sexuality class, which is pretty fun, and my philosophy class has moved onto Freud and parapraxes. In Shakespeare, we're reading Much Ado about Nothing, which is one of my favourite comedies, so I'm good with that. For some reason, my Literature and Sexuality class was missing exactly half its students today (there were eight of us), but the discussion was really interesting and pretty much everyone had something to contribute. So those other eight people totally missed out.

And... today I'm going up to Seattle. I'm seeing The Lion King with my mum and sister, getting some rest away from the demands of Willamette, and doing my FAFSA. Unfortunately, there apparently isn't internet in my house at the moment, so I'll be doing FAFSA from Starbucks with their wi-fi. And copious amounts of coffee, to keep me in a good mood.

As an ending note to this scattered and not particularly exciting entry, I will leave you with a youtube video. I've mentioned my love of Takarazuka (the all-female Japanese musical theatre company) before, at least in my Japan blog, so I feel like I should spread the love farther with a clip from the 2007 Snow Troupe production of Elisabeth. With Mizu Natsuki as Der Tod. I have such a massive crush on Mizu Natsuki, you don't even know, and any opportunity to watch her be awesome ought to be taken advantage of.