Taking Golden Week off to entertain a friend from home and celebrate my birthday.
But, I post my toy-camera and iPhone photos from Japan at least once a day over at The Birdwatcher’s Report.
You can also check out some other J-Bloggers who are awesome writers and nice people:
See you next week.
Title: Battle Royale
Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Year: 2000
Notes: A 3D version of this film is being re-edited for American release in 2011. This article refers to a subtitled Japanese edition of the original, 2000 theatrical release.
TLDR: High school kids are inexplicably drafted into an annual government-sponsored contest where students must fight to the death until only one survives.
There’s some irony that the English “convenience store” is such a misnomer. There aren’t real conveniences, just bathrooms and cigarettes, packaged food and buckets of shaved ice smothered in anti-freeze colored syrup.
Japan has adopted the concept – and word – for convenience stores into konbini, but konbini are a whole other creature. They actually make life easier for you.
Japan is really good at dividing wholes into smaller parts.
Just look at the Bento box a mother makes for a 4-year-old or the masterpieces of the Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. It’s in the architecture, where panels are carefully measured and placed, where windows look out into windows. It’s evident in the sacred gates of Shinto that serve as open doorways to places of awe; it’s in the wicker rope tied around trees.
This Japanese Life. 