Lost In Translation

World Rugby

England won the world championship and the Brtis were happy--the Aussies less so...

My Favorite Coffee Cup

A friend gave me this Wakanohana coffee cup earlier this year. He was a former sumo wrestler who had the top position of yokozuna.

Lost And Found

This is a picture of Enoshima Island, I was supposed to go to some temple in Kamakura but it was raining so we went to see a movie instead. On the way home my digital camera fell out of my pocket on the train, and I thought I lost it. A couple of days later I checked at the station to see if they found it and lo and behold they found it. My first year I dropped a camera while riding my bike and put in a report and got it back as well. Another time my wallet slid out of my pocket when I was taking a bus from Narita to Ueno and the company gave it back as well. Not to mention, I lost my cellphone recently and did the same and got it back--you gotta love the honesty of this country.

Revolutions

I know I said I wasn't going to see Revolutions in the theater, but my date wanted to see it, so I did. It was worse than the second episode and as bad as I thought it might be, a lot of tedious battle scenes, I fell asleep a couple of times as well.

Christmas in Bali

Yesterday I booked a flight to Bali Island in Indonesia. I haven't been to Indonesia and I've heard nothing but good things about it. Furthermore, I figure it's safer than ever since it was the target of a terrorist attack not so long ago, hopefully this mean cheaper prices as well. I'm only going to be there for 10 days (12/19 until 12/30), so I'll experience my first New Year's in Japan as well.

The 5.6.7.8's

If you've seen Kill Bill you might have noticed an all-girl garage band playing in the rock-n-roll izakaya. It's The 5.6.7.8's, a band I have seen several times live here and back in Bellingham in the day. There was a good article on them in the Japan Times the other day.

Book Notes: Orwell. Tanizaki, & Greene

It being the 100th anniversary of George Orwell I decided to read one of his books that I hadn't gotten around to yet that was recommend to me a while ago, Keep The Aspidistra Flying. It was a novel about a poet who is trying to live outside the capitalistic system with abysmal results. He vividly describes the tedium and sordidness of "middle class" poverty, which differs from the equally demoralizing squalid poverty of the common classes. I could relate to some of the experiences of the main character when trying to get by as a student and just after.

I've been reading a lot of Junichiro Tanizaki lately, and the most recent book I read was Quicksand. It was another love triangle penned from the point of view of an unreliable narrator, which is similar to The Key and Diary of a Mad Old Man. It is yet another story of obsession, desire, and death. It is a love triangle between a married woman, her husband, and a corrupt, manipulative femme fatale. It was one of his more compelling stories.

I'd have to say that Graham Greene is one of my favorite authors; The Lawless Roads is the second non-fiction travel book of his that I've read, and Journey Without Maps was also a great book about travel in Africa. Greene is a brilliant travel writer; he makes detailed observations about the countryside, people, and customs of Mexico. The way he traveled in the 30s makes you appreciate modern infrastructure and the advances of civilization that make godforsaken places livable. He was on assignment for a paper to report on the anti-clerical government that was persecuting the Catholics. It was from this experience that Greene wrote The Power and The Glory, which germinated from an anecdote he heard in Mexico about a whiskey priest.

Moomin Posters

This is a poster advertsing Toyo University with the Moomin characters, there is another poster I saw in the trains in Tokyo adverstising that Toyo will have all 4 classes of students at one campus starting in 2005, a rarity in Japan.

Recent Rentals: Morvern Callar & The Sunshine State

The first movie, Morvern Callar is based on a novel by Alan Warner that I read about 5 years ago. When I read the novel, I felt that the main character was somehow distant, alienated, unfeeling and cold. I think Movern is portrayed much more sympathetically in the film, but perhaps I was misreading the book. In this film, she embodies a spirit of individuality and freedom or something along those lines. However, she did cut up the body of her boyfriend who committed suicide and erased his name on the manuscript and puts her own on it and takes credit for it's publication, not exactly the acts of a sympathetic character in my view. The movie is begins quite somberly with little sound and then explodes into party and dance scenes, a series of contrasts I suppose. I couldn't relate to he character, but it was an interesting film nonetheless.

The other film was The Sunshine State directed by John Sayles. I think John Sayles is one of the most interesting directors around these days reflected by a varied body of work. Sayles writes and directs all of his movies and seldom is unsuccessful in the results. This ensemble film seems like a Robert Altman film, but is probably closer to in spirit to Sayles? excellent Lone Star. The guess the film is a bit heavy on dialogue and the issues of family, redevelopment, and preservation of traditional communities and the environment. The scenes with the wealthy golfers in particular seem a bit too staged. All in all, it is well acted with good performances and intelligently written and thought provoking.

Japanese Students Are Unbelievable

"Japanese students are unbelievable. Hardly anyone listens in class. They talk on their cell phones, sleep or chat, and the professors don't say a word."

Chinese student Xuan Hua, 26, a third-year Kanagawa University economics major. (Spa!)

This statement from Japan Today is pretty accurate, however, I don't let students talk, sleep, or use their cell phones (I guess it's the high school teacher in me). Bu this is pretty standard in Japanese professors' classes. I have some Chinese students in my Business English class and they definately seem more dilligent and better at English, however, I have noticed they follow the example set by their Japanese classmates and miss too many classes.

One of my colleagues thinks that they all come here enroll and then work and don't attend school. I think this is true at techinical schools or junior colleges, but here at Toyo they're legit.