Lost In Translation

The Narrow Road To The Deep North And Other Travel Sketches

Matsuo Basho has long been admired as the wandering poet and master of "haiku," the 5-7-5 syllable poetry style renowned among grade schoolers everywhere. The Narrow Road To The Deep North And Other Travel Sketches (1689) is a collection of poetry and other musings by Basho, who seems to have used his travels as inspiration  for his poetry about life on the road as well as the beauty he encounters on his travels. This collection is comprised of the following pieces: "The Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton," "The Visit to the Kashima Shrine," "The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel," "A Visit to Sarashina Village," and "The Narrow Road To The Deep North." Travels to the wild untamed North are something of a trope in Japanese literature and Basho made several journeys to the North and found inspiration in the beauty of the untamed wilderness in the north. I decided to read his book as inspiration for my own journey North to the capital city, Sendai and surrounding sites. Many of the cities and villages that he visited still exist and many, like Ishinomaki, have become infamous for the vast destruction laud upon them by the Tsunami of 2011. One stop, Matsushima (one of Japan's three great views) is extolled by Basho as the most beautiful in all of Japan.

East Village

I have been meaning to go to East Village in Ikebukuro for some time. I finally made it there and they do belong in the upper tier of hamburger restaurants in Tokyo. I got a gruyere cheese burger (¥1250) cooked to juicy medium rare precision with home made buns and garnishes of pickles and fried potatoes. Note: there's an upstairs, but we were escorted to a nearby shot bar with space for 10 on the main floor-I suspect it is for busy weekends.

Paths of Glory

I have been a Stanley Kubrik fan ever since I've seen his seminal films 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange. I have gone back and saw some of his lesser known films like Barry Lyndon. But It was David Simon's comment in a online chat about Paths Of Glory (1957) being his visual inspiration for the style of The Wire, that sent me searching for the film. He says look for the French Generals, I can see his contempt for incompetent, corrupt officials in his TV series. I was more impressed by the visual beauty of the film that brought the trench warfare to life in this film than its message about corruption of the elites. But that message comes through very strongly as well. I must say that the casting of Kirk Douglass and several otehr actors who embody America seems somewhat miscast as Frenchmen, but I guess that how movies were cast in the past. Certainly, a masterpiece and one of Kubrik's greatest films.

Ain Soph.Ripple

Can it be called a hamburger if there's no meat in the burger? Ain Soph.Ripple, a vegan restaurant, is serving up the Ripple Cheese Burger for ¥1250. And I have to admit it's the best vegan burger I've every had.

Narcos Season 2

I really enjoyed Narcos Season 2 mostly because of the great acting by Wagner Moura as Pablo Escobar. It seems they have renewed the series for two more seasons. So I guess they writers will delve into other stories about the drug war-perhaps chronicling how it moved north from South America into Mexico.

Shinkei

Shinkei is a chain izakaya specializing in yakitori (grilled chicken skewers). Not he geisha in the upper window-there is traditional taiko music being played in the background as well.

Love & Friendship

Whit Stillman is one of my favorite underappreciated filmmakers, so when he gets the chance to make a film I am excited to see what he has come up with. His latest film, Love & Friendship (2016) might seem like a departure at first since it is an adaptation of an unfinished Jane Austen story, Lady Susan, and a period piece. But there is plot point from his debut, Metropolitan, that hinges on appreciation for Jane Austen that brings two characters together. Furthermore, it is yet another romantic comedy heavily reliant on dialogue. Like most romantic comedies and Austen novels much of the plot centers on who will marry whom and all the scheming that goes onto to see that the proper match is made. There are some Stillman regulars like Kate Beckinsale as the acerbic Lady Susan Vernon. She gets most of the best bon mots: "Americans really have shown themselves to be a nation of ingrates, only by having children can we begin to understand such dynamic" and "Facts are horrid things." Her confidant is another regular, Chloe Sevingy, who plays an American wed to a controlling and much older husband, played by Stephen Fry. Actually, it has the usual great ensemble cast, which is a typical byproduct of a Stillman production. It is yet another winning Stillman film-highly enjoyable.

Gekikara Gourmet Festival 2016

I love spicy food so I thought I'd check out the Gekikara Festival in Okubo Park. I should have done more planning, I got a full serving ticket for ¥1000 (smaller portions are available for ¥800), and decided to go for mabodofu at a Chinese booth. When asked how hot I wanted it I said medium (forgetting it was a super spicy festival). I couldn't finish it-maybe 10 spoonfuls maximum. I guess I am weaker than I thought when it comes to the heat.

Laputa Asagaya

Laputa is a cinema building inspired by by the legendary Studio Ghibili's Castle in the Sky. It is currently showing vintage films from the 60s. They seems to be more commercially successful films rather than the more artistic films from that era I am partial to. But I still might stop by and check a film out at some point since it is one of the golden ages of Japanese cinema in my opinion. Last month they were showing the art film The Lobster, so they also show contemporary films on occasion.

Deep South

The last time I left Paul Theroux in the pages of The Last Train to Zona Verde, he was defeated by his travels in Africa. He finished his trip early feeling that life was too short to put himself through the many miseries of travel in Africa. The ridiculous amount of foreign aid given to the people there created a sense of entitlement and made the people lazy-they were waiting for handouts instead of finding ways to be self-sufficient. Theroux began wondering why so much aid was being given to this continent while in America there were many people who were as poor as those he found in Africa. And it was there that he found the idea for his next book, Deep South: Four Seasons On Back Roads (2015). He clearly states his objectives-he is not in the south for the great meals or to see historic buildings in the big cities of the South. He was searching for the poor of the South, the forgotten left behind people of a region that he was unfamiliar with. He would travel by car for the first time instead of relying on public transportation and he would make multiple journeys at different times of the year to get his stories for his book. He would look closely at many aspects of the South: racism, poverty, religion, education, politics, the belief in the Second Amendment, the literary culture of the South from the writers of the South. So the bulk of the book is spent with the common folk of the South that he searches out in poor towns and at gun shows. At first he can't help bring up Bill Clinton and visits his hometowns town and birthplace. He eventually makes peace with Clinton's complexities and lets him off the hook so to speak. However, he does get to meet one of his favorite (and my favorite) living Southern writers in Charles Portis, but doesn't really get to have a substantial conversation with him. Part One: Fall:"You Gotta Be Going There To Get Here" is his first foray into the south and he ruminates on the differences and his boyhood associations with racism and the civil rights movement, the literature of the south, and the differences of the culture there with that of his Boston "Yankee" upbringing:

We tolerate difference only when we don't have to look at it or listen to it, as long as it doesn't impact our lives. Our great gift as a country is its size and its relative emptiness, its elbow room. That space allows for difference and is often mistaken for tolerance. The person who dares to violate that space is the real traveler.

This is followed by an Interlude: The Taboo Word, in which Theroux muses on that powerful n word, n******, that still has such power, despite the efforts by blacks to it back by using "n****." In Part Two: Winter: "Ones Born Today Don't Know How It Was" is a continuation of his journey. This was followed by another Interlude: The Paradox Of Faulkner, in which Theroux muses on the writings of William Faulkner, who is one of Theroux's favorite writers (as well as one of mine). He finds the author elusive and a paradox on several levels. He points out:

He gave Southerners heroes and villains and good ole boys; he added names and histories to Southern stereotypes: the Major, the Colonel, the Lawyer, the Landowner, the Preacher, the Runaway, the Alien, the Jailbird, the Meddler, the Interloper. And he differentiated among the Indians and the categories of blacks, all sorts-the mixed-race characters in Absolom, Absolom! and Light in August, upright and falsely accused Lucas Beauchamp in Intruder in the Dust, the enduring housekeeper Dilsey ('I can seed the first en de last"), the field hands, and the black laborer who helped dispose of Emmett Till's corpse, is Faulknerian right down to his name. Faulkner's most memorable characters are his villains, Popeye in Sanctuary, the Tall Convict in "The Old Man," and all the Snopes, set forth (in The Mansion) in the words of his cousin Montgomery Snopes:"All right...every Snopes will make it his private and personal aim to have the whole world recognize him as THE son of a bitch's son of a bitch.

Again, we return to the journey with Part Three: Spring: "Rebud In Bloom." The following Interlude: The Fantastications of Southern Fiction" was also of great interest to me. I wrote my undergraduate honors thesis on the Southern Gothic focusing on Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and Sherwood Anderson. He discusses Erskine Caldwell, O'Connor, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote (his early work), Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird (Of which he says: With a cast of stereotypes confirming every conventional prejudice against the Deep South, the book has sold in the millions.), Barry Hannah, Portis, Mary Ward Brown (a new revelation and a person eh met on his journey before her death at the age of 96), Eudora Welty, William March. He mentions that the black writers of the South did not remain in the South and were: "...more factual, contain more obvious self-portraiture, are often more polemic in their sentimental rage, and emphatically radical in their indignation." He hits the road again in Part Four: Summer: "The Odor of Sun-Heated Roads." The final section includes photos by Steve McCurry and a short notes by Theroux and McCurry about their relationship and the project. Since I am a Yankee from the Pacific Northwest, I am also fascinated with the South and this served as background reading as I visited the South for the first time in New Orleans. I still am eager to see more of it and Theroux has only kindled that desire with his compelling observations on the modern day South.