first and foremost, someone was a little...shall we say...upset when she realized she didn't make it into my last blog entry. so, saori will open this one. she and i had an amazing talk earlier today down in the hotel lobby about her future theatre aspirations, how upset i will be on our first day in cincinnati after a wonderful time here in tokyo, etc. gotta say, she's one of the best people we've had on tour. our show tonight wasn't until 7, but she left the hotel at 4:15 to go set up. awesome work ethic. awesome girl. just one of many i will miss when we leave. the entire local staff is so nice. just last night, mr. uji - one of the japanese producers - showed up at a large crew gathering. we went to another traditional shoes-off restaurant that was close to the theater, and if you didn't know it was there, you would never find it. but the food was scrumptious. we kept ordering rounds and rounds of kirin and sake, and i really love the family-style way the japanese approach their meals. one of the best japanese staples i've seen here that we don't have in the states is a headstopper (yes, go ahead and make your jokes now) on beer pitchers. as you pour, there is an extra extension to the pitcher that prevents the foam from ending up in your glass. why is this not available at every bar back home?!?!? i keep reiterating this - the japanese are so intelligent. well, food-wise, i had tempura eel and macaroni au gratin with shrimp and crabmeat. the eel belongs on a list of exotic things i've never had before or haven't in a long time. mackerel, tofu, eel, types of sashimi that i have no idea what they were (i think one was horse) and chicken elbow grizzle, just to name a few. and the kicker is that it's all so fresh and actually quite tasty. well, before we knew it, mr. uji had left the table, presumably to go to the bathroom, but instead came back and told us that he had just paid the entire bill. after a quick cab ride back to the hotel, our night ended with...oh yes, you know it...another ice cream waffle. man, i must have had 8 or 9 of those by now, and i'm not really a heavy ice cream guy back in the states.
my mom brought up a very good point in her last e-mail to me. as much as i dissect weather at home, i've yet to mention it here. spring in japan is pretty darn sweet. this entire week has/will average a high of 73 and a low of 61, with sun on 5 of the 7 days (mostly cloudy last monday, chance of showers this upcoming saturday). but that's not all - our first couple of weeks here did have a north american spring feel to it. there was a somewhat regular pattern of two or three days of sun followed by a day or two of rain, which is pretty much what we're used to in the eastern two-thirds of the states. even in the 70s, there is a good touch of humidity present, so i'd be shocked if a tokyo summer is dissimilar to a manhattan one. but i really wish the clouds had cleared out on monday...
but before i get to monday, i've gotta share sunday's awesomeness. only one show, a noon matinee. and it felt so great to be done at 3 and to be walking around outside with the sun out. jason had been raving about this place called pepper lunch, saying that it was the best spot to eat that he'd found in tokyo, and that i had to try it. it's close to the shibuya station, right next to scramble, where i'd had breakfast on saturday morning. so after the show, that's where trevor and i went, since neither of us had gone yet. first off, its front door has a push button on it that you have to depress before it automatically opens. most shops have this feature, which is genius - the door won't unnecessarily open (and waste the AC inside the establishment) as bustling hordes of people traipse down the street. there is no menu when you sit. it's just like the curry house that i had for lunch on saturday (which had naan that was bigger than the table). the menu is a slew of pictures on a wall or window, right next to a machine that has pictures as its buttons. you insert money, select your picture, get a ticket and the appropriate change, hand the ticket to a waiter, sit down, and a few minutes later, you have food. sweet! for only 1080 yen, i got salad, a butternut squash soup and a heaping plate of beef pepper rice. you get a wooden slab underneath a piping-hot grill set down in front of you. a huge serving of rice, cilantro, shallots and pepper is surrounded by uncooked pieces of beef. it's your job to cook the meat as much as you want before consuming. throw in the three different kinds of sauces that are at your disposal, and you've got yourself a tasty feast. pepper lunch was so good on sunday that i went back on tuesday...and know exactly where they exist in roppongi and akihabara. i love pepper lunch and wish we had it back in the states. simple, cheap, tasty. what more do you want? sunday night, trevor, romich and i went out to roppongi on behalf of matos, who was starting to feel a bit under the weather. he really wanted to buy his friend a t-shirt from hard rock cafe. so we decided to eat there and get a shirt for him. unfortunately, the shop was closed - but that didn't mean that we didn't enjoy our meals. my twisted mac chicken 'n cheese was great. if you haven't noticed, i'm a sucker for two things - macaroni and cheese, as well as salmon. throughout the tour, i've been trying both wherever i can find it. i've had mac with dungeness crab (seattle), shrimp and crabmeat (tokyo), lobster (at gordon biersch in dc during our layoff - took my mom and grandma there for mothers' day, because my cousin, kerry, was working there at the time), as the only topping on a burger (dillon's irish pub in hollywood), chicken/ham/peas/mushrooms/bacon (chicago) and chorizo (columbus), just to give you an idea. and here in tokyo, some fast-food place, first kitchen, had a 290 yen tartar salmon sandwich. it was in my belly with 7 minutes of me seeing the picture. anyway, our hard rock cafe meal in tokyo was pretty darn good. and the waiters there spoke the best english i've heard (outside of our translators on the show...right, saori?). one said that her teacher was from california, thus her accent. turns out that hard rock is the only place we've been allowed to leave a tip. actually, they included a 10% service fee on our bill. literally, the only time i've given a tip (hotel, any other meal, tip jars in little shops don't even exist) was at hard rock. even if you buy a dessert for 399 yen and you give her 400, you still get that 1 yen back. speaking of tips, i wish i could have given one to the red bull girls i saw. turns out they aren't just in boston, dc, new york or atlanta. yep, a pair of smokin' hot red bull girls pulled up to the stage door/loading dock of the theatre after a show. they had just seen it and were handing out free red bulls in exchange for autographs. needless to say, i orchestrated my swap rather quickly.
sorry this post is all over the place, but i just have a lot on the brain. down in the subway, we're so used to standing anywhere along the platform and then pick the closest car door that stops to us. well, that's what all of us do here...except there's one problem. there are either distinct lines or a recognizable color scheme that tells you exactly where to line up for the doors once the train gets there. oftentimes, we've walked into a station, stood wherever and talked while the japanese line up accordingly...then get upset at ourselves when we're the last ones to board and end up standing. who knew that lines on the ground would make things so simple. not only that, but the trains also have directional maps inside. the stop closest to our hotel is tammeike-sanno, or g-06 on the ginza line. the ginza line has 19 stops, and shibuya (where the theater is) is g-01, the end of the line in that direction. it's very clear which side of the subway platform goes is which, because of all the signs that are in english and show stops by (letter of line - number, e.g. g-01). pure genius. once you get above ground, the shibuya station intersection that i cross at least twice daily to go to and from the theatre is historic. it's the same intersection from "lost in translation," and is apparently the second-busiest one of its kind in tokyo. that's saying something for a city with a population of 13 million and a metropolitan population of 39 million. often weaving its way through that traffic is a dreamgirls shuttle (that's loaded with pics from the show), which ferries patrons from other parts of town to the theatre and back. to the best of my knowledge, tokyo is the first city that has offered shuttle service to and from the theater since new york, when people were apparently too lazy to take the A/D or 2/3 up to harlem from midtown. the producers of the show have truly welcomed us and have gone all out to make us feel welcome. and it has shown by the size and appreciation of the audiences we've had for every show. every. just last night, a true japanese celebrity attended our show and loved it. akiko wada came backstage and met us and according to the japanese, she is the equivalent of aretha franklin in japan. so dreamgirls was right up her alley, and she thoroughly enjoyed it.
hmmm, what next? oh goodness, i haven't even mentioned monday. got up at 7am to meet at 8 with trevon (cc in the show), trevor, sam and romich. the five of us were bound for hakone, a wonderful resort about an hour and a half outside of tokyo via train (http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e5200.html) that features many hot springs, museums and on a clear day, a spectacular view of mt. fuji as just a few of its highlights. we hit up starbucks for coffee, and what a pleasant surprise i got. green tea is all the rage here, and i got a matcha muffin and a venti matcha iced frappuccino. absolutely delicious. little did i know that green tea would follow us all the way to hakone. for 5,000 yen, we got a hakone freepass that allowed us to take any form of transportation offered there...and for an 850 yen upgrade (which we all did), we got to ride in the limited express romance car on the odakyu line from tokyo to hakone and back. and yes, that is the official name of the car - the romance car. a 9:27am train put us in at 11:04, and we jumped on a trolley up the mountainside to the open-air museum. it was an absolute delight - exhibits of japanese graffiti, mesmerizing sculptures, an awesome wood structure that held an uniquely-hung netting apparatus where kids could play, and a stunning picasso exhibit. a crude profile picture stood at the end of one wall, while 18 straight-on paintings lined the rest of the wall. it showed the 18 steps that picasso took to perfect this picture of jacqueline. i wish it had stated exactly when he had painted all of them, just to see how quickly he completed the process. regardless, it was clear that each step had its own character, because one slight change in approach vastly altered the overall image. and picasso recognized his own genius. the 18th and final step was definitely the best one. he knew when his work was completed. the museum also had huge orange fish that really wanted to be fed, because every time you put out your hand, their mouths would open, expecting a tasty treat. the weather managed to cooperate - high 60s but mostly cloudy most of the day. that would come into play soon enough. all my diehard wishing couldn't get those clouds out of the way of fuji. post-museum (where we had a delicious 1,980 yen buffet for lunch), we headed back to the trolley in search of the cable car. the cable car that would take us to the ropeway. the ropeway that would suspend us over 1,000 meters over the hakone valley, where we would hopefully see fuji in the distance. you know me, i'm a fan of bad weather, but for once, i was upset at those stupid clouds. but despite not sending fuji, we still passed over a valley of sulphur, where some volcanic activity still occurs. the area was very smoky and, as you might expect, reeked of rotten eggs. they were selling sulphur eggs (half-dozen for 5,000 yen) with black shells, each one apparently increasing the longevity of your life by 7 years. did we buy any? hell no. i mean, if we stood still too long around the sulphur fumes, they could have possibly overtaken us...that is, according to the guide book. but we didn't want to find out ourselves. we rode the ropeway for several minutes, watching roads snake through the mountainsides and hills disappear behind larger ones. it was an already breathtaking view. however, our adrenaline rush was soon to be met with despair. on our way down to the boat that would take us across lake ashi, we saw a gift shop that had some snacks. on a poster in the window was an ad for 300 yen green tea ice cream cones! we all leapt for joy, because it had been a couple of hours since our lunch, and that sounded like the perfect snack. it was quarter to 4. on a monday. and the damn shop closed at 3! yes, it was 15:45, and the store closed at 15:00! we were stunned silent. then exploded in an outrage. then fell quiet again. the boat didn't leave until 4:20, so we had a half-hour to do nothing but stare in the window at the workers who were cleaning up and not serving us ice cream. the five of us stood at the door in a row, staring at them, in hopes they would have pity on us. nope, not at all. our consolation prize was boarding a pirate boat that took us across the lake. gorgeous views of docks and shoreside hotels. there was even a guy out fishing in his little speedboat. since the boats run so infrequently (once every 40 minutes), joy and corinne (from the hair department), who had separately come on their own, ended up on the same boat with us. next was a winding bus ride around hairpin turns that took us further down the mountainside, back toward gora. we boarded the trolley, which took us back to the odakyu line and our romance car back to shinjuku. our full day as a fivesome concluded with an italian dinner in akasaka-mitsuke. had some tasty gnocchi and campari soda for only 1,900 yen. romich and i were the only ones to prolong the night, by hitting up a pub, 82 ale house. this place is right across the street from still, the absinthe bar we went to last monday. dave was with the chorus line tour that came to tokyo and found this bar and actually met the manager. wakaru really liked us, made sure we had a good time - even exchanged cards with us. the bar was advertising a chimay triple special that started on june 1 (and the date was in tiny print). but after i asked about it, he personally got a keg and tapped it, so that dave and i could partake. how's that for special? yet again, another situation where i wanted to tip but couldn't. after some uniquely thin but awesome pretzel sticks and three of those chimays, dave and i took the party to the hobgoblin, a british pub, in akasaka. we met four americans, my most recent facebook friends, one of which is in the marines and is stationed in japan. he and his wife (notre dame alums) were having a beer and a smoke, and she overheard us talking about theater. she's from chicago and was stunned to hear that we had just played the cadillac palace theatre four months ago. more talk about the states attracted this other couple from huntsville, alabama. 1am came and went before we left the bar, each pair going its separate way. unbelievably, it turns out that the alabama couple was staying not too far from our hotel, and we met up again. right in front of the 7-11. so yep, that night ended like so many others on this tour. with an ice cream waffle.
it's 3:20am on thursday, and i have two shows tomorrow. so i will not write about the tokyo experience that happened earlier tonight after the show. suffice it to say that it was so amazing that i know for sure that i will be doing the exact same thing tomorrow. and no, it's not sex. although, trust me, i wish it were. and wow, i didn't even mention my sex-related events from earlier today. man, this next post is gonna be something. it'll involve lube, french fries and me being behind bars.
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