the end of the road...

Well it has taken almost a week to actually sit down and write my final blog about my adventures in Japan. This week has been pretty cool. I mostly did a lot of shopping around and visiting different areas of Tokyo. It reminds me of Manhattan because it is mostly a downtown area that is split up into different neighborhoods. Each little area has it's own unique touches.

Here are some of the places that I have gone to. This is a picture of Harajuku and some of the shops that are there. As I mentioned in my previous blog, it's a very trendy place. This is one of the odder stores that they have. But believe it or not, I have seen a ton of young Japanese girls in the maid outfit on the right side. Here is a reminder of home. This Nathan's stand is right by Harajuku. For those of you who don't know, Nathan's is the famous hotdog restaurant at Coney Island where they do the hotdog eating contest every 4th of July.

This is a picture of Simon O'Neill and myself with one of the french maid girls. She was also dressed like a cat, with ears and a tail. She was handing out ads for something. This was in the area called Akihabara which is also know as "Electric City." This place is Amazing! It is a techno-geek's dreamland. One store in Akihabara called Yadobashi is like a Best Buy on steroids. It has 9 floors and each floor is huge. They had pretty much every kind of electronical thing that you could think of, and some I had never even seen before.

I would say one of my most exciting nights was last night. I went to the final performance of Walkure and heard Domingo, Voigt, and Pape, sing live for the first time. It was pretty over-whelming. They are amazing. Domingo sounds like he is 45 years old. His performance all around, including his acting, was top notch. And to hear Debbie Voigt live, Wow is all I can say.

Here are some pictures with Debbie Voigt and Domingo backstage during the performance. They both are lovely people. I love the picture of Debbie and I, look how skinny I look. :-) Here are also some videos that I shot during the performance. On the one with Debbie and Domingo, the voice you hear is Simon O'Neill who is Domingo's cover.

Well this may be my last blog unless I decide to do one when I get home. I think I will most likely update my blog every once and a while just to let you all who care know what is going on with me. I hope you enjoyed my ramblings about Japan.

Placido Domingo, Jose Cura, and Horse Meat

Well I am officially on my 3rd day here in Tokyo. Today was my first jaunt out into exploring the city. Let me first fill you in on the last few days.

Tuesday we arrived in Tokyo from Kobe and I didn't really do much. Had a few drinks at the bar with some of the Walkure cast, including Rene Pape, and then had a great dinner at the Chinese restaurant in the hotel with the same crew.

Wednesday was our first performance of Traviata here in Tokyo, and only our 2nd performance of the 4. The backstage area where all of the covers hang out doesn't really have a lot of room. I think there are 8 chairs and about 12 covers. Anyway, about 15 minutes prior to curtain I was talking to Eduardo who is the Gastone cover and is singing some of the performances. He looked at the stage door and said "Oh, Maestro is here." I thought "of course Maestro is here, he has to conduct Traviata." Then I looked up and saw a different Maestro, Maestro Domingo. That was the first time that I have ever seen Placido Domingo in person. Suffice to say, I was star struck. He was here to see the show and he headed into the house. As I was preparing for the 3 hour wait, Jonathan Friend came by and asked if anyone wanted to see the show because he had some extra tickets. Only 3 of us decided to watch. I headed out into the house and looked down at my ticket, I had no idea how to even read it. I just walked up to an usher and she walked me to my seat. I was sitting in the orchestra section just off to the right and the 3rd seat in. Sitting in the 2nd seat, Placido Domingo. I just about crapped myself. I introduced myself and told him that Noble said "Hello!" (he says "hello" back to you sir) and that was the extent of our conversation. Only because Jonathan Friend was heading up the aisle with Christoph Eschenbach who is the conductor for Walkure which Domingo is singing in. I immediately stood and moved to the next empty seat. So there we were, Domingo, Eschenbach, and myself, ready to watch a little Traviata. What a crazy world.

And now to today. I decided to head down to Harajuku and check out the shopping. They apparently have this great store called the Oriental Bizzare. Well, they are closed on Thursdays. I was starving so I decided to stop in at a Sushi place. It was really cool. You sit down at a bar and there is a conveyer belt in front of you with plates of sushi passing you by. Most of them had 2 pieces of sushi, either nigri, which is a ball of rice with a piece of fish on top, or sushi rolls, which are made with dried seaweed. There was also a little picture menu so I could figure out what was what. There was one thing on the menu that I decided I had to try, Horse Meat. I know it sounds gross but what the hell. I asked the waiter and he said that they were out of Horse Meat, to my disappointment. I really do want to try it, I will most likely go back. Well on the belt was something that wasn't on the menu. I asked my waiter and he said it was "while." I asked him what it was again, with a puzzled look on my face. Again he said "while, while." It then hit me, I said to him "whale?" and he said "YES!" I had to try it of course. It was good. Here is a picturee of it (I already had eaten one piece.) I don't know how to explain it. It had a very mild flavor and didn't taste fishy at all. I also had yellow tail, fatty salmon, conch, and tuna. My meal also came with all the green to that I could drink. It all was amazing, by far the best sushi that I have ever had. It came to a whopping total of 1180 yen or about $10.50. unbelievable.

I walked around and looked at some of the stores in Harajuku. It really is a teen place to hang out. And I also felt like I stepped back into the 80's. That is the style of clothes for the kids here. Tons of bright colors with mismatching items. Girls with lace gloves and the fingers cut-out. Guys with long skinny ties and plaid pants. It was weird, but a lot of fun just to walk around. I had to head back to the hotel to get ready for the opera performance.

I didn't go and see the Met, but I saw Teatro di Bologna performing Andrea Chenier who happened to be performing here in Tokyo in the same theater that we are. The Met office had some tickets so I decided to go. Once I got there, I found out who was singing: Jose Cura, Maria Guleghina, and Carlo Guelfi, all conducted by Carlo Rizzi. It was a pretty damn good show. Cura sounded great, Carlo Guelfi sounded even better. His aria, Nemico della patria, was awesome. I decided to bootleg a little. Here is Jose Cura sing part of one of his arias. My camera can only take 30 second videos, so that's how long it is.

Seeing as we are performing at the same theater, I have a pass to get backstage, so of course I went. After the performance I met Cura and Guelfi and got pictures with them. Here is Cura and me. After the performance I headed back to the hotel and I am writing this right now.

My dogs are killin me and I think I am going to head to bed. Just another amazing night in Japan.

Till morrow...

Earthquakes and Bird Flu

Well I officially have been in my first real earthquake, and I slept through the entire thing. For those of you that know me well, I am sure you are NOT surprised. To my credit it was early in the morning though. At about 5am there was an earthquake that measured 6.2 on the richter scale. That's a pretty sizeable earthquake. I didn't even know about it until I saw it on CNN. I was talking to some people in the chorus and they said that they felt light tremors that lasted for about 30 seconds.

Today I went to the Kobe bird sanctuary. I know, I know, what about the man-eating deer? I was pretty tired today after walking so much yesterday so I decided to take it easy on my last day here in Kobe. Tomorrow we travel to Tokyo for the rest of our trip. I am really excited about Tokyo, I have heard that it is crazy there. Oh yea, the bird sanctuary (damn ADD). I had a great time. It was more of a bird free for all then a sanctuary. The building that it was in was like a giant greenhouse. They had it separated by netting and doors in between each "exhibit." I say "exhibit" because there were only 4 different areas with all of the birds roaming free in each area. The only thing that they really kept in cages were the owls. They had a TON of owls. I would have to say I saw at least 25 different kinds. And I even got to hold one as you can see here. I am also very excited because I figured out how to put videos into my blog through youtube. So here is a little video of the owl show that they did. Who knew owls spoke Japanese?

They also had a ton of beautiful flowers. I have no idea what kind they were, but some of them were huge. I really liked the flowers that were hanging down like this one. If anyone knows if you can get these in the states lemme know, I really like them.

In one of the other areas they had birds flying all over the place. I am not sure what they were but they reminded my of Toucan Sam, so I guess they are some kind of Toucan. They had little cups of fruit that you could buy for 100 yen and the birds would come over to you and eat it out of your hand. I could not believe how gentle they were at picking up the tiny pieces of fruit with those giant bills. Here is a picture of me holding one. Apparently he is the only one in the room that lets anyone hold him. They even had penguins that just wondered around in their little area too.

Tonight is the first game for Japan in the World Cup. They are playing Australia who is making their first appearance in the World Cup in 32 years. Well the hotel decided to send good vibes and prayers to the team via fireworks. They invited all hotel guests on to the 4th floor at 8pm tonight to watch the fireworks. We all gathered at 8pm and at about 8pm and 32 seconds it was over. I only hope the Japanese will last longer in the match. They are being led by Naohiro Takahara otherwise known as "The Sushi Bomber." The game is at 10pm tonight and I am planning on watching the game either in the bar at the hotel or I may be brave and venture downtown. This video literally started right at the beginning of the fireworks and then the video ends about 1 second before it was over.

Well that's it from Kobe. I had a great time and enjoyed my stay here.

See you in Tokyo...

The Foreigner Tour '06

There is nothing like traveling half-way across the world (I think this may be the first time I actually mean half-way) and going to see Western homes and of all things, Chinatown. We had a great time though. The "we" were some chorus and orchestra people that happened to be on the shuttle bus with me. I had decided to travel into downtown Kobe and see the sights. While I was on the bus I overheard some people talking about a great performance of the Kodo drummers that they saw in Kyoto. I asked them about it and we started to talk about our plans for the day. I told them I would just be aimlessly walking around the city and they asked if I would like to join their roving band misfits. Of course I jumped at the opportunity of actually spending time with people on an excursion. It is really different visiting a place when it is part of your job and you know only a few people. I had actually written a post this morning that was pretty depressing. I was feeling sorry for myself that I didn't know anyone here or at least the people I knew were in another city (Nagoya) for Die Walkure. Some how I erased it accidentally and didn't feel like typing it all again. But the gist of it was that it's hard to have fun and see all these neat things alone. It is so much better to share the experience with someone. I wish that the someone was my Susie and family and friends but I had to settle for the chorus. They were great and we had a great time.

We first started out in Chinatown. This place is nuts. It is Sunday so I guess I should have expected a lot of people, but wow. Here is a picture of the classic gates into Chinatown that you find in pretty much every Chinatown across the world. I wonder if there is a GIANT gate in china that everyone has to go through. Or at least one over every road leading into China. I swear to God that we ate our way through the town. It was great though. I first started out with a dumpling filled with pork and veggies. Next we moved on to duck wrapped in a moo-shu wrap with scallions and plum sauce, followed by a sesame ball with red bean paste, all washed down with bubble tea. What is bubble tea you ask? I had no idea either. Susie and I tried to order it up in my neighborhood right before I left, but they didn't serve it anymore. It was like a cold tea that had milk in it, but at the bottom of the glass were brown balls of tapioca that were the size of marbles. They gave you a really wide straw to suck it all up. I must say, it was pretty tasty. All of these things we got from vendors on the streets. They all had little restaurants and then sold these in front. Here is a sampling of some of the things that they had.

Here is a couple in a little park that we passed in Chinatown. Too cute to not take a picture of.

To keep up with the theme of visiting foreign places in a foreign land, we headed to the "western" area. All of these houses were built by western merchants that moved to Kobe around the turn of the century. A lot of the houses were leveled by the earthquake of '95 but they have museum-like buildings where they were. I must say that it wasn't all that exciting to go into a house and see old western furniture, but it was interesting. Here is a pic of one of the houses that we took a walk through. It had a beautiful garden in the back and a grat view looking over the city of Kobe. After our jaunt through the western civilization we were all pretty tired from walking so much. We decided to go back to the hotel, but agreed to meet for dinner back in downtown.

We went to a place called Ohishi which was recommended by the concierge for teppen-yaki. I am still not sure exactly what that means, but at least I know what I ate. Well, for the most part. We started out with (damn) quesadilla looking things that didn't have much of a taste to them. It was then followed by some grilled eggplant in some kind of wonderful sauce that I could have taken a bath in, it was so good. Then came the beef, not just beef, but Kobe beef. Marbled with fatty goodness, I could feel my veins and arteries clogging up by just looking at it. It was accompanied by a nice mix of vegetables. Back to the beef. Wow. This would have to be the most tender beef that I have ever had in my life. No knife needed, no sauce needed, it was great. Not quite melt in your mouth, but really close. The meal that we got was for two which Kurt and I split. Kurt is in the chorus and is also the chorus manager. I also had some sake. I am not sure what kind it was, but I had cold sake which was actually room temperature. I have had warm sake before, but I didn't really like it. This was awesome. It was so light and tasted great. The whole meal cost us 12,000 yen or about $50 a peice.

Well I think I am off to Kyoto tomorrow to try and catch the Kodo show. I may then run over to Nara which has a great shrine and they also have deer just running wild around the town. I have been told that you can buy little treats from vendors for the deer. I have also been told not to eat them. I think he found out the hard way.

If I am not eaten by a deer I will write about it tomorrow.

Till then...

and so it begins.....

Well I have decided to join the masses and have a blog. I have never really wanted to do one, only because I don't think anyone really cares to hear the mundane details of my life. I thought it would be a great place to post pictures and tell you some stuff about my adventures in Japan. I have already been here for a few days so I will catch you up.

June 4th, 2006
I got up at about 6:30am so I could start packing (don't worry Mom, I remembered everything) and then finally got down to Lincoln Center to catch a bus to JFK. Oh, for those of you who don't know, I am on tour with the Metropolitan Opera covering the role of the Marquis in La Traviata. We are in Japan for 3 weeks. OK, back to JFK. It is very interesting to see the clear delineation of rankings at the Met. All of the "stars" where in first class except for Placido Domingo who was meeting us in Japan. Anyone else who was actually singing a role got to fly business class, and the rest of us were in coach. No big deal though, we had plenty of room. The Met chartered the plane, so we where the only ones on it. The first leg of the flight was to Alaska. It took 7 1/2 hours and 3 meals on the plane. They wouldn't stop feeding us. For my main meal I had the Japanese Special. Since we were flying on JAL I figured it should be good. I think there were 7 or 8 different things on my plate. I knew what 2 of them were, a carrot and broccoli. The rest is up for debate. I ate almost everything, or at least had a bite of them to try it. Interesting...

We landed in Alaska and they said that we could de-board the plane as they were refueling and that there was a "fresh-air" area to go to. It was nice to get outside and this picture is where we were. It was nice to get out in the air, even if we did feel like prisoners. On a side note, the woman standing in the middle with a white shirt and blonde hair is Deborah Voigt.

We got back on the plane and finally arrived in Osaka, Japan 8 hours later. Osaka and Kobe are very interesting places. Kobe was completely leveled by an earth quake on January 17, 1995. It has now been built back up, but looks very industrial. Everywhere you look there are cranes and construction going on.

The hotel that we are staying in is called the Portopia and is on an island of Kobe, which is good and bad. The good part is that it is fairly quiet around the hotel, but the bad part is that there is nothing around us except other hotels and convention centers. There is a free shuttle bus to downtown Kobe, or we can take the train. The station is a 1/2 block from the hotel. The rooms are very nice. I have 2 beds, a couch, desk, TV, electric toilet, nice patio, and a special water heater for tea.

Yes, I did say (type) electric toilet. What an invention! A little scary, but nice, well kinda. The best part is the seat. It's heated. I am sure that it would be great in the middle of the night in the cold of winter, but it feels like someone else was sitting there just before you. :-(

Here is a picture of the "control panel" on the toilet. The features include: Bidet, Spray, and the heated seat. You can also change the pressure of the spray and the temperature of the water shooting up your butt. It's only lacking a dryer. Isn't technology great? SAFETY WARNING: Do not turn on spray or bidet when not actually sitting on toilet. I did, and I almost lost an eye.

Here is a picture of the view from my porch. You can see that I look out over the harbor, but there is so much stuff in the way. And just look at all of the cranes. It looks like they are building an amusement park, you can see the half finished ferris wheel in the background. This has also been the weather since I have been here, cloudy and overcast. Very cheerful. You can also see one of the train stations by the hotel. The trains here are amazing. They are pretty much exactly on time. If it is supposed to be in the station at 9:07, it's there. It reminds me of the efficiency of NY Metro Transit. By the way, my TV only has 1 station in english: CNN.


June 6th, 2006
Notice how it went from the 4th to the 5th, Apparently I will get that day back when I fly back to the states. It's kind of like your taxes, they just hold on to it for a while, and then you get it back in the end.

Today was our first day of rehearsal. We are at the Hyogo Performing Arts Centre and it is beautiful. The outside is ok, but the inside is all wood and it looks great. This is a picture of Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Ramon Vargas rehearsing. I still have not gotten over the fact that I am hear working with these singers. It's great to see them in the rehearsal process and see how they work. Renee Fleming is playing the part of Violetta.

After rehearsal I walked around downtown Kobe for a bit. I tried not to wander too far so I could still keep my bearings. I found a GIANT store called Midori. They have pretty much everything you can think of, and many different styles to choose from. I guess you can compare it to a department store. For instance they had a section of bathroom scales. They had about 30-40 different kinds that you could choose from. For cell phones, I think there were 8 or 9 aisles of them. Amazing.


June 7th, 2006
Today was the final, well only, dress rehearsal for La Traviata. Here is a picture of the theater. It really does not do justice to it though. The staff there is great. We are mostly using the crew from the Met, but there are Hyogo tech people also. There is a nice little canteen in the theater that is backstage. You can get some really good Japanese style meals for under $5.00.

That was pretty much the extent of my day. I was at the theater for the most of it, but when I got home I did do a little shopping. I went down to the super market and got some groceries for breakfast and snacks. This was an experience. Most things being written in Japanese, it is hard to figure out what is what. The most challenging thing to find was cereal. They don't really eat a lot of it, or any. I found an aisle that had about 10 different kinds. I settled on good ole Kellog's Special K. That was the only thing written in english on the box, so I assumed it would be the same as the states. It is. Something that isn't like the states are these little guys. Yup, whole dried fishies. They eat them as snacks and also put them in soups and things. I pulled this picture off the internet. I guess they have the cigarette pack there to give you an idea of the size of the little fishies.

Well this finally brings us to today, or yesterday...


June 8th, 2006
Today I decided to take a little excursion to Kyoto, which was the capital of Japan from 798-1868 and is one of the best places to see the old temples and shrines. I took the shuttle bus from the hotel to downtown Kobe and from there hopped on a train to Kyoto. This is a picture at the train station in Kobe. Notice anyone familiar in the ads across the street? They really use a lot of American actors in their ads. I saw a great one on TV of Richard Gere laying back and relaxing in a canoe on a lake. I couldn't even tell you what the commercial was for. The fare to Kyoto was 1050 yen (roughly $9.25) and was only about 50 minutes away. Once I got to Kobe I went to the tourist information center which was on the 9th floor of a department store in the middle of the train station. They gave me some maps including a walking map of the different areas of Kyoto. There are 1600 temples and 400 Shinto shrines. I tried to figure out the best way to see all of them, but I only made it to 2 Temples and 1 Shrine in 7 hours of walking.


Here is the first one that I went to. It is called Nanzenji and it is a head temple of one of the Zen sects. If you click on the picture and look really close, you can see a guy sitting on a bench in a yellow hat. That just gives you an idea as to how big it is. This picture is actually of the Sanmon, which is the gate of Nanzenji. It was built in 1628 after the first one burned down. The next picture is the view from the top of the gate and looking over part of the Temple grounds. You can see the lovely weather too.



The next place I visited was the Ginkakuji temple in the northeastern part of Kyoto. The grounds for this temple were a lot smaller but the gardens and ponds where beautiful. They had traditional giant carp in their ponds and some very beautiful zen gardens. They rake the rocks into patterns like waves. This is a picture of the silver pavilion. Apparently it was supposed to be covered in silver foil, but they never got around to it. All those wars and stuff, ya know. This other picture is from the top of the walkway looking over the gardens and temple. You can see part of the downtown area of Kyoto in the background.

After I left the Ginkakuji temple I decided to head over to the Imperial Palace. They had a tour that was at 2pm and I wanted to take it. On my way over I saw a moped shop and I asked if there was anywhere that I could rent a moped for the day. She didn't really speak english, and when I say really, I mean not at all. Both of us at the same time looked around the streets for a youngster. Most of them speak english, or at least broken english. This is when I met Ray. I'm not sure if that is how he actually spells it, but that is how it is pronounced. He translated for me only to find out that there were no rental places in town. I guess I will have to wait until I get to Tokyo for the moped experience. But I did have a nice conversation with him. He asked me a ton of questions about where I lived and when I told him New York, I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head. He said that it was a great honor to meet and speak with someone that lives in New York. I was excited to hear english. He told me that I should go to the Shimogamo shrine which was only a short walk away. He then also reached into his wallet and gave me his bus pass that was good for the day. The people here, for the most part, will really go out of their way to help you. And he was no exception. We said our good-byes and I was off to the shrine.

While I was walking there I looked down at my watch and it was 1:30, only 3o minutes until the tour. I decided to pass on the tour and figured I would just walk around the Imperial Palace unguided. So I finally found the Shimogamo shrine. I have no idea what they do there, no one was around. I saw a few people in little tiny shops that were selling things, but otherwise I have no idea. There also were no signs in english, at least none that helped me. It was pretty cool though. The blaze orange structures were huge. This is a picture of the front gate into the shrine. All of the buildings were this color. You can go here and see some more pictures of the shrine buildings.

I headed off towards the Imperial Palace and saw that it was going to be about an hour walk. As my feet were already killing me, I opted to take a taxi down there. First of all, I should mention that they drive on the left side of the road. Also, all of the cabs are beautiful on the indise. The seats are covered with pure white cloth and the head rests look like doilies. The doors also open and close by themselves. I got down to the Imperial Palace, well at least the Imperial Park. This park is huge. Not as big as central park, but pretty big. All I could see where giant walls surrounding buildings that I couldn't see. I decided to take a look at my guide book to find out exactly where that palace was. Lo and behold I was standing right next to one of the giant walls that held the palace, but I couldn't get in. The tour that was at 2pm is the only time that you can see the Palace. Not only do you have to go on a guided tour, but you also have to have your passport and fill out an application to see it. This is a picture of the front gate of the walls around the Palace.

I decided to head back towards the train station and found myself in front of a McDonald's. I couldn't help but go in, I was curious. I ordered a cheeseburger just to see if they were the same as the states. To my disappointment, they were. But they did have the number 2 which consisted of fries, a drink, and a fried shrimp patty sandwich. I didn't try it, but I still may.

I got back to the station and headed back home. All and all it was a pretty cool day. I fell short of my goal to see all of the shrines and temples in Kyoto but I did see some beautiful ones.

On a side note, I have my patio door open and I can hear a siren for either an ambulance or a police car. It sounds like the ones you hear in England. Anyway, the reason I am commenting on this is because this is the first time that I have heard a siren since we have gotten here. Again, it reminds me of how peaceful and quiet Manhattan is.

Till next time...