Monday was the day that we had been waiting for since we got to Tokyo: Takarazuka day. Takarazuka has its main theatre in the city of Takarazuka where I’ve been many times now, but it also recently opened a theatre in the Hibiya district of Tokyo. We had already planned to stay after the show for and wait for the actresses to leave the theatre so that we could see them up-close, but my friend came up with what turned out to be a brilliant addition to this plan: we would wear some of the clothes that we had bought in Harajuku the previous day. The goal of this was to be extremely visible among the legions of Japanese fans in normal clothing, and it proved pretty effective. All day we had people staring at us and, outside the theatre, asking to take pictures with us. One older woman asked me if I was an actress, and when I answered ‘no’ she told me that I should be, which was very flattering, really. After the show we scoped out a good place to stand by next to the fan club for the number 3 star of Snow Troupe, Mao Ayabuki. Within a given troupe every actress is distinctly ranked from the top star all the way down to the chorus members, with Mao Ayabuki outranked only by the top ‘pair’, the top otokoyaku (male-role player) and the top musumeyaku (female-role player). This is reflected not only in how parts are distributed and where people stand during the finale, but also in the placement of fan clubs outside of the theatre, which was surprising. The fan clubs are extraordinarily organized. Besides the fact that they are actually administrated by the company that owns Takarazuka, they have elected officials and very specific rules, it would seem. Whenever an actress left the theatre, the front two rows of people in each fan club would sit down, either to show respect or to allow the people behind them to see, we were not certain which. When a star exited the theatre, she headed straight to her fan club and stopped there, taking the messages and presents that she was handed and saying her ‘thank you’s. When she reached the end of the line, the president of the fan club would be waiting there with a bag for her to carry all of her gifts in and she would leave without looking at anyone else. In the case of Mao Ayabuki and the troupe’s #1 Mizu Natsuki the president of the fan club also had their car parked at the end of the fan club line to take the star to (I assume) her hotel. This process was repeated right in front of us as Ayabuki Mao met her fan club. She didn’t seem to notice us until she had already climbed into the car and was about to wave a final goodbye to her club. Just then she clearly noticed us for the first time, stared for a couple seconds and then just said a word in Japanese that is a bit hard to translate, but basically amounts to ‘wonderful’, ‘lovely’, or ‘cool’. My friend and I were speechless, and were probably staring stupidly with our mouths open as she drove away. We were pretty excited by this, as you can perhaps imagine. We decided that we needed to commemorate this event, and so headed to Akihabara, a district famous for electronics stores and large gaming complexes where we knew there would be print club machines. ‘Print club’ is where you choose a background, lighting level etc. and have your picture taken in a variety of poses. After the pictures have been taken, you can draw on them, add images or otherwise customize them, then choose your favourites and have them printed out as stickers. We did this at two different machines with great results. Afterwards, we had some Indian food (really having the curry tour of Japan, I guess) and went home where all we could do was gush about how wonderful of a day it had been.
-Mao Ayabuki called us “suteki” (pronounced steh-key).
-Fan club members have matching mufflers, Mao Ayabuki’s where beige, Mizu Natsuki’s were blue plaid and Otozuki Kei’s where purple.
-The actresses where all incredibly fashionable, even those who didn’t have fan clubs and were thus not very highly-ranked yet.
-The women who play female roles look, rather unfortunately, like any other Japanese women when not onstage, which makes them much less noticeable than their otokoyaku counterparts. They also didn’t appear to have fan clubs of their own.
-The Tokyo theatre is, on the inside, nearly identical to the one in Takarazuka, probably on purpose.
-Akihabara is filled with maid cafes, but we didn’t really feel a need to sample them.
-I had expected the lighting inside the print club booths to be fluorescent and thus unforgiving, but we actually looked really good in the final product.
-The secret to walking around all day in unusual clothes without being embarrassed seems to be to act as though you always wear clothes like that. Confidence is apparently key to not feeling like a complete idiot.
-Mao Ayabuki called us ‘steki’.
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