Sticking My Neck Out One Last Time

Turtles at Mitsuike Park

There's a moving van or two parked in every townhouse cul-de-sac, boxes stacked up along the sidewalks, and Japanese workers kicking their shoes off and slipping them back on as they scurry in and out of front doors. Invitations to sayonara parties are flying through cyberspace. It's that time of year again. PCS (Permanent Change of Station) season is upon us.

There is no better time of year to visit Second Hand Rose, the base thrift shop operated by our Officer Spouses' Club. There's a weight limit on the household goods we can take with us when we move and exceeding that limit means paying out of our own wallets so we cram china, rice cookers, golf clubs, books, and toys into our car trunks and head over to the thrift shop donation window on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Someone unloaded an entire Talbot's wardrobe last week and someone else got rid of every Star Wars book ever published.  .

Between our thrift shop and our gift shop, the Officer Spouses' Club raised nearly $70,000 this year. Now it's time to start doling that money out to worthy local causes. This is my third year on the committee that does the doling. I had hoped to lend a voice of reason and experience to the deliberations but, sadly, I no longer have the patience required for committee work.  About halfway through today's four-hour meeting I had to squeeze my hands between my thighs to stop myself from drumming my fingernails on the table.  Drumming her fingernails on the table was how my mother expressed impatience with rambling monologues (usually emitting from the mouth of her oldest daughter).

The Ancient Mariner and the husband of another committee member will deploy in four days.  It will be December before our family can spend another weekend together.  Why are we meeting on a Saturday morning?  Why couldn't we meet during the week when our husbands were working?

Why do we dole out money just once a year, in June, rather than two or three times a year?  The chairman has decreed that all organizations receiving money from us must spend it by December 31 but a third of the requests are from high school coaches wanting help with the costs of student lodging at Far East Tournament events, most of which occur in the spring.

We are told that our base commander has revised the regulations governing how we can dole out our funds and that none of our money can leave Japan.  Three committee members resign themselves to this turn of events while the fourth -- the one squeezing her hands between her thighs -- thinks it's likely the base commander simply stepped out of the room for a potty break during Command Leadership School and missed part of the session on how his boss's boss's boss expects spouse groups around the world to pitch in to cover the $60,000 annual printing and postage costs to distribute guidelines to families of individual augmentees and rising Navy leaders.

A school parent wants $5,000 to equip each classroom with an emergency bag the teacher can grab when exiting the room during an emergency.  Three months after the earthquake/tsunami, the principal still isn't sure what items those bags should contain but $5,000 seems sufficient to cover the costs.  Someone notes that the principal can obtain a time-tested list of items to be included in an emergency bag at the city's Earthquake Center two blocks from the base.  She then quips, semi-seriously, that she'd rather spend the $5,000 on training the teachers how to behave calmly and professionally during a disaster, something that is drilled into Japanese teachers.

Maybe it would be better if she shut her mouth and started drumming her fingers.

Chinese Theater Comes to Ikebana

Ikebana meets on the third Thursday of the month except in January when the most special program of the year is held on a Saturday, making it easier for us to bring our children, spouses, and friends. My family members were otherwise occupied this morning, so I contented myself with escorting the guests of other Ikebana members from the base to the Daibutsu priest's residence in Kamakura.

Today's program was a presentation on a form of Chinese theater called Kunqu Opera (which appears in a different color here because I've provided a link for my sister-in-law Sandy and our mutual friend Ann who are the only people I know who might want to know more about this art form than I am prepared to share).

Kunqu has been around for 600 years but had nearly disappeared by the early twentieth century and barely survived the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s when there were deliberate attempts to suppress it.

Today there are seven professional Kunqu troupes performing in Mainland China and Taipei. It was listed as one of the "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity" by UNESCO in 2001. (Maybe I should try to get a job with UNESCO. I wonder how much they pay people to come up with fancy titles like that one.)

This was all explained to us in Japanese by the actor Lu (pronounced 'Lee') Hairong (33) and then translated into English by a young Australian who had to wrestle that microphone out of his hands to do her job.


Lu entered the Shanghai Academy of Performing Arts, a boarding school, at the age of 10. Students there are selected to learn and perform one of the five Kunqu roles when they are 11 years old or are sent home to (presumably) live out their days working in the rice paddies. Lu spent the next seven years, until he was 18, training for martial arts roles. He was allowed to visit his family only once a week during all those years. When he was 26, he moved to Japan where he currently attends Keio University.


We were then treated to a PowerPoint presentation about the five basic Kunqu roles and variations thereof. I will spare you the details since (a) the balding Russian lady sitting between me and the screen ruined most of my shots, and (b) my attention started wandering about 10 seconds after the overhead lights were dimmed.

The lady sitting in front of me, for instance, was wearing an interesting sweater, or perhaps it was a detachable belt . . .

. . . and the lady on her right had a net thing on her head, the likes of which I haven't seen since the mid-60s when my mother sometimes splurged on custom-designed Easter bonnets . . .

. . . and then there was the Chinese mask dangling from the rafter over my head.

"Perhaps if I attach a little camera to my makeup mirror and project a live image of myself on the screen I can recapture the attention of that gaijin in the third row," schemed Lu. We watched him apply his makeup. This normally takes 90 minutes. We breathed a collective sigh of relief when Lu said he was going to do a quick version for today's performance. (Sighs of relief are apparently universal as they sound the same in Japanese and English.)

His fellow actor, Kong Fanqi (29), helped Lu into his costume. That polka dot ball off to the side of Kong's head signifies he is playing the role of a hero (assuming the translator understood Lu correctly and assuming I heard the translator correctly, so you might not want to quote me on this one).

Lu's outfit was pretty cool and featured lots of cranes in flight. Kong's outfit was all about butterflies. I couldn't help wondering if anyone helped poor Kong get dressed.

Oh, look! Lu's playing a hero, too!

They performed a farce for us, in which two best friends mistake each other for mortal enemies in the dark and narrowly miss killing each other. It was really quite funny, and the American children in the audience were squealing in delight which made all the adults break out in laughter.

The ladies mobbed the stage at the end of the performance. The blonde kneeling in front of Kong is the Russian ambassador's wife.

Next month we're going to learn a Japanese handicraft technique called kimekome so we can make something called a goten-mari ball. I am definitely going to have to drag a guest or two along to that one. Probably not Mimi.