Hello all. It’s Monday but because today is Coming-of-Age Day (see below), the kids have school off, even though they should by all rights be in school by now. So my poor wife is spending another day taking care of them insted of getting her own work done. Ah, but that ends tommorrow…
Here are some pictures from Japan, with no theme to them at all. First is a picture of my wife’s uncle, who fought in World War II on the battleship Ise. This is what he looked like when he was young. All his other pictures were lost when the ship was sunk in the harbor by the U.S. forces. Next, a New Year’s Day shot of Darumas (decorative little Buddhist paper statues that are popular in Japan, especially in Gunma Prefecture where we live), about to be burned since they’re from the previous year. Finally, a shot of the recent snow we had, very frosty and cold. As always, snow in the Kanto area (the flat plain around Tokyo) melts right away, so it’s lucky we went out to play in the snow before it was gone.
Today’s J-List post is below. You can also read it on the J-List website or the JBOX.com site.
Today is a special day in Japan: Seijin no Hi, or Coming-of-Age Day, when Japanese youths who have reached the age of twenty celebrate their entry into adulthood, since this is considered legal age in Japan. In the morning, they gather at their City Office, the girls wearing beautiful kimonos that their proud parents have bought for them and the boys in smart-looking suits, and endure long speeches by the mayor and other pillars of the community about their futures. In the evening, the new adults will generally smoke, drink and otherwise celebrate their new legal status as adults any way they can. Previously the holiday was held on January 15th, but a few years ago it was changed to the nearest Monday so that people could enjoy a three-day weekend (this is known as “Happy Monday” in Japan).
The Japanese film world is all abuzz these days. Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film, Howl’s Moving Castle, is playing in theatres now, and we took our kids to see it over the weekend (we had to wait a while for the crowds to die down, which is normal for a Miyazaki film release here). As usual, Japan’s most famous animation director has created yet another fabulously original world which thoroughly delighted us. Based on a British novel by Diana Wynne Jones, it’s the story of Sophie, an ordinary girl who is changed into a 90-year old woman by an evil witch’s spell and seeks the help of the handsome wizard Howl and his magically moving castle. As usual, the soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi, the composer who has created the music for every Miyazaki film, is superb.
The other Japanese film getting a lot of attention recently has been Godzilla Final Wars, the “final” Godzilla movie by Toho has they retire the 50-year franchise, at least until they un-retire it at some point in the future. We caught a documentary on television about the making of this film, which features a somewhat Matrix-ified sci-fi story and lots of monsters for Godzilla to cut through. There were more than a few tears as actor Tsutomu Kitagawa got inside the massive Godzilla suit for the final cut of the film, and then it was a wrap. They showed the final shots of Godzilla from each of the films, intercut with comments by the staff who had worked on the movies over the years, including Eiji Tsuburaya, the special effects cinematographer for the original film, who went on to create Ultra-Q and Ultraman for television. They then showed the demolishing of the historic Dai Pool, the giant pool of water at Toho Studios where the ocean sequences have been shot for the past half-century, which is being cleared to make way for new studio construction. It was very moving.
