Are you looking for anything to do this weekend? My friend is performing in the ‘The Pirates of Penzance!’ this weekend. Unfortunately I cannot make it as I have some prior plan, but if anyone is bored or simply interested in seeing performing arts, this might to be it!!

Come see The Pirates of Penzance! The cast is very diverse in age and truly international representing Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, Philippines, Japan, Netherlands, USA, to name a few. It has been a lot of fun building up this grand operatic parody of the Victorian era! They have had some press in Metropolis : http://http://metropolis.co.jp/tokyo/recent/agenda.asp as well as the weekender and our musical director, Katherine Cash was featured in the Japan Times on May 5th http://http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20070505vk.html

Don’t miss a rare occasion in Tokyo theater!

(Unfortunately Sat tickets are already sold out >.

You probably made mud balls when you were a kid. I did and it was fun to make it smoother and harder. But did you know you can make it shiny? I was surprised to read this site. Look! It’s so shiny. Actually it seems a real hobby in Japan and there is the "Association of Nippon Doroｰdango Science" (Doro-dango is mud ball in Japanese). Here is the site talking about shiny mubball in English. This site has instructions  for"how to make shiny mudball". Wow don’t you think you want to try? I want. I will :-)

Yesterday I read an interesting article. The products having good sales have common keyword. It’s "Men’s". For example, Kanebo foods released a gum "men flavor" (otoko kaoru). After eating the gum, your body smell like a rose, they said. It flied out of stores and currently they are back-ordered.  "The Handsome Tofu" (Otokomae Dofu) was the big topic because of their success. They are just Tofu maker, but they have very unique pop website and named a very tough manish name to each tofu. This is "handsome tofe", this is "Blown by the wind, tofu guy Johnny" tofu.  This summer, the authentic umbrella maker Miyatake released guy’s parasol "Men’s Sara cool". They said Sara cool sold more than women’s parasol this year. Thinking of "men’s", I think Glico men’s pocky is the first product having copy "men’s".

Hmm interesting, I wonder "men’s" sound "functionable", "real", "serious" to the people. I tried only that gum, did my body smell nice? No I didn’t feel like that.

The Tokyo International Players (TIP) are performing Chekhov’s play “The Cherry Orchard” at the Tokyo American Club — today and tomorrow only. There are matinee performances today (January 28) and tomorrow, and a 7:30 performance tonight.

I went to the opening performance last night and had a great time. I very much like the tragic-comic story behind “The Cherry Orchard”, and it was a great pleasure to see it brought alive by the TIP ensemble cast — every player contributing some truly memorable moments to the performance.

It’s staged in the round within one of the Tokyo American Club ballrooms, with the players entering at different times from all sides. There are some very nice surprises in the direction (by Malcolm Duff) and also in the lighting and music. There’s even one wonderful, crowd-pleasing dance scene that had everybody in the audience clapping along and stomping their feet. And within all that, some moments of real poignancy,

As a big sumo fan, one of the nicest surprises for me personally was seeing Doreen Simmons performing in the role of Firs, the housekeeper. It is the first time I have seen her perform, but I am a huge fan of hers from many years of listening to her color commentary for NHK’s English-language sumo-tournament broadcasts. She’s a brilliant commentator on the sport, and has a obvious love for it that makes listening to her comments during the broadcasts a real joy.

Though she has one of the smaller roles in this play, it’s a role that captures some of the funniest moments in it and also what is perhaps the most poignant moment. She plays the fun parts exhuberantly, giving the performance some of its biggest laughs. And she plays that final moment of poignancy with a genuinely touching sense of warmth and tenderness.

Bravo to everyone in the TIP cast, and to Malcolm Duff and everybody involved in the casting decisions. They’ve put together a performance that’s a pleasure to watch and remember.

Japanese government thinks one of the reason why our birthrate keeps falling down is money. So they are thinking to get us delivery expense. It will be some help but I don’t think it solves the problem much. This country, actually people are not supportive for people with infant or child. Childrens are treasure of nation but for most of Japanese, childrens are parents belongings.
I posted about it on my weblog before, I think I can still say same thing. Please read the extended post if you are interested.
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Yes, Japan goes to the polls tomorrow and I know because now there are those annoying loudspeaker vans everywhere in Tokyo blaring out the local politicians name at 200 decibels.

However, for once, this election is actually vaguely interesting. At last it seems like there might be a genuine two-party system here, with the DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan) challenging the ruling LDP (Liberal Democratic Party).

Of course as a foreigner, I can’t vote, but if I could, who would I go for?
Prime Minister Koizumi and his famous hair cut (think Japanese Richard Gere), or Okada (DPJ), who has been through many parties since leaving the LDP in 1993 and is son of the founder of Aeon (the supermarket giant).

First, some background: Prime Minister Koizumi called this election as a referendum on his plans for reform of Japan Post, which as well as delivering the mail, is the main savings bank and life insurer and has $3 trillion in assets. The idea is to free up this money by privatising Japan Post and stop the government from using the “second budget” (as these funds are called) to finance unnecessary construction projects that have traditionally been used by the LDP to buy votes in rural areas.

Koizumi was elected as a reformer and vowed to transform the LDP and Japanese politics in general. However he has been unable to push through many of his planned reforms, has failed to establish good relations with Japan’s Asian neighbours and lost a lot of support from the electorate due to his decision to send troops to Iraq.
The DPJ on the other hand would withdraw from Iraq and they insist that as the LDP is so tied to its past, they are the only party that can undertake the reforms necessary in Japan.
I would say that instead of solely focusing on reform of Japan Post, Koizumi should be embracing the rising Asian nations as a way to boost the Japanese economy.

My initial reaction would therefore be to go for the opposition DPJ, however in the circumstances of this election, I feel that it would be a mistake.
Koizumi has been unable to push through his reforms due to the old guard in the LDP who want the status quo preserved. While the DPJ talk about reform, they are an amalgamation of various smaller parties and I feel that they do not have the unity or strength to really transform Japan.

I therefore cast my vote for Koizumi, against the “old” LDP and for reform.
Even if Koizumi loses, his bravery in risking all on this issue has finally shaken up Japanese politics and hopefully put Japan on the road to reform, whoever is its next leader.

Of course it would be a lot easier if they just decided it all with a simple game of jyan ken pon (paper, scissors, rock)

Related entries: Koizumi to dissolve House

At just before 2pm today, Prime Minister Koizumi and his party, the LDP (自民党 - jimintou) suffered a very big loss in the upper house of parliament here: A set of postal-service privatization bills that Koizumi had been personally championing was soundly rejected by a vote of 125 to 108. The TV new stations are saying that more than 20 members of the LDP itself voted against the bills. The outcome of the vote was not a terrifically big surprise. Based on comments from senior members of the LDP that were broadcast last night and this morning, they already knew before today that they didn’t have enough votes to win passage of the bills.

The real significance of it all is that prior to the vote, Koizumi had threatened that if it didn’t pass, he would dissolve the lower house of parliament and call an early election. The threat seems to have been (at least in part) an attempt to cow the rebellious members of the LDP into voting for the bill. Apparently, up until this afternoon, senior LDP members who had a pretty good idea of how the vote was going to turn out had been pleading with Koizumi to retract the statement about calling new elections. But he didn’t. And now he’s got to make good on his word.
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