01.Feb.2010 Japanese Season Has Ended, For Now
Can you believe we have gone through the third round of Japanese Literature Challenge, and it has again, ended?
I did a lot better this time around than last year. Funny. Last round I intended to read a lot and ended up reading much less. This round I intended to read one or two, and ended [...]
31.Jan.2010 Oishinbo: Ramen & Gyōza by Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki
Oishinbo (美味しんぼ, lit. “The Gourmet”) is a long-running cooking manga published between 1983 and 2008, but only in 2009 it is published in English in thematic compilation volumes, which includes: Japanese Cuisine, Sake, Ramen & Gyôza, Fish, Sushi & Sashimi, Vegetables, The Joy of Rice, and Izakaya: Pub Food (7 volumes so far). Thematic compilation [...]
16.Jan.2010 Hello Japan: My YA J-Pop
This month’s of Hello Japan is about Japanese music. I’m going over the top by being awfully nostalgic in the past week. I haven’t listened to Japanese songs regularly for many years, but it used to be my staple day and night.
It was in the late 90s and I was all alone. At 17 years [...]
15.Dec.2009 I Am a Cat by Sōseki Natsume (Volume One)
I Am Cat is narrated by…, you guess it, a cat. I never have a cat (I’m a dog person), so I don’t know the daily real behaviours of a cat. But I did find this cat interesting. I liked reading his daily life and observations of humans around him.
The cat remains nameless, since his [...]
26.Nov.2009 Clueless in Tokyo by Betty Reynolds
Clueless in Tokyo: An Explorer’s Sketchbook of Weird and Wonderful Things in Japan is the second book in the series that I read after Squeamish about Sushi by the same author.
Once again, the illustration was always a joy to look at and the little things were fascinating to learn.
For example, the instruction on how to [...]
11.Oct.2009 TSS: Movie Mini-Reviews: Julie & Julia, Coraline, Shawshank Redemption, My Neighbors the Yamadas
I’m going to watch WICKED the Broadway Musical this Wednesday so I’m reading Wicked the book by Gregory Maguire feverishly so I can finish it before Wednesday — which is a more difficult task than I thought, because the book is LONG. I’ve been reading it for about 2 weeks now!
Surely I will write my [...]
08.Oct.2009 Strangers by Taichi Yamada
An idea that started as having relatively good potential, turned into B grade horror movie, except that it’s not even scary. That probably sums up what I think about the whole book. It’s very short so I’m sure you can finish it in no time. Even so, I felt like it could be compressed even [...]
16.Sep.2009 Movie Mini-Review: Dolls
Dolls
Japanese, 2002
“Westerners loathe the notion of death. There is no reason. Life is considered to be something meaningful. There is no religion which justifies the notion of death. In Japan, there’s no philosophy. So death seems something sublime, once it’s decorated with an ornament like love. You’ll find something creeping towards you and that is [...]
12.Sep.2009 Kabuki: The Metamorphosis by David Mack
I first heard of Kabuki from Carl’s blog and picked it up from the library not long ago (a review that makes me run to the library to get a copy is sure one hell of a great review). Somehow my library had only Kabuki: The Metamorphosis, which after halfway reading I found out was [...]
09.Sep.2009 Movie Mini-Reviews: Jin-Roh, An Autumn Afternoon, Cheri
A few movies that I watched recently:
Foreign Movies
Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade
Japanese, Released: 1999 Japan, 2000 US
A world in future dystopian Japan where Little Red Riding Hood is a bomb-carrier terrorist and Wolf is elite government army. Red and Wolf are involved in political mess that bring them closer as two wounded people. But at [...]
