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GET Challenge Museum Madness

9:44pm JST Saturday 20 February 2010 (day 14577)

Big fun of course with the GET Challenge today. We basically split up into group and visited a museum each. My group and Jon's group both went to a music museum, which I found cooler than I expected in that they had a bunch of old timey juke boxes (semi flexible metal discs with holes though which air blew to play the drums/pipes, or to make some type of visual thing move). The were really cool, and made me wonder about the market for them, back in the day. I mean, how many could have been made? Was there a disc industry of people making music by banging holes into discs? Who bought the players?

The coolest one for me had a scene on the front with a variety of characters doing a variety of things, from a guy taming a wild alligator, to a goose chattering, a woman feeding balls to a monster, and various other things I don't remember. Such incredibly intricate parts, all with their own timing. Who made it? How? How does it work????

My granddad would say, "you can take it apart and *see* how it works. I want to know how your electronic calculator works."

I got a gave lots of hugs from ah I forgot her name and threw away the paper, a fifty+ year old woman who was super genki. She invited me to join them for beverages afterward, but I declined.

cru cru cirque

10:03pm JST Saturday 20 February 2010 (day 14577)

Instead of bevvies, I joined Emiko and Taki in Ikebukuro for the final moments of their meal and then we headed to a stage called P.A.C. where we saw a pretty cool performance, that while not necessarily technically perfect, was extremely creative, and required a pretty good deal of strength and agility from its three performers. It was no Cirque du Soleil, but neither was the size of the crowd. We had a chance to talk to the performers afterward. My favorite part was them juggling three big white yoga balls. Second favorite was a performance broadcast sideways on screen to make it look like a guy who was laying down was actually sitting up, and when he looked like he was lying down, he was actually standing up. Quite clever use of an imposing building support column on the stage.