Back from Japan

We have been back from Japan now for I don't know how long -- three weeks? Both got sick when we returned. I especially had a hard time getting back to local time. It took me a week. While I had adjusted to Tokyo time in a couple of days. Because it was spring in Tokyo and we could lie out in the sunshine at Shinjuku Gyoen. Stayed at the Easton Hotel in Nakano-Sakaue. Every morning had coffee and pain au raisin at the Vie de France at the station. There was a Romanian restaurant just down the street but we did not go because Isabella thought it would be just too weird, to eat at a Romanian restaurant in Tokyo.

Saw a lot of Noh plays. 10? 11? Over three days. My impressions of Noh: refined, delicate, at the same time raw, primal. Refined movements, and I must presume the poetry; raw in the drums and drum calls and chanting. (I wonder what effect a soliloquy would have if punctuated with drum calls.) Abstract in the sense that objects or people have significance that is understood, and no effort is expended on illusion. So -- a golden tablet falls from heaven -- the stage hand brings it out and sets it down before the actor. Look! A golden tablet fell from heaven!

We also saw one scene of Kabuki from the 47 ronin. The strangest thing is the stage hand dressed as a ninja (and all the more visible for that) running out to crouch behind the main actor and wait patiently for minutes until his moment came -- to remove the tea tray! Unless he also represented the evil impulse moving Lord such-and-such to goad his companion into drawing his sword.