I have rarely been delayed when flying out of Tokyo.  But on Friday the runways of Haneda airport were closed because of an engine fire on a Korean Air flight.  Inside the airport this information was not given out.  At first we weren’t given any reason for the flight delays and then there were announcements about runway closures and air traffic control problems, but nothing specific.  I assume they think that passengers will panic if they hear about a problem on a plane.  Of course, most of the passengers knew anyway, thanks to the wonder that is the Internet.

The delays wasn’t as bad as I feared and at one point I was hopeful that I would make my connection in Frankfurt.  But once we got to Frankfurt the plane couldn’t land as that airport was closed due to a storm.  We ended up being flown to Leipzig where we refueled and waited to fly back to Frankfurt.  Once we got to Frankfurt there was the usual chaos of hundreds of people with missed flights not knowing what they were supposed to do.  The staff at the airport were not that good at giving instructions and I ended up queuing in the wrong place for a while.

I did eventually find the right place and queued for my hotel voucher and for information on when my flight was rescheduled.  It is not pleasant trying to do this after being on a flight for more than 14 hours.  But at least in Europe they sort these things out.  If I had been in America I would have been told that the airline was not responsible for the storm.  They would have rescheduled my flight, but they would not have sent me to a hotel.

By the time I got to the hotel they also had a large queue of people waiting to check-in.  It was midnight, 22 hours after I had left home, when I sat down to eat dinner.  It was a rather strange buffet meal with lots of things I couldn’t identify.  I was a little disappointed, as the airline had told me I had 30 EUR for dinner, to find out I could only use it on this buffet and couldn’t have a la carte items, room service, or even anything to drink.  I was hungry though so I had an odd schnitzel like thing and some rice – hardly anything that should cost 30 EUR.

The hotel room was lovely and I did manage to get five hours sleep before having to get ready to go back to the airport.  It is horrible wearing the clothes that you travelled in for a second day, but my suitcase was in transit. The airline paid for taxis to and from the hotel and I got to experience the speed that people drive in Germany.  I don’t mind that they drive fast, I would just like them not to use one hand to hold a mobile phone while they are doing it.

In many ways the rest of the trip was uneventful, and I was incredibly glad to arrive in Dublin on Saturday afternoon.  Though not overly thrilled that I then had to get to Belfast, but at least the bus ride through the country is beautiful.

I am finally starting my 2 month trip.  The packing took longer than I wanted.  It’s no fun trying to work out what clothes to put in one suitcase when the weather is going to range from 6 C (42F) to 36 C (96F).  I’m at Haneda Airport and I’m already concerned that I’m going to need to buy a coat in Belfast.  It’s 21 C (70F) in Tokyo at the minute and I’m a little cold, probably because it’s also raining and I got wet on the way to the airport.

I don’t have room for bulky clothes for the cold.  Northern Irish summer is not hot, but I decided that being cold was better than dragging a second suitcase around the world.  I may regret that.

It’s the morning after the last performance of Big River.  I’m in that post performance daze where it seems hard to believe that 6 months of work is over.

There were many new experiences and challenges working on this project, but the stand out thing was the people I worked with.  I was incredibly impressed by the director, stage manager, and the production team.  It made such a difference working with people who had a strong vision for the show and were competent in facilitating that.  I loved how the cast worked together.  We had a story to tell and everyone helped each other tell it.  There was a lot of love and support and a real feeling that we wanted each other to succeed and perform to the best of our ability.  It was also a joy working with the incredibly talented musicians.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed working with costume and wardrobe.  My sewing skills are basic, but I did manage to make my own costumes and some other pieces.  I discovered that ironing costumes in the theatre before the rest of the cast arrived really helped with the anxiety I feel before performing.  Actually, all the costume work did.  Having cast members come to me because they had lost their hat or their apron gave me something to think about other than the fact that I was going to have to perform in front of an audience.  I don’t do well if I have to sit still.

Acting with an American accent was a challenge.  I have no idea if I was any good at it, but I tried.  One of my friends who came to see the show appeared stunned by my performance saying that they had no idea who that woman was on the stage, but she wasn’t me.  I’m going to take that as a compliment as I’m not an old, American, shrewish spinster.

It was the first time I was involved in dramaturgy as I wrote a short piece on the historical context of the play for the program.  I didn’t know what the word “dramaturgy” meant when I was first asked to do this, but I was happy to try and I did enjoy researching the history of the 1840s in America.

So for now I will find a place to keep all the lovely notes and mementos I received and I’ll take a break from theatre.  It may be the end of my journey down the river, but it’s much too soon to know which parts of my own journey are only beginning.

I have been busy rehearsing as part of the ensemble cast of Big River.  The musical opens on the 19th May, so not long to wait now.  The city is getting warmer and I am finding it hard dancing in layers of clothing in hot rooms.  It will be hot on stage, so I will just have to get used to it.  I am so glad that during the performance each dance only happens once, unlike rehearsal where the point is to keep doing them until they are right.

It’s been fascinating doing theatre work again as technology has changed so many things.  Now rehearsals are organised with web-based project management tools.  Nearly every cast member is carrying a device capable of recording the rehearsal.  Choreography steps are videoed so you can review them at home.  There are apps to help you run lines.  And microphones are everywhere.  I’m not completely thrilled about the microphones, as it changes vocal technique, but I love most of the other changes.  Now if we just had air conditioners that didn’t dry out the throat…

 

I went to see the documentary play SEVEN last night, which was put on by Black Stripe Theater as part of International Women’s Month.  It’s an upsetting play to watch as it deals with rape, domestic violence, enforced prostitution, poverty, and human rights violations.  I won’t say that I enjoyed the play, but it was not supposed to be entertainment, and art can certainly make us feel uncomfortable.

I had not read about the seven woman before going to see the play so I was surprised that one of the seven was a portrayal of Inez McCormack, a human rights and trade union activist from Northern Ireland.  It was strange listening to a voice from my own culture and trying to work out how it fits with stories from woman from Afghanistan, Russia, Guatemala, Cambodia, Nigeria, and Pakistan.  I found myself feeling something like imposter syndrome for my home country as we do have a tendency to downplay what happened and the impact it had.

One of the aspects of the show that I really liked is that it depicted all seven woman together, in a way that they could not have been in real life.  It was beautiful in that it clearly showed that woman are the same all over the world.  That we all love, we all feel pain, and that we are more alike than we are different.  That there is hope for change.

Another morning spent at the thyroid hospital.  I always knew that the hospital was efficient but today they had posted expected waiting times in the various waiting rooms.  They aim to take blood from 50 people every 10 minutes. It always takes a little longer to take my blood, than the ideal time, as it makes me feel faint.  This seems to amuse the phlebotomists who don’t seem to understand that I can’t relax even if instructed to do so over and over.

Today I also had an ultrasound and it seems they aim to do 50 of these in an hour.  That is rather ambitious though, and they are failing to meet their targets.  The notices, inside the treatment area, suggest that they are averaging 37 an hour.  The other great thing about the hospital is that the provide the results quickly.  Today’s results were mostly good.  My thyroid gland has gotten smaller, I have no nodules, and most of my hormone levels are good.  The one that isn’t is more than the likely the reason why I’m having problems with insomnia and anxiety, but changing my medication would make things worse, so I’ll just have to find other ways to deal with that.  And hopefully it will be months before I have to have another blood test.

My Japanese friends have strange ideas about the food eaten in Northern Ireland.  It was St. Patrick’s Day last week and I was asked what I was cooking.  I made Irish Stew, or at least I made what I call Irish Stew.  I tried to find a picture to show my friends but most of what I found on the internet was American food or something that looked much too pretty or deconstructed for me to call it a stew.  The stew I learnt to make in Belfast looks rather yucky in comparison.  It also saddened my friends to discover that we don’t make green desserts.  That things like mint brownies aren’t even slightly Irish, and the thought of dying food green disgusts me.

I did find a recipe that is similar to the stew I make in the Belfast Telegraph.  I can’t buy the same cuts of meat in Japan, but I also don’t want to spend hours waiting on meat to soften, so I substitute traditional meat with steak.

 

I got flu.  It’s not very interesting.  I have spent days at home feeling horrible.  My body temperature moved from my normal 36.3 to 39.1 C (97.3 to 102.4 F). My pulse and blood pressure increased.  And I spent much too long in that state where you are too ill to do anything but not ill enough to just sleep the whole time.  I’m starting to get better, so maybe now I will be able to do something with my days, even if I tire quickly.

January has sped past.  I have managed to keep up with my personal goals, apart from the exercise ones.  I will need to try harder to sort out classes or soon it will be March and I will not be any fitter.

Most of my spare time is taken up with work on Big River.  I still can’t speak my lines with a Kentucky accent.  (An example of the Kentucky accent can be heard here on the International Dialects of English Archive.) I can say some of the words, but the majority of them elude me.  There are some words in my native accent that most English speakers would find hard to reproduce.  The Northern Irish version of “How, now, brown, cow” would make Henry Higgins despair.  But what I hadn’t realised was that my natural way of saying “how” would make it incredibly hard to change the word.  I can change the vowel sound but changing the position of the “h” in my mouth to start the word differently is tormenting me, and probably all those who have to listen to me try.  I’m a little horrified that I’m understudy for a character who has a Deep Southern accent, but I think I’ll tackle one accent at a time.

I have an audition at the weekend for a musical theatre class. I hate that audition songs have to be so short and I’m really struggling to cut the piece down to 1 minute so that it still makes sense.  I’m also breaking the unofficial audition song rules by singing Andrew Lloyd Webber.  “Unexpected Song” is not one of the more popular ones, so I imagine it will be fine.  I just can’t bear singing another ugly song, so I picked something with a tune that could be hummed by most people instead of the difficult Sondheim stuff I have been singing lately.

As usual winter is taking a toll on my health, but I’m trying to set realistic goals for each day.

“Why, what’s the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?”

–  William Shakespeare,  Much Ado About Nothing

I’ve just finished watching “Gone with the Wind”.  I’m sure I’ve seen it before but I was still surprised that it’s even longer than the extended version of “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”.   I’m not sure what I make of the movie but I was watching if for the accents.  I need to change my accent for a musical I’m taking part in.  I don’t know how to do that.  I know that my voice changes, depending on who I am talking to and what I’m doing, so it’s not like I can’t change it at all.  I can also change it when I’m singing, but I find it hard to do deliberately when I’m talking.  I also feel incredibly silly, which is something I’m going to need to get over.

I need to use a Southern accent, and unfortunately not a Southern Irish one.  The musical takes place in 1840 somewhere in Missouri.  Since there aren’t recordings I’m watching period movies set in the South.  The accents sound fake so I’m also listening to modern Southern accents, as even that would be much better than my own.

I also need to change the register that I speak in.  My usual speaking voice is not light and feminine.  At the minute I sound more like Kevin Spacey in “House of Cards” than I sound like Scarlett O’Hara.  I’m trying to find something slightly higher than my usual voice that doesn’t make me feel like Mickey Mouse.  It’s going to be a challenge!

Next up – “Driving Miss Daisy”.