Lost In Translation

Sanagi Shinjuku

The other day I stopped at Sanagi, a new communal restaurant space under an elevated road near the South Exit of Shinjuku station. There are several restaurants that serve Asian food and drinks at a reasonable price-there's an outdoor dining area as well. It's reasonably priced, but the food was mediocre. Could be a good place for a snack and a few drinks though.

Spicy shrimp satay and Asian tsukune (minced chicken) with miso.

Korean style dumplings with spicy sauce.

Dogville

I recently saw that Dennis Villeneuve, a director I respect, listed Lars Von Trier's  Dogville (2003) one of the ten best films of the 21st century, So I thought maybe I should give it a try. Previously I had seen Dancer in the Dark and Breaking the Waves and found both hard work. In fact previews I had read of Dogville put me off it. It is a Brecht-like film, with a stage-like set to remind the viewer that this is an artificial construct, that suggests via metaphor that America is a corrupt and evil place not worth saving. It is overlong and again hard work to watch the awful things the characters do to one another. Nicole Kidman puts forth a powerful and brave performance as the catalyst for the evil embedded in the town. I don't think I can bear to watch another Von Trier film after suffering through three hours of this.

You Only Live Twice

I've seen most James Bond films and a few years back made a special effort to see You Only Live Twice, since it was set and filmed in Japan. However, I have never read an Ian Fleming novel, so I thought I would start with You Only Live Twice (1964) for the same reason. I was surprised to learn that it was Fleming last full-length Bond novel before dying of heart disease after the publication. The plot is very much different from the film, Bond is in a funk after having his wife of one month killed by his arch nemesis Blofeld. He is dispatched to Japan for a difficult assignment-there he meets with Australian Dikko Henderson and the bilingual Oxford educated Tiger Tanaka. It seems that Blofeld has acquired a castle in Fukuoka and has created a garden with a host of poisonous plans and creatures like stocking the stream with piranhas.  One of the things that I did enjoy about the book and film were the locations from Tokyo to Mie prefecture and the Inland Sea to Fukuoka. Bond's stop in Mie is particularly memorable since he meets Awa diver Kissy Suzuki who falls in love with him and helps him with, and eventually saves him, with his mission to dispatch Blofeld. Characters like Tanaka seem to be the mouthpiece for Fleming's unconventional views of the Japanese as suicide obsessed sadists. I can't say that I was inspired to seek out any of the other Fleming novels-I think I'll stick with the films.

The Law Of The Border

The Law Of The Border (1966) was directed by Turkish director Lutfi Akid and starred Kurdish actor and writer Yulmaz Guney. When a repressive government took power in Turkey prints of this film were destroyed, because of the Kurdish star, save one-which is the basis for this imperfect restoration of the classic New Turkish film. Guney stars as Hidir, a smuggler along the Syrian-Turkish border out of necessity. The film is notable for its realism and location settings on the border, as well as being one of the few films from this era that can be seen as part of Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project No. 2. 

The Best American Travel Writing 2014

The

I sought out the The Best American Travel Writing 2014 mainly because the guest editor this time was one of my favorite travel writers, Paul Theroux.  It is another solid collection, I didn't skip any of the essay this time round. Some of the standouts for me were: "Amigos" by Julia Cooke, about real life in Cuba, "460 Days" by Amanda Lindhout with Sara Corbett, about being held for ransom in Somalia, "Now We Are Five" by David Sedaris, about his family's first vacation after one of his sisters committed suicide, "Maximum Bombay" by Gary Shteyngart, about Mumbai, "Loving Las Vegas" by Colson Whitehead, about early travels in America with his college friends, and "Open Water" by Sean Wilsey about his gondolier connection with Venice. I suppose these collections reflect the tastes of the guest editors and I can see here Theroux and I have similar tastes by the subjects he chose to included in this collection. I know that he is one of those writers who isn't for everyone, but I think he's done an admirable job with this collection.

Mysterious Object At Noon

I was also interested in seeing Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Mysterious Objects At Noon (2000), which is included in Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project No.2. It was Weerasethakul's first full-length film and was a mixture of fiction and documentary. It is an original and inventive film in many ways. Weerasethakul's subsequent films are noted for their freshness and inventiveness as well. In the film people that the film maker meets while traveling throughout Thailand are encouraged to embellish a tale about a paraplegic boy and his teacher, Dogfahr. The film was shot on 16mm in black and white and blown up for the big screen. I found the documentary-like depictions of life in the late 90s the most interesting thing about the film-there are a variety of locations-from the city to the countryside.

2017 Sake Night

I got an invite to the the pre-opening party for the Sake Brewer's Association's Sake Night in Ikebukuro. There were hundreds of award winning nihonshu that we were able to taste. One of them was from Gassan (the one inthe middle), which is brewed by my friend Tomonori Yoshida's family in Shimane prefecture.

Taipei Story

I was highly anticipating seeing Edward Yang's second film Taipei Story (1985) that is the gem in the Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project No. 2 box set (the other films are: Insiang, Mysterious Object at Noon, Revenge, Limite, Law of the Border). This is the story of the disintegration of a relationship between former baseball star Lung (played by script co-writer and fellow auteur Hou Hsiao-Hsien) and his modern long time girlfriend Chin (pop star Chin Tsai). There is no future for Lung and he is unable to change with the times as Chin has. But it is also the story of the transformation of Taipei itself-three generations are represented-the old, the middle (with the two protagonists), and the new, which is seen in the rebelliousness of Chin's younger sister A-Ling (Lin Hsiun-Ling) and her friends who live for pleasure in the moment. Yang's cinematic depictions of the city and open spaces haunt the film. There are all sorts of impressive cinematography that add to the overall feeling of disintegration and dread throughout the film. Yang in only his second film as director is firmly in control of his cinematic vision.

Ryoma Sakamoto

I saw an interesting exhibition on Ryoma Sakamoto, one of the founders of modern Japan, at the impressive Edo Museum. There's another exhibition at another site that I hope to take in for his 150th anniversary.

The Lady In The Lake

I'm really enjoying Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe series and have just finished reading the fourth book in the series, Lady In The Lake (1943). Marlowe as usual attracts dead bodies that complicate the missing person case he has been hired for. The first body is "the lady in the lake" of the title and the wife of the alcoholic caretaker-seemingly the result of domestic violence-but things are never so simple in a Chandler novel. The story has the usual femme fatales, crooked cops, and eccentric LA types as well as some yokels since the body is found at in lake in the mountains where some vacation cottages have been built. There's an underrated county sheriff that shines in this novel and makes one wonder if it was inspiration for the female sheriff in the Coen brother's Fargo. It does feel as though this novel had one of the more straight ahead plots thus far as well. As usual some great writing and dialogue throughout:

“I'm all done with hating you. It's all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don't hate them very long.”

“Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get...”

“However hard I try to be nice I always end up with my nose in the dirt and my thumb feeling for somebody’s eye.”

It was another entertaining and stylish thriller from a master of the genre. looking forward to the next book in the series.