Well! For all my promises of upcoming updates I certainly have kept you all waiting! Since moving into my apartment I have slowly but surely added to my furniture collection, and am by now pretty much squared away. J has been staying with me almost every weekend and it is nice to have someone to speak English to. Together we have seen two shows at the Takarazuka Grand Theatre and one at a theatre in Osaka. One of the shows that we went to see in Takarazuka was what they call a ‘Shinjin Kouen’, a sort of understudy performance where the actresses who have been in the troupe for 6 years or fewer fill all the roles in a one-act version of the troupe’s current play. I had never been to one before, so it was an exciting opportunity. While the actresses were necessarily less skilled than their main-performance counterparts, every person onstage was bursting with enthusiasm, clearly giving every line and dance move their all. The energy was contagious and more than made up for the occasional mistake or sour note.
The reason that I could go to a play in the middle of the week was that this was what they call “Golden Week”, a 7-day period where several national holidays converge. Because there are so many holidays some schools and even businesses shut their doors for the whole week, which makes it a very popular time to travel. I, unfortunately, only had the actual holidays themselves off, which meant that I had last Friday, my usual Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday off with class as usual on Saturday and Monday. On Wednesday J and I dressed up in kimono and hakama and met a friend of J’s at a park in Tenouji, which was quite beautiful even if it was a little hot out. Afterwards we had lunch in a nice café near the station and then J and I went in search of a special donut shop in Shinsaibashi. Lately Krispy Kreme has opened several locations in Japan, including one in Shinsaibashi, but the donut shop that J and I set out to find was far more special. Instead of being fried, these donuts are steamed and use traditional Japanese ingredients to make Japanese-style donuts. After some wandering around and fighting with J’s iPhone we finally found the place and calmly waited in line for about half an hour before ordering at the counter and getting our donuts. I had a cherry-blossom flavoured donut with glutinous rice and walnuts in it topped with black sesame seeds, a steamed strawberry cake filled with strawberry cream, and a roasted green tea iced latte. J had a cherry-blossom flavoured one like mine only with actual cherry blossoms on top as well as an Okinawan brown sugar donut with candied citron peel in it topped with apple. They were beautiful and delicious, absolutely worth the wait and even worth the 200yen apiece. I think what I liked best about them, and about Japanese sweets in general, was that they were not really very sweet at all; the flavours were subtle and would have been eclipsed by too much sugar.
After looking around a couple of the stores in the area we headed back to my apartment where I made a simple dinner (a post about cooking will follow) before getting some much-needed rest. Tomorrow I have class again, and starting next week it will be back to business as usual.
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