2017.01.20 Todoufuken Puzzle
*Todoufuken means ‘Prefectures of Japan’ So basically: The Prefecture Puzzle which is rather fitting.
I went to see my first play of the year about two weeks ago! (Technically my first play cos Touken Ranbu LV doesn’t count because I wasn’t in the theatre in person xD)
Official Website here
Stage Details here
Official Twitter here
NON SPOILER:
Overall: It was nice and enjoyable with a serious over-tone and random comedy moments that hit really well - oh did I mention it was short?! Only 70mins!! I'm not used to that xD It was a quick interesting, thoughtful stage and I cannot wait to see JP’s next work obviously xD
Rating: 6/10
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SPOILERS:
It was Yasukawa Junpei’s play and I went into it knowing nothing except, judging on the ticket price, it was a small production. And I was right; the audience was practically all kankeishas except like me and 8 other people xD There was probably a total of 40 or 50 people in the audience so yeah, SUPER intimate and the staff were nice and it wasn’t even seat coded! So I chose second row and to the side which was luckily the side JP usually stayed on! Let’s get on with the story:
9 people from 9 different regions in Japan have been selected as part of a committee to decide what they should do as a Reformed Area Festival which will show off each regions famous or iconic food. In this play, the areas in Japan have been split up differently to what they are now including each representative from each region:
Hokutouhoku (Literal. North-East-North’s) Region = Hokkaido, Aomori, Akita, Iwate. Representative: Kobayashi Yoshinori as Yagihashi
Nantouhoku (South-East-North) Region = Yamanashi, Miyagi, Fukshima. Representative: Odajima Aniwa as Souzou
Hokuriku Region = Niigata, Toyama, Ishikawa, Fukui. Representative: Tsuji Natsuki as Tsurumaki
KitaKantou (North Kantou) Region = Ibaraki, Tochigi, Saitama, Gunma. Representative: Tsuji Kyohei as Akutsu
MinamiKantou (South Kantou) Region = Tokyo, Chiba, Yokohama, Yamanashi. Representative: Yasukawa Junpei as Kamoshita
Toukai Region = Shizuoka, Aichi, Nagano, Gifu, Mie. Representative: Miyata Yuuhei as Seko
Kinki Region = Shiga, Kyoto, Hyogo, Osaka, Nara, Wakayama. Representative: Yuuki Tsugumi as Inomoto
Nankai (South Sea) Region = Tottori, Okayama, Yamaguchi, Shimane, Hiroshima, Ehime, Kagawa, Kochi, Tokuyama. Representative: Shinzawa Tensho as Komada
Seikai (West Sea) Region = Fukuoka, Oita, Kumamoto, Kaogshima, Miyazaki, Nagasaki, Saga, Okinawa. Representative: Sodeyama Shun as Takane
As you can see there’s no Kantou, no Kansai, no Kyuushuu which is actually what was going to happen at one point in Japanese history but I’m glad they didn’t xD
And so they’ve come together to have a festival that shows off each area in a cultural, food way. First it started with Oden but then one of them wants to have more than one staple ingredient in the oden (they’re only supposed to pick one) and this leads them to be like ‘wait why we doing oden?! Why not just famous food from each region’ and slowly it moves from the topic of local food to a whole different level.
My brain is a little fuzzy how we ended up on all these different topics and points of view but I’m going to bullet point all the main points that were brought up:
- There ends up being one member in the group who’s against the whole festival and feels that by doing the festival nothing will change; it won’t encourage people to move away from Tokyo, it won’t encourage the populous to move else where and wouldn’t help the regions economically.
- But the other members begin to talk about how they used to live in Tokyo and when they went back to their hometowns they felt more comfortable and very much at home and how most ended up working and staying in their hometowns. - One of them has never left his home town but notices how everytime his friends come back from the cities during new year and obon, they always comment and how nice it is to be back. And he’s proud of his hometown and doesn’t intend to leave even if all his friends have.
- Another thing brought up is marriage and kids. How it’s more difficult to find a partner and such in the small places because everyone’s moved to the cities. But JP’s character is the least experienced of them all. Turns out everyone else is either married or married and kids, or have a partner or are happy just being by themselves and he talks of how even though more people are in the city, people aren’t really looking and it’s harder to find someone. He’s still single.
- The final point brought up was from the woman who says 'I want people to come to Fukushima and see how great it is… I have a child and she’s perfectly healthy… my husband is from Hiroshima* but our baby is fine. If we think about Hiroshima and Nagasaki now… they’re now symbols of peace! And maybe in 50 years, 100years, Fukushima** also will be a sign of peace. That’s why I want to do this festival: to show the good in my hometown and encourage people to come.
*if you don’t understand this then: Hiroshima was a victim of the 1945 atomic bomb dropped on Japan on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The radiation caused and still causes deformities and has raised cancer in the families affected.
**Fukushima was victim to the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami that caused its nuclear plants to melt and radiation ended up spreading out into the air and cities. Even today a lot of the area near the power plant is a no go zone and maybe families are still waiting to return to their homes. This stage was a serious one but with some off comedy moments that hit really well, and one guy was very hilarious because of how dry and straight forward he was.
There was a moment where JP's character (who's a born, raised and living Tokyo-ite) who feels he's missing out because every one except him can relate to the whole 'moving to Tokyo but moving back home is so nostalgic and slow paced and much nicer' and he says 'I don't have a hometown to go back to because Tokyo is my hometown. I can't go anywhere. I don't have the same experience as you guys.' And he gets really stressed and talks about him job and then the guy goes '..... please don't commit suicide' and it's so out of the blue and perfect delivery and JP is like 'I don't have such an intention' 'but don’t okay.... it's bad' 'I never said I would!' '....don't' 'I never said anything!' XD
There's one character called Inomoto and she's from Osaka and she was the perfect stereotypical Osaka girl: Loud mouthed, strong personality, trying to boss everyone around, not afraid to speak her mind and she really lays in thick on JPs character 'why is it a person from Tokyo is holding the meeting? Are you trying to say people outside Tokyo aren't capable?!' and stuff like that. There's this moment after JP has his dark moment (the suicide moment and I talk more about this moment below) where she's like 'you gotta have girlfriend.... there's tons of beautiful girls there (in Tokyo)!' and he replies 'I don't have a girlfriend.... just because they're beautiful and there's a lot of them doesn't mean....' and then she rubs her hand on his face 'WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?! DONT SO THAT?!?! Why did you do that?! And you don't even talk to me nicely/in keigo!!!' Her simple answer is 'it's a bit of skinship!' from there she goes completely frozen for like 10 seconds solid, and suddenly goes all girly and 'wait, you hate me?! I'm sorry, please don't hate me' all cutesy and politely and the switch was rather funny xD she soon went back to normal but I really enjoyed her character and she was a main source of comedy. The audience (although I think most were her kankeishas) laughed a lot when she was on stage.
After all this has been discussed, they decide that this festival, even in the end if it doesn't bring new people to come and live in them, is a good idea and that they should continue and finalise it.
It ends with JP being accepted in his role as the leader of the group and they start the meeting again. End.
This stage did make me think about my hometown and what I thought about it but unfortunately I must be a rare case of ‘girl from small town goes to the city and loves it and never wants to go back home’ because I couldn’t relate to them; I much prefer living where I am and would never dream of moving and living back home. I might change in a few years when I reach the character’s ages but right now; I can’t relate to the main message of loving your hometown. But I’m glad the stage made me contemplate and thin about such things.
Oooooh and besides JP - who by the way look absolutely dashing in those dark blue suit pants and black rimmed glasses and with his hair slick back!! He looked so good! But he looked a lot older in this role which I'm not used to xD and the first time he came in, he said with his back to me so got a lovely butt shot xD ooooops, ANYWAY - there was another Ikemen! As soon as he walked in I was like 'oh no!!! Who do I look at?! JP or this guy?!?!' This guy’s makeup, he definitely had eyeliner one, really brought attention to how pretty his eyes were and his character was a little immature but super cheery and genki which helped raise the mood during the play at times. He too, like JP, had these lovely dark navy pants on xD he was next to the elevator when I was leaving and he was all smiley and saying thank you. So naturally after I had to find out who he was!! His name is Shinzawa Tensho and he's a baby! A '95er! And a Junon (that's like an Ikemen magazine where you try and win the contest in it and a lot of guys get companies and managers through it) boy winner from 2 years ago! So he's SUPER new! OH! He was in High Low!! So looks like I'm gunna have to rewatch that. He was ALSO in a Midusmmer Night's Dream which I DID watch last year! (See review here and here) but who he was I have NO idea... looks like he was in the ensemble.... oh no! Was he the one guy I was attracted to?! =O
Unfortunately he's not that photogenic; he's much cuter and prettier in person! But here's some pics anyway:
It appears he and Riki are good friends which is amazing cos I LOVE Riki!!! <3
Okay! Back to more important stuff!!
Going back to the lovely JP cos that's who I went for so obviously that's who I wanna be bias about; THOSE PANTS!!! I've already comment on how JP looked in the stage so let's talk about his acting, y'know his JOB and what I'm THERE for xD firstly: I was surprised at how small JPs role actually ended up being. There were like 10-20 mins at a time before he spoke. Even though he was credit first on the cast list, I feel like he did the second least amount on stage, of course his body language and reactions fitted the scenes perfectly but I was a little shocked and upset at how little lines he got... BUT I really enjoyed the moments he did have. He had one moment where he gets really angry and just snaps and yelled and I was impressed with this scene from him because I've never seen him do such a role before and I think he did angry very well! Also the comedy moment I mentioned before where Inomoto touches his face; reaction is great! As well as he timing with the guy who's like 'please don't commit suicide' the timing of his replies were great and helped the comedy there. Other than that he was playing a quiet, conserved guy who just wanted the meeting and ideas to be decided. It was a nice slow role for him to play compared to his Dance With Devils character who, he played last month, is bat shit crazy.
Unfortunately there was one guy in the crowd who laughed at pretty much every line for like no reason. There were some seriously funny moments but not that many. He was annoying.
The audience was full of girls too which is kinda to be expected and again, for small time plays, most were kankeishas anyway xD and I think the majority were Inomoto’s actresses kankeishas because loads spoke to her after the show.
The after talk was the director and two guys from the (same?) production company and they spoke about how many times they've changed companies and how sometimes it's hard when you wanna do your own thing but you gotta work as a group. And they said 'even a one person group can still be an acting troupe' xD and they spoke of how one of them started in Osaka and one of the main members suggested going to Tokyo and so he went but no one follows him xD And then they naturally got into a conversation about two out of the there's parents being divorced and how they have their own kids and stuff and one of them even lives in the Philippines now. I don't remember the point of the story but it was refreshing to hear a Japanese person talk so naturally about divorce and not making it a big deal or acting like it's the worst thing ever. It was very in line with my point of view of divorce: it's no biggie and it happens often.
Once it was officially over a lot of the actors came out and (I assume it was) their Kankeishas were talking and laughing with them. I decided to leave quickly rather than wait around for JP this time, don't wanna be a bother to him xD but I left him a rather long letter and some gifts from England so hopefully he appreciates them.
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I doubt there's a DVD of this so just assume this is the best English review of this stage you're ever gunna get.
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PS. Apologies if this feels rushed or there’s lots of mispellings. I did have a perfectly nice review but then my pc crashed and I lost it all so out of stress and anger you’re getting the shittier version.