When we walked onto the stage and saw that the audience filled every seat (and some were even standing), I felt proud of this choir, for being able to pull the whole thing together this last concert. For a Japanese choir that was essentially monolingual, we sang in three languages: Japanese, English, and Russian.

And in the audience, like a blinding white beacon, 7th row and on the right side, was Tiffany surrounded by some of our friends that had come to cheer me on. She noticed that I spotted her right away (in a sea of Japanese people, it was really easy to spot a solid line of white people sitting together with Tiffany's bright red hair in the middle) and I wanted to wave but I had to be professional.

After the concert though, was a different story. I apologized to my choir (because they all went back to change out of the ridiculous costume we had to wear and they wanted to lock up the room soon) and bolted out, white suit, pink tie, and all, to try and find my group. During the concert I was able to steal a few glimpses toward them, but I still couldn't quite tell who had made it. Tiffany was easy to spot, and so was Bryan (hereafter nicknamed Texas) wearing a bright red shirt. But the rest were not identifiable on stage when the lights when the lights were shining on me.

When I ran into the area where all the audience was leaving, Tiffany, Vandy, and Mary were first on the scene to congratulate me. Tiffany wore this new dress that she was excited to wear for this concert (it definitely made her look overdressed when compared with the rest of my friends, but I didn't care. I was actually very happpy she was so dressed up.). For the previous week, she kept telling me that she couldn't wait for the concert (I was dreading it, but more on that later) so I could see her. Well, when I did, I realized why. I won't give you too many details on these pages, but there are pictures up on this site. Click here to see what I mean. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Intermission

Well, there you have it folks. Isn't she hot? When I came out, that was the first thing I noticed about her. Actually, I'm a bit sheepish to admit, I didn't even notice Mary and Vandy right away. So, that was what we looked like at the concert. Me in my ridiculous white suit from the movie Big and Tiffany in her new dress. As for the rest of the folks who made it out, I want to say thank you for coming, and hope that they enjoyed the show. Vandy, Kevin (Irish Kevin that is), Mary, Hiro, and Texas all managed to make it out and witness this little thing I do. So thanks guys, and I'm glad I can make y'all proud (I hope anyway)

The thing is, for about two months prior, I realized that I was sadly very badly behind in my choir preparation. I did not know the music as well as I should have and the concert was looming. Understand, my faithful readers, that for this concert, I have to read Japanese script. Now, that isn't so much of a problem for me these days. I'm not bragging, but I have lived in this country for a little under two years, people! Anyway, the problem that I have is that I have to read Japanese script fast. So while I'm trying to figure out whether a character is pronouned "sa", "za", "chi", or "ki", the music has moved along and I get lost.

So essentially, being in this choir of mine, things can get a bit frustrating because the choir can read a lot faster than me, which means they learn the music MUCH faster than me (after all, they can focus on the notes and the music, whereas I have to focus on the music as well as the words) and unless I study it every night, I will never learn it. For the first time in my choral career, I actually had to study the music outside of choir!

Every day for at least an hour, I worked on the different pieces slowly. But without my own musical instruments here (my keyboard and bass guitar), I had to rely on the Internet to tune. Let me tell you, if you haven't tuned your voice to the sound of annoying computer bleeps, then you haven't lived!

This year's "theme" was folk songs, so the songs we sang were:

1. Lorelai, a German folk song translated into Japanese
2. Shenandoah, an American folk song that we sang in English and A Cappella (That means without piano or orchestra accompaniment)
3. Hana, a Japanese folk song
4. Volga Boatsmen, a Russian folk song, also A Cappella
5. Kiso Bushi, a Nagano-ken (where the winter Olympics were held a while ago) folk song
6. Bridge Over Troubled Water, a popular English song by Simon and Garfunkel
7. The Four Seasons of the Heart, a Japanese opus type work

I actually ended up teaching my choir the English for both the English songs and I worked on their pronunciation as well as a little translation of some of the poetry. Seriously, guys, how would you describe "silver girl" in the context of "Bridge Over Troubled Water"? Why not golden? Why not any other shiny surface? Or what does it mean for evening to fall hard? When does it fall softly? What does this mean?

So basically, this concert was tough for all of us. But when we got up to the stage, all my worries were set aside to the packed theater. I was going to give them the best show of my life.

But I couldn't. It was too emotional for me. I saw the look of pride on Tiffany's face as we started the concert, and my heart swelled. I sang as expressively as I ever could. But I couldn't sing during "Bridge Over Troubled Water". You see, folks, that song is about feeling alone in this world. It's about those times when you feel absolutely lost and there's nowhere you can turn. But it's not a depressing song, because no matter how alone you feel, I will be there. I'll take your part and I'm on your side. And Tiffany has been on my side for a little under 2 years. And she was even there at the concert so I could sing to her a form of "thank you". So once more, here it is, on the web in print, for all to see. Thanks, Tiffany, for being you and for being there for me.

So, for the past many months (since January, to be precise), Tiffany and I have been stressed, busy, and exhausted for a variety of reasons. As a result, as some of my more faithful readers have noted, the updates to the site came about once a month, instead of once a week like I had promised. I've even noticed that the quality of the stories has gone downhill.

Therefore, Tiffany and I finally deciding to make a nice romantic getaway out of a long weekend. One last hurrah before my new job started with even more busyness. And the perfect opportunity came up. My choir purchased a group rate of awesome CATS tickets. We decided to go to Tokyo, make a long weekend of it, and finally relax. In fact, we made a vow to turn off our cell phones the entire trip to make sure that there were no distractions. (We ended up not turning them off because I use mine as a clock as well as an expense tracker, but the idea was still the same!)

So this was our chance to be completely with each other and remind each other just how special this relationship is. Yeah, it was that important. Life was exactly that busy, folks.

We started the weekend at about 4:00 in the morning. Why, you may ask? Why, in the name of everything good, would we wake up at such an ungodly hour? Well, we didn't plan to start the day quite THAT early. We did need to get an early start to get to the afternoon showing, just not that early. Well, Tiffany woke up accidentally which in turn woke me up. I was half awake and I noticed that room was still very dark from the night. Needing to know the weather anyway (remember, you can take the man out of Iowa, but you can't take the Iowa out of the man), I looked outside and a thought struck me. I grabbed Tiffany and dragged her half-comatose body out to the balcony in my corridor. She stood there blinking in the dark, wondering what I was doing. I simply walked behind her and hugged her from behind and we watched the sunrise, just like the night we met. Who would have even remotely guessed that almost 2 years later, we would do the same thing together? But there we were, holding each other and looking at the city of Hamamatsu as it wakes for the day. After that, we went back to bed to get in a few more hours of shut-eye before our train.

When we woke up for the second time, we calmly got ready (read: we woke up late and rushed out getting everything finalized) and quietly said good-bye to my corridor (read: hurried like mad, hoping that nothing was forgotten). We walked (ran) to the train station, calmly (frantically) bought our train ticket and boarded the train the minute the train left. Literally, the door closed behind me. We sat down in the shinkansen seat and breathed easy. We were on our way!

Getting There

We arrived in Shinagawa station and took that to the Ozaki station via the Yamanote Line. Getting around is very easy in Tokyo as it is a very English-friendly place. From there, there are two exits. One does not lead to the CATS theater. We took that one. There was a lot of construction going on and, frankly speaking, it wasn't a very friendly looking atmosphere. So we went back to the station (after talking to two different people on the street pointing in two different and both wrong directions to the theater) and went to the other side...and we noticed as we looked around that there were signs everywhere for the CATS theater and what direction to go to get there. So we followed that, heart thumping more and more, and stomach growling louder and louder. In a straight line from the station, we saw the theater in the distance. We had arrived.

The Theater

Saturday was supposed to be our big romantic day and we wanted to do it right. It was the first day in a long time that we could actually spend time with each other. So we stopped at a nearby Tully's (a competitor for Starbucks out here, arguably better) for a quick bite to eat, and then had to do the embarassing task of changing clothes in the restroom. Anyone who's had to do it at all knows exactly what I'm talking about. You're there, relatively naked, and you got people banging on the door wondering why you're taking so long. You emerge from the cramped bathroom, half wet because you accidentally dipped half your new wardrobe in the toilet. (I am making this part up) Tiffany wore her amazing dress from the choir concert, and I wore my purple dress shirt with purple tie. Yes, I know. We matched. It was disgusting. :)

So then we went to the theater where we found the other members of the choir...and they were dressed in T-shirts and jeans. The most anyone dressed up was a polo shirt. Totally casual. I looked around at the other Japanese people and they were all casual. My choir told me that I could take off my tie if I was hot. Whoops. Oh well. We looked good.

The theater itself is called the CATS Theater. The cast plays the same musical there, you guessed it, CATS. So as a result, they could do a lot of things that they couldn't at Hancher (where I last saw it, but it was a traveling company). But also because it's a regular occurence, they also translated the whole thing into Japanese, which I don't understand. And neither does Tiffany. But, since seeing the show has been one of Tiffany's lifelong desires, she knew the music relatively well. She had listened to the soundtrack often growing up, and so we hoped that we could understand enough.

CATS

We walked through the gate and was welcomed to a stage with enormous everything. It felt like we had shrunk to the size of...well, alley cats, complete with giant microwave ovens and tires. We entered the theater underneath the balcony seating and looked around. Our seats were nowhere to be found, but when we asked one of the stagehands, she led us across the stage to the fourth row, facing the entire balcony audience.

Now, we were aware that our seats were good. Really good. So to have the balcony audience and us facing each other meant that they would see the general backs of the actors as the actors had to be presenting for us. Oh well. Sucks to be them! Tiffany's excitement built up as we sat in the theater talking about what was to come.

And then it just started. The cats just showed up on stage, slinking around quietly. When enough people finally started noticing and quieting down to watch them, the lights cut and all you could see were eyes all around the entire room. And then the stage moved! The stage, with our section of seats, rotated and full 180 degrees so that we were finally underneath the balcony. Ah, now the stage makes sense. A 280 degree stage!

The cats were arriving in time to the opening Intro music. Anyone who has seen CATS knows that in the beginning of the musical, they play an instrumental while the cats appear. They run around in the audience, looking at everyone with glowing LED eyes. In the pitch black of everything else, it is cool to see these giant cat's eyes staring at you.

The show itself was spectacular. We didn't understand anything about it, but it was still impressive. The make-up was awesome, the acting and the music was great. But then again, what else can you expect from a Japanese production? Completely perfect with no flaws. A true copy of the original.

But I have to digress here a bit. I've seen CATS before, and I wasn't interested then. I didn't think it was a very good musical. But I have to admit that when this play started, well, I was really excited. More than I think I would have been if I had been alone with the choir. I could actually feel Tiffany's ecstasy and excitement and that made me really happy I could have gotten this for her.

To complete the romantic day, we went to Shibuya in Tokyo and wandered, trying to find a good place to eat. In the meantime, we found the pearl teas and Tiffany had her first one ever! Now I've had this crazy concoction before, but I didn't like it. I had some crazy fruit shake cocktail and the tapioca balls were really funky going down the gullet. So when we came to this place, I asked the lady what she would recommend. She suggested the milk tea. I gotta tell you folks, that this was really good. So, wherever you are, try to get the pearl tea, but make sure you stick with regular milk tea, and not some fruit mix smoothie. After that, we found this awesome restaurant, called La Brasserie Chez Matsuo.

Getting There

Get to Shibuya Station in Tokyo. Notice the herd of people, balk at the crowds, then take the North Exit (The Hachiko Exit), marvel at the giant stone dog statue (there is a story to it, but it is beyond the scope of this article), and balk once more at the crowds. Try to cross the street (for now, any direction is good, just get some breathing room) and you will find yourself at Dogenzawa Street. This street is a hive of good restaurants, but we found one in particular (actually, we found about 6 that we wanted to eat at, but had to choose 1) that looked incredibly good. So did a bunch of other Japanese because there was a 3 hour wait at that place! But it looked really fancy, nice, and most importantly, romantic. But we were hungry.

I wish I could give exact directions to get there. The food was that good. But I can't, so it will remain a mystery. But we sat down, and shared a very nice quiet romantic meal. We ended up ordering the same thing (not because we're unimaginative, but because we have the same tastes). It was a beautiful lamb shank, just falling off the bone. I gently touched at the meat with my knife and it gracefully peeled away. [smack, smack] I'm getting hungry again just thinking about it!

Average meal of dinner is about 3,500yen per person and it's a very high-class looking establishment. The front area is a bakery/dessert cart, so you can have their desserts by itself.

After our lovely meal, we decided to check out the area. Shibuya is known for having a place aptly named, Love Hotel Hill. For those who aren't aware, love hotels in Japan are a little different than love hotels elsewhere. I've alluded a few times to a future explanation of love hotels, but have yet to give it because it will be in an upcoming book, To Asia With Love: Japan. Well, I'm still not going to explain it fully, but suffice to say, it isn't as sinister as one would think. In fact, it is more common these days for a woman to get a room at a love hotel by herself away from everybody else!

One thing to remember though about love hotels is that they are cheap, but more importantly, they can provide Western style luxury. The beds are raised (instead of on the floor). They have full mattresses (instead of futons). The tubs are gigantic (for laying in the tub, instead of sitting, Japanese style). In fact, one would have to take special care in finding a love hotel that WAS Japanese style!

To get there, follow Dogenzawa street from the station and turn right...almost anywhere. Walk about a block and there will be your first one. Walk up the hill and you can see easily thirty hotels within a stone's throw. After a couple of tries, we finally decided on a nice "honeymoon" suite. The bed had a nice romantic gauze stretched over the front of the bed, and the bathroom had a nice giant cast iron tub on legs. It was an incredibly romantic room. And thus Tiffany and I started our romantic weekend. Stay tuned for the rest of our weekend!