From Odaiba to Shibuya

Woot! It's 8:11pm - my compadres, compatriots and collaborators will be winging their ways over this land where the sun has now set for the day, with weeping in their peepers to be saying goodbye to Old Nihon and hello to the Pacific. All except Kate (or Kate-o, as our Japanese friends sometimes called her, which I loved) who was joined here by her bloke Wayne and they're on their way (well actually probably well there by now) to Kyoto. All except her and me.

Me I'm here.

I hadn't been able to admit it but I had been mildly terrified at the thought of facing the JR Metro system on my lonesome. However, luckily I sat next to Wayne at our meal last night and he had such admiration of, and ease with, the Tokyo train system and it must have been contagious 'cause I caught it. (This was just before the restaurant needed to step up the time- honoured Japanese 'gentlemen it's time' system, which is the playing of muzak versions of 'Auld Lang Syne', to actually turning the lights up on us)

So thanks, Wayne: Daiba to Shimbashi - no problem. Shimbashi to Shibuya -- no problem. Perhaps a slight exaggeration, there. A couple of times I looked at the rainbow spaghetti map on the wall of a station and thought, maybe I can sleep here and survive on vending machine food. Which you probably could.

Then I hiked around Shibuya for a while, making the usual mistakes of scale and landmark, until this Shangri-La of a place hove into view:

Ah wonderful! And if I buy a car while I'm here I'll be able to park it in the lift-up garage right next door.

Emboldened by my succcess on the trains, I then started one-stopping: Shibuya to Omotesando on the Ginza line, Omotesando to Nogizaka on the Chiyoda line. Yes! I was on my way to the new National Art Center (sic). I walked past paintings painted directly onto underpass walls:

And then this:

The centre is usually closed on Tuesdays but because yesterday was the holiday, it was open yesterday and closed today. Pity, too. It looked great from the outside...

I slipped into the grounds and a glade around the corner caught my eye: seats, trees, sunlight.

Okay. I took my machine-dispensed hot can of coffee and sat down.

And Hayao Miyazaki sat down with me. It was --- perfect. The quiet. The green. The sun.

I took out my pen and drew.

Really, it was blessed by whoever is taking care of zen these days.

Wonderful.

Then, whup-whup-whup! A helicopter. Coming closer. And closer, and CLOSER. Heck, there's two of 'em and they're landing about 20 metres away.

Out get the people, run across the tarmac with one hand on their head just like you're supposed to, then 5 minutes later, WHUP-WHUP-WHup-Whup-whup. They're gone, momentarily taking the sunlight with them.

Then, tentatively, the inquisitive AH? AH? AH? of the Japanese crow returns. Quite, quite different to the sunbaked, heavy-lidded aaaaaaaaa of the Australian crow.

Ah well. I walked into Roppongi. Went ito a high-class shopping centre, which houses the Suntory Museum of Art. It was

After trying to get onto Skye Ogden, an Australian comicker who's living here, I headed back to Shibuya (making a train mistake on the way, but let's not tell anyone) and on Ebisu (?I think) station I saw this poster, which I'd like to post for my Westagarth Theatre buddies:

Apparently Quentin is offering a money-back guarantee here: walk out within the first hour and he'll give you your fistful of yen back...

BACK on the home turf of Shibuya, it was time to let my inner otaku bask in the glow of a major manga purveya...

Mandarake, also referred to as 'Mandrake' by the gaijin. Down three flights of stairs to a wooden floored wonderland of manga, figurines and plastic monsters. I nabbed a couple of books, which I will blog further about. But the Osamu Tezuka one, 'Shumari', I began over my udon noodles and tempura dinner. Then a stop at my corner convenience store 'am/pm' for some snacking supplies, and home.

Ahh. Bring me my shower, bring me my yukata, bring me back to Fukudaya.

See you tomorrow.

"It depends on the mood of the machine"

Our last day of rehearsal. Tomorrow's the day.
The above was said by Coco today, about whether the smoke machine will work for our big final trick of the show.
The klim (dried milk, for those not posessed of an extensive WWII POW escape story library) in the rehearsal room always gets me singing that Radiohead song.


Below, my team in our final burst of writing and development. It was about this time I had a powerful burst of deja vu, as I was demonstating an action that would illustrate Megumi and I drowning in a pool of oobleck. Oobleck-o? Ask your mums, kids: it's made with corn starch and water and is the funnest stuff. It's our first big trick.



Prize for Best Japanese/English sentence so far goes to Chris Krishna-Pillay for the below, which basically means, "This is the best mess."

And the mess.

We lunched outside, in the sun, before a dry fountain and a fashion model photo shoot.

The toothpick, happily, did not hurt my finger.

Back in the room, it was time to roll out the astroturf. Things were getting serious.

And, after a run, we needed to debrief, to streamline the show, to make things make more sense. Many questions arose about the language that we had decided to put in the show, and whether it now worked in the overall picture. Much got changed.

And at this point the conversation got very serious indeed.

Luckily we were just discussing the fate of the show mascot, Maurice Fitzmaurice.

His big monologue remains.

My character has developed substantially.

Oddly enough I'm no stranger to bobbed-wig-wearing, see here for my turn as Liz Moran.

At 6pm we went down to the stage under the GeoDome (where we'll be performing tomorrow) to be part of the opening ceremony for the Science Agora 2009 - we got up on stage and each of us spoke for a minute about the experience, made our thanks etcetera. It was an interesting moment to 'see outside' of what we have been doing, out of the womb of the rehearsal room, to realise that this precious world made by these 16 people will be a memory by Monday.

Before the tears began, we hustled off to dinner at the Telecom Centre Building, the square with the hollow centre, I will post a picture, then back for the inevitable late night walk-through and then dress rehearsal.

We get another one in the space tomoorw morning at 8.30am, so I'll mosey off to bed now.

But I know that the Mighty Atom will be smiling over us tomorrow - and I'm sure he'll look after my colleaugues back at Museum Victoria who will be working on the big Children 365 day there. Good on you, my friends: ja mata (see you soon).

Shall I be Mother?

Another great big day, and big great day. Some of us were over at Miraikan at 8.30am, test-driving rockets, but me I ambled over for the 9.30 start with the rest of the crew. We got right into it, with Yuko keeping a firm hand on the timetable tiller. Our first task was to pull each of the experiments, or 'demos' as they're called in the scientific communication world, that were located in each setting in the show, under a common theme expressible by a Japanese character, or kanji. Below, Akihiro and Megumi help Kate to write the kanji for 'change' and 'water'.



The garden part of the show uses the kanji for 'air' and the third part, 'explosion'.
All this time, of course, and all throughout the process, everything that is said needs to be translated, from Japanese into English, or vice versa. Also this particular day it struck me that there were a couple of words that have double meanings in the strange science performance world we are in. 'Character' refers to both kanji and the fictional people on stage. 'Reaction' decribes what people do and what chemicals do. While this was going on, I did a drawing I like to call "Hairstyles of the Scientific and Performative':



Though it all, Yuko kept transcribing our babble of Babel into charts and lists of actions and story and experiments and transitions and characters and characters and reactions and reactions.


Some time after lunch, a cheer went up as the giant smoke ring box appeared: constructed by the Miraikan technical department over the last day! There WAS a little worry for a while that we wouldn't be able to get the smoke machine going,

but then we did,

with magnificent results.

A fairly shambolic (to be fair, it's to be expected at this stage in the process) walk-through of the show ensued. I must say, I am always a bit downcast at this point, in every show I do, because all the great writing and ideas up to that point DOES NOT, not ever, immediately transform itself into great stage material. That metamorphosis is always a difficult process. And that, hopefully, is what will happen tomorrow Saturday.

Luckily though, Megumi made friend with Minmi, the dinosaur doll puppet that I used in the presentation last night. And some casting got done, with Cathy as the grandfather

And I was cast as...

After this long day, with workmen putting the stages and booths together down on the ground floor of Miraikan for the Agora, starting tomorrow, we trucked out again to the 100 yen shop for last minute supplies: rolls of fake grass, check, kilos of corn four, check, frilly apron for me -- nowhere to be found. Hmm. Maybe tomorrow.

We ate dinner at a place called 'Pasta and Sweets: DUCKY DUCK on the beach' and while there, Coco talked me though a drawing of Azuki Terai and then she drew/wrote in the characters:

Back at the station (310 yen fare back to Daiba), Pete, Motozugu and Akihiro put their feet up...

Okay, who's here to work?

This morning, both parties of the exchange breakfasted together in the 'Sky Lounge' on the 30th floor of the Grand Pacific Le Daiba. As I slurped down sweet potato rice porridge, Coco ate adzuki beans and told me about the character/demon/ghost Adzuki Arai, a little old bald man who spends his time washing beans, made famous in a manga by Mizuki Shigeru. Will have to track that one down when I visit Akihabara.

What with the view and the demons, we were 5 minutes late in getting to Miraikan for our first session. Never again: Yuko (below left), our process wrangler, was so politely disapproving that it chilled us to the marrow. Tomorrow, five minutes early.

But it was time to hit the floor, to start writing the show. Yuko kept us moving at a clip, and we arrived at a setting (a house) and characters (a family), to help us to tell the story of 'familiar science', the brief which has been set for us.

Then it was time for small group work to start to generate scenes. Below, Hiromi reports from the 'bathroom' group - from left Yuko, Patrick, Motozugu, Hiromi, Mitsuru and Chris.


Can't see Motozugu? Here's a sketch:



Below, Mami reports on the 'garden' group's progress - Cathy, Coco, Mami and Pete.

And below is our team, with the stirling interpreter Naoko doing the pointing either just before or just after Aki's report on our progress with the kitchen scene. Naoko, Kate, Megumi and Aki.

At 4pm we were joined by Matsuda Suzuki from the National Science Museum of Japan, which we will be visiting on Monday arvo. She was one of the attendees at last year's inaugral exchange at Questacon in Canberra. She performs science shows from Hokkaido to Kyushu. She made the point that Japanese science performers do not do so much character work/acting, but that after last year's exchange she was putting more emotion into her shows.

She brought her own matches:

and liked to make things burn.

After her demonstation, which examined oxgen and fire, she and Patrick got up and spoke about their experience last year in Canberra.

After which (heck, I think it was after which - wow, it was only 7 hours ago and I've forgotton the order of things: I do feel a bit brain-fried at this point I must admit) Patrick delivered a talk featuring snippets of show from each of the Australian performers. Cathy (Questacon) did Newton's third law for 3 year olds, I did part of a show from Melbourne Museum called 'A Fly in Your Eye', aka 'What Poo Do you Do?', Pete (Queensland Museum) did film canister pop rockets, Kate (Scitech) did fire-in-a-flask/pressure change/water filled balloon sucked in, and Chris (CSIRO) did a Tesla Coil/PET bottle detonation. Bang!

Then, was it time for an official welcome dinner? It most certainly was! Up we went to the 7th floor where we were congratulated on being selected and welcomed to Miraikan by Doctor Mamoru Mohri, the Executive Director of the museum, who recalled his happy years studying at Flinders University in Adelaide. Mohri-san is an astronaut who has been up in the space shuttle.

In amongst eating and drinking Australian wine (thanks Embassy!) and Japanese beer, there were more demonstrations from the participants, both Japanese and Australian. Static electricity, annoying noises, centres of gravity, sound waves, dinosaur nativity,

a bit of a custard powder fire ball from Kate,

and a big yellow balloon kept up in the air by Aki.

Getting to Tokyo

Thanks to Susan and Joseph and Zebedee for dropping me off at Tullamarine. Chris Krishna-Pillay and I flew together to Sydney, where we met the rest of the crew:


Above from left to right is Mitsuru, Kate, Chris on the phone, Cathy, Peter and Patrick. We nabbed us a snack, we misplaced and then found a suit, and then it was onto QF21 for the nine and a half hour flight to Tokyo.

I read a bit of the Tokyo Time Out guide (thanks H and Torrie), then needed some fiction so turned to John Barth's 'The Sot Weed Factor' (1961) which I've always meant to read and had finally began on Saturday on Phillip Island. Some great language in there so far, including this exchange between Henry Burlingame III and Ebenezer Cooke, 'over small beer after dinner':



The sun came up over the Pacific, and we dived down to Nariba Airport where we had a couple of breakfasts: my first was a BOSS can o' coffee and a red bean paste bun. It was very tasty and I was very lucky: it could have been anything...

From the airport it was 100 kilometres and about an hour and a half to Odaiba Island (built on a pile of rubbish in Tokyo Bay - hmm, I will check on that). It's a fairly recently constructed place and has quite a Canberra feel (quick note: I am a Canberra fan). Our hotel though, the 'Grand Pacific Le Daiba' is constucted on the Opulence and Elegance school of architecture - zow. Ee.

A quick shower to rinse a couple of plane trips and a bus trip off (looking down into Tokyo Bay the while, la di da) and then... the nightshirt.

I'm sure it has a Japanese name.

Okay, time to head down, meet the others and have an explore.

Next: the wonder of toilets.