New National Ballet of Tokyo

I spent the day in Tokyo, all by myself,  and attended the New National Ballet production of Swan Lake. The train dropped me off right in front of the building, convenient!

This is a ballet that I have always wanted to see, and it was amazing! It is nice that there is no language barrier with dance.

The New National Theatre is a brand new, state of the art building for the performing arts. The opera also uses this venue.

Rather than a playbill, they gave me this big sack of different brochures, definitely not as convenient. Not that I could read anything anyway!  

 I walked in and was greeted by this friendly character, of course.

Many people had arrived early for lunch. There was a champagne station for drinks,

fancy bento box sandwiches,

beautiful mousse desserts,

and some cream puffs, this seemed to be the favorite. They put four on a plate and drizzled chocolate syrup over them. Too bad I had already eaten! (Though, I don’t think Matt would like the prices of these confections!)

Of course, there was an array of adorable stuffed animals to buy!

The venue was really beautiful, and I definitely had a height advantage, there were no heads blocking my view!

This was the outdoor courtyard. This venue also had a babysitting room where you could drop off your children during the show, I thought that was brilliant! (As an interesting side note, according to my Japanese friends, the concept of getting a teenage girl to come babysit just doesn’t exist, they NEVER do that. It is a very foreign concept, literally.)

The ballet was amazing and moving, and yes, I cried! By the time they were on their 25th curtain call…seriously, I thought it would be okay to sneak a quick pic. But the brilliant costumes did not come out very well.

Waiting at Shinjuku station for my train home. I loved my solo day in the city!