Skip to main content

Movies and Meat!

Yesterday the newest Studio Ghibli movie, When Marnie Was There, came out in Japanese theaters. Unfortunately not a work of Hayao Miyazaki (since retired...) but it's by the director of The Secret Life of Arrietty, which came out a few years ago.
Regardless, When Marnie Was There is a movie based off the novel by Joan G. Robinson (and is currently out of print and impossible to find, even though I really want to read it...Amazon claims there will be a reprint next year but I'm impatient...)


I won't say too much about the movie since I'm sure an English version will come out eventually, but I will say that I enjoyed it. It was much better than I thought it would be; the background art was beautiful, as was the music. The ending was a little too well-wrapped up for my taste, but there was an element of ethereal mystery throughout the film. I'm really glad I went--and even MORE glad that I understood it!! Probably helps that there's pictures, but still!

Then we all went out for yakitori (lit. grilled chicken) for dinner. Naoko (who visited once earlier) came again, this time with her husband. They're very cute. We had to wait about forty minutes to get seats at this yakitori restaurant, but it was definitely worth it!



Meat!
And tomorrow is yet another day off! I'll have to start studying for the final exam soon...
T-5 days.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Homecoming

This is it. It's Friday, February 3rd and in less than 24 hours I will leave this house for Tokyo train station, which will take me to the airport, which will take me...home. Most of this week has been taken up with goodbyes: to schoolmates and teachers, and later, close friends. There were tears involved. I think the photos will do it a lot more justice than I could: Kohei, from tennis group. All the tennis people got together for dinner at an okonomiyaki (think cabbage pancake, with yummy stuff like shrimp in it) but first we went to a boardwalk which had nighttime light shows. Top: Anime Club. They threw a small party for me, where we ate lots of food and watched (what else) anime and talked. Bottom: one of my English classes. They asked me to teach them an American game for the last day, so I taught everyone how to play Heads-Up 7-Up. They were pretty good at it. The other exchange student, Nom, and my Japanese teacher. The last view of school: the walk leading u...
13 comments
Read more

Enoshima: The Heavenly Maiden and the Dragon

This past Monday was a national holiday -- Mountain Day -- so, of course, Troy and I headed to the beach instead. Well, to an island near a beach since (as some of you may know) I'm not exactly the beach-going type. Plus I'd just climbed Mount Fuji, which was more than enough mountain for me. Enoshima is a small island off the coast of Kanagawa Prefecture, fairly near Kamakura. It's connected to the mainland via a bridge, so you can just stroll on over from the train station. The entire island is dedicated to Benzaitan, the goddess of everything that flows -- time, water, speech, music, and knowledge. According to the "Enoshima Engi," (a history of the shrines and temples on Enoshima) there's also a legend associated with the creation of the island involving Benzaitan and a dragon. In brief, the area around Enoshima was once wracked by violent storms and earthquakes. Eventually the tumult ended and a heavenly maiden (Benzaitan) descended from the clouds....
2 comments
Read more

In Praise of American Teachers

SPOILER ALERT: This post is going to be part rant, part commentary and part revelation, so be prepared for a lot of text and some opinions (which may be rather harsh). Since I've had about a week of school I think I'm just about qualified to make comments about the type of education in Japan, and a bit of confusion I have about world education rankings. Let me be rather blunt at first: a dull teacher at an American school is already more intersting than a teacher at a Japanese school. The best examples I have for this is comparing American math and science classes to Japanese math and science classes. Science and math classes that I've always had have been very teacher-student and student-student interactive, with discussions, questioning, and interactions with the material. Japanese math and science classes are completely lecture based, where the teacher either reads directly from the textbook or instructs the students to. Even when the teacher wrote on the chalkboard (y...
6 comments
Read more