We decided to treat ourselves to the local entertainment, known as kabuki, which is hard to describe, a cross between opera and theatre of sorts. Plays have been performed since the 17th century and it seems to still have a popular following in Japan today - the Kabuki-za (theatre to you and me) was packed and we were the only non-Japanese there.

The play itself was one of the weirdest things either of us has ever experienced - a chanter yodels his way through the story, accompanied by another guy on a sitar-like instrument. These two are replaced at regular intervals by a revolving door, and each yodeller becomes higher-pitched and more involved as the story progresses.


The actors (all male, though mostly in drag) also wail occasionally, though for the most part they act melodramatically. Some of these kabuki actors have near god-like status in Japan, and they all grow up in the tradition of kabuki - so sons inherit roles from fathers, fathers from grandfathers etc. To add to the madness, members of the audience occasionally made cat-calling noises, shouting what sounded like "Schmeer, schmeer" at regular intervals [we later found out they were shouting the nicknames of their preferred kabuki actor on stage, but at the time, we were completely bewildered as to what the - otherwise incredibly reserved - Japanese audience might be doing].

Our bewilderment was somewhat lessened by the audio commentary, which regularly threw in things like "there is no reason for them to be doing this, it's not part of the story, it's just to add to the audience's enjoyment." Without this, well might we have wondered what was happening when one of the characters pushed a chicken across a lake on a tea tray, only for it to start cock-a-doodle-doo-ing half way across [for future reference, chickens can detect dead bodies at the bottom of bodies of water].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki