A special guest, baseball and Halloween

Dear friends,

Hope you are all doing well and enjoyed your weekend. Spending one weekend at home, I thought I would have more time to keep my blog up to date - but unfortunately, with having a lot of assignments for university, I didn't... So I'm still trying to catch up on events from almost two weeks ago :P

Singing session with...

Our Arts Workshop class on Thursday (October 27th) was very special. We had none other than singer Mai Fujisawa and her pianist (whose name I forgot) visiting us. Never heard of her? Well, have you ever wondered who sang the requiem from Nausicaä from the Valley of the Wind? Okay, she was only 4 years old back then. But what about Lily's Theme from the last Harry Potter movie? And what baffled me even more was that she actually is the daughter of the composer creating all this fantastic music for Studio Ghibli movies - Joe Hisaishi.

So she visited us, presented a bit about her past and future projects (her latest project was the documentary Paper Lanterns) and gave a "private concert" including the Nausicaä theme and a song from Ojarumaru, an NHK anime for children.

This is her singing for us - thanks to Maria to providing the video:

Then came the embarrassing moment: For this session, we had to translate "Sanpo"/"Stroll", the opening theme from Totoro from Japanese into our language. What Mai did was writing each line of the song in a different language. For every line, someone who translated it had to come to the front to her and explain how it is pronounced. Even though about 4 people from our class had translated into German, I ended up being the one who had to go! Oh my God! I got to shake Mai's hand and teach her how to speak German. I think she did pretty well ;)

If you want to know more about Mai: She likes American drama (especially The Walking Dead and Dr. House), french fries, and soon she will go on a world tour promoting her dad's music. I will be sure to be there!

Go go Keio!

On the last weekend of October, a very important event for Tokyo's college students took place: The Tokyo Big6 Baseball League. This means Keio University had to play against Waseda University at least two times, on Saturday and Sunday. Weeks before the big event, the students start to sell tickets and organize cheerleader performances on campus. Exchange students are not excluded: The KOSMIC international club invited everyone to go together to the Jingu stadium on Sunday, but because I had a field trip with my Arts Workshop course on that day, I couldn't join. That's why Essi and I went on Saturday and this even turned out the be the right decision!

Cheering, cheering, cheering

If you don't know anything about baseball, this doesn't affect your enjoyment of the game. In fact, baseball here seems not to be about watching - it's more about cheering. All throughout the game, the male cheerleaders (or screamers or singers, or however you may call them) in black Keio uniforms encourage the audience to clap, sing, beat those balloon-like things everyone has in their hands... and meanwhile, the female cheerleaders dance and all this draws your attention completely away from the field. I knew something good has happened when everyone seemed even happier than before, but apart from that... I still have no idea what actually happens on the baseball field, even though I tried to understand. ;)

At the end of the game - the flags are ready

Even when the game was over, we were not sure if Keio has actually won or not - the score on the screen said so, but noone was overly emotional. Instead, every team bowed respectfully to each other (even with the flags brought up to the stadium!), and sang their respective hymn. Later, I learned that this was the first time for Keio to win in a long time - and we witnessed it! :)

However, the next day, they lost, so another match had to be scheduled for Monday. Guess who won this one? ;)

Cultural Sunday 

As mentioned above, Sunday (October 30th) was field trip day again. This time we met at Nippori station in the morning and visited Taito city, an area with lots of temples, shrines and shoutengai. Not very different from  the Zoshigaya area - that's why I loved it! Another area unfamiliar to many Tokyoites, offering curious shops and good food to try. Our task was to take many nice photos ;) 

Sorry, I don't remember the name of this temple 

One of the many cat-themed shops :3

... and another

Street market sellers demonstrating their toys

An arabic shop?

The highlight of the tour was a visit to the atelier of Allan West. The artist from the US came to Japan decades ago to learn a painting technique - and then he just could not leave. So he just settled down and designed his own atelier. The reason why he chose Taito city was that there are three shops selling natural mineral pigments in this area - apparently one of the few in Japan. The following pictures with their bad quality don't do his work justice:

The technique he uses for painting is mixing these dry pigments with animal protein, which has been used by Japanese artists for centuries.  This traditional style is called Nihonga ("Japanese painting"), and is often found on folded screens. But he has not just copied the traditional painters - he discovered the technique by himself, only to find out that he was not the first having done so. When painting kimono (which he also does!), the animal protein is replaced by soy.

Halloween madness

I mentioned before that Halloween was everywhere in Tokyo - and when the time finally came, I even managed to go on one Halloween party with Essi. It was held in one of the Keio dorms and we were there for only one hour - but it was still fun and we could wear the "costumes" we bought for this occasion. ;)

On actual Halloween, everyone kept talking about Shibuya, Harajuku and Shinjuku. Apparently, it was crazy - so I just went there to find out. And they were right, it was!  I needed almost half an hour to walk from the station to another place where you usually walk 5 minutes. So many great costumes -  and it was funny how people liked to walk in groups where everyone was wearing the same costume, rather than each of them having individual disguises like it is common in the West. But see for yourself:

Because this post turned out to be quite long (again), another thing that has been the part of my time here will be described in the next post: Food. Lots of delicious Japanese (and other) food. And coffee. So be prepared for a mouthwatering foodie post in the next few days! Have a fantastic start of the week :)

View from the Toho Cinema in Roppongi Hills, where Maria and I went to see "Tale of Tales"