Lost In Translation

Owen Wilson As Karl Rove?

Here's an interesting theory about the decline of Wes Anderson films from Slate:

The disappointment was widespread, yet the critics at the major papers and the hipster blogs all overlooked one important fact: The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou was the first Wes Anderson film in which Owen Wilson didn't share the writing chores. What if Owen Wilson, America's resident goofy roué with the broken nose and the lazy nasal drawl, was the rudder keeping USS Anderson on course, steering its captain away from solipsism and ironic overload?

Click here to read the whole article.

Hiatus

I'm on my yearly summer vacation until the end of Spetember, and tomorrow I fly to Seattle (and I will also visit my family in Spokane), where I'll be for about two weeks, then I'll fly back east to visit friends in DC and NYC. I'll be back in Japan on the 19th of August. I don't usually post much while on vacation, but you never know...

Favorite Places: Yusoshi

I've been wanting to visit Meshi Mase the new dining complex at the Lumine department store in Shinjuku. I went there on Sunday and and ate at a really cool and chic cafe restaurant, Yusoshi. I really liked the minimalsit design and the lit floor that you see people stiitng on in the picture above. The food was quite tasty as well. We had miso soup, california rolls, a shrimp avocado salad, and some fried noodles.

Zoka Coffee

I noticed a new Zoka Coffee shop in Akasaka not long ago, and I wasn't familiar with it from Seattle, so I thought some company was trying to capitlaize on Seattle as a sort of brand for Coffee-there are Tullly's and Starbucks all-over Tokyo. Then I saw an insert, in the Japanese magazine Casita, which gave information about the company and the other shops in Seattle, and introduced a new branch in Meijiro, which isn't far from where I live in Myogadani. Bauhaus Books & Coffee, a Capitol Hill Coffee shop that I have frequented in the past, was one of the shops profiled, so inadvertenly I was familiar with the company. Other shops include: Caffe Vita, Hines Public Market Coffee, Caffe Appassionato, University Zoka, and,Original Zoka. Smoke-free gourmet coffee shops are welcome to me-there are lots of great cafes in Tokyo, but few are smoke free. I think it's interesting that the owners totally skipped the domestic market and opted for Japan (as far as I know) to expand their empire.

Book Notes: The Best Nonrequired Reading 2004

I’ve gotten in the habit of reading The Best Nonrequired reading series, and recently finished reading the 2004 edition. As usual there were a lot of interesting pieces from small publications, as well as a few from the bigger ones that I did manage to catch at publication (David Sedaris’ “Full House” and Michael Paterni’s “The Fifteen Year layover” both from GQ). There were several stories that were written from the perspective of immigrants or foreigners (Africa-“Half of a Yellow Sun” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and South America-“City of Clowns” by Daniel Alarcon). There was another excellent story that was concerned with Jewish Orthodoxy and coming of age, “The Smoothest Ways Is Full Of Stones” by Julie Orringer. There were a couple of well-written journalistic pieces as well. One was an inspirational story about a Rwandan runner who survived the genocide after almost being burned alive. The other, “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness” by Jon Gertner, is about economicist who look at how changes or the purchase of goods affect out level of happiness-for example getting a new job, getting married, or buying that new car. The results were interesting since greater wealth beyond being able to easily get by don’t necessarily make people happier. I found Christopher Buckley’s story “We Have a Pope!” very humorous and well written as well. I didn’t enjoy every story, but there are plenty of great stories worth reading in the volume.

Toshomenso

Toshomenso is a Chinese restaurant in Ikebukuro that I've been meaning to go to for a while, and yesterday I finally made it there for lunch. I had the spicy soup with "ma" noodles, which is similar to another spicy dish, Tan Tan Ramen. I think the soup had more chili oil than usual, as well as sesame, cilantro, garlic, and chili peppers with minced pork. The noodles were unusual for a ramen-style dish, they were soft, flat, and wider than usual. It was very tasty and reasonably priced, 680 yen (about $6), so I'll be back in the future.

Beauty Pressure

I have often noted that the emphasis on youth and beauty has been a driving force in American culture, but it seems twice as important in Japan, especially among women. The amount of time, attention, and detail that women put into their make-up and clothing ensembles is staggering. On the trains I see women touching up their make-up, re-checking their hair, and it is not unusual for girls to spend 30-40 minutes in front of their portable mirrors applying make up in other public places like fast food restaurants. This column from Bilingual in The Japan Today discusses this obsession:

Beauty: Japanese women's never-ending quest Elsewhere in the world women are concerned about politics, social issues, family, warfare or simply survival. In Japan, it seems their interests are centered on just one thing: bi (beauty).

Oh, the Japanese female predicament! The pressure exerted on us to be utsukushii (beautiful) and kirei (pretty) 24-7! The drive to develop and maintain female youth and beauty in this country borders on the manic-obsessive -- as a nation, we're probably in need of collective therapy.

According to the media everything in life links directly to the bi factor, from the vocabulary a woman knows and deploys (consider the best seller called "Kirei ni Naru Nihongo -- Japanese That Makes You Beautiful") to the kind of food one consumes (please, no animal fat or heavy starch) to the way one conducts oneself during, um, sex. (Reacting is OK, but overacting distorts the facial muscles.) For the record, I just jeopardized some of my own bi points by writing out such a hashitanai (ribald and shameless) sentence in broad daylight, which shows the lengths I go to for the readers of this paper.

Click here to read the rest.

Book Notes: Take The Cannoli

I saw a collection of essays by Sarah Vowell, Take the Cannoli, in the bookstore and picked it up based on an interview I read about her latest book, Assassination Vacation, on Salon.com. It turns out that I’ve read one of the essays, perhaps in one the Best Non-Required Reading volumes. Anyway, I really enjoyed the essays, I don’t listen to public radio and probably should since I like a lot of the people who have become popular writers there: Vowell, David Sedaris, David Rakoff. Vowell seems to be about my age and has similar sensibilities as far as music, films, and politics go. Furthermore, she is from the Inland Empire (an area known as Eastern Washington state, Northern Idaho and Western Montana), Missoula. For example, references like “frat boys from Spokane wearing baseball caps” in philosophy class at Montana State University, are quite accurate and hit home. But Spokane seems like Gotham in comparison, to Missoula but she has managed to grow up an artistic and political outsider. I particularly liked the personal essay in the section called Home Movies (“Shooting Dad, Music Lessons, and The End Is Near, Nearer, Nearest). It seems the essay about “The Trail Of Tears”-is similar to the historical travelogue that is her latest book. I also could enjoy and identify with her paean to mix tapes, “Thanks For The Memorex.” These are entertaining and informative essays.

Rock Heroes: Dinosaur Jr.

SST was the big indie label before punk broke with Nirvana in the ealry 90s and Dinosaur Jr. was one of the most influential bands on that label. They didn't last as long as some of their label mates. I they have reunited for a tour and The Onion AV Club has an interview with them:

It's safe to assume that if the Pixies hadn't gotten back together last year, the re-forming of the original Dinosaur lineup (which was forced to add the Jr. after the release of its second album) would be the most unexpected band reunion in the history of underground rock. Though the group—singer-guitarist J Mascis, bassist Lou Barlow, and drummer Murph—recorded a handful of influential albums in the second half of the '80s, and played ear-shattering shows that were burned into the memory of devoted listeners, the initial trio was just as well known for the way Barlow was kicked out of the band (Mascis and Murph told him the band was breaking up, even though they'd already replaced him and booked an Australian tour) and his subsequent public anger. In addition to suing Mascis for back royalties and keeping the acrimony alive in interviews, Barlow wrote some pointed songs about his ex-bandmate, recording them with his side-project-turned-main-project Sebadoh. But time reportedly heals all wounds, and after Merge agreed to reissue the band's first three records—1985's Dinosaur Jr., 1987's You're Living All Over Me, and 1988's Bug—Mascis' management jumped at the chance to get the original trio back on the road. That became easier after some recent pleasant encounters between Mascis and Barlow, including a one-song reunion of their pre-Dinosaur band Deep Wound at a benefit show last year. Nearly 16 years after Barlow was given the boot—and more than a decade after Murph left Mascis following Lollapalooza '93—the '80s version of Dinosaur Jr. is playing its back catalog for intrigued audiences all over the world. The A.V. Club spoke separately with all three members between the band's first 10 shows and its current North American jaunt, which includes an appearance at Lollapalooza in Chicago this weekend.

Click here to read the interview.

Book Notes: Meat Is Murder

I found out about the Continuum Books 331/3 series from reading Nick Hornby’s Polysyballic Spree, and he had particular praise for Meat Is Murder by Joe Pernice. I’ll definitely have to read some of the other selections after having read this fine novella based on The Smith's 1985 masterpiece Meat Is Murder, which has my favorite Smiths song of all-time ("How Soon Is Now"), it is the only selection that is fiction, and the others are essays. Anyway, Joe Pernice is the lead singer/songwriter of The Perncie Brothers (who I have a heard a few songs by); he has written poetry before, but this is his first published piece of fiction. And what a tour de force it is. It is really nostalgic for me even though I didn’t attend a catholic high school near Boston in the 80s. However, I could really relate to the main character, who was a bit of a Smiths fanatic, and his fate as a high schooler in the Reaganesque 80s, where their was a feeling of the threat of possible mass destruction by nuclear attack. He manages to reproduce the turbulence of adolescence and the ways in which we confront the strum and drang of this difficult time. Perncie captures the feelings of the disaffected youth perfectly. A lot of the details are familiar: pegged jeans, records recorded onto cassette tapes, inclusion into the special membership of punk/new wave-ness, etc… In addition the former importance of the cassette tape is given its due. I remember when I first started getting into new wave/punk I asked a friend to make me a tape, and she made me The Smiths “Meat Is Murder”/The Sex Pistols “Anarchy in the UK” pairing, which I probably played into dust. I’m so nostalgic after reading this story that I will run out and buy both CDs and download them into my iPod for maximum use.