At the end of this month, I will be performing rakugo IN TOKYO!!! This will be the first time for me to perform in Japan since 1996, so don’t miss out on this super rare opportunity 😊
The first one is a casual performance at Asakusa Culture Tourist Information Centre on 22 December. I will be performing twice at 1:30PM and 3:00PM. Free entry.
The one on 28 December is a formal full-performance with my master and some of the top students from my rakugo family. This will be a great opportunity to check out some of the best English Rakugo talents in Japan!
Long time no see! Hope all is well with you and your loved ones 😊
First of all, any decent correspondence by a Japanese person must begin with a good solid apology.
I am sorry for my long hiatus in the virtual space! Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry…
NOTE: When a Japanese person speaks in English, “sorry” is usually repeated at least twice up to 4 times (don’t you agree with me?)
Now I am talking absolute nonsense… but I had a long break from my SNS (except for DMs) after I closed my Twitter to stay away from negative news and also because I didn’t have much to report to.
Now I have a few interesting projects going, I thought it’d be a good timing for an update.
UPDATE 1: English Rakugo in Tokyo
My master invited me to perform rakugo in Tokyo (Asakusa) in December, so I’m going to perform there at the end of the year. Keep an eye out for this blog and/ or my SNS.
UPDATE 2: Another Project with Fiona Amundsen
As you may know, I have had a privilege of working with an artist, Fiona Amundsen, for the last few years. Our works have been exhibited at art galleries and festivals in Finland, New Zealand, and Japan.
She’s kindly invited me again for another project, this time along with a well-known author. We had our first meeting at my favourite French cafe a few weeks ago.
UPDATE 3: School Visits
I have resumed school visits. In order to test the updated contents of my workshops, I have decided to visit 5 schools/ libraries free of charge. It will include my new favourite story called “Licking a Kettle” (やかんなめ) 😁
I have committed myself to 3 organisations so far, 2 more to go. If you are interested, please contact me asap- first come, first served!
UPDATE 4: Finished Translation Project
As some of you know, I have been translating a Japanese story called ‘The Restaurant of Many Orders’ (注文の多い料理店) by Kanji Miyazawa into Te Reo Māori. It has been submitted to a publisher to be considered for publication, and I heard back from them!!!
The short answer is… it is not going to be published, BUT it was due to the story itself being too simple and also not very relatable to the Māori audience. I was happy and humbled to hear that the lack of my language command was not the reason. In fact, the publisher kindly suggested me to try translating another story and recommended me to submit the same work to another publisher/ competition 😊
A small step forward to accomplishing my dream to connect Te Ao Hapanihi and Te Reo Māori directly, completely bypassing Te Ao Pākehā (no offence!).
After long thought, I have finally decided to say goodbye to my favourite SNS, Twitter… or whatever you call it.
I was a big Twitter fan and used it as my main SNS platform since the early days of my English Rakugo career in New Zealand. It was there that I met many invaluable friends who have inspired and encouraged me to carry on this rather lonely journey. For this, I am eternally thankful to you all!
This decision was made largely due to the new owner of the platform and the increasingly divisive contents that people post on the once-friendlier space (I am also guilty of occasionally posting progressive left posts myself, though! 😁).
So… Threads, Instagram, and Facebook will be my SNS platforms from now on. I like the Twitter format, so Threads will probably be my main platform. Sorry Mastodon, I’ve tried, but I still don’t know how it works…
We are currently planning our 2nd storytelling group meeting. The venue will be Ōtāhuhu Library again, and the timing is likely to be 2:30-4:00PM on a Sunday this month.
If you are planning to attend, please let me know which of the following dates suits you better:
SUN 12 Nov SUN 26 Nov
If you’d like to find out what we did at our first meeting, please refer to this article.
Slightly jet lagged, I’m writing this post back home in Auckland in the bright morning sun.
I went to bed at 9:00PM last night, and I got up by 7:00AM this morning. Not bad for Day 1 back in this time zone, isn’t it?
It had been still warm when I left here, but now I have to use the heater. It is definitely autumn now.
I’d just gone through the opposite transition from winter to spring in Japan, so this feels like time is going backwards somehow. After 20 years, I’m still not used to having two homes in different hemispheres.
It was my first visit to Japan in over 4 years, thanks to the pandemic. We normally visit Japan every 2 years or so, so it was a very long gap for us all- especially for my aging parents.
The main aim of this trip was to catch up with my family and pay respect to those who have departed, but I managed to fit in a little sightseeing and do some research on local folklores to get ideas for my rakugo work.
As in the previous entry, I am still suffering from a frozen shoulder, so I will be sharing about my trip in bite-sized posts in the following days. As usual, it will be from the perspective of an insider with the eyes of an outsider.
The photo above is from Fukagawa Edo Museum, in which dwells my soul. I’ll explain what I mean another time!
Konnyaku(蒟蒻, こんにゃく) is one of the ingredients for Japanese cooking. It’s made from “Konnyaku Potato” or konjac roots in English.
It’s quite chewy like really firm jelly and almost always used for savoury cooking, but it could also be used for fruit-flavoured confectionery like “konnyaku jelly”.
A few months ago, I started learning a rakugo story called “Konnyaku Debate”.
In this story, the owner of a konnyaku store, Rokubei, pretends to be a zen master to beat a travelling monk in a “zen debate”.
In the olden days in Japan, the travelling zen monks challenged the head priests of temples in zen debates, and if the head priests lost, they were kicked out of the temples- it was like a serious quiz battle.
So, how would a konnyaku maker try to win a debate?
By pretending that he could not hear nor speak.
Therefore, the debate was conducted in gestures instead…
I’ll save the punchline, but you know who the winner of the debate was.
As you can see, this story involves a lot of physical movements unlike most other stories in rakugo, sometimes forming a large circle with arms over the head.
Life is ironic.
When I just started learning this kind of unusual story, I was diagnosed with a frozen shoulder…
It is literally impossible to do some of the movements at the moment, thanks to my unmovable (and painful) left shoulder!
Unfortunately, all of the painkillers I have tried have side-effects on me like knocking me out at noon for a nap and can’t stay awake past 9:00 PM.
So I couldn’t use any strong painkillers, which prevented me from writing this blog for a while.
Fortunately, my shoulder seems to be coping well today, so I thought of saying hi to you all.
English Rakugo NZ 