What's "Donburi"?

Yesterday and today, the drama club did a lot of deliberating over what script to go with for the play we want to put on at the end of the semester. We convened in the morning and went on into early evening on both days, so naturally there was a break for lunch each day. Both times, some of us went down to Seicomart for pre-made lunch goodness. Today, when we got back, Hirokawa and I had a conversation including the following snippet.

H: Do they have donburi in America?
L: Donburi?
H: Yeah.
L: Um... is that like, pre-made food you can buy for lunch?
H: Huh?
L: What's "donburi"?
H: {Indignantly} "What's donburi?!" It's [whatever]-don. Pork cutlet-don. Hamburger-don.

From which, based on what we had bought, I figured out that "don" means "over rice". While this story isn't funny or anything like that, it was great for me because Hirokawa's tone on that last line was something I hadn't heard directed at me since coming to Japan. It was full of momentary, "What are you, stupid?!" It felt kind of like I had broken through a wall. I mean, I've made quite a number of friends since coming here, but most of the people I have talked to have either been more polite with me than others, understanding of me not knowing words, or just not been the kind of people to say stuff like that. It was just a good feeling.

I also went with a bunch of people from Drama club to see a play today. It was called 思い出のグリーン•グラス, or The Green Glass of Memories. I didn't catch the things they said that explained the title of the play, but I could tell what was going on and what the internal and external conflicts of the characters were.

At the beginning of the play, the main character, Aizen, is coming into his first day on the job as a prison guard. He meets the prison warden, one of his co-workers, and the first prisoner coming into his charge. It's a character driven story; as the play goes on, you learn a bit about the prison warden and his co-worker (Nomura) and why they are there. Nomura turns out to be a bit of a nutcase, from which stems a good deal of the conflict. Nomura's parents were killed in front of him when he was a child, causing him to want all criminals dead. I didn't catch what was up with the prison warden exactly -- only that his inner voice was telling him that he was supposed to be like Nomura, liking seeing criminals die. Aizen, on the other hand, ends up becoming friends of a sort with the prisoner under his care; he doesn't like Nomura's view of the prisoners at all, which wears on him as the play goes on.

The best part of the play was Nomura. His actor did such a wonderful job. He made the character come off as being just freaky nutso crazy so well. And the pace of his insanity bubbling out into the open over the course of the play was fantastic. The fact that the guy had a slight lisp somehow enhanced the character's insanity, too.

It was the last performance, and I don't know exactly how my drama club had been supporting the production of this, but it had. As a result, I was one of four of us (Hirokawa, Yuuji, and Daisuke were the other three) who helped strike set. That was about when I realized that although I've gotten over a good deal of my shyness when talking in Japanese, it still bubbles to the surface when in the middle of a group of people I don't know and don't have a good stock of vocabulary for talking to them with.

I tried talking to Nomura's actor at the beginning, but I was shy and he was shy and we got pulled off to do set striking stuff. I didn't figure out that he was shy, too, untill later, when I finally just walked up and told him that I thought he did an excellent job. (Hooray for getting fed up with my own lack of guts!) Turns out he's only part way through high school; he's planning to go to a drama school in Tokyo when he graduates, then go to America to study further at some point. I think his prospects are good. I am also glad that I have little patience with my own shyness; it should be easier for me to up and talk to people after this.

Today has been a really good day.