Sunday, August 24, 2014

The Beach and Marnie

This weekend I went to the beach for the first time this summer! And even though my skin has gotten pretty pale, I didn't get sunburn. I met a guy from Okcupid who works in a hostel near Miyajima and we hung out and had a good time.

When we swam out to the raft we were joined by a British father and his two adorable British kids. (Who probably would resent being called adorable as they were teens, but they were so freakin' beautiful and had accents to die for. I'm totally jealous.) We talked together for a while, and then they swam off. But later we saw them again in the shopping area on Miyajima, this time with Mom too, and the six of us went to have dinner together! It was super fun hanging out and I taught the daughter some Japanese phrases. They were an interesting family and all seemed to really enjoy hanging out together. I was feeling a bit nostalgic for when I traveled with my family and was also thinking, "Someday me too; I'll get married and have some cool kids and take them cool places...."

Today I went to Hatchoza theater downtown to see 思い出のマーニー. This is the first all-Japanese movie I've seen, and I saw it by myself. However, as there was no version with subtitles the choices were either to see the Japanese version or not see it in theaters at all. And I didn't want to let summer go by without seeing it.

There was a lot I couldn't understand, especially for some of the adult characters, but I could understand a lot of short sentences and the children's dialog. Luckily the main story is the same as the book so when people started talking for a long time about something complicated I at least knew what the topic was based on the animation and a few key words. If you know Anna's backstory and Marnie's back (future?) story then it's not too hard to follow what's going on.

I think fans of the book will mostly like the movie because even though the story's Ghiblified and a few things are changed or moved around in the plot, the main story is the same, and more importantly the emotion of the story is the same. You really feel what Anna is going through and her redemption.

Maybe the book leans more toward "It really happened but don't ask how" and the movie is more "It was all in her head" but I have to watch it again to decide. :)

However, this is definitely not a movie to watch alone. There may have been some tears...Any story about a character who's lonely really gets to me.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Tokyo--Again!

During Obon vacation I went to Tokyo again for two days. Unfortunately I manged to catch a cold two days before I went, so I didn't have as much energy as I had hoped. To make things worse, I managed to deactivate both my available cash cards (don't ask how) and was left with very little money until I could go to the Japan Post head office on the second day and get my cash card reactivated.

This is why most of the pictures I took do not show my face...


In spite of these setbacks, I was able to see both Tokyo Tower and Meiji Shrine (in Harajuku) and have a nice dinner with my friend Akiko, who was an excellent host for my stay. I'm glad we got to meet up again because she's going to Germany this month. I wish I had such an exciting life....

Friday, August 8, 2014

New Glasses! And sound recording mishaps.

On Thursday one of the nose pads on  my purple PC glasses broke off. They did this once before but I was able to repair them with tweezers to tighten the screw. This time the pad fell off completely when I was unaware and was lost in the mists of the carpet.

So I took the glasses into the Alook shop in Hondori and the guy was all, sure I can repair these easy--no problem. Unfortunately in the process of repair he inadvertently snapped the base of the nose pad clean off. And since last year the purple glasses had been discontinued.

Luckily, he offered to let me choose a new pair as long as it was the same price. By then I had been looking at all the other PC glasses for the last five minutes and was actually rather elated that I would be able to switch up my frames for no cost at all.

At first I wanted to get a pair in red, but the only red pair was the sample so I chose brown instead. It's exactly the color of my hair, so maybe that was the best choice in the end.



These glasses are slightly larger than my old ones, but as that makes it slightly easier to look through the frames I don't mind so much. It would be tiring if I had to wear hipster glasses everywhere, but as it's only at work (which is actually a good chunk of my waking time...but still) I don't really care.

The new pair doesn't have adjustable pads at all, so maybe they will last longer without breaking. The clerk doubted they would fit me because 鼻高い but actually they did, thank you very much.  As always I vaguely nodded to agree that, yes, I acknowledged the truth of the statement that my nose was big. Meanwhile I wilted inside and felt self-conscious for the rest of the evening. I know my nose is too big, it is in the center of my face after all, but that should be more reason why I don't need a stranger to inform me of the fact.

The next day I told my coworker that I had replaced my glasses she said that no, no, no, 鼻高い is neutral or positive, while 鼻デカイ or 鼻大きい is always rude. I can sort of appreciate her Japanese-style discretion to realize that I really was bummed about what some random shop person told me. Most Americans would have just laughed and chimed in with some story of their own when they were singled out.

Today was exciting in general because not only did I have new glasses, we spent the morning recording sound in an actual sound studio. And one of my coworkers kept making an idiot of himself, which was entertaining in sort of morbid way.

First, he forgot his umbrella and had to go back to the 14th floor to get it while we waited outside. And then our Japanese boss got nervous because of course it's a recording studio and we have to get there on time. When we got there, the same coworker kept screwing up his lines over and over again. To be fair the section he had to read was newspaper articles that we had cut down to the bare minimum, so it was a bit unnatural. But when our other boss asked me a grammar question, I was able to read perfectly off the cuff a line that my coworker had butchered at least three times already. In fact, my boss sort of looked over at the other guy was like "Like that!"

When the bumbling coworker finally left we all sort of gave this sigh of relief. And my boss started repeating sentences over and over with false starts in a sort of "Thank God he's gone that was the weirdest thing ever" cathartic outburst.

Then we noticed that the copy of the script was gone. We three readers were supposed to share one, but this same guy decided randomly to put it in his bag. So in fact I was the only one who didn't get to read the script in the office before work (same guy hogged it and didn't hand it over to me) and then my two bosses had to share one script while I read from the other one.

Did I mention this guy and I don't get on so well?

Now, I goofed up a bunch of times during my reading as well. But I did have by far the longest section (a good 90 minutes) and a large part was numbers. Part 1-1 through Part 6-30. And then numbers 1-90. Which is a lot harder than it looks! However, once I started reading actual sentences it got much easier. And I had some weird phrasing to get through too since my boss who wrote the script has a particularly Japanese way of phrasing everything.

"I came to understand the beauty and richness of the Japanese spirit..."

But still I managed to finish my part 10 minutes before time was up, so I feel really accomplished today. I got to record in a real studio and did some hard stuff.