A Takarazuka Weekend in Taipei

8-16-15 Sunday 

Thai Restaurant near Taiwan University

      It has been a very social weekend with more action than I have seen in weeks if not months.

Friday morning Leona and I took the scooter to the Taiwan Railroad to the HSR to the Taipei Metro When we arrived in Taipei, we went straight to Gu-Gong Station neat Taiwan University. We perused Eslite bookstore (buying nothing) and had Thai lunch at our favorite spot.

 We went to see Takarazuka performs The Rose of Versailles at National Theater in Taipei.  

The Takarazuka Revue (宝塚歌団 Takarazuka Kagekidan) is a Japanese all-female musical theater troupe based in Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan  . Women play all roles in lavish, Broadway-style productions of Western-style musicals, and sometimes stories adapted from shōjo manga and Japanese folktales. The troupe takes its name from the Hankyu Takarazuka rail line in suburban Osaka. The company is a division of the Hankyu Railway company; all members of the troupe are employed by the company.(Wikipedia) 

I commented  on Facebook that the tone of the musical-dance review show from Japan made the Rockettes look like sluts. The three hour show was fun although I hardly 

understood Chinese word translated on LED screens from the Japanese libretto. The acting and costumes were dazzling. Leona absolutely loved it. Her brother and mom had seen a Taiwanese version of the all-female theater when he was a child; Leona was too young. It was always a dream of her mother to see the original Japanese cast, a dream Leona fulfilled for her.

Women make up the primary audience of Takarazuka; in fact, some estimates say the audience is 90 percent female.There exist two primary theories as to what draws these women to Takarazuka. One is that the women are drawn to its inherent lesbian overtones. One author states, "It was not masculine sexuality which attracted the Japanese girl audience but it was feminine eroticism".The competing theory is that the girls are not drawn to the implicit sexuality of Takarazuka, but instead are fascinated by the otokoyaku (the women who play male roles) "getting away with a male performance of power and freedom". ^(Wikipedia)

     After we left the National Theater in CKS Park, we went to see our hotel room in the Shin-Shin Hotel, a two floor modification up to the seventh and eight floors of a ratty apartment building with a window view (at least there was a window) facing an urban highway interchange. Leona had gotten the room because another hotel she looked at was booked. This hotel, she reasoned, was on the same subway line as the National Theater and was a few blocks from the Rao-he Night Market. What she neglected to consider was that it wasn’t on the train line to Shih-Lin where we would meet the Hung family Saturday morning, but more on that later. We had fun at the night market buying  yummy snack foods and some shirts, a bandana, and an inflatable tube (you read right) for Nala who insists on scratching the wound on her back that she gave herself back in May. We got back to the hotel but I had a had time getting to sleep on the hard bed.

The ugly view from our hotel window near Rao-He Night Market

Rao-He Night Market entrance
with location of free bathrooms

  There was dissonance between me and Leona when I suggested we buy cake as a gift for the Hung Family in addition to the gift money for Niu-Niu and Xiao Tien-Tien, the baby girls born in March and May. Leona finally agreed to give each 1600NT (unclear why though I suggested double h’ai for Jewish good luck) after I had initially wanted to buy one baby a mobile and give the other another gift. Though I mentioned the Krispy Kream stand at the Taipei Terminal, since other bakeries were closed at 9am, it slipped her mind and we went to board another train to Shih-Lin. When I reminded her of my request, she unhappily got back on the train, the wrong train, and headed to comply with my wish. It being 10am already, the time we had agreed to meet, I withdrew my request disappointedly and we headed to Shih-Lin where we met Mr. Hung at the station, without any gift other than the babies’.

   On the MRT, we passed the Grand "old" Hotel on the
 way to visit Shih-Lin to visit my old friends, the  Hung
  family with whom I taught ESL in 1986         

The lunch at the Shih-Lin Seafood House wasn’t special but the company was wonderful; Jenny, her husband and bay, Edison, his wife and baby, and Mr. and Mrs. Hung, the folk I taught with back in 1986 before the shirt hit the fan with my ex. The Hung’s knew what I went through and supported, even gifting me a gold ring before I vacated Taiwan with Simone, Ariel, and Renna to protect them from their mother’s abuse. It was an emotional three hours of chatter and laughter. In the end, before we were driven directly to Taipei Terminal, I turned to Mr. Hung. “You knew I would come back to Taiwan, didn’t you?” He nodded his head, both of us with a tear of joy in our eyes. It was the first time we had visited them since we moved here almost three years ago.