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glassprism · 10 months

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Does the Japanese production move around like a tour or is it usually in the one place? I noticed the Japanese production website says final performance in August but also that it’s been there since 1988. Thanks!

The word I've always used for the Japanese production is "sit-down tour". A "sit-down production" is one that stays in the same place, like the Broadway production of Phantom, but also like the ones that were in Los Angeles from 1989-1993, Chicago from 1990-1994, San Francisco from 1993-1999, and I suppose even the Las Vegas version from 2006-2012. A "tour", as you might expect, moves from location to location, like the roving US tours, the UK tours, the World Tours, and so on.

Now why do I combine the two terms for the Japanese production? Because the way the Japanese production works is that it opens in a city in Japan, say Tokyo, and stays there the entire duration of its run, which is usually about 1 to 2 years. It then closes for a year or so before opening again, sometimes in the same city but a different theater but just as often in a different city, like Osaka, Sapporo, Yokohama. It will then stay at that theater or city for another 1 to 2 years, close down, move elsewhere, rinse, repeat. So it's both a tour, because it does move around the country... but also a sit-down, because whenever it opens, it stays in that location.

(Incidentally, this is why the Japanese production "only" hit 8000 performances even though it's been running since 1988, almost the same amount of time as the Broadway production, which was about to hit 14,000 performances when it closed. The Japanese production does not run continuously, but starts up, stops for a time, then starts again, over and over.)

If you want a very nice, constantly updated list of all the production's past, present, and future stops, I highly recommend this part of the Japanese Wikipedia's page on the musical! It includes, as far as I know, the start and end dates, locations, and any other pertinent info for every stop the Japanese production has ever made, as well as letting you know when the current production will end (August 27, 2023) and when the production will open next (April 2024). Obviously it's all in Japanese, but hey, that's what Google Translate is for!

So there you have it!

#GP gets asks #anonymous #in retrospect it helped to know minimal Chinese for this #the characters for month and day are the same in Chinese and Japanese so I knew what I was looking at when I saw that list #anyway can't recommend enough going to the different language pages for Wikipedia #you find a huge amount of info sometimes that's not on the English language page

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its8simplejulesblog · 4 years

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Did I Ever Tell You About The Time I Got Stranded in An Airport In China?

It’s true. I was utterly alone. I mean in retrospect I wasn’t, there were hundreds of people in that airport. The difference, they spoke native Chinese and I didn’t. My family members have always been avid travelers, to the point where my mom let me, 20 at the time, travel to China alone. Of course, I was meeting up with people when I got there, but the travel part was alllllllll me. So naturally, things had to go wrong.

So here’s the sitch. Before my brother was born, during the dark ages of minimal internet, my mom joined this online group of moms that were expecting around the same time so they could ask questions and go through the experience of being pregnant for the first time together. My mom really clicked with a woman named Sandie in the group who happened to be from Australia. As we grew up, our families became really close. We would meet up with them in Florida all the time.

Eventually, we decided we would ship ourselves over to Australia for Christmas/ New Years, but that’s a different story.

More background information: My dad helped start a robotics team 21 years ago, and has become really well known in that community so he’s friends with everyone. We were contacted while we were in Australia to come meet up with another family who is really involved in robotics internationally so we went to have dinner with their family. They are an INCREDIBLE family. You know the type where they always have a ridiculous story for everything you just can’t believe it’s real? That’s what they were like. Anyway, the mom started talking about how they were opening a robotics lab in China and they take students over to teach the kids about programming and lego league and just to be pen pals; and, if you know my family at all, I immediately invited myself to go. I really was like “oh I should go with you,” out loud, and my mom looked at me and instead of saying no, she looked at this lady and she said “yeah, Julia is learning Chinese, she could go with you.” and the lady just said “yeah! ok” and I was going to China...alone haha.

Flash forward and I have to take two flights to go to China. The International flight goes sickeningly smooth. I have absolutely 0 issues, and my whole family is extremely relieved, BuT WaIT, there’s more. When I go to take the domestic flight to Fuzhou, the province that we were going to be “touring” I see that the flight is canceled. There’s an announcement over the loud speaker but I’m already panicked and it’s in rapid fire Chinese so I go to the desk instead. The lady at the desk is trying to be patient with me, but I’m clearly already freaking out and her English is broken. She manages to tell me that there was a bad wind storm so they had to postpone a lot of the flights.

Okay, postpone..that isn’t so bad, right? ALSO WRONG, it’s at this exact moment that my phone’s wifi cuts out entirely, so it’s survival mode now. I’m crying on the floor of the Shanghai airport when I hear actual English for the first time in forever (I’m apparently really good at accidental Frozen references) but I FLY towards whoever is speaking English. The culprit turns out to be these 2 guys from Canada. One of them speaks fluent Chinese and they’re helpful for about 5 minutes before they have to abandon me because their flight was rescheduled. So, we’re back to square one.

At this point, they announce that the flight is cancelled and I want to die, but the good news is my wifi comes back on. I immediately text my mom and my uncle, who my aunt met when she was in the Peace Corps in China so he starts a call with his entire family that lives in China apparently because I don’t recognize any of these people at all. The only thing they can tell me to do is to talk to a flight attendant so that’s what I do.

Imagine a group of really cute and young sorority girls hanging out when they’re approached by someone that..is just completely a mess. Yeah that’s what it was like when I went over to them. I got one of the girls to help me and again, her English was about the level of my Chinese at the time, so together we were only slightly above idiot. She tells me that the Chinese airport doesn’t let foreigners stay at the onsite hotel, so I would be able to go with her and her friend once she got off of her shift to go to a hotel.

SOUNDS SUS doesn’t it, but when you’re desperate, you’re desperate. When the flight attendant gets off of her shift I go with her to the parking garage because she booked a hotel for me. When we finally get there, this 25 year old Chinese Troy Bolton looking man whips his car around and we get in with him (completely safe, how could you not trust Chinese Troy Bolton). We drive about 30 minutes through Shanghai and honestly, it’s beautiful. It was one of those circumstances in life we’re you’re looking at the city lit up at night and you really can’t believe you’re there. It was probably one of the scariest, yet most memorable experiences of my life.

We pull into the hotel and since I finally had native speakers with me, things were going a lot smoother. The flight attendant was talking with my uncle on the phone about scheduling me a flight for the next day and she talked to the lady in the lobby about my room. At this point, I knew her pretty well because, surprise, she was actually 30 years old and had a daughter and I thought that was SO CUTE. I gave the flight attendant a hug and thanked her friend, and it was just me again.

Here’s the best part of this entire story. The only hotel they could book me in was, wait for it, a honeymoon suite. A HONEYMOON SUITE. The hallways of the hotel were covered in mirrors and the carpets were covered in flowers. Everything smelled like drugs and smoke and clearly everyone was having the time of their lives. The bathroom in the room, completely see through, the bed had a HUGE mural of Barbie’s face above it and the curtains had minnie mouse on them and I don’t know how that’s romantic at all, but you can’t make this shit up haha. If you think I’m lying, here’s a lil (horrible) photo I took of the curtains. If you want to see video, ask me in person.

At this point, I am way past delirious. I took a shower and time ceased to exist. I was so jet lagged and confused. I called my mom and after I hung up with her I immediately fell asleep. A solid 2 hours later I woke up and SCREAMED because my body clock was so off, I thought it was the next day and I had missed my next flight. I called my mom crying again, and she told me it had only been two hours so I went back to bed. When I finally woke up at the right time my uncle, god bless this man, got on the phone with me and helped me talk to the people at the desk. They got a cab for me and I trudged back to the airport.

2nd times the charm, except, I need to get my boarding pass printed out at the help desk, which has a line of about the entirety of the Chinese population. Fun fact about China too, they don’t know what a straight line is. This is just fact, they just cut straight to the front and shove each other out of the way. This took me way too long to realize, and after I stood in this line for about 2 hours, I realized that I was going to have to assimilate. So there I was, a puny stick of a human, elbowing grown Chinese men out of my way to get this pass while my uncle and 300 relatives are on the call with me.

I get to the the desk and surprise, the person is not helpful at all so I do what any actually insane person would do and I just continued walking my way through security to the gates. I get filtered into bag check of which, I don’t even have a bag so I just walk up to the desk anyway to see if anyone else can help me.

After the longest 5 minutes of my life my SAVIOR of a 22 year old tiny little man decides to give me his attention. I don’t know HOW. I don’t. Know. How. But he manages to print a boarding pass for me and my soul left my body because at this point I had 30 minutes to get to my flight so I thank him and SPRINT and I mean really book it through security to the plane. I finally made it.

Granted, the trip was entirely worth that stress. The kids I met in China were incredibly kind. They called me a Disney Princess and wrote me love letters and gave me hugs even though it was clear I didn’t know shit about coding. It was just amazing to be there as a friend and role model for them. I stood in front of them and spoke Chinese and encouraged them to keep learning English and it was the most grounding experience of my life, because it was clear that they didn’t have much.

We went to five cities while we were there to tell the kids about lego league and cooperation and teamwork. I sat in on meetings with school board professionals and on interviews with students that wished to continue their education abroad in America. I learned so much about the systematic education there and there is nothing I want more than to go back there. The kids have already invited me back to their homes, and I have never met anyone more welcoming and kind. So think twice before you make jokes about the Corona Virus.

At the end of the day, this trip defines what I want to do. There is nothing like stepping entirely out of your comfort zone to explore. There is nothing like shocking a bunch of Chinese men with your ability to use chopsticks. There is nothing like putting aside biases and language barriers and simply treating people like people. Everywhere I go, I think of that place as a new home to me, and I can’t wait to be home there again.

Also..the next semester when I got back, we learned the airport and travel unit at school in Chinese class, such is life I guess.

Here are some pictures from China.

-Julia

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100days1000hills-blog · 6 years

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Before you climb Mt. Kigali

*I write this blog with a bowl of Chinese veggie-fried noodles, broccoli, a water, and open Netflix tab. Kigali is REALLY starting to feel like home. There is music blaring outside and I’m assuming it’s setting the ambiance for a celebration of sorts. It’s 7:59pm here, 1:59pm Canada time.*

Now to get to the real blog post...

Getting there is half the battle.

Last night we decided to that we would leave our house at 7am sharp so as to avoid the heat that kicks in at around 9:30. Naturally, we woke up at 7:30 and left minutes after 8. There were several drivers that we met at the top of our street but none of them had any earthly idea what we meant when we requested that they take us to Mount Kigali. Mount Kigali is the highest hill in Kigali, its elevation is 1,852m. Regardless, the drivers we first met with didn’t know. My limited Kinyarwanda allows for me to hold small conversations with big animated gestures so we didn’t get far with them. One of the drivers suggested that he could take us to Mount Kenya... I was very confused. Was there a Mt. Kenya in Rwanda or was this man about to take me to another country? I approached another driver. I tried to explain, “Mount Kigali, ni hafi Nyamirembo.” (It’s near Nyamirembo [a town]). He told me no and I just said okay and pulled up a map. It didn't help. Finally, another driver pulled up and I tried my whole spiel again with him. He perked up, “Mount Kigali! Nyamirembo!” That was our man. He ended to 15-minute long confusion and took us to Nyamirembo with ease. We saw Mount Kigali from the bottom of the hill that Nyamirembo is situated on.

Well not quite the bottom of the hill.. I’m struggling to find the words to explain where we were dropped off in proximity to Mt. Kigali. We were not close. Before we descended down the Nyamirembo hill, Michael decided to go into a nearby shop to get some chapati (which he may or may not be addicted to) and some water. Diah and I followed because we figured a 1.5L water sounded a lot better than a 500mL bottle when confronted by the visual sight of Mt. Kigali. We got our waters and finally started out journey.

I took the lead. Having read some tourist reviews, I sort of understood that we would have to be walking very close to people’s homes and through villages. I DIDN’T know that we would essentially be walking through people’s yards. The houses in the village were very close together so despite us walking on a path, we had some intimate moments with residents. It took us about 25minutes to maze our way through the village at the bottom of the hill to the base of Mt. Kigali. We crossed a street and were confronted by another village. Along this walk, we caught a lot of glances and glares. My minimal vocabulary still allows me to be polite: I would say “Mwaramutse” (good morning), “Muraho” (hello), and simple responses when others would address us first.

We scaled makeshift stairs made of bags filled with dirt and near-vertical hills with extreme caution. I don’t know about Michael and Diah but I was in awe when locals would saunter past us with a large jug of water balanced on their heads with ease. Kids waved, I waved back. We often stopped to visually map our way up the base of the hill in the village before we climbed. When we neared the edge of the village and beginning of the real climb we paused for a break. We had picked up quite the following at this time. A few local kids had been trailing us for the past few minutes. Michael suggested that we take a picture at the beginning of our hike and asked one of the local boys to take it for us. He tipped them for their willingness to help us and our climb commenced. The children followed.

About 10 minutes into our climb we looked around for the best path and I saw something moving in a burrow. My heart stopped and I saw a little puppy emerge. Michael was immediately wary. “Where’s it’s mom?” This puppy was small but by no means underfed... We didn’t even want to imagine how a wild mother would great random people playing with her puppy so we parted with the adorable fur ball. The children followed.

I don’t know if it was the altitude or the hike in itself but we all grew tiresome very quickly. We sat for a lunch break and shared some of our water and chapati with the local boys. I asked for their names in Kinyarwanda and we all introduced ourselves to one another. I pulled out my 500mL bottle and gestured that they share it, Diah did the same and we continued on well-hydrated. Michael connected his phone to my bluetooth speaker and we boomed some Bob Marley as we trekked. One of the boys, Jimmy, bopped his head along to the beat. The climb continued on like this for quite some time.

We all had our weak points, I breathed heavily while Diah wanted to be left behind (I think she was joking) and Michael kept falling. The boys made the climb look so easy. As a team, we scaled the brush, hills, dips, and water canals. I often used my hands to pull myself up so Abed, one of the local boys, offered to hold my water bottle. He insisted actually. I’d run up a steep incline, grab a tree and offer my hand back for support. It was definitely a team effort and we would not have made it up that hill without those boys.

I saw a dirt road as we neared the top. We all felt a little ignorant when we saw it. Maybe we didn’t need to be embodying Tarzan if there was a road that we could have walked up... Anyway, we didn’t think much of it before we continued on up. In retrospect, I realized that should have been the first red flag but I won’t get ahead of myself. I took the lead and hopped up a sharp incline, grabbed a tree and helped boost Michael up. The 7 of us carried on as we had been for the whole climb until one of the boys, Cedric, stopped in his tracks. I followed his gaze to a hut. I looked around and saw another. I stayed quiet and pointed to show Diah. Michael followed and I whispered what we saw. Michael didn’t think anything of it and Diah said she saw people waling above through the brush. Abed didn’t move when the others carried on and the look on his face made me think twice about moving forward. Diah and I hung back as the others moved forward.

“Hey! Where are you going?!” Abed was already taking off down the hill halfway through the sentence. Diah and I spun on our heels and ran toward the dirt road. We reached it and looked up for the others, whom we saw were being walked down by 6 soldiers. S*gar. This did not seem good. They asked for Michael’s phone and went through his pictures to make sure he didn’t take any photos. They didn’t see Diah, Abed, or myself on the grounds so they largely left us alone. The soldiers then questioned us: Where are you going? Where are you from? Canada? Why are you here? You can walk down there *he motioned below the dirt road* but you can’t go up there *he motioned above the dirt road.* Okay! Superb! I wanted to get the heck up outta there because I didn’t want my boy JT (Justin Trudeau) to have to answer to my mother if I ended up in any sort of trouble. He told us the way to leave as his fellow soldier scolded Cedric. We all carried down the dirt road with a sigh of relief that we were okay.

We neared a small village and did a few minutes of exploring there before we caught a ride down the mountain to Nyamirembo, to go get food at our favourite brochette place. It was closed. We grabbed food at another place and then came home. Once home, I happened to stumble upon the blog about climing Mt. Kigali that I had skimmed over before we left. It literally warned about the military base in the third paragraph. I told the others and we laughed. I learned my lesson and hereby urge future Mt/ Kigali hikers; make sure to read the fine print before you climb Mt. Kigali.

#whe

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