I met up with Robert last night in Nakameguro, and he brought me to this absolutely great ramen shop called Kouryu. One very neat thing about the place was that you customized your bowl by filling in a small questionnaire as you sat down. There’s a shop in Ikebukuro, Genbu, that does the same, but this one was very detailed, and also let you choose your combination of toppings. The soup itself was delicious.
I’ve decided that from now on I’m going to write Japanese names in the order that’s used in Japanese (family name comes first). In the past I’ve used the “westernized” style of writing them, but I always find it odd when I write it down (because it’s not what I use when talking to people). So be warned.
My new favorite anime series is GOKUSEN (Tuesday nights at 1am on channel 4, NTV). Based on a manga, and then done as a drama last year (starring TRICK’s Nakama Yukie in the role of Yankumi), it’s now been launched as a late-night animated series. It’s only at episode 3 or 4 now, so there’s still time to jump on board. It tells the story of Yamada Kumiko, the daughter of a yakuza boss, who becomes leader of the gang after the death of her parents. The thing is, she also wants to be a high-school teacher, which is where the hilarity comes from. We see her trying to be a sweet teacher, but then when tension rises she starts using yakuza slang and showing that she’s not the innocent girl she pretends to be. It also features the coolest end credits I’ve seen in a while. The song is by a super-famous enka singer (I forget her name, but Yuko was really surprised that they got her to sing a song for the show), and the visuals are of classic Japanese imagery, featuring the characters from the show. Very nice.
A poster at a train station.
Her hair is dyed a dirty yellow. She wears colored contact lenses to make her eyes look blue. Her dresses barely cover her panties, let alone her thighs, and showing her shoulders is a natural. Barely legal now, she’s been living with her lover since she was 15. And now, Hitomi Kanehara, a 20-year-old high school dropout, has become one of the youngest ever winners of the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most prestigious literary award.
Read the rest of the article at the Mainichi Daily News site.
A bunch of police officers waiting at a crosswalk in Ikebukuro.
Tonight is the opening party of the Suitman Tokyo Invasion show at the Tokion Shop. More info here, and have a look at the great poster for the show here. I know a few people going, but I can’t make it because, like I’ve said in the past, weeknight things are a no-no for me because I get back from work too late and I’m nowhere in that area.
Takeshi Kitano is at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam to help promote ZATOICHI, and it seems like he’s having a good time there (from AICN): “Mr Takeshi started with apologizing, explaining that this was the 3rd screening he had to introduce that night, the first two being screenings for invited VIP’s and that between screenings he had had a couple of glasses of wine, and that he in fact was a bit drunk. He was sorry that he was drunk especially since we actually paid for this screening. He then went on to say that there have been a lot of Japanese sword fights recently in movies, naming Kill Bill and the Last samurai, but that Zatoichi was the first real Japanese sword fight movie, because well, he was Japanese. And those other movies were fake American Japanese sword fight movies. As most sword fights only last very short with two hits as most he wanted to show that.”
The new issue of bilingual magazine