Lost In Translation

The U.S. A Third World Country?

One of the things I like about Chuck Thompson's travel writing, aside from his humor, is his reflective analysis of the places he travels, his role as a traveler/human in the context of other cultures. In his latest book, To Hellholes And Back, he travels to several of what used to be known as "third world" countries, however, I believe the current nomenclature is "developing" countries. he discusses what makes them appear so in the collective consciousness of the typical American and then offers a contrast in perspective by quoting from a discussion he had with a friend while living in Japan who essentially said:

"To the Japanese, the United States looks like a Third World country. Homeless refugees everywhere. Beggars. Police. Garbage on the streets. Institutional incompetence. People dressed like hobos. Cars on the road that by Japanese standards would barely be fit for scrap metal."

Agree? Disagree? Discuss.

Fish Tank

I previously saw Andrea Arnold’s fine thriller Red Road set in estates a few years ago, so I was intrigued to see what she would do in her next film. Fish Tank is the story of a difficult and neglected teenager (an impressive debut by newcomer Katie Jarvis) with a lot of angst trying to find her place in the world. It is a somewhat bleak existence and probably more cleaned up that the reality of a council flat. It is a compelling film, but not as fascinating as her debut, but worthwhile for Jarvis’ performance as well as Michael Fassbender's turn as a wayward husband who shacks up with her mother and provides a complicated foil as positive male role model in her life.

Daikichi

Here's a hearty meal from another great little family place near my apartment in Sasazuka, Daikichi. It is a mini oyakodon (egg and chicken rice bowl) and tanuki udon

 

Kogals & Luck

There are a couple of interesting Japan-related articles that I've been meaning to post. The first is an article from Metropolis about a new English language book that looks at the influence of high school girls (kogals) on Japanese culture:

 Wielding an influence on everything from street slang to fine art, videogames to fashion, Japanese schoolgirls have, in the subtitle of Brian Ashcraft’s new book, “made a nation cool.” Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential puts these financial powerhouses and cultural arbiters under the microscope, offering foreign readers insight into topics both arcane (the history of sailor uniforms) and edgy (school-themed dating sims). In this exclusive excerpt, the author details the rise of ’90s kogal culture—and finds that it was nothing less than a loose-socked revolution.

The second article is from Kate Elwood's Cultural Conundrum's column in the The Daily Yomiuri about superstitions and luck among the Japanese:

Omamori are amulets provided by shrines and temples to help with the needs of people in everyday life. Common types are those for traffic safety, passing examinations, business success, finding a mate and having a healthy pregnancy and easy delivery, as well as more general concerns of avoidance of evil and good fortune. In a research article published in the 1980s, religion scholar Eugene Swanger notes that Sensoji temple in Asakusa, Tokyo, provides 15 kinds of omamori for six needs, while at Kompira Shrine in Shikoku there are 77 selections covering 45 needs, including success in an election, protecting a ship's engine and preventing water pollution. Swanger further observes that Aso Shrine in Kyushu conducts an annual survey to assess the sorts of needs for which people in the area might wish to have an omamori.

Of course, good luck charms are prevalent in many cultures. Social psychologists Rees Lewis and Helga Dittmar administered a questionnaire about personal amulets and planned purchases to 117 British students, 124 Canadian students and 121 Japanese students. Almost all respondents were able to give an example of a personal amulet in their possession. Ninety-eight percent of the Japanese students, 93 percent of the British students and 82 percent of the Canadians named an amulet they owned. The researchers classified the types of amulets, finding that for all nationalities, items of jewelry, including fobs like key chains and omamori, were most common, representing 64 percent of the British amulets, 79 percent of the Canadian ones and 73 percent of those belonging to the Japanese students.

Other categories named by 5 percent-15 percent of the national groups were objects of utility, like a lucky pen or watch, or objects of art and culture. Within the jewelry classification, 65 percent of the amulets named by the Japanese respondents were omamori. Rings and necklaces were most common for the British and Canadian students, amounting to about 40 percent of the jewelry designations for each of these groups.

Lewis and Dittmar further asked the respondents the personal significance of the amulets and here, too, found some cultural differences. The researchers examined both the degree of attachment to an amulet and the type of attachment. They found the Japanese respondents were most likely to explain the significance of an amulet in terms of a "magico-religious" function or a "cognitive-affective" function (which referred to the object's role in invoking memories or mediating emotion) than their Western counterparts. The Canadian and British respondents, on the other hand, more often mentioned their "shared history" with the object and "relatedness" in the way they felt a sense of connection with another person through the object.

Interestingly, the Japanese respondents overall felt less attachment to their amulets; they would be significantly less upset to lose the object. At the same time, the amulets that they felt a higher attachment to were more likely to be linked to "relatedness," while they felt less attachment to amulets with a "magico-religious" function.

While there is obviously a range of ways of regarding omamori, for many Japanese, these amulets have an easy come, easy go quality. Some years ago, religion researcher Richard Anderson lived and worked at a large Buddhist temple in Tokyo and was assigned to work at the omamori counter over the New Year's holiday. He notes that a large number of people chose amulets based on color, style and price, more often describing the motive for their purchase as shukan (custom) rather than shukyo (religion) or shinko (belief).

Tropical Malady

It seems my timing for seeing Thai director Acpichatpong Weerasethakul’s film Tropical Malady is appropriate since he won the Palm d’Or at Cannes for his latest film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. I thought it was a visually stunning film, but also with a difficult story line that might be hard to follow for the lack of cultural awareness of Thai culture and the stylistic diversion that the director took through out the course of the 118 minute film. This is an art film-I would suspect that it has little commercial value and it is definitely not for everyone, but he has created something artistically inspired and beautiful to look at. I would have to say that I prefer the films of fellow countryman Pen-Ek Ratanarung-which are also considered art films, but have more conventional stories and narratives. 

Bottle Episodes

Alan Sepinwall, probably my favorite TV journalist,  explained what a bottle episode is in his recap to the fascinating episode "Fly" of Breaking Bad that recently aired. And I thought he had some interesting insights:

I am going to talk to you for a few paragraphs about how the sausage gets made in television. If you'd rather not think too much about production logistics and budgets and whatnot and just focus on why "Fly" was such an unusual, incredible hour for this series, just skim until I start talking about "The Sopranos." 

But I want to start off with sausage-making because it was clear to me that "Fly" was what's known in the industry as "a bottle show" - that is, an episode of the series shot almost entirely on existing sets, with a minimum of guest stars. The idea is to keep the budget as small as possible, so that you can then spend whatever money you saved on another episode down the road. (Or, in some cases, so you can compensate for a previous episode that cost more than anticipated.) 

Last year, "Breaking Bad" tried to do a bottle show with "4 Days Out," the episode with Jesse and Walt trapped in the desert after the RV's battery runs down. The idea was that it would only feature Cranston and Paul and take place largely on the standing RV set and therefore be dirt-cheap. Instead, it wound up being one of that season's most expensive episodes, as more and more of the action began creeping outside of the camper and into the desert itself, which meant lots of location filming, often at irregular hours (a lot of that episode, you may recall, took place around dawn and dusk to get a particularly beautiful light quality), and that costs man-hours, it costs crew overtime, and it costs simply to transport all the men and materials back and forth from the studio to the desert. 

Still, the basic idea of that episode went to the core of "Breaking Bad" - that of teacher and pupil stuck together, getting on each other's nerves, and revisting all the damage they've done to themselves, to each other, and to the world at large since they teamed up. So it wasn't surprising that the show would try to revisit the basic conceit - nor that Vince Gilligan and company (here with Sam Catlin and Moira Walley-Beckett on script, and Rian Johnson directing) would find a way to do a bottle show as a bottle show. Having already spent the money to build the huge Walt-cave set, they were able to dwell inside it for 95% of an episode, with no castmembers other than the two leads (which is valuable, since most TV shows these days can only sign a few regulars to appear in every episode), and no other speaking parts. 

And it was through that attempt at minimalism and frugality that we got the "Breaking Bad" equivalent of the "Pine Barrens" episode of "The Sopranos." Only this one was, heresy though it may be, better.

Both "Pine Barrens" and "Fly" were black comedies about crooks out of their element (Paulie and Christopher lost in the woods, Walt and Jesse trying to play exterminator), but much as I love "Pine Barrens," it stayed in that minor key. "Fly" started out as slapstick; one critic on Twitter compared it, not inaccurately, to Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner, and certainly Walt's fall off the railing was as broad a moment as this show has had. But as Jesse realized the only way to control Walt's obsession with the fly was to play along, it turned into something much darker, and deeper, and tenser, until we got to that riveting scene where Jesse is standing atop the rickety ladder, with his only support coming from a Walt who's barely conscious from sleeping pills, and Walt is talking about Jane, and we wonder..

To Hellholes And Back

Chuck Thompson is a very entertaining travel writer, and his latest, To Hellholes And Back, reaffirms this greatly. There are many of the elements that I found so endearing and entertaining about his previous book, Smile When You’re Lying, were on full display here: straight talk about the travel industry, illuminating commentary about the places he visits, entertaining similes and pop cultural references. The premise of the book is that he will visit places that are largely deemed dangerous and unsuitable for travel, Africa, India, and Mexico City and his own personal version of hell-Walt Disney World. Like Thompson I have been trying to get out of my personal travel comfort zone as well with last year’s visit to Bangladesh and this year’s planned trip to Kyrgyzstan. Not sure if the Congo will ever be on my list, but Africa definitely is, as are India and Mexico City. I’m sorry to say that he didn’t convince me that WDW is ever going to in my future travel plans. He does a good job of explaining why it is that I detest the crass commercialization of Disney and the commoditization of dreams. In fact I’ll hold onto the book for his recommendations about India and Mexico City in particular.

Tenho

Here's the lunch set at a local Chinese restaurant in Sasazuka called Tenho. This is a chili sauce rice bowl with won ton soup and salad. It is a very mild chili sauce and is usually used with shrimp as it's own dish.

 

The Temple Of Dawn

The Temple of Dawn is Yukio Mishima’s third installment in the Sea of Fertility teratology. It seems to be known as the weakest volume in the series, but it still has some merit in light of this probability (I can’t judge until I read the final installment The Decay of the Angel). This novel is essentially written in three sections. I found the beginning promising in its prewar descriptions of Thailand where Honda encounters the reincarnated Kiyoaki in the Thai Princess Ying Chan. He then travels to India where he has a sort of epiphany at Benares. This is followed by a long section on the history of Buddhism and reincarnation. The final section of the novel resembles Tanizaki’s Diary of a Mad Old Man in that Honda has an obsession with Ying Chan and develops a habit of voyerism-he wants to consummate the relationship but believes that Yin Chang is Kiyoaki reincarnated. There is a dramatic ending followed by a unusual postscript which reveals Yin Chan’s fate to Honda much later in 1967. I think I found Mishima’s descriptions of Japan in context of pre-war and post-war life most interesting, but this volume is more concerned with Honda’s inward reflections, rather than his outward observations of the world.

Standout Movie Scenes

The AV Club has a great feature, Standout Movie Scenes, where the contributors select three of their favorite movie scenes, like Kyle Ryan I want to say all of Goodfellas, but I'll just chose one and then two others.

1. It's difficult to limit it one scene from, probably my favorite film of all time. I think the long tracking shot at the The Copa, when Ray Liotta takes Lorraine Bracco through the back entry through the kitchen to the front of the restaurant where they set up a special table for them with The Chyrstals "Then He kissed Me" playing in the background is my fvorite. Also rans include the scene where Billy Batt gets a beat down from Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro to Donavan's"Atlantis"-great juxtaposition, and the "Layla" montage scene when members from the big heist start getting whacked. 

2. The "Danny Boy" scene from the Coen brother's film Miller's Crossing where Albert Finney spoils an assassination attempt: "The old man's still an artist with a Thompson."

3. The opening tracking shot from Robert Altman's The Player.

What are your favorite three standout scenes?