michael lambe's scrapbook

As some of you are aware, I spend way too much of my time watching movies. As some of you are also aware I have a part-time job teaching English conversation at a mental clinic. I say teaching, but what I actually do is play games and chat and generally end up learning more Japanese (and more about Japan) than teaching English… Anyway, last Saturday I put the question: What Japanese movies should I watch in order to understand Japan better? My pals at the clinic gave me the following list:

椿三十郎 – Tsubaki Sanjuro (That’s the original by Kurosawa not the latest starring Oda Yuji).
男はつらいよ – Otoko ha Tsurai Yo (anything from this series but especially those starring Yoshinaga Sayuri).
東京物語　- Tokyo Monogatari directed by Suzu Yasujiro.
華麗なる一族　- Kareinaru Ichizoku (TV drama?)
忠臣蔵　- Chuushingura (a classic samurai/revenge tale that has been remade many times).
おしん　- Oshin (old NHK TV drama)
機動戦士ガンダン – Kidou senshi Gandan (anime)
And then these movies by director Itami Juzo:
マルさの女　ー　Marusa no Onna
スーパーの女　－　Su-pa- no Onna
お葬式 – Ososhiki

That should keep me busy for a while, but I wonder if anyone out there has any more recommendations they feel should be on the list…? As it happens, all of Itami Juzo’s movies come with lovely English subtitles so that’s where I intend to start. Tonight: Ososhiki. I’ll let you know what I think.

Some Other Stuff

Up on Deep Kyoto tonight, a fresh post on Dog Cafe. All good dogs welcome.

Here are some more links.

The Daily Mail has a story about a polar bear that drifted on an ice-flow all the way to Iceland last Tuesday. The first polar bear in Iceland for 15 years, it attracted a crowd of sightseers eager to see one of the world’s largest land-based predators before they all succumb to climate change… And the police shot it dead.

A Burger King advertising campaign reveals the seedy underbelly of life as a vegetable: Veg City. These images have apparently been used as tray liners in Burger King stores!

Coco Wang’s heart-breaking comics from the Chinese Earthquake. LINK. All true stories apparently.

And here is a man with exactly 2008 (very colorful) pins in his head celebrating the Beijing Olympics. LINK.

If your wondering why I haven’t been writing anything of late, it’s not because I’ve decided to give it all up, climb a mountain and become a hermit (I’m saving that for my retirement); I haven’t joined the French Foreign Legion in order to forget a disastrous love affair (I find it’s usually more fun just to launch yourself right back into yet another disastrous love affair); neither have I run away to join the circus as the Amazing Mikey and his Little Irish Jackhammer (“a-ha!”), – I haven’t been writing because Da Computa is poorly and everything has gone suuuuper slow and dysfunctional, (so slow that posting pictures from Sunday’s glorious hanami party is at present inconceivable – and you wouldn’t believe how long this post took to write), and I am tryin to fix Da Computa all by myself. I’ve been at it for a good week now and I am just about on the verge of giving up and taking Da Computa to the good ‘puta-doctors at Sofmap. But if I could just do this one thing by myself this time, it would be so very very cool and Rik Abel would never be able to call me an effin’ Luddite again. So I am going to try a wee bit longer. There are signs of progress and hopefully I’ll be uploading pictures , regaling with anecdotes and mis-translating poems again before the week is done. Bear with me.

Tomorrow, I teach my first class of the new school year at Kyojo. It’s hard to believe this will be my third year there… What’s scary is that I am actually starting to like it. It was only supposed to be a stop-gap! But whereas this job used to totally stress me out, I now find myself totally looking forward to teaching my new classes. We humans – we are capable of strange transformations… Like some of the worst students I taught over the last two years stopped me on the stairway today to tell me they missed me. Which was odd, in a nice sort of way (still glad I’m not teaching them anymore though – haha). More weirdness to follow. Just watch this __________

Well, I’m afraid I still can’t be bothered blogging for proper, as I’m tired and sleepy and I already wrote this once and then half-way-thru the server went down and I lost most of what I’d written and you know things I want to blog for proper about, I want to blog for proper about – proper like… So, tomorrow, ok? There’s so much I have to tell you! In the meantime, here are some pictures from Gosho (the “Imperial Palace Park”) yesterday (day before yesterday now…). It’s the tale-end of the ume-blossom season so I went and strolled around and took some pictures until the worst hayfever I’ve had so far this year drove me indoors. If you double-click on the pictures you can see them bigger (and perchance better).

BubbleShare: Share photos – Powered by BubbleShare

Also here are some links for ya:

From Boingboing – I really want these “6 Stages of the Drunken Salaryman” cellphone charms. I think I have been or seen every one of these guys.

Also found on Boingboing, are these marvellous quotes from the most charming member of the “British” royal family; Phil the Greek.

And finally, last year I remember reading about Arthur C. Clarke’s 90th birthday and thinking “Golly-gee!” (or words to that effect) “Is he still going?”. And then also being amazed that my dad is the same age. Well, though happily, my dad is still with us (and still sprightly) the old Grand-daddy of Science Fiction has passed on. He had a bloody good innings though. I first encountered A. C. Clarke under a parasol on a beach in Shri Lanka debunking mysteries for his marvellous “Mysterious World” T.V. series when I was a kid. And then I read his novels and found them – thrilling. Mr. Neil Gaiman put a link up today to a super short story by Mr. Clarke (it’ll take you five minutes) that although, not really Science Fiction, is a super, simple and superb sample of the short story form – enjoy: The Nine Billion Names of God.

A misguided friend sent me this chain mail today with a picture attached and the message went like this:

沖縄で何年かに一回現れる『神の手』という雲だそうです〓幸せになって欲しい人七人に送ると願いが叶うそうです〓七人より多くなるのはいいそうです〓ビックリするぐらいキレイに手が撮れてます〓

Which is basically a bunch of nonsense about how “The Hands of God” have appeared over Okinawa and if you send the picture onto 7 other people then all your wishes will come true blah blah blah. So I clicked on the picture and had an emotional moment when I realised I’d been sent my very first GOATSE. Hurrah!

There are no rules.

Last minute packing and trying to get the last few laundry items dry with a hairdrier are keeping me busy right now, as I’m off home squeakily early tomorrow morning – and do hope to get maybe 3 or 4 hours kip before my 24 hour odyssey begins. However, I did see this on BoingBoing this morning and it had me chuckling over my cornflakes so I thought I’d share it with you. It’s worth following the link and reading the other reviews. Quite marvellous.

And ooh look, it’s popped up on Neil Gaiman’s blog too.

Next post from Birmingham (U.K.).

It was my last lesson with these lovely ladies today. So naturally I took a couple of pictures:

And this is completely unrelated, but if like me you feel uncomfortable with the increasingly xenophobic attitudes of the Japanese media and also of course the police, then the recent reestablishment of fingerprinting for non-Japanese nationals will give you cause for concern. For what it is worth there is a petition you can sign up here: LINK

God put you here to be the best, and do the best and live the best that you can.
And when he’s ready he’s gonna take you.
Now what in the hell can a human being ask for that’s better than that?

Evel Knievel

When I was a little kid back in the 1970s, Friday was “toys day” at school. We would all bring in our favorite toys and show them off to each other. There were two toys other boys had that I badly craved for Christmas but never got and still feel a pang of yearning for even today; one was the Bionic Man Action Figure and the other was the Evel Knievel Stunt-Cycle. Possibly two of the coolest toys ever created in the history of mankind. Thing is, unlike Steve Austin, Evel Knievel was a real live awesome dude who did really amazing stunts on motorbikes and broke real bones in the process. In short, a living legend. That is he was until yesterday. I think every boy who grew up in the 70s feels a pang of loss today, like a very important and very magical part of their childhood has been taken away for good…

Anyway, (ahem!) although the weather was beautiful today and I really did want to go for a bit of a walk and explore somewhere or other, the cold medicine I’m taking proved the better of me, so after my morning job at the clinic I pedalled home and fell back into bed and slept for four hours. However, the day has not been completely wasted. After slacking off for most of November, I have finally written a new post for Deep Kyoto, this time on 六曜社 and it’s world famous donuts (doughnuts?). Click on the last link to view it.

Here I am sitting at home on a Friday night prepping prepping prepping. This is my life. The other day a couple of the students in my very most favoritest class were asking me the meaning of various English expressions current in Japanese pop songs. They would write them down and then hold them up to me with a questioning look. Finally, one girl held up a piece of paper saying “Have you fun day” or something garbled like that. Finally I realised she wasn’t asking about a song lyric but asking me if I’d done anything fun lately. And do you know… I couldn’t think of a damn thing. (Sigh)

Here’s a couple of things that made me smile today though.

First a fine collection of chat-up lines for geeks: I don’t have a library card, but do you mind if I check you out? I reckon I’d have a hard time translating those into Japanese though…

And I don’t know about you but I have long pondered on this question: if a world class champion race-walker was suddenly in immediate life-threatening danger (say from a bunch of crazed sword wielding samurai for example) would he continue walking quickly to escape or would he run like the clappers? The answer my friends is merely a click away: LINK

I sometimes dream in parables…

The best known of all King Arthur’s men was Lancelot. The truest of all knights, he was famous for being unbeaten in combat, for his super courtly conduct to the ladies and for being the King’s best friend. Later he would also become famous for boffing the King’s wife on the sly, but at the time of this story the boffing had yet to commence. There had been quite a lot of stolen glances, confused clearing of throats and even a little footsie under the round table, but nothing you could actually be executed for. Not yet. However, Lancelot was French and those guys can’t help themselves. With a rising feeling of mingled dread and excitement he knew it was only a matter of time before he got himself into a right pickle. He just couldn’t stop thinking about Queen Guinevere and what with all the meaningful looks she kept casting his way, the dropped hankies and the coy fluttering of eyelashes he was  convinced she felt the same way.

One day he decided to take a ride in the forest ostensibly to seek “chance” or “aventure” (which in those days meant pretty much the same thing) but really because he just needed to ride off his frustrations. However, the forest, which was usually full of all kinds of distractions; magical beasts, distressed damsels, and stranger knights defending fountains, was curiously empty on this occasion. After riding around all day looking for something to do with himself, the only thing Lancelot discovered besides two squirrels and a wood-pigeon was a tiny scrap of blue cloth which had gotten itself caught up in some furze. Lancelot dismounted, picked it up and eyed it absent-mindedly. What an amazing shade of blue, he thought. There really was something, almost unearthly about the colour that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. I think I’ll hold onto this, he said to himself without quite knowing why.

Over the coming days, Lancelot couldn’t get that little patch of blue cloth out of his mind. If only, he thought, I could find some more material like it. To be dressed from head to toe in a shade of blue like that, one would be quite the hit at all the banquets. But then that wasn’t it. It wasn’t that he wanted to be seen wearing it. It was more he just wanted to wrap himself up in it… To drown himself in that strange and beautiful colour. He began searching for it in all the markets and asking all the merchants if they had seen anything like it but to no avail. Any other material was simply that – just material. It was never quite the same. It became something of an obsession for him though. He was fingering and gazing at his one little patch of the material so much, it was beginning to wear out. What to do? He travelled the country looking for it, becoming increasingly desperate, but he found nothing.

This is beginning to affect my health, he realized, but he simply couldn’t help himself. It was as if he had become possessed by some all consuming force. I’d better take another look in the forest then… perhaps I’ll find some clues there. And thinking this, he mounted his steed and plunged back in through the trees. After wandering about for a few hours he came to a clearing and caught his breath in astonsihment. Seated on a white horse before him was a beautiful young lady, with long and wavy black hair and she was wearing a bodice, skirt and stockings of the exact same colour he had been searching for so long. Blue blue blue…

“Hello, Lancelot,” she said.

“This must be some strange magic,” said our boy Lancelot (no thicko he), “Who are you fair damsel? And what do you crave?”

“I’m a witch,” said the lady, “And I’ve made these clothes to please you. If you marry me, you can gaze upon this material every day to your heart’s content. And you can enjoy the hot little body within to boot. The only thing I ask is that you leave Arthur’s court.”

She was certainly an attractive proposition, with her long silky black tresses and her fine fine figure packed into the most beautiful blue material he had ever seen. Normally it would be a no-brainer, but you know she was a witch and Lancelot wasn’t too keen on the “leaving Arthur’s court” bit either.

“I know, you’re doubtful about the leaving Arthur’s court bit,” said the witch, “but I think it’s probably for the best under the circumstances. And you know, because I’m a witch I can be – well – anything you want me to be.” And with that she made a pass over her face and Lancelot gasped again for her face had become that of Guinevere’s. What to do? The choice was made for him. A sudden clap of thunder and Merlin appeared.

“Begone witch!” cried the angry old man.

“Curses!” said the witch and fled the scene.

Lancelot felt curiously deflated.

“What was that all about then?”

“Your fate, is not with her, Lancelot.” said the bossy old wizard. “Besides, you fool, you’ve been so absorbed with a single patch of blue stuff, you haven’t realised it’s an illusion. None of it was real!”

Lancelot looked at his tiny scrap of material and moaned. It was stone-cold gray.

“That was a magical colour she stole out of nature my boy. That’s what witches do. If only you had the sense, if you really wanted satisfaction, if you really wanted peace-of-mind, all you ever needed to do was raise your head up from your deluded obsessions. Look up at the sky above you.”

Lancelot peeked up, heavenwards. It was sunny above the clearing and there was barely a cloud above… nothing but blue of the finest and richest kind.