Old Toys Theatre

Last weekend I was fortune enough to see a children's theatre performance with my Japanese family. The show was very cute, and introduced a Japanese folk tale about the zodiac and old Japanese toys. It was a very engaging performance.




The toys they forced on was Kendama. Kendama is a ball and stick game were the object is to get the ball onto the stick. Another one was a Koma. Koma is the Japanese form of a spinning top, but instead of spinning it with your finger you have to whine it up with a string and than let it fly. Just getting the string to whine properly was difficult, getting it to spin was a whole other story. They also did lots of juggling tricks. After that they introduced a batabata, which is a line of picture boards that have two sides to them and make a banging sound as you change them to the other side. Its really cute.




After the show we all got to play with the Japanese toys. Surprisingly they were a lot harder than they looked. I kind of want some of them now.