Japan Day 2005
Is this guy a lean, mean samurai warrior, or what? Fumihiko-san was the star of our kabuki show for Misawa Air Base's 2005 Japan Day celebration, and he was awesome! Eight of us renegade warriors menaced him with some very dangerous umbrellas, and he defeated us all, even though he started out bare-handed – he took the sword away from one of us before he even broke a sweat.
The show opened with an array of twirling umbrellas. If I knew more than two words of Japanese (they're biru, "beer," and toyray, "toilet"), I might be able to explain the significance of this display, other than to say, "This is significant." (If you know what this is supposed to symbolize, maybe you could send me an e-mail with the subject line, "You illiterate kabuki nerd.")
Uedo-san attacked with the much-vaunted open umbrella technique. "Hah!" said Fumihiko-san, and batted him aside with a flick of his wrist.
We surrounded Fumihiko-san with our umbrellas, but he broke free and scattered us all up and down the stage in a line. No mere whirling umbrellas were going to stop him.
In the final pose, we all open our umbrellas and watch the skies for passing pigeons. Fumihiko-san doesn't need an umbrella because his Jedi-like reflexes allow him to parry any droppings as they fall. The other American guy is Phil Miller, who managed a much more serious kabuki-like expression than my smirk.
Our show also featured these unbelievably cute girls dancing the kappure. I get stage fright so bad I can hardly breathe, but these girls just stroll out there and do their dance beautifully. Some of them are just five years old.
And these young ladies did a very slow, graceful dance – how they can manage to move so sweepingly in their gorgeous but tightly-wrapped kimonos is a mystery to me.
Here's the whole crew.