Who could ask for anything more

Another week has barrelled past but this time I noticed; I've actually started saying the date out loud every day to make sure December doesn't club me over the back of the head. Not that there's much danger of forgetting how late in the year it is - walking through the house is now more like spelunking, having to weave our way through stalagmites of clothes, books and lord knows what else. It's all immensely distracting and being able to get out of the house and think about other things for a while is probably a blessing, which is why we went out for a bit of rhythm and music this week.

Incoming fabulous

Thursday was the "Culture Day" public holiday which broke the working week into manageable pieces and gave us an excuse to finally head out to the Takarazuka Revue, an all-female musical theatre group that we've been meaning to see for years. Their ads plaster every train and there seems to be a new show out every couple of weeks, which can be anything from Alice in Wonderland to samurai dramas to obscure European bits and pieces. We booked in for one of the Revues, which instead of a full-length performance is a shorter play with a big singing and dancing show to finish. In this case it was a very odd play about an Italian suitmaker, made particularly surreal by the fact that every character from the American reporter to the Neapolitan grandpa spoke fluent Japanese and couldn't go 3 lines without bursting into song or dance. There was something about a clown and a beach as well, but I was too busy surreptitiously taking photos to pay too much attention. We broke for intermission, headed into the lavishly decorated ballroom and opened our boxed theatre sandwiches which were, in true Japanese style, cut into cute little fingers with no crusts.

I need this at least 10 times sparklier

The highlight was definitely the Revue, which threw all the sophistication to the wind in favour of sparkly insanity that we both thoroughly enjoyed. Within about 3 seconds of the curtain opening, a colossal disco ball had descended from the ceiling and spent the next 40 minutes trying to compete with the rhinestones on everyone's costumes. We went from angel wings and clouds to a forest to a New York cabaret club and back, complete with dancing cigarette girls, vampires and can-can lines. A huge staircase came down for the finale which the stars descended in peacock feathers almost as big as they were. I was getting bolder and bolder with the camera by this stage until I overreached completely, attempting an ambitious full-zoom on one of the featherier costumes. Unsurprisingly, one of the ushers saw my telescope-sized camera lining up for the perfect shot and scurried over to roundly tell me off and confiscate it until after the show... 2 minutes later. Mortally embarrassed, I then had to follow her down the stairs to the front desk where I stood like a scolded child and was made to delete all the offending photos. It was my own dumb fault for pushing the envelope, but I still stood there petulantly imagining grabbing my camera and making a break for freedom.

In a blaze of average

Once we had made it out in one piece we headed to the Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum nearby. This is a funny little triangular building with a colourful glass dome on top, dedicated the creator of Astroboy and Kimba the White Lion. It was basically wall to wall comics, souvenirs and old production notes and philosophies which I have to admit I found profoundly uninteresting (although I may just have still been cross about the photos). Several original cells from Astroboy and the like were stored in glass cases though, complete with white-out, pencil marks and pasted-over paper - I suppose it would be worth a visit if you were a fan. I think I liked the surrounding area more than the museum itself - they had a Hollywood Walk of Fame takeoff featuring all his characters and some very pretty sculptures and statues as well.

"One of us is awesome and I don't think it's you"

We kicked off the weekend with a trip to World Buffet a couple of stops away from our place, which is a surprisingly nice all you can eat place that does dinner for 10 bucks. All the staples are there - pizza, fried chicken and dessert, as well as onion rings as one guy demonstrated by eating about 6 plates of them in the time we were sitting there. I wouldn't have been convinced a couple of years ago if you told me there were Japanese bogans, but a quick trip to World Buffet would have sorted out the argument pretty quickly. For reference, a white guy with a tie will get more stares in a place like that than a woman in a pink tracksuit with a partly shaved head or, indeed, a midget. They had churros there though, so it all worked out alright.

On Saturday we headed out into Kobe for a taiko drum show and while the concert hall didn't seem to be as strict, this time I left the camera at home just to be safe. It turned out to be a surprisingly impressive concert, with a troupe of eight talented percussionists banging away on progressively bigger drums and accompanied by pan pipes, flutes, banjos, marimbas and just about anything else they could get their hands on (including a gong). I was expecting a community hall style thing but they had a proper sound system and a full lighting rig so it kind of felt like a proper concert. We emerged into the rain and retreated back into our burrow for the rest of the weekend, partly because Lisa is feeling a bit crook at the moment and partly because we're cave-dwelling troglodytes. We have a few more things lined up for November and then it's all just farewell parties and last-minute panicking. Six weeks more and steady as she goes.