I don't really understand this one.

So this event began in a normal fashion. There is nothing particularly strange about teachers and students gathering for dinner in the student's dormitory. Which is what we did. After a delicious meal, we were all ushered out of the cafeteria area while the students struck the tables and chairs and laid down blankets, a perfectly standard accomodation for floor sitting. So, while us adults are outside waiting, the students come around and hand out little candles in little tin foil holders. It's Christmas, so I feel that this isn't particularly unusual either. And we file back into the cafeteria, lighting our little candles from the big ones at the door. Then familiar music fills the room, and everybody starts singing. It's a familiar song, but they have their own special Japanese words. I stick with the English, "Silent night, holy night", etc. Perfectly normal holiday events.

Then things get weird.

It seems I've wandered into some sort of talent show. The first act seems to be some sort of comedy event. As the curtain opens, the Rocky theme begins to play. Not "Eye of the Tiger", the other one. There's a poster of a group of men sitting center stage, and it looks like a TV poster. From behind the poster pokes a little head in a bald cap, doing some sort of weird swaying motion, as if the person were trying to ascertain the situation on the other side of the poster without actually peeking over. But peek over it does, eventually, and it's a girl from my class, wearing a bald cap, long-johns, an orange hunting jacket, and magic marker. The magic marker is all over her face in a clever imitation of a beard, mustache, and large bushy eyebrows. The audience starts laughing. I start to grow concerned. She hops out from behind the poster, looks at it, does a classic double-take and flips it over. On the reverse is a picture that is identical, except the characters in this poster are four girls from my classes. I'd use their names here, for added versimilitude, but, to be honest, I don't know any of my student's names. At this point, the audience is going wild, again for reasons I don't fully grasp.

And behold, enter the other girls in the poster, also dressed in a variety of hunting gear and magic marker. They start saying things at this point, but I can't help you with that. I can understand Japanese now, but only when it's repeated five times really slowly. Oh yeah, and with really simple words and helpful hand gestures. They do a strange unison jump step, getting their knees up in the air in a floppy sort of way, before landing with their right foot out in a jaunty Charlie Chaplin fashion. They must be telling jokes too, because the audience is going crazy every time they open their mouths. This continues for a period, when, all of a sudden, a wild boar runs across the stage. I can tell it's a wild boar because it's played by the chubby girl. She's wearing a mask, like the type used in movies, with the stocking pulled over the face, thus obscuring it, and a pink blanket wrapped over her. She's running across the strange with a strange uneven gallop, bent over and tapping the ground with her hands. From these observations, I felt boar was the only possible conclusion. Exit the hunters in pursuit.

Next scene opens on four more girls, this time attired more traditionally. I conclude that these are the hunter's wives, because they're dressed in the grandma suit, which is a blue robe number, with a possibility of hair bonnet. This is most commonly seen on 800 year old women walking around the village staring straight at the ground because their spines have long ago frozen at a 90 degree angle. Here it is accompanied by hideously over applied red lipstick, I assume to make it clear to the audience that these girls are, in fact, girls. These clown faced grannies are making similar jokes, because the audience is still laughing. They're also doing something vulgar with props of oversized rice cakes. I can't explain it well, except to say that it involved grasping the rice cake firmly and then some pelvic thrusting. Very unladylike. At this point, we introduce our last two characters. The first is another woman, who, because of the lipstick, I decide is also supposed to be playing a woman. She's wearing overalls though, so maybe she's a farmer. The next character is either a police officer, a fire fighter, or just some guy. She enters, they talk, people laugh. I don't really understand, I'm trying to read her hat to see if she's supposed to be play a cop or a fire fighter. Then the hunters enter, and they all sit down to eat, and make jokes about shochu, a local alcholic product, while the wives watch. At this point the laughs slow down, which just reflects the difficulties of middle school comedy writing. There was also a cow skull from which the cop/firefighter ate a pretend eyeball. I think this scene might have included some exposition that completely eluded me.

The next scene is the hunters and the cop/firefighter on their own again, talking on walkie-talkies. Then, the boar returns and they chase it around for a while. Eventually three of the hunters catch it and drag it off like some mental patient, kicking her feet as she's being led to the soft-walled room. Then something must happen off-stage because the boar and the cop/firefighter re-enter alone and wrestle. After a fierce battle, it seems that the cop wins, and the curtains close.

They open again on the wife/farmer standing center stage with a walkie-talkie. Some really sad music starts playing, like the music from the end of The Hulk that they play in Family Guy. (First Family Guy reference in this blog. There you go.) She's crying and saying stuff into the walkie-talkie. I can only assume she's trying to contact the cop/firefighter. As I might have made clear, I didn't understand any of this. But there's a happy ending, because now everyone enters, and takes the boar of stage and the wife/farmer and cop/firefighter are talking, with a lot of awkward feet-watching and head turning, and a general stuttering of speech, while music from the end of some hypothetical Julia Roberts movie plays in the background. I think this is supposed to be some sort of love confession. Anyway, it ends with a hug, and then the whole cast does it's curtain call, complete with the afore-mentioned unison jump step.

I can't explain it any better than that. But that's not all. There was a second act.