other random japan in may

Design Festa in Tokyo Big Sight (more like Design Fest-"enh"-- Hide warned us it would be mediocre, but we had to see for ourselves)

Child with a laundry bag on top of her head-- rode the whole Yamanote line like this

A beautiful can of beer

You can't buy guns in Japan... but you can buy toy ones.

Capsule Life (capsule hotel coming in another catch-up post)

Tokyo Music-- Ariel Pink at Grapefruit Moon, Ami Yoshida (as one half of "California Dolls") at a party at Trees Are So Special

More Japan Through the Retro-spectacles

Neighborhoods:
SHIBUYA (my favorite favorite bebop gyoza shop is in there someplace... and a quiet temple just a stone's throw from infamous Shibuya Crossing)

SHINJUKU (our home "ku", throwing it down)

IKEBUKURO (and catching up with my long lost friend Harumi!)

MEGURO/NAKAMEGURO (you can't tell, but the first two pictures are of guys practicing karate! Karate in Japan! Ohmigod!)

DAIKANYAMA (weird embassies, amazing record shops and the super-cool Trees Are So Special gallery)

EXCURSIONS: YOKOHAMA (that big gray thing is the new Yokohama dock... looks like a huge wooden whale, thanks Sarah for knowing about this thing... also we went to an art gallery complex nearby that had a bar made entirely out of white plastic cutting-boards)

EXCURSIONS: STUDIO GHIBLI IN MITA (they wouldn't let non-children into the plush cat-bus, dammit)

movie-day

First Rowena, one of my former students and recent collaborator on this weird short film we hurriedly shot last week, came over to look at the footage and discuss editing.
This proved so exhausting that we went over to the UC film library and checked some things out-- I was mainly looking for some Vietnamese movies to get into the visual mood for my spur-of-the-moment trip to Ho Chi Minh City this weekend (thanks to insane discount tickets through LastMinuteTravel). The only Vietnamese directors I've really watched are Anh Hung Tran and Trinh T. Minh-ha, and I figured it'd be good to watch a few more...

Unfortunately Three Seasons by Tony Bui was out, as were many others-- that left The Scent of Green Papaya on Laserdisc, and a bunch of other non-Vietnam DVDs I've been wanting to watch. But our Laserdisc player over at Flat GB is on the fritz (incredible enough that we HAVE a Laserdisc player), so I just ended up having my own disparate but awesome double-feature of
Dog Day Afternoon and J.S.A.


It was especially strange to see Dog Day Afternoon at long last, since I had already seen and loved Pierre Huyghe's The Third Memory a few winters ago at the SF Moma. In this project, Huyghe has real-life bank robber John Wojtowicz (played by Al Pacino in the movie) re-enact (and effectively "re-tell") that long afternoon on a sound-stage in Paris modeled after the actual Brooklyn bank... Truth is stranger than fiction, every crime is a Rashomon story waiting to be told, etc. etc. but it really works.

And J.S.A. is pre-Old Boy Park Chan-wook just waiting to bust out. Elegant plotting and that sense of inevitability that always draws me in like a sucker. Hey, it worked for Oedipus Rex right? Watch out for awkward English dialogue, however.

some things never change...

It's always the umbrella.
The title of this print from 1912 is "The American Girl in Japan." I found it on eBay a few hours ago, and after some deliberation decided I had to buy it. 11 USD is a small price to pay for another addition to my (unintentional but growing) collection of white-woman-in-Asia iconography. How adorably "problematic".

cue the kevin shields

Yes, yes, I've finally written a piece about my love/hate affair with "Lost in Translation", particularly the frustrations of living in its shadow as a white girl in urban Asia. It appears in the premiere issue of "The Fanzine", a sharp new web-magazine founded by awesome Casey McKinney (and my lifelong buddy Michael Kai Louie-- but why aren't you on the contributors page, Mike?)

hostess with the mostess

one of my favorite photo subjects is the elusive creature "sarah cassidy". you have to be quick and stealthy to catch this special specimen on camera, for she is most likely to hide her face or make a disapproving sneer, but occasionally you can capture a moment of her in her natural state of ethereal adorableness.










(here sarah is not demonstrating her advanced kangaroo fighting moves, but re-enacting a speech she had to give in japanese class about the herzog/de meuron prada building in aoyama that we were looking at)




eternal kagurazaka love for my gaijin partner-in-crime

temple cats

l'empire des signes

Top Left: "I threw my cigarette butt into the drain. That is to say, I hid it in the drain." (Smoking manners poster)
Top Right: Kara Walker-esque train safety poster
Second Left: Adventures in non-PC advertising. "Blacky: Hyper Tanning Studio of Japan Islands"
Second Right: Everything is cute. Is that a bus or a flying ladybug-lamb?
Third Left: If you look closely, you can see that classes at the Chinese Language Center are taught by a Panda (wearing a mortarboard cap-- at least he seems qualified).
Third Right: "Let's hear your seventies Shinjuku memories!" I wish I had seventies Shinjuku memories.
Bottom Left: In Yokohama Chinatown, Pandas have gone to eat dim sam and stuffed themselves! But wait-- isn't that Jumbo Seafood Floating Restaurant behind them? They're actually in Hong Kong!
Bottom Right: Tadanobu, my supercrush, shilling for a coffee called "FIRE" at the bottom of almost every vending machine in Japan (which at least meant I got to see him four or five times every block).

goodbye, yen.

tiny taiko rainbow

at the asakusa jinja matsuri in late may:



lanterns and busy streets


big men carrying mikoshi


old men carrying their cellphones


sarah buying food at one of the teeming street stalls, and...


a float filled with babies playing a taiko. click on the picture to see a video so cute you may need to sit down.

japanimals

some amazing game i really wanted called "nintendogs"-- i think like tamagotchi only better because it's your own little digital puppy you can play with on your gameboy... assorted cute animal posters... and that rabbit is CRAZY.