Stars

The reason I haven’t blogged for so long is that I was intending to blog about my stay in Tokyo on my way out of Japan. Y’know, keep everything chronological. I was going to post pictures I took inside the Himiko ferry and pictures I took in Odaiba. But I’m not in Japan anymore. What is the point in blogging about being in Japan? I guess that must have been what my subconscious was thinking as I procrastinated and procrastinated some more writing that blog post. I now give up, and move on.

What have I been doing since I returned to NZ? Not a lot, really. I have applied for lots of jobs I found in the newspaper or on www.seek.co.nz, but I haven’t had an interview for any of them. I have had an interview with an employment agent. I hope she has better luck on my behalf than I have had on my own. I have made a little money. I sold a few bracelets I made on www.trademe.co.nz. But the amount of money I made no where near makes up for not having a job.

One thing I have been doing a lot of is watching DVDs. I rented Pan’s Labyrinth and Tideland from the video store. Pan’s Labyrinth was wonderful. It felt like a proper traditional fairytale (i.e. dark) rather than some airy-fairy Disney concoction. It struck a chord and resonated. Four and a half stars out of five. Tideland was disturbing, as it was obviously intended to be. There are many deep and powerful messages in Tideland, about innocence, resilience and the power of imagination and denial. However the movie is not for everyone, and I can see that many people would be disgusted by it. I wouldn’t give it to my mother to watch. She definitely wouldn’t understand. Four stars out of five.

Since August I have seen several different series on DVD. My mother has all four seasons of Enterprise on DVD and I have watched the first season and part of the second. I’m not a big Trek fan and Enterprise isn’t as good as earlier Star Trek series, but it is worth watching, if only when there is nothing else to watch. Oh, and I think I’ll just take the time to say that I don’t like Captain Archer.

My cousin lent me series one and two of the new Battlestar Galactica. My mother who is a big Sci Fi fan doen’t like it. She says it is ‘too dark’. I say that her memories of the old series are ruining her enjoyment of the new one. She says ‘Starbuck’s a woman!’ thereby proving my point. Anyway, I’m rather enjoying the new Battlestar Galactica. I don’t think it is too dark and gritty, I think the old series was unrealistically bright. Considering the situation the fleet is in, of course things would be grim. I like the new Starbuck and Boomer characters, the two who were changed from men to women. I like how the cylons have a story of their own to tell. I give the show four stars out of five. It misses out on that fifth star because of the over-use of sex and/or drunken tomfoolery as a plot driving tool, and also because the new Apollo is a git and I don’t like him.

My Mum bought a new series last week. I watched the whole thing over the weekend, twelve episodes on Saturday and all the rest on Sunday (and very early Monday morning). What TV series could have driven me to undertake such a marathon? Why, Heroes of course. (I don’t usually do this, but) OMG, SQUEEEE!!!! It’s so good! I couldn’t stop watching it, I just had to keep going and going until my eyes and my backside hurt. It was imperative. Eight stars out of five. No, nine! My favourite character is Peter because he is the Clark Kent/Peter Parker of the series. Not that he is exactly like either of those characters, but close enough. I also like Claire because her talent is one of the more intimately disturbing and yet she dealt better than most. And who couldn’t like Hiro? Even his manner of speaking Japanese is cute! The second series starts soon here. The ‘coming soon’ ads are already playing. Lucky!

I’ve started watching a few shows on TV. On Mondays I watch Robin Hood. Superficially light but in actuality rather dark, this newest incarnation of the old story has just the right balance of humour and death. But I’m not too sure about the costumes. It seems what they’ve tried to do is make the clothes look like clothes of the period and modern clothes at the same time. Presumably they have done this to appeal to younger audiences, to say ‘Hey, those cats back in the medieval period, they could be cool too’. Instead, it just looks like they were working with an incredibly small budget and couldn’t afford to make proper period costumes. Three and a half stars out of five.

On Tuesdays I watch The Tudors. Henry, although lacking the light hair he was known for, is sufficiently psycho, and Catherine of Aragon is as deserving of pity as she should be. The show is not quite historically correct, but even so good viewing. Three and a half stars out of five.

On Wednesdays, I watch The Nine. It’s fairly good, and has an interesting concept, but I don’t have a favourite character yet which is a bad sign.

On Friday I watch Boston Legal. Everyone else here has seen it all before, but it is my first time seeing it. I’m told that it gets wackier as the series progresses. I think it is already rather wacky. I haven’t seen enough of it yet to form a proper opinion, but I am definitely going to keep watching it. Denny Crane.

On Sundays I watch Doctor Who. It is the third of the new seasons that is playing on TV now, although I had previously only seen up to half way through the second. I still don’t know how Rose left, only that she is alive and the Doctor sinks into depression every time she is mentioned. I actually rather miss Rose. Not that Martha is a bad companion, but the Doctor/Rose partnership was such a good one. Oh, well. So far three and a half stars out of five, although that rating may go up once I have forgotten those terrible New York accents.

There is another show I keep watching and shock, horror, it is a reality TV show. It is called Miami Ink and it is about a tattoo shop in Miami. The artists who work there are all very talented. Their tattoos are works of art, above and beyond what most tattooers are capable of. I watch it for the art

And that, basically, is my life at the moment. Sad, isn’t it?

Brief Movie Reviews

On Saturday I watched some DVDs and then went with Sumiko to Nikaho. We went to the 100 yen shop and the supermarket (oh, so interesting) and then we cooked Chinese food at Sumiko’s house.

Yesterday I finished watching the DVDs I rented last week. The Polar Express was really good. I wish they had Christmas movies that good when I was a child, rather than that old Santa movie that I was subjected to every year, which was always followed up by Back To The Future (which is such a Christmas movie). Unfortunately, the DVD was a bit broken and a couple of chapters did not play properly. How irritating.

The Producers was really good. How come I never watched it before?

Hellboy was crap, but I wasn’t expecting it to be good. I only rented it on a whim, because I have seen several other comic-related movies recently so I thought I would add one more to the list. I should be a bit more specific. There were some bits of Hellboy that were very, very good but then there were these other bits that were so bad that they cancelled out the good parts. I get the feeling that if I were familiar with the comic I would like the movie much more. What was missing was character dimension and if I already knew the characters then that wouldn't be an issue.

The last DVD I rented for the same reason I rented Hellboy. I was expecting it to be kind of crap too, but I got a pleasant surprise. I loved the Superman movies when I was a kid, but I thought by now I would have grown out of them. I mean, he wears his underpants on the outside for crying out loud. He looks like an idiot! But either I am going through a second childhood or Superman Returns is really good because I really quite enjoyed it. Really, despite the outfit and despite something occurring in the movie that I had hoped would never ever occur in the Superman franchise because it is just too gimmicky. All of the silliness seemed to have a gentle ‘tongue-in-cheek’-ness to it which meant that I didn’t feel pressured to accept it at face value. There were some solid serious themes dealt with that worked well: even Superman has to deal with the consequences of his actions, and even Superman can’t stop change. The huge gap since the last movie while other media worked with the characters means the live-action branch of the franchise has had a long time to mature well. Like a cheese. Yes. Just like a cheese. Apparently the new movie follows after the first movie and to a lesser extent the second one, not the third or the fourth which seem to have been dropped out of the timeline. I need to go back and watch number two at some stage because I can’t remember anything about what happened in it.

Wow, I feel kind of embarrassed admitting that I enjoyed watching a Superman movie. I ought to find the time to go see Spiderman 3, because then I’d be really cool.

Here is a cool link for you: Comix Worst To Best from RottenTomatoes.com. It's a list of all movies adapted from comics that have ever been reviewed at the site in order from worst to best. It's really interesting so go have a look.

Marathon

This is my first blog post in a week and a half. I am not sure that I will be able to remember everything that I wanted to write about here, but I will give it a shot.

Not two days ago but the Saturday before I went to buy my ticket from Kyoto back to Konoura. It was a very cold day. It was actually snowing, and it was windy too. Therefore I did not want to walk all the way to Kisakata like I had done several days before. I took the train to Kisakata, bought the ticket, and then took a taxi home. I was expecting to pay about 1000 yen or so, but the ride turned out to be 2500 yen. That's NZ$30 for a taxi ride of less than ten minutes. What a rip off! More expensive than bloody Tokyo! And over twice as much as a daiko. (A daiko is a special taxi with two drivers. One drives your car home with you in it, the other drives his friend to and from your car. They are very important in a country that values the evening work drinks party as an important form of bonding, and yet has zero blood alcohol tolerance laws. Apparently daikos are subsidised to encourage people to use them.) I am never catching a taxi from Kisakata to Konoura again.

The next day I went shopping in Honjo. On the train I met a Chinese woman who I had met at the international cooking event in January. We exchanged phone numbers. Then I went to Denkodo (the big electronics store) to buy a new battery for my PSP. I also bought a few used PSP games (Shanghai and Mah Jongg, can you believe) and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe as UMD Video. Then I went to Yamasa to rent DVDs.

I rented Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa, an old Ghibli film I hadn't seen yet. I thought that, since it was a very early Miyazaki film that it wouldn't be as good as later films, but I was wrong. It was excellent. So many later anime have drawn inspiration from that movie. When I watched it, I kept thinking things like 'Oh, so that's what the Evangelion were based on.' It was an enlightening experience.

I rented Finding Neverland.It was a nice enough movie, but I think it would have been better if it weren't about real people, because the movie did not bear much resemblance to reality at all. Fifteen years were somehow compacted down into one summer, and various people were missing. Also, J.M. Barrie did not look much like Johnny Depp. But it was entertaining, nonetheless. I also rented Sleepy Hollow and Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and had myself a mini Johnny marathon.

I rented two Hong Kong movies, Lovers and Hero. Lovers was quite good, but I had to watch it in Japanese so I could not understand everything that was going on. The cinematography was very well done, especially towards the end. I have seen Hero before and love it to pieces. The cinematography is just amazing. And wow, Jet Li versus Donnie Yen. That's 'sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat' stuff, that is. Yes, it is a controversial movie, but actually the subject matter doesn't bother me. Maybe because I am capable of seeing things in shades of grey. Most people who have problems with the movie seem to think that if the King of Qin is not protrayed as an evil tyrant and if he is shown any sympathy at all, then his bad deeds are being utterly excused and therefore the movie is bad. I think that the line between good ruler and tyrant can be hard to determine in many circumstances, and I think the movie showed that well. The ruthlessness of the Qin in war was not hidden; in fact the plot depended on it. But the Kings good deeds were also not hidden, like they have been in the past. The standardising of the Chinese writing system, the establishment of safe trade routes; those deeds were also done within the reign of the first Emperor, and that is historical fact. Not black and white, but shades of grey.

Speaking of black and white, another movie I rented was Sin City. I've never read the comic books, but now I am tempted to buy them because that was one amazing movie. Gillian told me she had enjoyed it, but I never got around to seeing it myself. I had never even seen a trailer, because it came out after I came to Japan but before I started watching Japanese TV. But I decided to trust Gillian and have a look, and I am so glad I did. That was the best movie I rented last week, better even than Hero, and that is saying something. The prosthetics were impressive, the translation of the 'comic book' feeling to film intact was impressive, and the cinematography as a whole was not just amazing, it was revolutionary. You want to see the future of cinema? Watch Sin City. It is too violent for many people, and some people have called it senseless. Those people must not have been watching it quite right. In my opinion, every character is tragically flawed. That is why it is called 'Sin' City. And the sense is in showing that. I feel bad trying to describe Sin City when I have only just been introduced to the story. So many people have been fans of the stories for years and years, and therefore could do a much better job than me. But I have been inspired, and feel like saying something.

One of the games I bought for my PSP (I can't remember which) had a system update loaded on it, and now my PSP has lots of new cool features it didn't have before. It has an internet browser, can use desktop images, and some other things which are exciting to me at least but which wouldn't sound so interesting were I to explain them because they are to do with sound and video playback control.

Last Thursday I went to Kamagadai. I don't usually go there on Thursdays, but last week the Elementary school kids performed an English play for their parents, and I was invited to watch too. None of the town drivers were available to take me, so I had to go with the English teacher Mr. Sato (who also lives in Konoura) which meant I had to leave home at 7.20am because Japanese teachers (as opposed to me) have to be at school very early. The play was great. The kids made no mistakes. That was lost on the parents who can not speak English, but I appreciated it and I was very proud.

On Saturday it was hina matsuri, the doll festival day. I was invited to have lunch with Kobayashi-san, the strange lady who sent me ramen for no reason the other year and is always lending me books. I did not know what to expect, but I went anyway. There were other guests than just me. Takeda-sensei, a Sr. High English teacher who I know was there, as well as three of my elementary students with their koto teacher. The koto teacher is in her late seventies (although she doesn't look it) and has been teaching koto in Konoura for fifty years. We had traditional hina matsuri foods, which are made for women since hina matsuri is only celebrated by females. We also had sukiyaki (which I love) and lots of random weird sea things like raw squid in pureed raw sea urchin (which I hate). An interesting meal. Takeda -sensei lent me a bilingual book on obscure Japanese culture points which I am looking forward to reading. I got talked at a lot by Kobayashi-san (she is a lonely woman and likes to talk a lot, but doesn't really like to listen) and got very confused (because she has a tendency to change subject in the middle of a sentence when she suddenly thinks of something, even if the new subject is utterly unrelated to the old one). Then the koto teacher taught me to play 'sakura sakura' on Kobayashi-san's koto, which is a traditional piece of music that is always the first tune taught to a beginning koto or shamisen player. It was very easy. She had trouble believing that not only had I never played a koto before, I had never even seen one before Saturday apart from in photos (because they are very big and so people don't exactly carry them around with them; kotos stay inside peoples houses). The teacher said that in the old days, it took people about a month to learn to play 'sakura sakura'. Maybe so, but in the old days people did not get to play with random instruments that were lying about at school or at home, such as guitars, which are everywhere now. Including anywhere that my siblings reside. I had fun playing the koto. It felt more natural to me than playing the shamisen, which felt more natural than the guitar. Both the guitar itself and its pick are too little and fiddly for me and I don't like it. The shamisen is still small, but its pick is comfortably big, and the koto itself is big and the picks are strapped onto ones fingers so they don't actually have to be held. I guess the reason I am not good at guitar is that I lack dexterity.

Yesterday I went to Honjo to return the DVDs and to rent new ones. I rented Pirates of the Caribbean 1 which is what I had wanted to rent last week but I made a mistake (damn you, hard-to-read katakana!). I finally managed to rent Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory which is really popular here in Japan and so is almost always out. So I also rented From Hell to make it a nice round three and to continue my Johnny marathon. That is what I did last night, watch those three movies. I also rented The Man in the Iron Mask (which, despite myself, I really love) and The Davinci Code, which I haven't seen yet. Yesterday I also bought two new CDs which I haven't listened to yet, Agatsuma's 'En' (more shamisen music) and something from China that I haven't heard of before, but it was on special. It is music played on traditional instruments and looks rather interesting. I also bought a new outfit. It is a cheap simple suit with both trousers and a skirt, and I bought new cheap but smart black shoes to go with it. I will wear it at the 3rd grade graduation ceremony this Friday.