Tremendous week

I have had a gorgeous week, the temperatures have reached 30 degrees, and the humidity is similar to Darwin or Singapore, just wet all the time. I went to 2 bath houses this week, got giddy at both, but felt so relaxed and soft afterwards, it is a heady addiction. I also spent the day with my girlfriends here, eating the most amazing and cheap sushi I have ever had in my life. I am afraid it has ruined me now, all other sushi just tastes like shit...dear me. We ate for a whole hour, constantly. It is about 45 minutes from here, a long trek but well worth it. Such a beautiful suburb, Tataishi, very old-fashioned and laid back. People were so friendly and warm, and we had such a great day, we just stayed and went to a park, had a rest, then went for a soak together before meeting up with a dancer I had met before and enjoying drinks in his tiny flat...what a great experience.

Lying on the grass in the park, stretching and singing with the girls, tummy stuffed with sushi, thats the good life. I came home late and felt so good, I climbed into bed after yet another shower and fell asleep immediately.
The other night I went to see Takusan, the hanging man, do a performance with a Noh artist. It was only 1 hour long, but felt very brief. It was a very moving performance, whence the Noh practitioner sang a story and moved very slowly and deliberately through the space. Takusan entered and the dynamic changed, his gaze is what I was watching, this intense gaze, sometimes on the rope on which he is going to hang and sometimes not. I think it is the deliberateness of that gaze that is so empassioned. He hung himself 3, maybe 4 times, and at the end, the lights go down while he is still hanging and I can't express how moving this image was. I couldn't speak afterwards, not till we went for a drink and I told Takusan how I felt and he said "for what purpose?". I found out that the Noh story being told had to do with suicide, which befits Takusan's work, and was a great marriage of concepts. So moving, so deep and intense, in this tiny theatre, air-con turned off, the heat washing over the audience gradually increasing...each movement creaking the floorboards, each audience member's shift in position amplified in the space.
All the old words I remember thinking last time I was here are echoing in my mind, discipline, devotion, duty...such a fascinating place filled with such amazing people trying to make their work but forced to work shit jobs, and largely unrecognised by popular culture. And here I find myself, thrust into the heart of it, meeting beautiful people who do their work and share in their community, it is so similar to what we have in Australia in our own alternative scene. A bunch of weirdoes and aliens who don't feel like they belong, at odds with mainstream society and struggling to get by.
Tonight I am going to a dance improvisation night put in Tsunashima, at Mika Kurosawa's studio. I am going to participate, and am glad the weather is a bit cooler today.