How to cross a country (and back) in 2 days

Normally, when I write in this journal, I attempt to not talk about my interests, because they’re very unknown and most people don’t seem to get it. However, there is no way I can write this without explaining why I went all the way to Ishikawa prefecture to be in the city for only 27 hours.

Three years ago, a friend found out I was into musical theatre, and thought I might like to see videos of a series of musicals based around the anime series, Prince of Tennis. Now, I’m not much an anime fan. Or a manga fan. I might watch or read once in a while, but only if there is nothing better to do.When in Japan… Anyways. I took to this series immediately, and it’s amazing just how much its has influenced me. I have such a huge range of interests now in Japan that have branched off from liking the actors in these plays. I can keep up in conversations about television and music because I find out about them through association. I’ve been learning casual form in Japanese by learning through these actors blogs (of course, now I speak like a young guy instead of a girl, but I don’t like the way girls here act so whatever) and when I was deciding if I wanted to move to Japan or not, the opportunity to see one of these shows live was a very huge deciding factor.

After moving here, I’ve also made such an amazing group of friends by getting to know other foreigners that are into the shows, and I’ve enjoyed introducing all my friends so we’re one big group of awesome. ♥ I love you guys!

Anyways, the main problem with these shows is that… they are popular. Very. Very. Popular. If you want to see the show in Tokyo or Osaka, it normally takes amazing luck or acts of God to get a ticket. Or determination and logic, which has been my angle in getting the tickets I’ve got. But really, the tickets for shows in the two major cities sell out within… about 45 seconds of the start time. But! As the series has grown in popularity, so has the length of the tour. Last summer, the series exploded into a ten city tour, with performances in Taiwan and Korea. So there were many more options for tickets, in case you couldn’t get to Tokyo!

Now, I had already been to see The Treasure Match on Christmas Eve in Tokyo. Which was an amazing night. But after a very silly conversation with my friend Adele, we realized that the show in Kanazawa City, Ishikawa prefecture, was very much not sold out. And that the performance dates fell within the magical time of the Winter Seishun Juuhachi Kippu (Seishun18 tickets) period, where you can travel on local lines for 24 hours for only 2300 yen. And we’d both been wanting excuses to travel like that.

And so Adele and I, along with Mari and Leah, decided to meet up in Kanazawa to see “The Prince of Tennis Musicals: The Treasure Match Shitenhouji featuring Hyoutei Gakuen.”

Not going to lie, the fact that Fukayama Seiji was the Hyoutei guest that weekend was also a major influencing factor. But there’s no need to get into that. (^_^;;)

Adele and I had planned to use the Seishun18 tickets to get there and back, because it would have been very cheap. However, the only way we could have done that would have been night trains, and the night train was fully booked weeks in advance. So we took the night bus. If ever you’ve taken a bus back home, you’ll think you know bus travel and say it sucks. Travelling by bus in Japan though? Is awesome. There are only three seats across the bus on the night bus, so that there is space between each seat. There is so much more leg room, and two foot rests that come out to hold your legs up so you can curl up on the chair and sleep. The chair reclines way back, making sleeping very easy. I was so worried I wouldn’t sleep at all, but it was impossible not to! The lights go right out, there were curtains covering all the windows, and you just got this feeling that being awake would bother others so you end up falling asleep.

Six hours later, I woke up in Ishikawa prefecture. Where I live, in Kanagawa, we live on the Pacific Ocean. Ishikawa is on the Sea of Japan. We had crossed the country (in the shortest possible way, but still.) Sadly, the weather was cold and wet, and I’m still trying to recover from one of the worst colds I’ve had in history, and so my options for what to do that afternoon were limited. Adele went to see a Samurai District, which sounded very cool, and I look forward to the photos. I, on the other hand, found myself camped out in an International Centre, reading a copy of Macleans, being a very happy Canadian. It was then time to pick up Leah and Mari, who were arriving by train (they don’t live in Tokyo yet.) It was really awesome to get to meet up with them, because Mari and Adele had met, but Leah had met neither, so it was nice to get to introduce friends to each other.

We still had a few hours until our hotel would be ready, so we headed into the giant shopping centre looking for food. What we found was the Dessert Garden, which looked like some weird, Alice in Wonderland on acid theme restaurant. I’m rather use to theme restaurants, Tokyo has some awesome ones. But this one in the middle of a mall, like a food court, amused me to no end. Also, the fact that their main dinner food was omelette dogs continued to amuse me. It was delicious though, so that’s alright. 🙂

Finally, it was time to go to the hotel! We decided to stay at the Toyoko Inn. Which I highly recommend. They have an English website, you can do your reservations in English too, and they even have an English keitai site! The rooms were SO nice, and I liked the staff. Plus, free breakfast and dinner, you can’t go wrong. Since we managed to check in a bit earlier than we should have been able to, we took the time to get ready, because it was almost time for…

ZA TORESHAAA MAACHIITHE TREASURE MATCH!!!!!!

I. Love. This. Play. Like I said, I’d seen it before, and so I knew what I should be looking for, and where the funny moments where. Since there can be a lot of things going on stage at once, it’s nice going to the show more than once to watch different actors. It was SO WEIRD being in a theatre, knowing there was going to be a Tenimyu show on, and not having to push my way through a crowd of over a thousand girls. The theatre wasn’t full, I’d say it was only 3/4 full. Plus, there were WAY more guys than normal. And they weren’t dragged by their girlfriends. Straaange…. It was nice though, because the theatre was much nicer than the one we normally go to for this show , and my seats were REALLY AWESOME. Ninth row, centre. Dead centre. 😀 The boys seemed really relaxed, which was nice compared to the show before where you could tell they had been doing two shows a day every day for a week and a half. I could get into the show more, but there are more interesting things to talk about, in my opinion.

So, after the show let out, we decided to walk back, despite knowing it was a bit of a walk. I had a migraine and needed some fresh air. When we got to the bottom of the hill, there was this huge, snow covered park. Adele and I have a few things in common. We both like these plays. We’re both Canadian, both from Ottawa, and we both live in the Tokyo area. Which means we haven’t seen snow in a very long time. So before we could even think twice, we were running through the park, frolicking and playing in the snow, very much forgetting we should be acting our age, not our shoe size. Mari and Leah, the token Southerns, seemed to find it amusing, but after being pelted with snowballs, they joined in the madness. We were being really silly, having a snowball fight and taking photos pretending we were characters from the show we’d just seen, when suddenly… this bus catches my attention. Now, I’d been very aware of the fact that the actors in the plays would not be returning to their homes like they normally do, but to a hotel. And that they travel by bus in these situations. And we had spent enough time in the park for the actors to have all changed and been ready to leave the theatre.

And so I was looking at a bus load of actors, all of whom were watching us playing in the snow.

They were a bit far to see detailed reactions, but considering one of them on the bus jumped up to keep watching from the bus as it passed (which is the classic”Mao-chan Sees a Foreigner!” reaction,) it’s safe to assume that the reaction on the bus was “HOLY CRAP THAT LOOKS LIKE FUN!”

The blog posts later from some of them, talking about how the snow looks fun, certainly doesn’t stop me from grinning like a loon.

Since we were in Japan, we did as Japanese do afterwards and went to karaoke, where I messed up my poor, recovering throat, but it was worth it~ (^_^) It was here that I looked at some things I had picked up for a friend and realized…. that the staff at the show had made a mistake in what I’d bought. Insert panic here, because it’s not like I could just go back and trade them in. Theatre was well closed, and we were leaving early that morning. And so the rest of the evening was spent me mentally mapping out how my next morning would go.

At 8:30, I woke up to find Leah gushing over the Kamen Rider Kiva finale (I can’t get into the series, but I do adore the main actor in it. And I also love the actors who will be in the next one, Kamen Rider Decade. Won’t watch that either.) I packed up quickly, inhaled free breakfast, and grabbed a cab to the theatre. I was so terrified, because my spoken Japanese is not nearly as good as my reading, and in situations where I’m nervous, it gets worse. So I get there, and babble something at the security guard (the doors weren’t open yet.) SOME HOW, he understood me, and let me in through to the front lobby to speak to one of the staff girls. I feel it necessary to say how much I love the staff girls in the shows I’ve been to. They all seem to know enough English that we usually meet half way. Luckily for me, I did half decently (though I can’t help but wonder if chaangiii actually works in Japanese or if it’s just an English word everyone knows – It’s worked so far!) the girl was awesome, and the goods mistake was corrected. I then FLEW LIKE THE WIND to get back to the station in time, because there was only one train I could take that would get me out of the city in time to make last train to my home station.

And so 27 hours after arriving in Kanazawa, Adele and I boarded the first of… four or five trains that we would go on. I can’t remember how many there were really. The trip home was LONG. Long but CHEAP. This trip would have been about 9000 yen normally, and that’s for the 11 hour trip. So only paying 2300? Was well worth it. Plus, the view was amazing, for the most part! We went along the Sea of Japan for a bit, and then turned down and headed into the Japanese Alps. Adele was really excited because we were going to go through the mountains and it was going to be really pretty.

Only problem is…. we literally went THROUGH the mountain. There were a few hours of just tunnel after tunnel. But, the view of the mountains as we were heading towards them was really cool! There was also a long period where we went through a region that was IDENTICAL to going through Northern Ontario. Both Adele and I were raised way up North, so it was really surreal.

One other thing that I thought was funny was the fact that where we lived was apparently really obvious. While we might not be into the whole Tokyo Street Fashion things (I like my hair natural coloured and my shoes to not be a hazard,) we both still dress for the city, and it seemed obvious at times. Especially when we had a stop over in this town in the middle of nowhere, where I felt really out of place, not because I was foreign, but because it had such a small town feel.

I ended up getting into Kurihama around 10:20 pm, 11 hours and 22 minutes after I left. I had so much to do when I got home, and still have so much cleaning left to do.

And yet some how, I’m at work the next day, handing out souvenir cookies, finding myself very amused at how my staff can’t even imagine how I managed to get a trip to ISHIKAWA PREFECTURE done in FOURTY EIGHT HOURS. I’m still wondering it myself.

*sigh* The things I do for Tenimyu. ♥

PS – All of my photos so far can be found in this gallery on my Flickr account.