Adrift in Japan

'Lost in Translation' doesn't translate well in Japan | csmonitor.com

Now that Lost in Translation has actually been released in Japan, here's an article in the Christian Science Monistor
about what the Japanese think.

Lost in Translation, Redux

The Oscars are coming up, and although Scarlet Johannsen wasn't nominated for an Oscar, there's still plenty of buzz about Lost in Translation, which I talked about a couple of months ago after seeing it back in the States.

The buzz in the expat community in Japan is finally making the Western press.

I can see where the critics are coming from. The film does go out of its way to highlight the strange aspects of life in Japan, as well as stereotypes. All the same, through living here, I have experienced those very things in a way that leads me to the question: when is a stereotype a stereotype, and when is it just a true statement about the way things are?

Is it cruel to say that Japanese people have trouble saying "r" verses "l" when it's true they don't have either the "r" or "l" sound in Japanese, and I have several times had communication problems because I couldn't understand what word someone meant? I don't think so, especially when I point out that I can't say their combination "rl" sound very effectively. In fact, last night when we had friends over for dinner and I tried to say "ryori" (cooking, or style of cooking), they had no idea what I was saying for quite a while, and I couldn't hear the difference when they finally got it and repeated it back to me.

Are there stereotypes about Japanese TV? Or is the movie creating them? Quoting from the article,

... it's almost invariably weird: an aerobics instructor leading a troupe of women dressed in police outfits with plastic miniskirts; an effeminate talk show host who guffaws and prances around in a pink and blue patterned suit.

which implies it's somehow wrong to show Japanese TV in that light. It is, however, my experience that when the TV isn't showing news, it's very likely to have on some sort of game show where the objective is not immediately obvious and which features people pointing and laughing and performing strange stunts, such as eating only cake for 5 days while being stalked by a camera and seeing how much weight one has gained while people guess.

The article also highlights things the movie shows as "the bizarre and unfamiliar" which I consider a part of daily life in Japan, such as a Japanese person continuing to prattle on in Japanese despite an obvious lack of understanding on my part, or vans driving by with political slogans being shouted constantly. In fact, I wonder, where were the salespeople yelling "Irashaimase!" or the people on the street corners handing out free packs of tissue paper?

I'm sure I can now be accused of perpetuating Japanese stereotypes on my blog, but I'm just reporting about the things I encounter when I leave my front door every morning. However, even though I think Coppola may simply have been showing realistic elements of Japanese life, I do understand the feeling of Japanese people and expats who have written elsewhere on the web and in print criticizing the film. (Also see Joi Ito's blog) It's not particularly enlightening, and it makes little effort to show the wonderful beauty of Japan (although it does show Charlotte being unable to appreciate said beauty). The movie's depth is not from its depiction of Japan - rather, it from its ability to show a snapshot of a few days in the lives of some displaced Americans. It's more a picture of where they are in their lives and in their own minds than any statement of the reality of life in Japan. Perhaps the depiction of Japan didn't bother me because I thought of it as Japan through the eyes of two unfortunately and tremendously depressed individuals who wouldn't have been comfortable in any place, not as a serious depiction of life in Japan. To think of American viewers of this movie leaving the theatre thinking - "ahh, so that's Japan, it's exactly what I imagined" - that's truly sad.

The film was interesting, it was entertaining, and I could absorb the cinematography and empathize with the characters. But do I think it deserves all the raves it's been getting? Not really. It was simply a little movie, a little snippet, in some ways a beautiful little snippet, but one that's like a little candy that melts in your mouth and leaves behind a strangely astringent aftertaste. Not the film of the year. There goes my buzz... Striking? Yes. Touching? Maybe. Oscar winner for Best Picture? I hope not.

フィンヂングニモを見ました

On Thursday, the cheap day for women to see movies (1000 yen instead of 1800) I went to see Finding Nemo. Or, more precisely, I went to see フィンヂングニモ. I didn't see it in English with Japanese subtitles, although that was available. I actually watched it with Japanese dubbing.

I was a little concerned. I mean, Ellen Degeneres did such a great job as Dory, and Albert Brooks as Marlin, and Willem Dafoe as Gill... okay, well, you see what I mean. Poor dubbing can really ruin a movie, not just in translation, but in the energy and character of the film. Sure, they didn't have to worry as much about the exact synchronicity of lip movements (how do fish move their lips anyway?) But somehow, the Japanese dubbers captured the spirit of the original. I admit I'm speaking as someone who couldn't completely understand the Japanese version, but even the nuances of the characters seemed correct. Dory's song およぎましょう (that cute swimming song) even came across just as playful and engaging.

This was my first Japanese movie watching experience, since due the cost and the marked dearth of movies I had any interest in seeing, I had been really unmotivated to go. But somehow I managed to communicate with the woman at the counter I wanted to watch Finding Nemo, and although she was surprised I wanted to watch the Japanese version, I told her I wanted to practice. Then she said something in Japanese I couldn't understand, but she held out a map of the theatre and I realized I had to pick the area I wanted to sit in. Ahh, reserved seating! I had a great seat, right in the center, not too far forward and not too far back, and I got to watch it with digital projection and excellent sound.

How did the practice go? Not badly, actually. Thankfully the conversation is geared towards kids, so it's possible I understood as much as 30% of the movie. Well, I understood more, but it's hard for me to say whether that's just because I knew what they were actually saying in the English version. I can't wait to watch it again to see just how much more I can catch the second time around.

Or maybe I'll just pop in my DVD copy of Spirited Away for the Nth time and give it another whirl.

Untangling My Chopsticks

If you know me at all, you know that food is an important part of my life. And you may also know that I love books (although a lot of my book "reading" has been through Audible.com). I love Amazon.com and visit the site frequently to browse through books and add and remove things from my wishlist. A combination of clicking on books on Japan and on cooking eventually led the website to suggest I might be interested in Untangling My Chopsticks, which just so happens to also be on my cousin's wishlist. I ordered it, shipped it to my parents, and they brought it with them on their recent visit.

I devoured it. Victoria Abbott Riccardi tells the tale of the memorable year she spent in Kyoto, leaving her American life behind for her dream of learning tea kaiseki, the stylized cooking that accompanies the Japanese tea ceremony. The book gives a glimpse of the beauty of both the ceremony itself and the meaning behind all the elements of presentation, which lend their own grace to the book. She presents the history and evolution of tea ceremony and its cuisine, but weaves it together with her own tale. In addition, Riccardi shares the Japanese challenges, customs and traditions she lived through, from her first visit to a nice sushi restaurant, to making homemade mochi with the neighbors.

For anyone interested in Japan and in Japanese food, it's a worthwhile book. It's a quick read, in part because some of the pages are taken up by the recipes she's included for things like dashi and chawan mushi. But for me, myself stumbling through learning Japanese, struggling to figure out what to buy at the grocery store and trying to remember not to blow my nose in public, it was like reading about life through the window of someone who's been there too, if, it seems, slightly more gracefully that I am going through it now.

Riccardi learned tea kaiseki from a famous tea school in Kyoto. She made friends with fellow gaijin interested in tea, taught English in schools and to business people, and became close with a Japanese family. Throughout the book, she reveals some things I wondered about (Why are people eating sushi with their hands? Why do Japanese women constantly cover their mouths?) as well as some things I did know (such as that Japanese people generally look down on used items - one reason used cars are so cheap here). And, of course, tales of food permeate the text. Her extensive descriptions of the presentation of Japanese and the motivations behind it, have awakened me to things to be looking for in every meal. And, of course, what I needed was another reason to look forward to my next meal.

Lost in Translation

It's not a movie about Japan, or even life in Japan, no matter how many times you hear that it is. Rather,
it's a beautiful film that follows two people as they move languidly through their temporary stays in Tokyo, circling each other until they entwine and then slip apart.

People ask me what I thought of the movie. What they're really asking, I sense, is not whether I liked it, but whether I felt it was accurate, or true, or even whether that's how I feel, living here in Sapporo. I'm not sure what to say, so I think about writing a blog post instead. (Although this isn't really a review, spoilers may follow, so continue at your own risk.)

I was drifting along watching the scenes swim before me, watching the characters navigate their way upstream through crowds of short Japanese people and fight incomprehension and insomnia. I laughed at the moments that were there for our laughter - struggling with the short showerhead (more of a problem for Matt than for me), dealing with people who keep repeating things in Japanese when you obviously don't understand. But the funny parts were just blips in the fabric of the movie as Bob and Charlotte suffer perpetual insomnia and loneliness.

I've heard some people say they didn't "get" the movie, that if they were in Tokyo for a week, they'd be out and about, drinking in the culture, soaking up the sites. Those people remind me of the little girl who stopped by "my" island at the end of my Outward Bound solo; I heard her say as she walked away "If I had an island all to myself, I wouldn't be just sitting there!" Well, frankly, you would too, if all you'd had to eat in the past three days was 2 cups of trail mix and all the water you could suck down. So it is for Bob and Charlotte, except they've been going without whatever it is they're missing for longer than 3 days; it was missing before they even got to Japn.

Lost in Translation was not about being a tourist - it is about disconnection in the midst of the world. It is about the distance one can feel from everything and everyone, even the people who are supposed to be closest to us. For me, the most telling moment was when Charlotte was on the phone with a friend back home and told about her visit to the shrine - the monks were chanting, and she felt nothing. Her friend heard none of Charlotte's words, not even her cry that she doesn't know who she's married. Charlotte can't talk to anyone in Japan - but the people back home aren't really there either.

Did I enjoy it? Yes. Bob and Charlotte's connection is ethereal and lovely, like a wisp of wind catching a leaf in a graceful spiral. Two people who feel lost within themselves find each other, and they share moments which are perfect in their transitoriness, their lack of permanence and repeatability.

Does it reflect how I feel living in Sapporo? That will have to wait for another entry.

Read my favorite review of this movie.

Audible.com

Audiobooks offer a great advantage over regular books for me: I can knit at the same time I'm "reading." Plus, with neither many English books on hand nor any TV available (our TV doesn't work, and besides, I wouldn't be able to understand it), today I joined Audible.com. Basically, it's a site which offers audio book downloads in several different types of formats, including one that works with Apple iTunes and therefore allows me to (1) listen on my computer (2) transfer the book to Matt's iPod and (3) burn it to CD if I really wanted to (no reason to do that for now). Actually, lots of other sites, including Amazon, offer some audio downloads, but Audible has a very reasonably priced membership service. Since audiobooks are so darn expensive, that was important to me. Rather than buying the books "a la carte" I went with the premier membership, which is something like $20 a month for 2 audiobooks (less than the non-member price for most audiobooks!). The basic is $15 and includes one book and a subscription to a periodical such as the WSJ, but the only periodical I wanted was Fresh Air (NPR) and it turns out I can download episodes directly from their website. I figured if it turns out I am listening to less than 2 books a month, I can always cancel. That's the other beauty of the system: there's no commitment.

(And there's no pesky card to send back every month saying you don't want the automatic selection, which always sucked with those old Columbia music 10-CDs-for-the-price-of-one deals and which led to the arrival of music you had to open before you realized how much you didn't want it but now the packaging was destroyed and you couldn't send it back anymore. Remember that?)

Anyway, I've downloaded Ender's Game as my "free" book, and I've got two more books I can download until Oct. 11. I'm calling this my trial month. If you join too, be sure to say you were referred by member ID 'mkohpotts'.