小さいブログ. . .ゴメンね！

i know, i know. . . it's time for me to write a real blog reporting on all my amazing experiences in japan. . . and although it is my now my second year here (and i therefore have a much better understanding of my surroundings and the events taking place), i do still have exciting new experiences to report. . . the problem is in the fact that i have no time to report them . . .

i suppose the place to start is dance. . . as i believe you know, i will be dancing as part of the guest team at yosakoi in osaka this november (my birthday weekend to be exact). . . if you can read japanese, here's the info (dance cream is the name of the studio i dance at) . . .
http://sasso-japan.org/expo-vol2.html
http://park.expo70.or.jp/facil/facil_04.html#yosakoi
i'm not really clear on all the details. . . all i know is that we have numerous street performances and a couple of stage performances. . . i think we only dance on saturday (the 18th). . . we are leaving kochi around midnight on friday night. . . taking a bus to osaka (3+hours?) . . . and then dancing all day staturday. . . i believe relaxing a bit/ sightseeing on sunday. . . and returning. . . while i am obviously extremely excited, i am also getting pretty stressed out. . . as the only person on the team who has never participated in yosakoi, i have no idea how to use narko or maneuver my happi or scream random words in japanese (it's like trying to learning things like woohoo in english. . . よちょれ　and わしょい are not particularly useful for daily communication). . . aside from those challenges, my teacher put me in all four of the dances both in the street version (which everyone does) as well as on stage. . . since we started learning the first dance in june or july, two of the dances have been pretty well drilled into my body (including the chants and narko and happi). . . a third dance is coming along (although we spend very little time on it in rehearsals. . . as in running it once maybe every week? if that). . . the fourth, however, is my biggest source of stress. . . apparently my teacher has decided not to actually teach it to me. . .i finally asked him for a video of it (but have no time to watch the video). . . we NEVER practice it in rehearsal. . . i have no idea how he expects me to be in this dance. . . learning combinations is my biggest weakness in dance. . . so, yeah, that should be interesting. . .

okay, i know that's just a start, but i really need to go home and go to bed now. . .

out of curiosity, who still checks my blog? is it down to just my mother? i know i've been neglecting my readers lately. . . sorry about that! i have so much to say. . . it's getting harder and harder to know where to start. . . anyway. . . hopefully more to come in the NEAR future. . . for now. . .おやすみなさい！





"well, art is art, isn't it? still, on the other hand, water is water. and east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. now you tell me what you know." ~ groucho marx




"every child is an artist. the problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." ~ pablo picasso