tavie.com

As long as I'm not sleeping I might as well post the dribs and drabs of my wrap-up. Saturday we spent the afternoon/evening with Naomi. We went to Sunshine City Aquarium at K's request and it turned out to be one of the best aquariums I've ever been to. Santa Claus got into a tank and hugged and fed the rays and eels and fishies. Santa Claus was very small and looked like a woman, and kept pulling presents out of his sack which contained fish, which he hand-fed to the other fish. My favourite thing was that Santa's beard was affixed to the outside of his diving mask.

Then we went to Naomi's apartment and ordered Domino's and Pizza Hut. They put all kinds of crazy things on their pizza in Japan. My favourite pizza was the salmon-and-ikura pizza with cream cheese sauce instead of tomato sauce.

We also went to a big department store and a couple of dollar -- excuse me, 100-yen-- stores. I got that awesome bath powder that costs $8 at the Sunrise Mart in NY/Japan paviliion in WDW - it only costs 398 yen in Tokyo. Good times.

Sunday we went to what turned out to be my favourite thing in all of Japan besides Kirsten - the Ghibli Museum (Miyazaki's museum for children). This was strongly reminiscent of Junibacken - the Astrid Lingdren museum in Sweden. Ghibli Museum is a magical, magical, beautiful, incredible place that you must visit. I can't describe it adequately. It's simply beautiful and magical and that's all I'll say. I could've stayed there longer, even. But we only had a couple of hours and then Kirsten had a train back to Niigata and we had a plane back to New York. And so it went. She'll be home in 3 weeks for Christmas.

On the plane ride back I watched a movie called Densha Otoko (Train Man) at my mom's recommendation. It was sweet but terribly translated - way too literal, made the dialogue clunky and false. Nevertheless, a movie I will have to own. It's about a geeky nerd who meets a girl on a train and whose internet pals coach him through dating her. Its syrupy ending made me cry. Right up my alley - this is the first movie I've seen to really portray the tenderness and comraderie of online communities, done realistically if a bit simplistically. I've been waiting for a movie like this for years, and I'd love to see it remade in English (if only so I can read the clever way that the words are typed across the screen and intergrated into the scenes early in the film - my favourite is when Train Man is getting his haircut, and the snippets of his hair on the floor turn into bits of his cyberchat with his buddies.) I'd like all of my dear cyberfriends to see this film. It's sweet enough and the premise strong enough to overlook its flaws (which exist beyond the problem of the bad translation, but again, not enough to ruin the movie for me,) See this film if you can. Or wait until I track it down and come over to my house and watch it... (Unless you are a stranger reading my blog, in which case, please don't.)

Why are you in Tavie's head? 4:54 AM | shower me with attention