Lost in Translation

We saw the trailers for Lost in Translation before we came to Japan, and of course we were somewhat interested given the relation between the subject matter and our plans. We never got around to seeing it, though, and for a while we pretty much forgot about it. Our interest was revived by a couple of (negative) reviews, accusing it of portraying Japanese people in an offensive manner:

Totally lost in translation
Bashing Japan: People Love It!

Well, now we've watched it, and I've just visited the movie website and discovered that it's up for 4 Academy Awards (picture, director, screenplay, actor), and has already won 3 Golden Globes (picture, actor, screenplay--not that anyone takes the GGs seriously).

Let's begin with the awards. By no means does the movie deserve the awards it has won/been nominated for, except (maybe) for best actor.

On the topic of Bill Murray, I'm quite in agreement with the second review above: apart from some cool shots of Japanese land/cityscapes, he's the only really good thing about the movie. His lines are delivered as wryly as ever, he still has a talent for physical comedy, and his melancholy is so thick and tangible you could almost cover your walls with it and use it as insulation in the winter (insulation not being particularly popular in Japan, y'see). (Too bad he didn't have better lines.)

Turning to the other lead (just for laughs), Scarlett Johansson's acting is alternately mediocre and lukewarm. There are many scenes--many long scenes--showing her posed in a sad little pose (typically by a window, with no pants on). Problem is, all her poses are very obviously poses. As Kate pointed out, you can see the thoughts running self-consciously through her head: Do I look OK like this? Is this pensive enough? I think I look especially sad with my head tilted just... so.

Of course, without two strong leads, the relationship at the focus of the movie is left lacking.

What's left? The theme of displacement, alienation, culture shock. As it happens, this is a favourite theme of mine--so much the worse for this movie. Here's what I figure:

A) To pull this sort of thing off well, a work must be very frank and open about the shortcomings on the side of the character being culture-shocked: the blindspots in sensitivity, the areas of psychological rigidity that, from within, prevent a person from coming to an understanding with a foreign culture.

B) To pull it off to a degree of minimal acceptability, a work must give an accurate and even-handed portrayal of the culture doing the shocking.

(For good examples of both A and B, I suggest the novels and non-fiction of V. S. Naipaul, in which displacement is featured regularly. As for movies, Nowhere in Africa comes to mind--this one won an Academy Award, and deserved it .)

Easy one first: LIT did not play the culture-shock card well. Murray's character Bob (through whom the theme of culture shock was primarily played) exhibited numerous points of insensitivity. And these were not treated frankly, they were not portrayed as shortcomings of any sort--rather, they were used as humourous schticks. You mean, Japanese people tend to mix up Rs and Ls? How cutting edge! "Me so solly!" Even more telling than the cheapshots he makes is the fact that this guy, with no other career to speak of, is paid two million dollars to work in Japan, but still can't be bothered to learn just a little bit of basic Japanese, or make any effort to figure out the Japanese accent--pure class.

OK, now for the hard part. Did the movie give an accurate portrayal of (contemporary) Japanese culture, or was it (even apart from the throwback language gags) an exercise in Japan-bashing?

Not always. Some of the encounters between the main characters and Japanese culture struck me as being more or less neutral in tone; in the party-karaoke sequence, they were actually having fun. There is a scene where an old man tries, in vain, to use Japanese to ask Bob how long he's been in Japan, and this struck me as genuinely cute and humourous.

But what we need to look at are the scenes in which some element of Japanese culture causes feelings of unease in the main characters (Bob, mostly).

Well, there's the scene with the hooker, which has to be seen to be believed. Pardon my French, but donnez-moi a fucking break. Short though this scene was, I found it sour in the extreme, and it almost closes the case for me.

There are the scenes involving language barriers. In the workplace, Bob is confronted (during a commercial shoot) with an incompetent translator, and (during a photo shoot) with a photog with mediocre English and no translater in sight. Both of these situations are unrealistic. They're paying him two million dollars. Bloody well think about it. (Furthermore, it conflicts with what I was told by a real life assistant for a real life gaijin foreign talent worker.) Outside of the workplace, our intrepid couple (to take an example) enters a major hospital, only to find that there are no receptionists with any English-speaking ability, and (apparently) ditto for the doctors. Funny, I've found more English-speaking ability at the average coffee shop. Throughout, this movie seems to go out of its way to ignore the (spotty but very noticeable) presence of the English language in Tokyo.

I'm going to stop there. In short: no, the depiction of Japan is not accurate, much of it is slanted to artificially enhance the impression of alienation, and some of it is just plain offensive. But, I'd say it is not the case (as is stated by the second review linked to above) that "Virtually every Japanese person in the film is wacky, creepy, bizarre, or plastic." It's bad, but it's not all bad. And I would like to agree with some of the movie's defenders and say that, yes, a lot of Japanese TV really is that over-the-top. (Funny, though, that there weren't any clips from the rather unremarkable info shows that always seem to be on.)

One last point: the first review from the Guardian is dead on when it points out the ridiculous contrast between "ancient" and "modern" Japan in the movie. Why didn't they show any scenes of Johannson's character paying entrance fees in order to get into famous Kyoto shrines? Or shots of the stalls hawking souvenirs and charms to tourists?

How about the years after the traditional Japanese wedding, where the traditional Japanese husband forbids the traditional Japanese wife from having a life of her own?

Would that have ruined the mystique? Yeah, I'll bet.

Fire Down Below, and an Unexpected Taste Sensation

Our last act in the Yokohama Chinatown was to pick up some badly needed toilet paper. Our apartment had been thoughtfully stocked with a bag prior to our arrival, and we haven't needed to buy TP on our own until now. We found a pretty good deal at a pharmacy by the train station, but didn't look at the name until after our purchase.

See for yourself:



Now, let's not jump to conclusions. The first entry for anemone in the dictionary refers to a kind of flower--no doubt the very flowers depicted on the TP bag.

So the people at HOXY Japan who chose this name probably failed to realize that the average English speaker tends to associate the word "anemone" not with pretty flowers, but rather with the sea creature known chiefly for its tentacles covered by stinging, poisonous nematocysts.

Not exactly the sort of thing you want to be rubbing you know where.

In other news, today we had a burger at Becker's. Some of my coworkers recommended this place to me, and in the words of Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction, "That is one tasty burger!" (We just watched PF the other day. Kate had never seen it before--scandalous!)

But that's not the best part of Becker's. After I'd eaten that tasty burger, I looked up at the menu posted on the wall, and discovered to my surprise and joy that it advertised, none other than, that great staple of Canadian cuisine....



Oh yes, I have discovered the poutine in Japan.

Now, how is this Japanese poutine? A bit expensive, and smaller than the stuff back home, of course. But the taste?

The cheese is just normal mozzarella (I believe), and of course they didn't use cheese curds (but so few places do even in Canada).

The gravy was on the thin side, and I felt it was too heavily flavoured with spices. In my opinion, real poutine gravy should be distilled essence of dead animal--pure, unadulterated unhealthiness.

The best thing about this poutine, however, and a consideration which outweighs all the negative points, is that the cheese and gravy are evenly distributed throughout the poutine, covering all the fries equally. In Canada, no matter where you get it (even the Belgian Fries on Commercial Drive), poutine comes with the cheese and gravy dumped unceremoniously on top of the fries, and as a result eating potato, gravy, and cheese in an even manner becomes a difficult and uncertain art. There is no such stress when consuming the Japanese poutine.

Picature highlights

Kate edited and uploaded a bunch of today's pictures to DeviantArt, but she's gone to bed, so I'm posting some of them here.

Here's a pretty good shot of one of the gates in Chinatown. Note the very authentically Chinese storefront sign to the right.



Same gate, different angle, looking down the street. So many pretty lights! Yokohama Chinatown does the pretty touristy thing better than the one back in Vancouver.



The streets of Chinatown are lined with restaurants. Outside of one of them was this sight:



How they can get this cat to sleep peacefully outside in the cold, apparently on a regular basis, is beyond me. It sure is cute, but at first we thought it was dead--maybe a sort of advertisement for dishes featuring cat meat.

Here's the sign outside of Athens "TaBepva" (which is apparently pronounced like "Taverna").



Many kind of Greek foods indeed! I'm not entirely sure if this place is run by an actual Greek. The only people working there when we went were two Japanese girls--no Greek chef in evidence. Still, Kate thinks our food was prepared ahead of time by a Greek, and they did have an impressive array of ouzo--at least 6 different kinds. We'll hopefully find out more the next time we go. If all goes well, the owner will be there, he'll be Greek, we'll let him know Kate's last name, and then he'll give us free retsina.

A trip to Athens

We'd been looking for a Greek restaurant since shortly after we got here, but never had any luck. There were some "mediterranean" restaurants that had some kinda Greek stuff, and we found a Turkish restaurant in Shinjuku that would probably have some stuff that's pretty close. We also read about the "Aegean", which is apparently very expensive, and serves small portions (so not Greek).

Today, we finally found a Greek restaurant that looks pretty promising: the Athens restaurant and bar. The sign features writing in Greek, and offers such dishes as spanikopita and mousaka. And, as one might expect, it's located in the heart of Yokohama's Chinatown.

Hey, don't ask me.

So, yeah, today's events featured a trip to Chinatown. We had some lovely Chinese food--cashew chicken (wonder if they had the flu), sui choi and straw mushrooms, har gau, and lychee sherbet--picked up two strips of pleasantly red cha shu, bought quite a bit of sauce (oyster sauce, garlic black bean, black bean and chili), and finished it all off with a trip to good ole Athens. We each had an ouzo (first time for both of us) and shared a plate of Greek appetizers: feta cheese, octopus, herring, and olives, drenched in olive oil. The feta was lovely, and I plan to ask them where they buy theirs the next time we go there (and we will surely do so, this time for a bona fide meal). Ouzo is very tasty (liquid licorice), but also rather deadly, I think.

Kate will be posting some pictures shortly. And I think I'll have to make another post about toilet paper in just a bit.

Living With the Curse of the Campbells

The Tyee: Living With the Curse of the Campbells
Ha ha! I've been reading this online BC paper - they have a good article from time to time. Anyone else read it?

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Today is the first day of the Year of the Monkey, according to the Chinese lunar calendar. Not that the Japanese really keep track of the lunar calendar.

There is a sizable Chinatown in Yokohama, though, and of course they had some lion dances and fireworks and whatnot there today. We'd sorta planned to make a trip down, but had to abort because it was getting pretty late by the time we'd got the aforementioned scanner-printer back home.

Oh well. I want to make a trip out there soon, anyway. Maybe next week. I'm really craving some authentic cha shu. It's remarkably hard to find decent cha shu out here. Oh, they've got stuff they call cha shu, but it's some kind of cruel joke, some bizarre simulacrum. It's full of fat--basically just fatty pork. And it's not even red, ferchrissakes, not even a little! But they've got the real deal in the Yokohama Chinatown--I know, because I've seen it on TV. Yeah, we're definitely making a trip out there next week, dammit, and I'm coming back with half a pig, chopped into strips of neon red.

Scanners are Online, Captain!

Hee hee ;)

Today we got a new printer at Akihabara. It was a very good deal and includes a scanner (it's an all-in-one). Very kewl. As proof I am attaching a scan of a sketch I made...

Edge

Edge
My dad alerted me to this site. It's very interesting. It appears to be an informal community that has many of the leading scientific and intellectual minds around. They give talks and write essays and I think you can ask questions etc. So far I've listened to "Beyond Computation" by Rodney Brooks. It will take a while to explore this site (watch out for the videos, my dad can't get them to work at all and when I tried, I could only get it to work properly on the 'dial up' setting).

The End of Ender's Game

So I finished it today. Good book - a very quick read (and I consider myself a slow reader). I'm a little skeptical about the portrayal of the kids, as mentioned in the introduction of the book, but on the whole I liked it. On to other things now. I have another book on order from Amazon and a few more from the library (although the selection is bizarre). I think the librarians have decided that only an author's most obscure work must be included in the collection. Oh ya, and sequels can be included, but not the original or first book. I think that about covers the rules. Hee hee ;)

Looks like I'll be getting a private student, so tomorrow we're going to check out printers at Akihabara (my favorite place!!!). I'm excited about that. Other than the library today, we didn't do much except go to the Udon-Man (more free meat, yay!), the Veggie-Couple, and the library in Harajuku. Oh ya, and the Don Quixote. Picked up lots more Cook-Do and other cullinary delights. ;)

Weird BC Politics

So every now and again I feel the urge to laugh, and check up on what's going on back in BC. It was funny enough when I heard about the latest scandal involving the Liberals, but I just checked out the latest (Jan 5 2004) polls, shown here and I was really suprised (ok, not that suprised). But still, a 5% gap?! Wow.

In other news, I bought veggies from the veggie-man today and he gave me two free cupcakes (well, kinda, but no icing. they did have cream cheese in the middle though). Ha ha! Little does he know of Toby's egg alergy! I ate them both. They were delicious. That veggie-man rocks, he always gives us free stuff. The other day we got three free tomatos (tomatos are expensive here). Granted, they were very ripe, but still. Ya, my life is pretty boring. Waiting to hear from a private student who is supposed to call about now. Guess I'll clean up and try to finish Ender's Game (which is un-put-downable, by the way).

Latest News

Today I finished "Alias Grace", by Margaret Atwood. I think I've finished off my Atwood binge for now. It was quite good - although it was tough to get into. It definitely got more intriguing as I went along. Also, as ever Atwood creates the era so well - everything is in place, from the atitudes to the scenery. Anyways, I liked it a lot. Still think Blind Assassin and Oryx & Crake are better though.

It was very cold today. Sunny though, and no more snow. However, I had the classroom without heat. All day. I am going to have a nice hot bath now.

Not much else is new besides that. I've started "Ender's Game" (Orson Scott Card) and it seems pretty good from the beginning. I anticipate finishing it quickly.

Oh ya, one other thing! Yesterday we watched the latest episode of "Enterprise" (the Chosen Realm). It totally rocks! This show is getting so much better in the third season - and is greatly improved by the Xindi story-arc. Toby is feeling a bit better so hopefully we can get in some 24 tonight (I have a late shift tomorrow). :D:D:D

Today in Tokyo...

Today it snowed. It didn't stick - just dry little flakes that didn't even make it to the ground. It was bloody cold, but it was also kinda nice. Not much else is new. Raking up some overtime so hopefully I will have a half-day coming to me sometime near the end of the month.

Ken Comes to Town

Today we met up with Ken and his girlfriend, Marguerite:



We met up in Shinjuku, so we went over to the Takashimaya Times Square building for Chinese food. The restaurant had a beautiful view (being on the 13th floor) of the city as the sun was going down. After that we went over to the Starbucks (that's the one good thing about Starbucks: it is about the only place in Tokyo that is absolutely non-smoking inside) and composed a digital message for Mike and Rebecca's wedding (hope that wasn't supposed to be kept secret). We were going to walk around some more but poor Toby had a recurrence of his flu-like sickness so we headed home. We did have a lovely evening though (and thanks to Ken for the Aveno and Tylenol)! :D:D:D

I took that pic with the digital camera. I was in a hurry and didn't stop to think about the backlighting. Note to all thinking of purchasing digital cameras: you need photoshop too!!! If I had adjusted the settings I think it would have been better, but I was in auto-mode, unfortunately. Still, I think it's not that bad, and with a little fixing up in photoshop the purple fringing is fixed. :)

The Hobbit Movie

The Hobbit Movie

Kewl! Excitement! YAY!

I really hope they do this. I think, even though there are problems with the Lord of the Rings films, that having the same actors and the same feel created by Jackson would be important for a Hobbit movie.

Books in Shinjuku

Yesterday we went into Shinjuku to go to the Kinokuniya bookstore. The store was pretty kewl - having 7 floors and all. 7 floors!!! You'd think with one whole floor devoted to foreign language books, there would be a pretty large sci-fi collection. Alas, there were only 2 shelves of English sci-fi. :( However, I did get "Ender's Game", by Orson Scott Card, which neither of us has read, so that's something. We are going to try Amazon.co.jp for English books shipped in Japan. They are pretty cheap, and have lesser-known authors like George Turner ("Drowning Towers"). On the way home we picked up some groceries and the veggie-man gave us 3 free tomatoes. Pretty nice. I made eggplant hot-pot for dinner, which was very yummy, especially with the tomatoes :D. There is a pic on deviantart (testing out the digicam) :D.

Toby is sick again today. I hope he can pull it together for our visit with Ken. If anyone has any home-remedy advice for flu-like symptoms, now would be a good time :*(.

Bush in 30 Seconds

As part of today's posting spree, I am recommending this website. Some of the ads are very good; I really like the "Child's Play".

30's Sci Fi Meets the Silver Screen

Toby has alerted me to this movie website. The movie is called "Sky Captain" - you have to check out the trailer...it is soooooo kewl. This movie reminds me of all of those X-1 and Suspense radio plays I love to listen to so much. :D Can't wait to see how it turns out.

It's like some kind of cosmic joke

I made an awful, infuriating discovery today.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time I checked, Japan was a highly advanced nation, with the second-largest economy in the world. A stronghold of commercialism, with plenty of disposable income floating around.

So, why is it that the entire fricken world is going to get to see RotK before it shows in Japan?

"Surely not the entire world," you might be thinking. "What about, say, Poland?"

Your incredulity is perfectly understandable. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against Poland. I'm sure it's a lovely country in its own right, and some of my best friends are of Polish descent.

But you would think, wouldn't you, that a movie like RotK would be released in Japan before Poland.

Or, for that matter, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Iceland, Lebanon, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, or Uruguay.

You really would think--but you'd be wrong.

The worst part of it is, Japan's release date isn't just a little bit later than the others. We're talking February 22. That's over 3 weeks after the next latest date, January 31, which belongs to Poland. I can't believe I'd be able to see RotK earlier if I were teaching English in Poland.

Happy Birthday Toby!

Oops, I forgot. Luckily I remembered a present (Evolve-fish store calendar & alarm clock) and brought you nice things home from the store (Calpis Ice Bars, woohoo! :))

Too bad you were sick, but oh well. Have a good one ;).

Nerd Test

40.476190476190474% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?

I'm a total failure :(.

Worst part is, I got a star trek question wrong. I hang my head in shame. :(

Looking on the bright side, I got both the black speech, klingon, AND elvish questions right. So that's something.

Bleh encore

My immune system has the consistency of swiss cheese. (Not hard--full of holes.) I'm sick again--but this time I missed a day of work.

With any luck, though, I'll be better by Thursday, which is when Ken says he'll be able to meet up with us. He plans to record a message from us, to play at Mike and Rebecca's upcoming wedding. I'll have to think of something sufficiently evil to say.

In other news, I scored 69% on this test. Yeah, that's right. Guess who knows the verses of the One Ring in Black Speech?

Digital Delights

We got a digital camera last thursday. It's so kewl, but so far the only shots I have taken are on automatic. You can actually change the shutter speed and aperture, and all sorts of other nifty features. Just downloaded the english manual, which should help a lot. I'm about half way through. To show for it, I have a lovely pic of our garbage cans:


(This picture is actually zoomed in a bit which is why it's a bit fuzzy.)

Here is a picture showing the bathroom alcove and all-important tokyo subway wall map:

Many, Many Movies

Yesterday, on the advice of some friends, I downloaded Bit Torrent. I was getting a bit fed up with Kazaalite because the downloads are soooo slow. I think people are limiting their upload speed to lesson how much is uploaded. Well that's fine for those in the land of limited upload amounts, but here in Japan you can upload as much as you want (at least I think, we haven't found anything that says otherwise). On Kazaalite I seem to always get less than 20K/s, and quite often I'll get downloads of less than 2K/s.

Bit Torrent rocks! They have loads of stuff and the speeds on what I downloaded yesterday were (except for one) all above 30K/s, mostly around 50K/s.

In other news, yesterday we finished the first season of 24. I can't wait to start watching the second season. It was so good. For those who haven't seen it, be sure to watch it in order, otherwise it won't make sense.

And lastly, today we are going to Akihabara today to check out digital cameras. Yay! No more stupid film development (well, perhaps just not as much. I still plan on using my film camera for important stuff). And now I'm going to do some running (new year's resolutions and all that). :D

Pictures!

OK, so I'm finally getting to the end of all the pictures. From the cropping and adjusting experience with photoshop I have learned two things:

a) when I take a picture, it is almost always 1 degree off the horizontal (clockwise)
b) we desperately need to get a digital camera

That being said, some of the pictures we took turned out really nicely. I've decided to post a few of my favorites here in case you don't feel like going through the 60 some odd pictures I've got at Deviantart.


I think this is a lion - they are on the corners of the shrine's roofs.



Ha! The warrior has Toby on the run!



Throw the rings onto the pins for a long life. Toby got 2/3, most of mine ended up on the ground. Go figure.



Apart from Toby's aunt's breakfast, the best of the weekend...er...apart from the buffet breakfast the next day...



Nikko has amazing trees. Lots of cedars, but I don't think this is one.



Kawaii desu yo! Toby's cousin's daughter.



Toby's family sans Toby. Hiromi, Teruo, Mitsue, Obaa-san, me, from left to right.

Back to the grind

NB: Those interested in seeing our pictures should keep track of this site that Kate set up. There's a link to it on the lefthand side as well, under "pictures".

Today was the first day of work of the New Year. Not so bad--only 5 hours of work, an hour of which was break.

Today I also paid Japanese bills for the first time. I managed to get it done. Mostly. I tried and failed to set up automatic payments of my health insurance premiums. For some reason or another. You know, it's too bad issues of personal finance weren't featured more in Dragon Ball storylines. Then I would've understood that teller for sure.

In other news, I've been informed that Ken, our friend from back home, of mouth-watering BBQ fame, is coming to Japan to visit some of his girlfriend's relatives. Assuming they'll be staying somewhere near the Tokyo area, we'll probably meet up, in which case I'll finally get to meet this alleged girlfriend of his. (No one in our circle of friends has met her as of yet. After moving across the Pacific Ocean,I may well be the first.)

I just hope he gets through customs OK. He's agreed to bring us a "present" or two.

We're Back!

We're home. That is all.

My thumb almost fits on it.

There are some funky keyboard designs here in Japan. See, they need to account for these three other character sets they use around here. Some keyboard designs are done pretty well. Some are not.

Such as the one I'm using right now. The bottom row of keys is all Japanese conversion stuff. As for the space bar? See above.

Oh well. Happy New Years, everyone!

Happy New Year!

So we spent　New Year`s Eve with Toby's relatives in Nagareyama.　 They provided a fantastic dinner with squid in its ink, horseradish with soysauce that you eat by itself, and lots of other goodies, including chocolate cake...:D

Toby's little cousin Amane made an appearance,　being really cute as usual. Pictures to be posted upon development. Also, we met Toby's other uncle Hiromi. At midnight we went to a shrine and made a wish, watched the bell being hit by lots of hopeful teenagers (they are making lots of wishes so they will do well on their year-end exams), and had oranges and *amazake.

On New Year's Day we set out for Nikko. This after a huge breakfast spread prepared by Toby's aunt (we took a picture, it was that impressive ;)). There was sashimi, including octopus (yum). We got to take the special Express train (though not a Shinkansen) to Nikko, where we stayed at a really swanky hotel and saw (apparently) the equivalent of Niagra Falls (at least in height), called Kegon Falls. Here are two pictures of them:



The hotel is on a large lake, Chuzenji:



Also of note - on the bus on the way to the hotel, we saw a snow monkey. They are so cute! Unfortunately, we couldn't get a picture, but here is one anyways:



The hotel dinner was great - I think I had the best steak ever (sorry Dad ;)). Breakfast the next morning was also good - being the traditional Japanese breakfast just like Toby's aunt had prepared the day before. We had really nice breakfast sake (sweet but not horribly so), and other yummy things like smoked salmon.

Today we are at another hotel closer to Nikko's cultural center. We have taken almost two rolls of pictures entirely in the last three days, but won't be able to get them developed until we get back. I should mention that we were visiting 400 year old shrines and temples - where the first Shogun ruled. The buildings are amazing and there are lots of festivities since it is New Years. This is also the place that has the three monkeys (hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil).

I have left out lots of details because I am on a timed machine - 13 minutes and counting! More to come when we get home, hope you all have had a wonderful time this holiday. :)