Baby Pee

Too many of my stories start out with "this is going to take some set-up." Anyway, after the Kagoshima Jazz Festival, I sent one of the organizers an email with links to the photos I'd uploaded to Facebook. I got a nice reply back, so on Thursday I decided I'd send a second link to the photos I'd uploaded to Facebook for the past Jazz fests. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the photos I wanted in the Facebook Photos or Albums areas, so I went to my "home" page, and just scrolled back through my past posts. Turns out, I hadn't posted photos for 2018, but I did for 2017 (the inaugural year). As I was doing this, though, I found the photos for the absurdist "gekijo" (realistic) roving theater group Dokungo. I'd been wanting to watch another of their shows, but I can never remember their name right, meaning I can't find their website again. With the Facebook page photos, I could get their name, and that let me check their website for upcoming shows. Turns out they'll be in Kagoshima from Nov. 23 to 25. Great.



A little later Thursday night, I decided to run out to a nearby department store, Aeon, across from the main train station, to get more discounted paper towels for the apartment. The store is open until 11 PM, and it was 9:30 PM at that point. I take my normal route to Kotsuki river, and I find the above tents in the middle of Lion's Park. This is almost the exact same location as where I'd seen Dokungo in 2017, and the timing strikes me as incredibly odd. As I approach, I can see a small stage in the lead tent, and one of the women is pouring drinks into paper cups on a table in the stage area. A few people are lingering in and around the tent, and I figure that whatever had been going on has ended and that I'd missed it. However, I took the plunge and asked one of the people standing around closest to me what was going on. He answered that it was a gekijo play by a group called Baby Pee, and that the show had just ended. He then took me to one of the performers and introduced me to him. Turns out that the group is from Kyoto, and they were only performing the one night in Kagoshima before going to Shikoku. That bummed me out, because I would have been willing to pay for the ticket on Friday night if my schedule worked out right.



The thing is, because they'd finished performing in Kagoshima, the troupe was preparing for toasting the audience for coming to their show, and suddenly I'm invited to join them. I get a cup of beer, do the "kampai" thing with everyone, and spend the next half hour talking to another of the performers, who'd taken an interest in my Arale-chan T-shirt. Every so often, someone would come by and refill my beer cup. It was fairly embarrassing - I just wanted to get some paper towels, and now I'm drinking someone else's beer.



A couple of the Baby Pee members were familiar with Dokungo, and we talked about them as well. Someone gave me fliers for both Dokungo and Baby Pee, but it seems that there's no plans for Baby Pee to come back to Kagoshima in the foreseeable future. Now, I really do want to watch them when I can.


(Show flier.)

While Dokungo is absurdist comedy, Baby Pee was doing a more serious story. The idea is that back maybe 100 years ago, a number of Japanese families moved to Brazil for work. After several generations grew up there, their offspring moved back to Japan. The story revolves around those descendants trying to acclimate themselves in their forefather's homeland.

I thanked my hosts for the beer, and went up to Aeon to get my paper towels. We had heavy rains on Thursday, which had tapered off by evening. I brought my umbrella with me, which I promptly forgot at Aeon. After going over to the train station to see what was happening there (they're setting up for Aipaku - the ice cream event), I realized I'd left my umbrella at the cash register in Aeon. I returned there at about 10:30 PM, and it was where I'd left it. The guy running the register was relieved that I'd gotten it back without incident.


(Dokungo flier.)

And now, I feel more compelled to get a ticket for the Dokungo show in November than ever before. Saturday may be out because of English classes, but we'll see what happens Friday or Sunday.