Kristi in Japan: JET Charity Musical

Last night was the opening performance of the JET musical, "A Jungle Tale". So, pretty much all of us within reasonable commuting distance got ourselves down to the Niigata Kenmin Kaikan to support the cause. I guess that Niigata ALTs have been doing a volunteer musical every year since 1998 to raise money for good causes. Over the last two years, the proceeds have gone towards the Papua New Guinea Association, and a bunch of JETs will actually be traveling out there to build schools and housing for teachers. A pretty amazing project overall. The actual musical itself was pretty entertaining - an adaptation of "The Jungle Book", it was performed in a mixture of English and Japanese (for the benefit of the mixed audience) and incorporated musical selections ranging from "Thriller" and "We Will Rock You" to "Kung Fu Fighting" and "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better". I only had my point-and-shoot tonight, so I didn't manage to get many good pics - here's one of the monkey crew though (look for Rosalind on the far right):

Monkey Antics, JET Charity Musical
Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

Afterwards, we headed back to the station for a quick round of yakiniku (yay!) before heading to the after-party at the Immigrant's Cafe. A small group of us (myself, Melissa, Aaron, Nuria, Phil, and his Japanese friend) migrated over to Hot Spot and ran into one of the more bizarre crowds I've yet encountered here. The place was *packed* for some kind of hip-hop dance competition and the fashion was like a serious flashback to the early/mid 1990s (think gangsta Asian). There were also a number of [extremely large] players from the Niigata Albirex basketball team there - btw, when you're that tall, you just look weird. Seriously. Anyway, we made the best of it: