Movie past, vacation future

We saw Batman Begins, which was, in many ways, better than expected. Props to Gary Oldman, chronic chameleon, who I didn't even realize was in the movie until his name showed up in the closing credits.

We saw it in Odaiba, which we've explored somewhat before, and a couple of friends took us through a genuinely disturbing part of town, where a mall is made up to make the inside look like the outside. The ceiling over the hallway is painted and lit up to look like a pleasantly blue, partly cloudy sky. The corridors are given street names and marked with street signs. Walking around in that place is very uncomfortable, for some reason that's difficult to articulate--possibly the fact that the "sky" is maybe half a dozen meters away lends to a sense of claustrophobia. I have this great idea for an experiment, though--raise a kid in that place for the first 10 years of his life, act as if the fake sky is the real sky, and then take him out into the real outdoors and see what happens.

We also finally saw I Heart Huckabees, which I thought was marvelous, but Kate found a little too weird. I must admit, it really could have done without one or two of those scenes. Nonetheless, David O. Russell is a genius, and given that he was also responsible for Three Kings he's moving his way up my list of favourite movie makers.

We've decided on one last trip around Japan, to revisit Hiroshima, and maybe some other places like the Aichi Expo, starting August 3. We'll try to make the ceremony for the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, and I'll have to drag my butt out of bed in order to make it to the Peace Park by 8:15. We might take a whole week off, in which case we'd have time for Nagasaki as well, but that would start to get a little pricy. Later in August, starting maybe on the 24th, we'll be taking a nice long holiday in China, lasting for about two weeks. We're definitely going to tour around Beijing, but we haven't decided what to do after that.

After that, back to Tokyo, but I'll probably be leaving soon after. If I take off around September 14 or 15, I'll have time to drop in on Canada and collect some stuff to take to Chicago. I'm hoping to get there by September 20, in time for Orientation--I'm not sure how useful it will be, but I hear they serve free food.