December 23, 2009. The emperor's birthday and a national holiday in Japan. Hubby and I decided to bike from Akihabara to Ginza to eat at Wendy's for the very last time (Wendy's was closing all stores in Japan by the end of the year). We planned to bike all the way home from there. When we passed by the Wadakura Fountain park near the Imperial Palace, we found these really cool lanterns lit from the inside with candles. There were hundreds of people enjoying this lovely display called "Tokyo Lightopia 2009." We saw this event in the newspapers recently and didn't imagine that we would be lucky enough to see it in person.
A sea of lights. Wedding hall behind.
Each lantern is individually designed by school kids.
We biked further and were surprised to see women lined up quietly and in neat rows outside the Takarazuka Theater. When we rounded the corner, there were more of them, all in the same white winter coat and cream scarf. Hubby whipped out his iphone and searched Wikipedia for "Takarazuka" and found an entry on the Takarazuka fan club. Exactly as described in the Wiki article, the women stood in orderly ranks. There was little conversation and at some given cue (who knows what it is?) the women would sit and stand all at the same time (like a wave). We wanted to see how the fan club members would behave when the actresses came out. Strangely enough, when one of the actresses passed by, the fan club members just quietly watched them. One of the actresses managed a small wave and stopped quickly to collect cards from fan club members but the whole event was less than a minute as they walked quickly to their chauffeured cars. We wondered how long the women stood in the cold just to catch a glimpse of their favorite stars for a few seconds.
Hubby getting a kick out of watching eerie fan club behavior.
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