Lost In Translation

New Link

My friend Lorenzo has a blog up and running, check it out: Dream Theater.

Armani Casa/Boffi Design Store

This is the new Tadao Ando designed hhstyle.com store on Cat Street in Harajuku. The interior is pretty cool as well. But $40 candles are about the only thing in my price range in the shop.

Underrated? Films

The Onion AV Club had an interesting list of underrated things and a decade of underrated films. I think some of them are questionable in my mind though:

Who Will Love The Brown Bunny? A Decade Of Underrated Movies

Reviewed by Scott Tobias
October 19th, 2005

Every year produces at least half a dozen movies that are underappreciated for one reason or another. Sometimes niggling flaws obscure their considerable virtues. Other times, they're victimized by bad press or a studio that cares so little about them that its apathy becomes contagious. But more often than not, it comes down to a collective failure of taste. Some of these films will be revived and embraced somewhere down the road, but others will remain orphaned indefinitely. With the contenders piling up again in 2005—Why isn't The Devil's Rejects being hailed as the second coming of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Where's Lord Of War on the nation's editorial pages? Why no laughs for the subversive Pretty Persuasion? Here's a look back at 10 years in underratedness.

Click here to see the list.

However, there are a few films on the list that look worthwhile especially Mr. Jealousy, which has been getting a lot of print with Noah Baumbach's new release The Squid and The Whale, coming out recently-as well as Dark Blue-which is based on a James Ellroy novel.

The Japan Times Listening Post: You Could Have It So Much Better

Today I have a short album review on Franz Ferdinand's latest album, You Could have It So Much Better, in The Japan Times. I have a friend who was recently hired as an arts editor and he asked me if I wanted to write for his paper. My first reivew, In The Reins, a review I posted a couple of weeks back, was suppsoed to be the first one, but it "got lost in the shuffle." There's no online version of today's review for some reason, but here's my original review. A more truncated version appears in the paper today. Jeez, I already felt constrianed by 270 words...anyway, I'm hoping to pay for my music by this freelance gig.

RECORDED Franz Ferdinand: You Could Have It So Much Better Sony/Domino BY PATRICK MCCOY

The pressure of following up a successful record with a worthy effort has led many artists to crumbled under the pressure and produce something that is disappointing, hence, the familiarly of the sophomore slump. It’s impossible to approach this album without comparing it to their fresh eponymous debut album that was universally acclaimed. Franz Ferdinand has nothing to worry about after their second release You Could Have It So Much Better.

Like its predecessor, there are a number of songs that strongly stand on their own as good time singles. The slick production of this record brings the vocals more to the foreground, without overwhelming the pulsating drums, thumping bass, and catchy guitar riffs. It is true that most of the songs have that up-beat neo-80s feel to them that we have come to expect, which a host of other bands like The Killers, Interpol, and Hot Hot Heat, among others, who have been successfully mining their version of this sound as well.

The album kicks off with a succession of infectious, catchy tunes delivered with an urgency: “The Fallen”/”Do You Want To”/”This Boy.” However, there are forays into terrain once populated by the likes of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ray Davies and other heroes of the British Invasion with “Walk Away”,“Eleanor Put Your Boots On”, and “Fade Together.” This album leaves you eagerly anticipating the next one, rather than worrying about whether or not they can keep it up to par. Judging from You Could Have It So Much Better, it looks as if Franz Ferdinand has the talent for the long haul.

Retirement Blues

With record numbers of retirement occuring in the next few years there are bound to be problems. It's peculiar to ths culture that fathers usually don't have very much contact with their families-they are providers and wives are homemakers. They don't socialize together, they usually meet late at night when coming home and don't usually know their children well either. This syndicated article from The Washington Post via The Seattle Times was sent to me by my brother. It explains the problem retirees are having:

Feeling chained to the tradition of older women remaining utterly dedicated to their husbands' well-being, Terakawa said, she devoted herself to her spouse. Retirement cut him off from his longtime office social network, leaving him virtually friendless and her with the strain of filling his empty time. Within a few weeks, she said, he was hardly leaving the house, watching television and reading the newspaper — and barking orders at her. He often forbade her to go out with her friends. When he did let her go, Terakawa said, she had to prepare all his meals before leaving.

After several months, she developed stomach ulcers, her speech began to slur and rashes broke out around her eyes. When doctors discovered polyps in her throat but could find no medical reason for her sudden burst of ailments, she was referred to a psychiatrist who diagnosed stress-related RHS.
Terakawa began receiving therapy from Nobuo Kurokawa, a physician who is one of Japan's leading RHS experts. Kurokawa coined the term in a presentation to the Japanese Society of Psychosomatic Medicine in 1991, leading to its use in books, journals and mainstream media here. Confirming Terakawa's account, Kurokawa said he offered her the same advice he has given numerous other older women in the same position.

"Come to therapy," he said. "Then spend as much time as possible away from your husband."...

With a record number of Japanese men set to retire — almost 7 million from 2007 to 2009 — experts warn that the disorder has the potential to explode. The Japanese boast the longest life span on Earth, yet older Japanese men still cling to the outmoded idea of wives as servile attendants — leaving many elderly women to view their longevity as more of a curse than a blessing. One survey from the Tokyo-based advertising firm Hakuhodo showed that while 85 percent of soon-to-retire husbands are delighted by the idea of retirement, 40 percent of their wives described themselves as "depressed" by the prospect.

Sunnyside

This is a picture of the courtyard at Toyo University's Hakusan Campus, and was taken from a classroom in Building 2. The building with windows is where my office is, and the bottom part is the library.

Japan Has Four Seasons

Kate Elwood tackles the Japanese obsession with the seasons in her latest column for Cultural Conundrums:

To live in Japan is to be alert and sensitive to the changing times of year. But Japanese people sometimes fall into the trap of mistakenly assuming that a heightened awareness and appreciation of the passing of the seasons derives from the unique possession of them. I sort of already knew this from watching TV shows that made rather more fuss than seemed warranted by the fact that Japan has indeed four seasons. Then a few years ago I was one of the people on a committee to interview students who had expressed an interest in studying abroad. Before the questioning session, the students had been asked to write an essay in which they were supposed to imagine that someone in a foreign country had asked them, "What's Japan like?" How would they respond?

...yet I just had to ask the "four seasons" interviewees whether they understood that many countries in addition to Japan have four seasons.

Amazingly, many answered "Oh, really?" That response may have been an automatic polite reflex to a teacher offering them knowledge, but I was left feeling that yes, these students definitely needed an opportunity to mingle with people of other nations.

This always drives me nuts maybe more than people telling me how good I use chopsticks, I mean really how many countries have four seasons? They think it makes Japan unique...better than other countries, like how Japanese rice supposedly tastes better than imported rice. However, I do think that this culture places a special emphasis on the changing of the seasons and savors the passage of time by seeking out what is special and unique about every season:

Actually, Japan traditionally goes way beyond four seasons when thinking about nature and the changing weather. In the old solar calendar there were 24 points called Nijushisekki that some older Japanese people still refer to and that are much more interesting than simply talking about spring, summer, autumn, winter.

I learned about them when helping my daughter study for her middle school entrance examinations. It was a bitter, gray day in early February, but somehow it made me feel better to find out that we were past both "the lesser cold" and "the greater cold" and that spring had taken its stand (risshun).

Some of the calendar classifications are pretty matter of fact, like "end of insect hibernation" in early March and late April's "grain rains." Some are comforting, for example "manageable heat" in late August, and some downright poetic, for instance, early September's "white dew."

Fall is the best time in Japan, the weather is finally bearable, the autum leaves change color, and there's a lot of great seasonal food. Stuff like mushrooms, sanma fish, and fruit.

Pure Cafe

On Monday I tried out Pure Cafe, a vegetarian cafe in the Aveda store in Minami Aoyama. They are one of those rare hippy environmentally conscious businesses-no smoking and all that. However, it still came across as very sleek and stylish. I have to admit that the healthy food was quite tasty as well. I had the sandwhich set which came with a Kenpira Celery seven grain bread sandwhich with Yuma Mustard Salad, Sweet Ginger Soup, and organic coffee for 1,555 yen. It's a little pricy, so I think it will be more of an occasional lunchtime venue, rather than a weekly stop.

Bobby Valentine

Valentine originally managed the Chiba Lotte Marines a few years back and brought them from last to second in one year. This year he has them in the Japanese World Series in a thrilling come from behind victory tonight, here's some commentary form a local sports writer at The Japan Times:

Meanwhile, the focus in Japan has been on the exciting Pacific League Stage 2 Playoffs between Bobby Valentine's Chiba Lotte Marines of Makuhari and Sadaharu Oh's Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks of Momochi (see how silly that sounds?), and let us take a moment here for a few words about the Marines and how far the team has come since 1994, when that franchise was deader than the proverbial doornail.

No one went to watch them play in Chiba or anywhere else, no one wanted to manage them (until Bobby Valentine came along), and the team had deservedly acquired the label of a perennial loser after 13 consecutive finishes in the Pa League second division.

They wore those sissy-looking white uniforms with pink lettering, and I still remember Mel Hall, one of the foreign players on the 1994 Lotte club, telling me, "We just don't look fearsome out there in pink and white."

Hall was right; they were anything but fearsome.

Look at the Marines now. You just can't say enough about what Valentine and his staff have accomplished, mostly in the past two seasons, but the program is one Bobby really started 10 years ago when he breathed some life into the organization and set it on the right course.

Today's CLM roster is packed deep with quality players, featuring a batting lineup of power, speed and clutch hitting.

The defense has been superb, especially in the Oct. 8-9 PL Playoff Stage 1 series against the Seibu Lions, and having four starters win in double figures, excellent set-up men and the league-leading closer, makes the Lotte mound staff one of the best in the world.

Click here to read the whole article.

Book Notes: The Sorrows of Empire

I recently read Chalmers Johnston’s latest current affairs book, The Sorrows of Empire, about American militarism and the secrecy surrounding it, as well as imperialism. In the prologue he says:

If I overstate the threat, I am sure to be forgiven because future generations will be so glad I was wrong. The danger I foresee is that the United States is embarked upon a path no unlike that of the former Soviet Union during the 1980s. The USSR collapsed for three basic reasons-internal economic contradictions driven by ideological rigidity, imperial overstretch and an inability to reform. Because the United States is far wealthier, it may take longer for similar afflictions to do their work. But the similarities are obvious and it is nowhere written that the United States, in its guise as an empire dominating the world, must go on forever.

And I do think he overstates his case, when he suggests, that, among other things, America might have gone to war with Afghanistan even if 9/11 hadn’t happened, in order to prop up a government that would secure oil and natural gas transportation from Central Asia through Afghanistan to the gulf. He also suggests that North Korea and Iran are still viable targets for invasion. But he is more convincing when describes American militarism with exhaustive examples and statistics about the spending and number of bases throughout the world. And he challenges the existence of these bases, as to what end they are for. He is especially persuasive when talking about bases in Japan and Korea. I agree with him that we might eventually see America pull out of Korea, and that relations between Okinawa and the US would drastically improve if they reduced the number of bases and gave back some of the claimed land.

I also thought he was good at describing the history of imperialism in America as it goes back to Woodrow Wilson and the Spanish War-from which we acquired Guam, Saipan, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, etc…under the guise of being on a “mission to democratizing the world. Wilson he states has more than any figure provided the intellectual foundations for an interventionist foreign policy expressed in humanitarian and democratic rhetoric to justify American imperial power in terms of exporting democracy-sound familiar? He makes this astute observation:

To this day, the Philippines resemble Okinawa far more than they do Taiwan, which has become one of the richest and most industrialized nations in East Asia. Taiwan is an example of what Okinawa and the Philippines might have become had the US not played a neocolonial role.

Furthermore, he illustrates many examples where American meddling has resulted in blowback or at least a failure of considering the long-range reactions of meddling in other countries affairs with Greece, Iran, Central America and the Middle East. I also found his chapter on “Whatever Happen To Globalism” interesting and thought provoking. Here he suggests:

Our government seems not to grasp the relationship between its military unilateralism and collateral damage it is doing to international commerce, an activity that depends on mutually beneficial relationships among individuals, business, and countries to function well.

Will they ever? It was an interesting and challenging read about the state we’re in.