Aino Minako-chan

Things I Discovered On My Summer Vacation

1. One can indeed get sick of ham, cheese, and bread.
After three days in Paris and one too many delicious delicious sandwich, I suddenly discovered that I was utterly sick of the combination. Honestly, if I had one more slice of ham, I thought I was going to scream. For dinner that last night, my mom and I went out of our way to order a plain omlette and spaghetti respectively.

2. I missed Scottish food.
This was surprising to me, since I dislike many "traditional" Scottish foods, like blood pudding or haggis or fry-ups, but I love meat pies and pasties and beans and empire biscuits and leek soups, so I was in heaven. Plus, my uncle (a former butcher) makes a to-die-for lamb stew. Seriously, it was a good few days in Glasgow.

3. My cousin got divorced.
I totally didn't know until my aunt started talking about his new girlfriend, which made me think that she was talking about someone else with the same name for three-fourths of the conversation. It was seriously confusing. No one tells me anything! (Note to kinomakoto : Not R, the one you know; I mean R's oldest brother. R has two little girls btw who are ADORABLE. The older one, age 2, is a doll who speaks with R's strong Glaswegian accent; it's hysterical.)

4. My grandpa has some great war stories.
Like, he told us this one about his earliest memory, which involved him in hospital when he was 3 with scarlet fever, during WWI, watching from the balcony of the hospital as lights lit up the sky to search for bomb-carrying airships (zeppelins, because they didn't use bomber planes in WWI). Or how he mainly worked on convoy rescue ships, which, despite the tendancy to run into German submarines, was the best job (he said) because the ships had lots of extra room and extra supplies since they needed to be ready to take aboard survivors. Or his story about manning a ship to carry a bunch of Americans and their sekrit sekrit package to Italy while being hunted down by more German subs.

That was a really interesting story: He said that he never did find out what they were carrying, but that the Americans they were with weren't military, as the only real military aboard were he and his fellow British gunners; he assumed that the Americans were CIA or something. (I would think that the captain and main crew would have been British military as well, but they apparently weren't; Grandpa was the highest-ranking military member when they arrived in Italy for the debriefing. Maybe they loaned gunners to the merchant marines?) Grandpa said that they were followed by an American naval ship, and he was always amused because he said that the American sailors never seemed to go below deck; there were always people lounging around or even sleeping above deck. But whatever they were carrying, the Germans apparently got wind of it and started submarine attacks. Grandpa said that one night, there was a gigantic explosion, but he didn't know what had happened until the next morning when he realized that the American ship was simply gone.

When they arrived in Italy and unloaded the sekrit sekrit cargo, he said that he and his fellow gunners went to a debriefing with the American military in which he was the highest-ranking military officer and therefore had to deal with them the most. One American military guy got on their cases for looking so untidy and unprofessional, saying that they all looked like they hadn't slept for days, to which my Grandpa replied, "Well, that's because we haven't. Because of the submarines." At which point an apparently higher-ranking American military officer chewed out the first guy for giving my Grandpa and his men crap, and he ordered them to have a shower and some sleep before they came back. Grandpa said that the first American military guy never apologized, but later on, the guy did take a car and drive Grandpa and his fellow gunners to visit Pompei for a few hours, so he supposed that was the guy's way of saying "Sorry I was an ass."

5. You can remove the seatbelts from airplane seats.
Okay, so I had an adventure getting back to Japan... First, my luggage was temporarily misplaced. I had two connections on the way back to Tokyo. My first flight was running late, but I managed to make the connection. Unfortunately, my bag did not. Luckily, I had a long layover, it was a short flight, and there was one more flight that night, so my bags made it in time for the last leg. Then, on the plane to Tokyo, I went to buckle up... only both sides of the buckle were firmly attached on one side. The other side, normally the side with the adjustable strap, was reduced to just a strap. I blinked at it for a while, tried to figure out if I could thread the buckle back onto the strap, and just called a flight attendant. She and another flight attendant discussed it for a bit, and since I really didn't want to move from my nice aisle seat into the only other available seat (a middle seat), the flight attendants simply decided to replace the seat belt by removing the entire thing. It involved shoving one part back a bit and a lot of yanking, but it turns out that the seat belts are basically just hooked onto a bar with a spring-loaded latch. It doesn't come off EASILY (seriously, they were yanking the hell out of the seat in confusion, and I ended up with a twisted strap because they were having trouble installing the new belt right-side-up before the plane took off), but it can be done. You learn something new every day!

Movies Seen On My Summer Vacation
1. Star Trek
Yes, there is nothing better than Star Trek in its full glory on a 7-inch in-flight screen. (lol) But it was fun and I enjoyed it. Also, my mother apparently thought that the Sulu fencing joke (you know, when Kirk goes "What kind of fighting do you do" and Sulu goes "Fencing") was HILAROUS, and it always cracks me up to discover what parts of movies my mommy likes the best. No really, she couldn't stop laughing. It was cute. ^_^

2. The Time-Traveler's Wife
The logic doesn't make a huge amount of sense, and it's slightly creepy when you really think about how he visited his wife as a child, but overall I quite enjoyed the movie. It was just a tear-jerking, sweet romance with a sci-fi twist. Now, to read the book!

I had a pretty good weekend to combat recent work/life stress. On Saturday, johnabe took me to see "Terminator Salvation" (just known as the more logical "Terminator 4" in Japan). It was my first ever Terminator movie, and you know what? I quite liked it. It has lots of fun action and explosions and some pretty amazing shots (there's a helicopter crash in the beginning that I thought was really well done... it really DID remind me of being in my mom's SUV when it flipped, only, obviously, longer). Plus, it has MARCUS WRIGHT (played by Sam Worthington), who was totally awesome and I loved him like an awesomely awesome thing. Anyway, for some non-spoiler fun, the credits to the movie turned out to be accidentally hilarious:

1. One poor actor was accidentally credited as "Soilder". I loled pretty hard. Go go proofreading skillz!

2. At the very end, when they had the "Special Thanks" part of the credits, there was one line that went something like this: "Special Thanks to the Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force, but especially to the Department of Defense."

No seriously, it mentioned the DOD twice. I couldn't stop laughing. I imagine a meeting with the producers and the guys from the DOD went something like this:

Producer: ...and, of course, we will make sure to credit both you and the Air Force for your cooperation...
DOD: But we're responsible for the Air Force.
Producer: Um, yes, but the planes are actually being flown by the Air Force, so...
DOD: Well, sure, you have to thank them... but it's thanks to us that the Air Force even exists! So you need to, you know, thank us double.
Producer: Oh, well. I guess we could...
DOD: Can you print our name in big letters?
Producer: I suppose...
DOD: Or make it flash or something? Like, one of those scrolling thingamabobs?
Producer: Er...
DOD #2: What about sparkle font?
DOD: Oooooo...
Producer: ...We'll just thank you twice.

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One of my friends invited me to a little livehouse on Sunday night. Her boyfriend is acting as the temporary bassist for this comedic three person rock band. Their music was actually pretty good, and they were also very funny as well. They had songs called things like "My name is Bacteria Man" and "Draemon Ash" (a play on famous cartoon "Doraemon" and rock group "Dragon Ash"). Their lyrics were by turns humorous, surreal, and weird, and I quite liked it. I think my favorite song was one that mainly consisted of instrumental music while the lead singer/guitarist Sugawara-san (I've met him a couple of times) talked, giving a short setup to a joke (about current events, politics, whatever) that lead up to a killer punchline. But after Sugawara-san made a few good jokes, he forced the drummer, Endo,  to take a turn, and his joke went like this:

Endo: You know, you hear people talking about all of the horrible things happening to modern Japan, but I don't think people talk about Japanese eating habits a lot. You know, more and more people are cutting back on rice, and they're eating more and more bread (pan in Japanese). And to me, that's the real PANdemic.
Audience: ............
Endo: [attempt to hide behind drums]

I laughed. It was a pretty entertaining show. ^_^

Okay, I've got to ask because I've heard about it on other people's blogs and on news sites and even from my freaking parents... Susan Boyle. Am I seriously the only one who didn't start weeping and having a life changing experience upon hearing her sing? I mean, she's a good singer, and if she were at my karaoke night, I'd cheer nice and loud. But it wasn't exactly the best performance of "I Dreamed a Dream" that I'd ever heard, and I wasn't that impressed, and I certainly wasn't anywhere near tears. (Then again, I was also never impressed by Paul Potts two years ago, either.) It makes me wonder if maybe I'm cold-hearted (although I cry at half of the movies I see), or if maybe I'm some sort of elitist music snob (always a possiblity). So, have a poll!

Poll #1385024 It's like a poll you'd write in middle school:
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 21

Do you like Susan Boyle Y/N?

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In other news of a video that DID get me choked up, I watched the latest "Harry Potter & tHBP" trailer, and I was doing fine until the end of the trailer when they showed obviously end-of-the-movie Snape scenes, and I started getting teary-eyed. It's just [SNIFF!] all so very sad, and I will likely blubber like a baby at the end of the movie. July 17th in Japan, gotta mark my calendar!!

Holy cow, I'm exhausted. The filming today took no time at all, but I still spent half of the day in either a car or train, so I chugged a very sugary latte in an attempt to wake up. (Note: Backfired big time. Caffeine is a total crap shoot with me: I'm either insanely wired for the next 6 hours, or I immediately want to curl into a ball and go to sleep. Guess what happened. >_<) Anyway, the video was pretty hysterical; it involved me 10 seconds of me pretending to take money from an ATM, and then getting into a tug-of-war fight with my co-worker Miokawa-san (dressed in all black and looking hysterically suspicious) over my bag. It was pretty awesome. After some debate over when I should shriek and how long we should wait until Miokawa-san started attacking, we got it done pretty much in one take, so I went back to work. (Well, I took the train for an hour and THEN got to work.) But luckily, I had plenty to keep me occupied! And with that, here are my three big video game news items (because good things come in threes):

1. Final Fantasy VII (PS3/PSP). They just brought this out on the Japanese Playstation Store, so I was able to download the game. Now I can play it on the go with my PSP (as I did today), or at home on my PS3 (note: FFVII on a large high-definition TV is HYSTERICALLY overkill; each pixel is like the size of my thumb). I played it during my long travel time today, so I just got Tifa in my team and we're about to go off to take down Tower 5. It's pretty darned awesome, and I'm totally excited to get further along so that I can just run around and level-slut on my commute. Good times!
   
2. Final Fantasy XIII. FFVII:AC comes out on Blu-ray on... Wednesday? Thursday? In any case, I've got a copy on reserve with the FFXIII demo, and I'm totally excited. It looks very very purdy and lots of fun and it's going to be pretty hysterical to play it back-to-back with FFVII. ^_^
   
3. Valkyria Chronicles. I had been interested in it when it first came out, and then I forgot about it, but recently I picked it up due to a recommendation from kinomakoto. And, well, I adore it. It's a turn-based RPG strategy game with surprisingly little actually strategy required (lol). Essentially all you need to do is accomplish your goal (normally a capture-the-flag type deal), but you're mainly graded on speed. You can get bonus points for killing leaders and tanks and getting aces and all that, but your main points come from your rank in the battle, and your rank seems to mainly depend on how fast you capture the flag. So while you have five classes of soldiers and a tank, essentially all you really need is about two good soldiers to carve a straight line through the enemies and get to the flag as quickly as possible. And to be entirely honest, plowing through the enemies while attacking like a mad-woman, completely ignoring defense, and focusing solely on the end goal is how I normally play strategy games, so this is a perfect match for me. Add in the beautiful artwork made to look like painting instead of CG and the somewhat hysterical storyline (as Mako-chan described it to me, "It's set in Gallia, a neutral country stuck between warring NotRussia/Germany and NotBritishEmpire. (By location, it would be Poland, but it acts like Switzerland and the people are Austrians. Large plotpoints center on Edelweiss.)"), I really love the game. Two thumbs up so far!
   

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In non-video game related entertainment news, johnabe dragged me to "Frost/Nixon" totally against my will, and would you believe it, it was an awesome movie. I thought it would be rather dry and dull, but instead it's suspenseful and exciting, and despite the fact that it's based on true history, you still spend the movie on the edge of your seat. "It's the final interview... will Frost get a leg up over Nixon!? I just don't KNOW!" It was suprisingly good. Recommended!

OH HOLY CRAP, GUYS! OKURIBITO WON THE BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE OSCAR!

I loved it when I saw it, but I admittedly never expected it to win anything, especially when I kept hearing about the entries from Israel and France. Holy crap!

Yes, this means that I'm checking the Oscar results at work. Shut up.

I'm attempting to set a record for "topics that you will never ever see together in any other blog post." (^_^)v

High School Musical 3
John and I went to see the High School Musical movie in the theater on Sunday. I thought it would at least be unintentionally entertaining like past HSM movies, but it was also more intentionally entertaining than I thought it would be. Long story short, they apparently spent all of their money on big set pieces and dance boot camp. The choreography was very well done (not a single scene involved running over a golf course!!), so my dancer heart loved it. Plus, it's always fun when you can play "predict the choreography". (Like, "You know what? In this scene, I'd totally do a back roll into the splits. ...And they did it! AWESOME!") My biggest problem had to be one of the new characters, who was so annoying that I had to restrain the urge to leap into the screen and strangle him (possibly while screaming, "And cut your hair, you shaggy freak!!"). Seriously, don't even talk to me about whatshisname.

Demon's Souls
John's video game came out last week! John works for From Software, which put out the surprise hit Demon's Souls last week, so I picked it up. Look! Those wavy effects from my screaming dead soul? John did that!! I keep hearing that it's a horrendously difficult game, but it's really not that bad. I mean, I'm a HORRIBLE action gamer (I need cheats to beat all Resident Evil games, although this is partially because I jump at the drop of a hat and have a tendancy to start screaming when zombie doggies chase after me, at which point Mako-chan tends to start shouting, "You're immortal, Minako-chan! Just shoot them!"), so I was expecting to die right away, but I'm actually doing okay for the first runthrough. I've died twice so far; once I fell down a hole (I assumed that it was the right way to go, so I flung myself over the edge; whoops), and once I just accidentally ran into an enemy at the wrong time. But still! That's pretty awesome for me. I've only played about half of the first level, but I'm enjoying the game so far. Plus, you can customize your character by selecting one of 10 classes, and then using complicated Sims-esque controls to tweek your character's look. Therefore, my character Minako is a sexy, dark-skinned, white-haired holy knight. Go go Minako! (I also put away my shield so that I could just use my halberd two-handed... I'm not very good at blocking or parrying, so I'm just putting my money on strong offense to save the day. The halberd has a long reach, which can get dangerous in close quarters, but it means that I can kill things before they get within their own sword range.) I may change my mind later on, but so far, I honestly recommend it. Nothing like hacking at baddies to lower your stress.

Teriyaki Boyz
I watched the video for their song "Work That" while at the gym on Saturday, and I still can't decide what I feel about it. On one hand, it's a rather catchy song that I've had stuck in my head since then. On the other hand it's, well... See the video for yourself. Warning: Not safe for work. Or children. Or possibly your parents.

Okay, see what I mean? I vacillate between honestly insulted and genuinely amused depending on the time of day. As insulting as I find it, it's SO over the top that it starts to get pretty tongue-in-cheek funny after a while. Plus, the song is pretty catchy. I don't know. Decide for me!

Poll #1347201 More choices than you can shake an ass at!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 11

So, what do you think?

Reason that I cried yesterday: I went to see Okuribito (Departures), which is the Japanese film nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. (Fun fact: I looked at the list of Oscars nominees and discovered that I've only seen two other nominated films: The Dark Knight and Iron Man. Isn't that really sad? And this is even an Oscar year that includes movies that I'd actually want to spend money on!)

Anyway, it's a comedic story about the funeral business, or more technically, noukan, which is the traditional Japanese act of preparing the body for burial/cremation. After losing his job with an orchestra, Daigo goes back to the country and accidentally gets a job working as a noukanshi. (He thinks he's getting a job at a travel agency, due to the newspaper ad that talks about helping people with their precious departures. As it turns out, this was a misprint; it was supposed to read "helping people with their precious departed.") It's a very funny story about life and death and family, while still making me cry like a little baby. (Seriously, it was almost funny! There were points in the movie where all you could hear was people sobbing and sniffling into their hankies.) I don't know if it deserves the Oscar compared to the other films, but it is a very good, very Japanese movie. ( Cut for a very minor spoiler from Okuribito, although technically, I have a feeling that this wouldn't be a spoiler if I were Japanese. )

Reason that I'm going to cry today: My boss came down with the flu, so I came in to work only to discover that he'll be gone for the next two days. This means that I'm now in charge of my own work (still slightly behind due to the training session last Friday), plus half of my boss's work. My coworker will likely take on the other half, although she's currently moving and therefore taking a half day today. Seriously, I'm going to cry. Get better soon, Yagi-san! We miss you!!

Apparently, Keanu Reeves has been cast as Spike Spiegel in the Hollywood "Cowboy Bebop" movie.

OH MY FUCKING GOD. I'M IN HELL.

First Leo gets his filthy paws all over Akira, and now THIS!? [whimper]

Saw Dark Knight at a new theater in Shinjuku on Saturday. The theater was very nice, but my personal favorite part was the concessions counter. In addition to normal things like popcorn and french fries, they also served danish-and-soup sets. (Technically, they served "denishes". Oh, Japan! You and your Engrish!) I ended up getting soft-serve mango ice cream for the movie, which was fun.

As for the movie itself, I really enjoyed it. The only problem for me was that every time I saw the mayor, all I could think to myself was, "Batmanuel!!" You'd think that I would stop after a while, but no, the ENTIRE FREAKING movie I kept wanting to shriek "It's Batmanuel!" That was either the most inspired casting or the worst.

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In other news, I haven't really watched any Olympics yet (just whatever they show on the morning news). Overall, I'm not a huge sports fan. However, I like watching minor competitors from countries that you've never heard of, or events that you hadn't realize were Olympic sports. Four years ago in Athens, I developed a weird fascination with synchronized diving. There's something very intriguing about it. This year I've decided that I really want to watch the Modern Pentathalon, which I had vaguely heard about but had never really considered before. I must admit that I thought it was a track and field event. Apparently it's not. It involves competing in 5 events: shooting, fencing, swimming, equestian, and running. Which is just WEIRD. I mean, running and swimming, okay. But then shooting? Fencing? Equestrian!? There are people who do ALL of these things? That's super awesome.

Things that I have thought were pretty cool so far (from the Japanese perspective):

• I unfortunately missed the Japanese female weightlifters competing in the 48 kg class. It's kinda hysterical. They heave these giant bars over their heads, but of course they only weigh 48 freaking kg (just over 100 lbs), which means that they're teeny tiny and don't look muscular at all.
• A single Japanese mother came in 4th place in trap shooting. She almost won a medal, too; she missed the last shot in the tie-breaking shoot-off. Her little daughter was the one bawling afterwards; it was very cute. The mother calmly held her daughter and said that she had been "given permission" by her daughter to train for the 2012 London Olympics, so she would try to do even better. At which point the bawling daughter said in a wobbly voice, "But after London, you have to quit." Everyone had a good laugh; it was seriously very cute.
• I'm actually looking forward to one equestrian event (dressage, whatever that means). There's a 67 year old Japanese man competing in one of the equestrian events. He's apparently been in the Olympics before: the 1964 Tokyo Olympics when he was 22. Now that's pretty darned cool.

I saw the newest Miyazaki Hayao film Gake no Ue no Ponyo on Saturday. It was, well, bizarre. It was like The Little Mermaid made for and by preschoolers. After the movie was over, I literally turned to my friend and the two of us burst out laughing because we had no freaking clue what the movie was about. There was... a creepy fish girl? And she meets a little boy and decides to become human? And there's a creepy guy living in the bottom of the sea with magic potions? And he's evil and then he isn't? And the town is destroyed? And... I seriously have no idea what was going on. It's probably best for little kids who don't pay attention to the story and just want to see the little girl and the little boy do funny things like fall asleep in their ramen.

Now, on the plus side, the animation was spectacular. You can always say that about Ghibli films, but Ponyo was particularly amazing. It was a water film, and there are literally scenes where the entire screen is filled with individually drawn fish and other sea creatures. It's pretty phenomenal. Too bad the story made no sense.

Also, the theme song is absolutely devious. It's horrificly bad, but once it gets in your head, it won't leave. I almost want to upload it, because if I have to suffer, you should, too. (lol)

ETA: Ask and ye shall receive. I found a performance of Ponyo on YouTube:
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=hJwerpvoT4I
I've had it stuck in my head for two days straight. Screw you, little girl. Screw you.

Three videos that I've gotten hooked on recently:

• Carry On Wayward Son, as performed by a Japanese girl on Electone. It's pretty awesome. Bonus points for the hysterically dry Japanese MC and audience.
• Where the Hell is Matt? is just a happy-making video. I possibly got a bit verklempt while watching. [sniff sniff] Shut up! So I'm a leetle girl!
• Kiwi is an animated web video that I'm sure many people have already seen, but it never fails to make me sqeak a bit. It's phenomenal... it's like a Pixar story written by Japanese screenwriters.

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So I went to Roppongi two weeks ago to watch Indiana Jones with a friend. I loved it, of course (I'll keep watching until Indy's hobbling along on his walker). Here are a few of my spoilery thoughts for anyone who's actually managed to miss it:

( Indy Jones, how are you so awesome? )

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In other news, I possibly accidentally bought myself a big new TV last weekend. Ummm.... yeah. It was just one of those things where I had just received my summer bonus and I was thinking about how my current TV is failing me and there was a sale, and before I knew it, I had made a snap decision to buy a TV. I mean, I never budget for bonuses so it's not like I can't afford it, but still. I'm usually fiscally responsible (except when it comes to electronics)! I swear!! [sigh] I feel weak. I seriously need to stay away from the freaking electronics store. It's dangerous.

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Finally, I almost wish that I had a video iPod now, because Square-Enix just released a new game called Song Summoner. From what I can tell, it looks like Square's version of Monster Rancher, but with music straight from your playlist. It looks pretty awesome. Who can resist the urge to see what kind of fighter Mini-Moni's Hamuzu no Uta will produce? It's relatively cheap, so if anyone has a video-compatible iPod, download it and tell me how it is!

Has everyone seen this? http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/ It's Garfield, without Garfield, and it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Brilliant.

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I also read that the final Harry Potter book will be broken into two movies so that they don't have to worry about cutting out information. I will fully admit that my first thought was, "Oh, that is a horrible horrible idea." I understand what producer David Heyman says about it being difficult to cut anything from the book. It's the last book, afterall, so there's no time to slip information into the story at a later point. But making two movies out of the book sounds absolutely horrid.

( More about Harry Potter... )

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In random Japan news, there have been recent articles about proposed revisions to the bicyling rules, which actually involve fewer changes and more crack downs on unsafe riding practices, such as wearing headphones, talking on the phone, or holding an umbrella. The reason these changes have been coming up in the news, however, have been because of the crackdown on people who ride with three people on one bicyle: one adult riding with a kid in a back basket and another kid a front basket.

( More about bicycles in Japan... )

1. High School Musical 2
   After a somewhat hysterical comedy of errors that was totally my fault ("Where are you?" "In front of your house. Where are you?" "Uh, at your train station."), johnabe came over yesterday and we watched High School Musical 2. I would like to note right now that this was totally not my idea. It was John! I swear to god! But in the end, we were drinking and some of the over-the-top dance sequences were laugh-out-loud funny (the baseball dance-off? oh my GOD the baseball dance-off!!!), so it was a good time had by all.
   
   
2. Shadow Hearts 2
   Completely randomly, I decided to replay Shadow Hearts 2. I was 3/4 of the way through the game, but I hadn't played in probably two years, so I could barely remember who the characters were. Therefore, I decided to just start from the top. Hopefully, I'll actually finish the thing this time.
   
   
3. Final Fantasy (Versus) XIII
   Okay, so I'm obviously very excited about the next FF game. I doubt it will come out in 2008, so I'm placing my hopes on Spring 2009. (But who knows; Square-Enix always likes to surprise me with release dates.) Anyway, Famitsu released some more images for Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII, and they were pretty pretty as always. But the part that made me sit up in my chair? Check out the images for Versus. I know! Hot lead guy has a hot posse! Square-Enix always knows how to snare us fangirls. (FYI, I call dibs on Glasses Guy.) The only thing is that, after playing FFVII: Crisis Core, I'm utterly terrified that they'll all go crazy or start turning into monsters or something, and they'll all be dead by the end. Because if anything happens to Hot Posse, I will CRY.
   
   
4. Zombies
   Completely by coincidence, I have read several stories recently involving zombies. (Really; it's been weird. Weird and hard to sleep at night.) Anyway, it's made me think more about my own personal zombie readiness levels. In general, it's not terribly high (my general earthquake readiness isn't all that great, either), but I've come to the following conclusions that could turn the tide in either direction:
1. Pro: I live in Tokyo, which has plenty of bicycles (for easy, gas-free, faster-than-zombie transport) and relatively good systems in case of emergency (good earthquake readiness should be fairly similar to good zombie readiness... access to emergency food, water, etc = same. access to pitchfork for bashing zombies in the head = different.)
2. BIG Pro: I live a block away from a sword museum. Not even kidding you. A sword museum. It's even shorter if I lept out my window and climbed a few fences. If zombies ever start taking over Tokyo, you'll be able to find me snatching up all the best samurai blades for myself. Let me know if you need anything.
3. BIG Con: I live in freaking Tokyo. The city with dense population, narrow & confusing roads, and no unlimited ammo rocket launchers (if Resident Evil is any indication, this is what I'll actually need to survive a zombie attack). I'm screwed.
   
4. Conclusion? If there's a zombie outbreak in Tokyo, I'm most likely dead meat. But feel free to imagine me defending the local 7-11, sword in each hand.

I'm back at work and I'm exhausted, but that seems about par for the course. (lol) I work on Saturday this week, too, so I have a feeling that I won't be doing anything productive after work for a while. Oh well. The gym can wait a bit longer. The holiday pounds aren't going anywhere, after all. In the mean time, I ended up seeing four movies over the holidays:

Sweeney Todd: The biggest problem with Sweeney Todd was the slow first half. Now, don't get me wrong. Every single bit of exposition was vital to the story, and there was really no way to cut anything out. However, I felt that things didn't really pick up until Mr. Todd began killing men by the dozen. THEN it got hysterical. But incredible visuals by Tim Burton as always, and really, how could you possibly NOT love a movie where Johnny Depp and Alan Rickman sing a duet?

Enchanted: Not as super-de-duper great as I had hoped, but I did enjoy it. It was fluffy cuteness and sparkling puppies; always fun. Plus, James Marsden. Yum!

Pan's Labyrinth: Rented in the States so that I could get my hands on a copy with English subtitles. ^_^ And, um... See, I was totally psyched to see this movie, and it really sounded exactly like my type of film, and I thought I would totally love it, and er... I didn't. I... kinda disliked it, actually.

( Cut for both length and spoilers. )

3:10 to Yuma: This was playing on the flight back to Japan, which was the perfect way to see it. Although I love Christian Bale, I'm not a huge fan of Westerns or Russell Crowe (Tugger!!). As a whole, it was a pretty okay movie.

( Cut for length, but only minor spoilers. )

So long story short? Worth renting with friends for a couple of great performances and a good ending. But maybe not much more than that.

Special Bonus:
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: I finally got kinomakoto to see it, so everyone who knows her should brace themselves, because you'll be seeing it soon, too. It's one of my favorite movies ever, with a great narrator's voice and a spectacularly high quotability factor. Everyone needs to watch it! Then you'll know why phrases such as "Stop multiplying" and "Mr. Mustard" are so funny.

After reading the book on Saturday, John and I went to a showing of OotP on Sunday. Long story short, I really liked it. Sure, they cut out lots but they also squished all of the important points quite well. It flowed very nicely, and the big battle at the Ministry was pretty awesome. I feel like I need to see the movie several more times to catch the action and characters in the crowd scenes. I really don't have coherent thoughts about the movie, so here are random babblings in no logical order.

• So I mainly just relaxed over my Golden Week holidays. It was extremely relaxing. The only thing I even really did was watch "Spiderman 3" with johnabe. It's like 6 movies smooshed into one! John performed his own personality test on me, asking questions like, "Who's sexier, Tobey Maguire or DJ Ozma? James Franco or DJ Ozma?" and seemed slightly disappointed when I quickly answered "James Franco" every time. But the highlight was when we went to karaoke, and John finished off the 2 hour session with the hit single "Don't You Cry" by Steven Seagal. Yes, THAT Steven Seagal. I couldn't stop laughing the entire time as John power-balladed away.
• An actual outtake from work:
  Yagi-san: Minako-chan, I need you to check a Portugese translation for me.
  Minako & Yagi-san: [laugh hysterically]
  Yagi-san: No, seriously, I need you to check some Portugese.
• Another actual outtake from work:
  We received the paperwork for our annual physical. Along with the paperwork was a little device for our urine sample which is called, I'm not even kidding you, "Pee Pole II".
• As seen in this news article, apparently some Japanese viewers of "Babel" began feeling ill while watching a scene with a strobe light. You may remember back in the day when flashing lights in Pokemon made hundreds of kids sick, or at least you've seen the Simpsons in Japan parody of the situation. And I was among those who laughed at the cartoon, but now I'm really wondering. Because, well, it's really weird that you don't hear about this happening in other countries.
• The preview movie for Crisis Core: FFVII is up at the Square Enix homepage. It makes me cheer because, well, Zack! Zack! However, after watching the preview, I have two major things to say.
  • First of all, a message for young happy Zack: For the love of god, WHY would you join Angel and Sephiroth to look for Genesis!? Just... their names are ANGEL, SEPHIROTH, and GENESIS. You should know that there is no possible way that your mission is going to end with puppy dogs and fairy dust.
  • Second, I'm really curious about how, as a game, the story will proceed. Because, well, we already KNOW what happens to Zack in the end. He gets the crap beaten out of him by Sephiroth, he is made a human test subject in biological experiments, and then he is shot brutally. So what's the final battle like? "Hurray, Sephiroth spears you with his sword! You beat the game!!"

Okay, so this weekend, after finishing the Stephen King story Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, I finally rented the movie Shawshank Redemption. To make a long story slightly shorter, friends and family have been telling me for years that I had to see Shawshank Redemption, because it's such a good movie, but I kept resisting. And now that I've read the story and seen the movie, I can finally admit this: The plot was TOTALLY different than I had imagined.

See, for years, people only told me two things about the movie in an attempt to keep from spoiling me: A) It's a really awesome movie, and B) The ending will totally make you cry.

Now, I cry at the end of half of the movies I see, but still, I heard this second part and automatically assumed that everyone was trying to warn me about the SAD ending. And so therefore, literally for years, I have assumed that the movie ended with Morgan Freeman dead in a ditch.

Why? I have no idea. Probably because when you think, hey, what would make me sad? It would have to be watching Morgan Freeman die. (I [heart] Morgan Freeman!) I honestly thought that's what the movie was about. And whenever anyone would suggest renting the movie, I would say no way, because I really didn't want to watch Morgan Freeman get shot on an escape attempt, or get sent to the electric chair, or get beat up behind the south field, or any one of a dozen ways that I imagined poor Morgan Freeman dying in prison. It was too depressing to even think about, more or less want to watch!

But then I read the Stephen King story, and I went, "OHHHHH! So THAT'S why people said they cried at the end!!" So I rented the movie, and it was good (even though, for some reason, I was imagining Edward Norton in the Tim Robbins role when I read the story, so I was slightly disappointed when the movie started up), and even though I liked the novella better, I would still recommend watching the movie.

So for all those, like me, who haven't seen Shawshank Redemption yet, I say, rent it! It's a good movie. And Morgan Freeman is not shanked at the end. If only someone had told me that years ago...

So johnabe finally got off of work for a bit, so we went out to Roppongi, had lunch, and saw Letters from Iwo Jima. I really liked the movie and would recommend it whenever you get a chance. It's odd to say, but it was a very quiet war movie. There were two or three gruesome war scenes (oh look! there's an arm!), but otherwise it was far less bloody than most war movies, especially when compared to those within the past 5 years or so. The movie was just quiet and tense and full of despair. Basically, they started out in a situation that looked somewhat crappy, but they still had hope. Then it got crappy, but they were still hoping. Then it got slightly crappier, but with far less hope, until they were basically in a crap situation with no hope. Nino really did give a great performance as Saigo (and I still haven't figured out whether they meant for his name to be a pun or not). He and Watanabe Ken as General Kuribayashi really did carry things. Although there wasn't any one climatic moment in the movie, everything just built up slowly until I was sniffling and choking up at the end. So sad!

Oh a side note, the movie had one credit at the end that simply cracked me up:
Special Thanks: Johnny's Junior Kids

Ohhh, how I laughed. Go go Johnny's power!

• Hurray for "Letters from Iwo Jima", which won one of the 6 million awards that will be handed out to movies in the next few months. It's coming out to Japan this weekend, so there's a high probability that I will drag John out with me. Over here, they keep talking about how Nino is really good and how he might even get nominated for an award of some sort. I just have to say that if Nino gets nominated for an Oscar? I will laugh until tears run down my face. I mean, I'd be glad for him, go-go Johnny's power and all, but you'd have to admit, that'd be hysterical. I still giggle when I remember Nino's face at the Tokyo Film Festival when he accidentally invited Clint Eastwood to an Arashi concert.  Clint was kinda like, "Oh, I'd love to see little Nino on stage." And then Nino kinda looked panicked. Good times.
  
• My job sometimes makes me laugh. Last week-ish, I translated this customer support FAQ for Camera Company Z. So I translated it, and they sent it back today with some revisions. Interestingly enough, every single revision is wrong. So basically, I've been going through and rewriting their rewrites, or sometimes just plain changing things back to the way I translated it. I'm not a nice enough person, so I will completely say that this makes me laugh. (Well, I mean, c'mon, you're paying me for a reason. Let me do my job.)
  
  One of the biggest problems comes with the word 撮影 (satsuei). It seems like a simple enough translation at first. As a verb, it can mean something like "to take a picture" or "to shoot a photograph" or "to film something". Which seems simple and direct enough at first, but it's really not. First, the verb "to shoot" has various meanings that the Japanese employees at Company Z don't seem to understand, and although it's a camera FAQ and everyone understands the context, you'd probably still like to stay away from sentences like, "I want to shoot a stage from above." Not wrong, persay, but isn't the longer option "take a photograph of" much nicer and un-sniper-y? Second, someone at Company Z is apparently allergic to the word "photograph" (is it because it's a digital camera? they still take stupid photographs; get over it!). Which is fine, really, except that they replaced half of my "photograph"s with "shoots", so I ended up with sentences like, "I want to add the date to a shoots" or "How do I take shoots with manual focus?" Yeah... I just switched it back.
  
• Finally, a list of really random links that I found amusing:
• Six-word sci-fi stories
  Hemingway's six-word story is still the best, and many of the authors have six-word comments, not six-word stories, but there are still some amusing ones.
• Bad English subtitles in Hong Kong films
  They make me laugh. 11. I'll fire aimlessly if you don't come out!
• Bad English mistranslations
  Part of me feels bad because I totally know what these translators must have gone through, and because, for the most part, I can see where they went wrong. Having said that, it's really really funny:
  From a brochure of a car rental firm in Tokyo: When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigor.

This is a bit old by now, but while I was in the States, I watched The Illusionist followed by The Prestige. Both movies just happen to be period pieces about dueling magicians, but it turns out that both movies are surprisingly different and very good. Here's a little guide for those who are curious:

The...
Illusionist	Prestige
The Stars
Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti Two incredibly talented actors who give beautiful, subtle performances.	Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman Two incredibly talented actors who Minako-chan is very hot for.
The Blonde
Jessica Biel Much to my surprise, did not totally suck.	Scarlett Johansson I like Scarlett. Two thumbs up.
The European Locale
Austria	England (with a special guest appearance by Colorado)
It's not really about magic; it's about...
Love Norton and Biel were childhood lovers, torn apart due to class differences. Years later, they meet again, but Biel is about to marry a prince. Norton promises to whisk Biel away, but tragedy inspires Norton to perform one last trick to be with her just once more.	Revenge After Jackman's wife is killed during an accident during a magic act, he is determined to have the last laugh over Bale, who Jackman holds responsible for his wife's death. But Bale isn't about to lose, and thus a deadly game of trickery and one-ups-man-ship begins.
Watch for...
"Austrian" accents For no particular reason, I thought that Norton and Giamatti used the cutest accents.	David Bowie He played Tesla, and since I had completely forgotten about it beforehand, I totally missed him. I was just left going, "Gee, the guy who played Tesla was really awesome. Huh, wonder who he was?"
Watch out for...
Exposition There are two points in the movie where I really wish they'd stopping telling me what had happened. Norton's and Biel's pasts are literally prefaced by, "This is what we know about him..." Was that the ONLY segue you could think of?	Twists There are so many twists that it starts to get a bit ridiculous. Ridiculous in a fascinating way, sure, but the layers make your head spin after a while.

This last category is a spoiler, so I'll put it ( behind the cut: )

Anyway, in the end, both were very excellent movies, and I recommend both.

On a random side note, I have a new favorite Engrish from work of all time:
Hook the sloops of cover onto the ratches of the main body.
....Huh? The SLOOPS? I had no idea how to rewrite the sentence. I squinted at the teeny diagram and changed it into slots and tabs, but I have no clue if I'm right. It's just... SLOOPS!?