Monthly Archives: March 2008

On the Trail of the Kichijoji Wildcat

Posted on by
Reply

soap flowers

One of the most popular neighborhoods in Tokyo is Kichijoji. I’d only passed by the station on my way to teach at Asia University once a week, but never had the time to stop off. Much of the area is like any other Tokyo neighborhood with the usual shops and restaurants, but there is one particularly charming street that leads to Inokashira Park. This street has a village feel with a mix of cozy cafes and import stores crammed with folk crafts from around the world. It’s a short street but I loved walking around there.

inokashira bridge

The park is one of the better parks of Tokyo. It encompasses a zoo, the Ghibli Museum, a shrine, a casual pan-Asian restaurant, and a river with giant swan-shaped pedal boats for rent, reputed to be bad luck for couples who ride them together. The park has a local feel, with paths leading out of the park and ambling into quiet streets. It reminded me of Lithia Park in Ashland, Oregon, with its long creek, and its vitality.

I visited the Inokashira Park Zoo, which was free with the Grutt Pass. I liked that the zoo focused on native Japanese species instead of stocking itself with exotic species from further afield. On the other hand, I found it comical that many species were tagged with “Japanese”. Like the common squirrel was tagged as the “Japanese squirrel”, or the common raccoon as the “Japanese raccoon”. They were presented as subspecies, but probably should have been labeled as breeds.

I was really excited to see the Amur leopard cat. The wild cat ranges throughout East Siberia and Korea but was tagged in some places as the “Tsushima leopard cat”. Tsushima is a small Japanese island lying between Korea and Japan. I guess it could be a subspecies, except that they both share the same scientific name, Felis bengalenses euptilura. There were so many similar instances of species revisionism that I imagined some drunk nationalistic biologist giggling all night as he “discovered” new subspecies for the glory of the emperor.

The most interesting part of the zoo is the aquarium which featured waterfowl as well as insects and reptiles, including one really big cane toad from the Americas. It was the size of one of the Amur cats, but thankfully wasn’t labeled as the “Japanese giant toad”.

introspective swan

Creative taxonomy aside, I actually enjoyed the casual atmosphere of the zoo. It was more of a park for kids that happened to have animals. Still, like all zoos, it was depressing at times to see the animals pacing nervously in their cages. Watching the 50 year old Asian elephant, Hanako, was especially sad, as she rocked back and forth, gazing off into the distance, dreaming of a faint childhood in Thai forests.

Karaoke!

Posted on by
4

CIMG8502.JPG

One of the great cultural contributions from Japan is karaoke. It’s different here than in America and the UK (the two other places I’ve sung karaoke). First of all, instead of one big open room, usually a bar full of strangers, you rent a room by the half hour with just your friends.

Back in Oregon, my friends and I would drive over to the bar in the Red Lion Inn. I usually went with my buddies, Gil and Jerry, and whoever else wanted to tag along. We’d submit a request for a song to the DJ. And then perhaps 30 minutes to an hour later she’d call us up and we’d sing for the whole room. If we were lucky we’d sing two, maybe three, songs each by the end of the night. The DJ would make wisecracks and only Jerry would sound decent.

I was always surprised at how many people took karaoke seriously. The regulars would have one or two songs that they had perfected and that’d be their shining moment of glory.

In Japanese karaoke places, you can sing all the songs you want with people you know in your own private room. And many places serve decent food that’s delivered to your room. Some of the rooms are just bare bones. But most are well-decorated, plush and even swanky. At my last birthday party, we went to a karaoke place that had a shallow pool of warm water under the table for a nice relaxing footbath. All these places have a decent selection of English songs.

During the day, the rates can be quite cheap. There’s one place near my work that charges 50 yen per 30 minutes before 5pm. In the evenings the rates increase to 300 yen per half hour per person. If you miss the last train, a few thousand yen will get you a room from late night to early morning.

CIMG8377.JPG

After a while I’ve found that karaoke participants fall into a few types.

The Speed Dialer programs several songs in a row so that we have a solid half hour of just them singing. This is poor karaoke etiquette. However, this is a good time to eat all the food and chit chat with everyone else. Afterwards, it’s best to hide the remote control from them.

The Sneak Attack repeatedly says to everyone that they can’t sing. Their voice is awful. They’re tone deaf. They don’t know any songs. Then all of a sudden their song comes up and they sing beautifully, knocking everyone’s socks off.

The Smooth Operator sounds good. Everyone shuts up and listens. They even get requests.

The Screecher means well. They’re enthusiastic. They put on their song and belt it out. They mistake volume for skill. This is a good time to go to the bathroom. If you can discreetly turn down their mic volume, by all means do it.

The Encroacher will pick up the other mic and join you in your song. Sometimes it’s good, mostly they just sing over you. I’m afraid I belong in this category. For the Encroacher, it’s a good way to increase singing time while not appearing to be a Speed Dialer.

The Premature Evacuator. Halfway through their song, they give up, and either hand the mic over to someone else to finish it or they stop the song.

CIMG8368.JPG

These are just caricatures of course. Most of us fall into several of these types at one time or another. Most people have decent voices and pick interesting songs. To maximize your karaoke experience, I like to follow these guidelines:

• Put in one song at a time. Two max.

• Sing a few songs you’ve never tried before.

• Every now and then include songs that everyone knows and can join in on

• Sing duets with people you’ve never sung with.

• And most importantly, sing your heart out and always applaud after every song.

Babel

Posted on by
2

795px-Brueghel-tower-of-babel.jpg

In the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, all the people of the earth lived in one place and spoke one language. They formed a great civilization and thus they felt that they were as good as God. So, aspiring to be divine themselves, they began building a colossal tower that would reach heaven and God. God didn’t take too kindly to this kind of arrogance so the people of Babel were made to speak different languages. Thus, people were no longer able to communicate with each other and construction of the tower ceased. Thereafter, people spread out all over the world, forming nations and tribes with those they could communicate with.

402px-Babel_poster32.jpg

Babel, the movie, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga, is a meditation on the difficulty and tragedy of intercultural communication. The movie is filmed in English, Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Berber and Sign Language, with bits of French. Since I watched a Japanese version of the DVD there were no English subtitles. I watched the movie only able to understand the English. Having grown up in Southern California I was able to pick up some of the Spanish and living in Japan now I was able to catch smatterings of the Japanese. But otherwise, it truly was Babel to me.

Yet, it didn’t matter. I was able to understand the general meanings of what the characters were saying and follow the narrative fairly closely. After the movie, I checked online for a synopsis to make sure my perception was true and it surprisingly was close to what I “heard”.

The film is set in four countries: Japan, Morocco, Mexico and the U.S. And it involves the story of four intertwined stories. Previous Iñárritu/Arriaga movies also followed this conceit, with events and choices made by one character affecting another and so on. Babel is the least focused of these of films. Amores Perros, the first of their trilogy, is a tightly wound cinematic masterpiece set in Mexico City. 21 Grams is an excruciatingly cathartic follow-up. Babel though just as challenging and finely crafted, is just not as satisfying. The Japanese story, though mesmerizing, is the most tangential, while the other three story lines abrasively cleaved to each other.

Like their other films, Babel’s narrative jumps back and forth in time and only by the end does the viewer comprehend the timeline, the choices and the consequences.

The story can be followed through a Winchester rifle. It was given by a Japanese hunter/tourist to his guide in Morocco. Then it was sold to another Moroccan family of goat herders. It was accidentally fired by one of the sons, hitting an American tourist. Because of the medical emergency, the American’s children back in San Diego had to be taken care of longer than expected by their Mexican nanny. However, the nanny has to attend her son’s wedding in Mexico, so she takes the children over the border.

Each choice leads to both tragedy and redemption. But it’s mostly tragedy for the Moroccans and the Mexicans, and redemption for the Americans and the Japanese. The American couple grow closer through their harrowing experience, and the Japanese father and daughter learn to grieve together. Meanwhile, the Mexican nanny, soulfully played by Adriana Barraza, loses her livelihood and home, while the Moroccan family loses a son. Perhaps this is a parable on how bad choices disproportionately effect people from developing countries, while those of us in the developed countries are more insulated.

babel-large.jpg

Even with such heavyweights as Brad Pitt and my favorite actress, the ethereal Cate Blanchett, the lesser known performers stole the show. Both Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi, who played the deaf Japanese schoolgirl were nominated for many awards. (Click on the picture on the right for an interesting article on how these two actresses first met, since they never met during the filming.) But the actors who played the Moroccan father and his two sons were also compelling.

I was troubled by what I felt was unneeded nudity by Kikuchi. At times I felt I was watching some cheesy fantasy stereotype of a horny Japanese schoolgirl trapped in a scene from Basic Instinct. Much to her credit, Kikuchi portrayed the character as a complex teenager who was struggling with her sense of low self-worth and how it was enmeshed in her emerging sexuality. One could argue that the nudity and overt sexuality was necessary to convey her vulnerability. But Kikuchi did a fine job of doing that with just the expressions on her face. If anything the casual titillation distracted away from the emotional force of the performance.

I can’t say I fully recommend the movie. It’s not a comfortable moviegoing experience. Although it was a valiant attempt to expand the trilogy onto a global scale, for a casual moviegoer, you’re better off with Amores Perros.

The Notebook

Posted on by
4

983-notebook1.jpgIt’s said that one of the best ways to rid yourself of toxins is to empty your tear ducts. Crying, like laughing, is a healing act. To reach your quota of lacrimation, or tearing, I recommend The Notebook. The movie appears to be standard poor boy meets rich girl. And that’s partly true of this movie. Social pressures eventually push them apart in a heartbreaking scene. You can predict what happens by the end. Do they get back together? Well, of course they do. It’s Hollywood and that’s just the way it is.

Still, there’s a twist to it all and you can see it coming a mile away. But it doesn’t matter. This film is designed for maximum lacrimation. It’s best not to fight it.

The cast is stellar, with all kinds of little gems of performances from the supporting cast, from the easy rural elegance of Sam Shepard, the heartbroken charm of James Marsden, and the poignant regret of Joan Allen. It’s an idealized world, where everyone has good intentions, of a pre-Civil Rights South where black folks and white folks play banjo on the porch together, and a blue-collar single parent makes his son recite Walt Whitman to cure him of stuttering.

983-notebook3.jpg

Rachel McAdams shines in the starring role. But James Garner and Gena Rowlands steal the show as the couple in their twilight years, as Rowlands’ character deals with Alzheimer’s and Garner’s character patiently tries to remind her of their love.

Usually a Hollywood love story ends with a couple at the beginning of a relationship. Rarely does it reflect on the well-worn love story from the perspective of a shared life-long love.

An Art Deco Masterpiece

Posted on by
6

teien

Before the Japanese emperor regained control of Japan in the mid-19th century, the Shogun exerted control over the warlords through a variety of means. The most important way was to require his lords and their families to live in Tokyo. This allowed the Shogun to keep an eye on them, keep their families hostage, and make them spend a lot of their resources keeping two households while traveling back and forth.

What’s this got to do with the museum I’m about to review? The Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum is located in Shirokane, the neighborhood where many of those lords lived. The museum itself is housed in the former Prince Asaka’s mansion, a lovely and inspired use of an historical building. Completed in 1933, the house is truly an art deco masterpiece. There are murals by Henri Rapin on the walls, gorgeous glass reliefs by Rene Lalique, decorative ironwork by Raymond Subes, and sculptures by Leon Blanchot, among others. It’s a spectacular venue. Every so often, the museum has a special exhibition of the mansion itself, opening all the rooms to the public.

Architectural Photography

teien exhibit

Most of the time, however, the main rooms of the mansion serve as galleries for other exhibits. The current exhibit is Remembrance of Places Past: Japanese Architectural Photography from the 19th to the 21st Century. This is an exhibit of Japanese photographers who’ve photographed architecture and western photographers who have photographed Japanese buildings.

Highlights include:

  • Early photographs of palaces around Tokyo. These were designed in Western styles by European and American architects, and includes the museum itself. These were built to try to rival Western imperial powers to prove that Japan was an equal to other world/European powers, according to the gallery explanation. Curious that they thought mimicry was the best path to this, instead of glorifying or innovating Japan’s unique architectural heritage.
  • Ito Chuta advocated such a development of native architecture. For his troubles he was asked by the Japanese government to go to Beijing and sketch and photograph the palaces there. He captured beautiful sepia photographs of the gates, processional staircases and sprawling courtyards. The best were his drawings of engraving details.
  • Pictures of the Aomori Art Museum. The all white building blends into the snows of Aomori. The low profile elicits comparisons to a Frank Lloyd Wright creation, if he were ever to design something arctic.
  • The Tokyo Archdiocese Cathedral photos captured the stunning use of light in its design and a roof vaulted in the classic form of a cross. I need to make a pilgrimage to this building.

The ticket price includes the sprawling garden which has nice sculptures, plenty of places to sit and relax, a pond, and a teahouse.

coffee and anko

And of course, what about the café? Café Sahsya Kanetanaka has big tables by the gift shop. It has the usual over-priced coffee, but this is offset by the stuffed leather chairs that were so comfy that the old man sitting at the next table was asleep. Later a young couple sat down at the table next to him and they also joined in the slumber.

The exhibit runs through the end of the month and is free with the Grutt Pass.