Disney

Kaori's friends from Australia will be visiting her for over a week and yesterday we took them to Disney. It's a strange time of year to go to Disney. The decorations are great, but the wind off the Chiba coast and the usual winter temperatures do not make you feel like going on rides.

香織のオーストラリアから来た友達は一週間くらい香織の家でたいざいします。昨日いっしょにディズニーに行きました。冬にディズニーへ行ってはちょっと変けど。めっちゃめっちゃ寒いから。

Sayuri

Saw Sayuri (Memoirs of a Geisha) this weekend. Unlike some people, I liked this movie.

The first news I heard about Memoirs, they weren't going to use the traditional make-up as it would scare western audiences. Next, they cast non-Japanese in all the main roles. (You don't count Ken Watanabe.) You shouldn't watch this and expect something representative of history or Japanese culture.

The dance, with accompanying uncredited photo, is a great example. It looked amazing. It suited the story well. It has no connection to the dance practiced by Geisha. So what? Style carried this movie.

Graceful loser

It was sports day at Shonan today. I was invited to play with another teacher against the students. Before today, I was under the impression we'd play one game against the eventual champions. What happened was, we started in the tournament, and finished as quickly as I expected. Mostly due to my spectacular exhibition of why people should wear their damn glasses. The silver lining was the number of people who were surprised that 4 months of constant sports training turned a small percentage of my fat into muscle.

For the pictures, in the first, the second from the left was supposed to take pictures of my ill-fated match. She could not, however, figure out how the button worked. I believe all these girls are from 三年四組, by far my most difficult class.

As a side note, it was about five degrees in the gym. I wore a scarf at badminton practice.

Ghibli Museum

Went to the Studio Ghibli Museum this weekend. You can't take pictures inside so... Anyway the first one is in front of a Castle-esqe museum with a display of old childrens' books. The second is a statue on top of the Ghibli Museum. It looks much bigger in real life. Maybe 5 meters tall.

There were some really nice sketches by Miyazaki inside. I assume they were for storyboards of the movies he's made. He can do a lot with watercolours and pencil. They show a short film, with some of the characters from Totoro. It was quite fun, and did not require any understanding of Japanese. The alternative animation, a kind of strobe light claymation thing was cool to watch. They had warnings about looking at it in the brochure though.

Makin' Mochi

One of the standard days for an expat in Japan, I think. No knowing what was going on, meeting lots of strangers, and being the public spectacle.

It all started with 大掃除, the massive half-hearted community cleaning. I spent my time wandering with my chosen herd along the roadside gathering cigarette butts. After, I was forced to eat far too much mochi with elderly Japanese ladies, who were all very impressed with my ability to hold chopsticks. As I escaped I was pulled into the road/railway divider near my apartment to learn about mochi production. Photos are self-explanatory. I know no-one in them.

Really, it was a pretty good day.