#nagase and the band were great!

[jirettaiga]

Kode Talkers performance at Suzuka 8 Hours Race 2024

[levihauser]

十月の三週間

25 October, 2019

Sorry I have taken so long to write another blog entry! I have been a little busy with stuff here in Japan, so this entry should be filled with interesting events from the past three weeks.

On the fifth, my host niece and nephew, Yuria and Shuudai, came over for lunch. We had pasta (with thousands of tiny fish eggs mixed in-yum!) and crabs. My host mom said that the crabs were small, but they were larger than any I had ever seen. I was told to scrape the meat out of the legs and eat that, as well as the eggs for that. After having had eggs for breakfast, it was a pretty egg-cellent day. There. I hadn’t made a pun yet on this blog, but now you get to put up with one of the most cliché bad puns of all time. I went to our neighbor’s (Mrs. Takamatsu, I think I mentioned her in the most recent post) house to stay the night. I just learned a few days ago that her husband runs one of the 5 most profitable businesses in the prefecture.

The next day, I read in the morning and finished the last book that I had brought with me from the US. We had curry rice for breakfast, then I went with Mrs. Takamatsu to a temple for a Buddhist festival. It was quite a big temple, and very new. The festival was also interesting-everyone just sat in a central room and watched a recording of the same festival happening in a central temple in Tokyo, occasionally chanting, bowing, or clapping along to it. We left early to pick up her husband at the train station. He had just come back from Chicago (a few days later, actually, Mrs. Takamatsu left for Chicago. They have a daughter there, so they visit there a lot). I had my first Japanese-style pizza for lunch. It was very thin-crusted and crunchy, almost like a big cracker. I returned home, then my host parents and I went out for dinner at a nearby specialty restaurant called Nishide. I think they know the people there, and the like eating there, but it is expensive so they don’t do it too often.

The entire next week was midterms for the students at my school (their school year starts in April), so the school days ended at around 11 AM. I couldn’t take the tests, not understanding the language, so I was sent to the library to read and study Japanese.

On the tenth, I had a Rotary meeting. I have started taking Japanese lessons every Thursday at the Matto Cultural Hall near my school, so I have to go straight to the Rotary meeting without going home to change out of my school uniform. This one was in Kanazawa at a special restaurant. We had good food after a short meeting, and played host to a Rotary club that had come to visit all the way from Lake Biwa.

On National P.E. and Sports Day here in Japan (the same day as Columbus/Indigenous Peoples Day in the US), I had no school, so my host mom and dad suggested that I take the train to Kanazawa. I have never ridden the train before, even in the US (unless you count subways and old-fashioned railroads where you pay a lot of money to sit in leather seats and get your ticket punched with an actual ticket puncher), so I was a little worried. I had no problem buying the tickets-the ticket machines have an option to use English-but I accidentally got in the wrong line (I am still not sure what it was for and I haven’t seen one like it since then) and wasted about 40 minutes there without moving before I asked someone and they pointed me in the right direction. I successfully got to Kanazawa Station. One of my classmates was on the same train by coincidence, so I followed them to find my way to the exit. I actually went out the one that my tiny tourist map didn’t cover at first, so I had to go around to the other side. It was raining and windy, so I had some difficulty reading the map and holding my umbrella at the same time. I eventually made my way to Oyama Jinja, a famous shrine just outside of Kanazawa Castle and near Kenrokuen Garden (which is a famous Japanese garden, for those of you who haven’t heard of it). I admired the shrine for a bit and bought a few good luck charms that were for sale there, then returned to the station and went home, since I had to be home before 5 PM. The round trip only cost ¥400.

On the 18th, my school festival began. My school’s festival is a small one, or so I’ve heard, but the Japanese certainly know how to throw one (no offense to anybody back at home, but PHS should take some advice from Matto High School. Those 2-hour pep rallies and shouting contests just don’t cut it). The first day was not at the school, but at the nearby Matto Cultural Hall, since they have an auditorium and the school doesn’t. There were several student presentations and performances, including brass band (I mentioned this earlier. It has won regional awards and is very impressive. They play music that sounds just like the original recordings. They did a specially arranged version of the alma mater as well as the Jurassic Park theme and a few other songs), choir (it is made up of only 7 members, but has beautiful harmonies and keeps in tune perfectly, while creating a huge amount of sound without microphones. They did a song from Sister Act and a few others), taiko (I performed in this one! We borrowed some drums from the Asano Taiko Company, the largest taiko company in the world. The owner and CEO is a member of my host Rotary Club and my school is the only one in the prefecture with a taiko club), and dance (it was very well rehearsed. There were only five members, but I think they created their own routine and it was fun to watch), as well as a short, corny play put on by the teachers in which one of the gym teachers, Mr. Higashi, had to go on a funny adventure to rescue Miss Matto High School 2019 from her kidnappers (either a gang or a group of devils, it was hard to tell without understanding the language) headed by the other gym teacher, Ms. Sawada (everyone loves Ms. Sawada and they were a little disappointed to see her defeated in the end). We returned to the school after the performances finished, then finished preparing and decorating for the next day (I say finished because we had been preparing for this after school for weeks, making paper chains, posters, placemats, paper flowers, etc.), before being dismissed. The next day was a Saturday, but the festivities continued. It was in the school, and was pretty much the “buy stuff” day. We had tickets that cost from ¥50-400 that payed for things ranging from waffles to games of bingo to weird, confined-space bowling to tea ceremony. It took up seven hours, in which I explored, ate lots of food, and went to various events including what they called a 4DX movie, which was essentially an English horror film translated into Japanese and played through tiny speakers while a few students made weird sound effects and threw things (e.g. whacking rulers on desks, throwing foam at backs, and spritzing water from spray cans) to make it “more realistic.” With all of the stuff going on and the voices, I really didn’t pay attention to the movie and instead collected as many of the little foam pieces as I could.

On the twentieth I had my favorite Japanese food for breakfast-hooray, inarizushi! I went to Kanazawa alone by train again and spent about 5 hours wandering about and seeing new things, but forgetting to eat lunch and getting kind of hungry. I returned home at around 4, and was almost immediately told that I was shortly going to a concert with a Rotarian, Ms. Ikemoto (I think she is going to be my third host mom too, but I am not sure). We went to an old, elaborate temple and watched an out-of-place-seeming amateur old folk and country music concert with a couple of English songs and one entirely about curry rice. The musicians were very talented. We went to an udon shop for dinner afterwards and stayed very late because Ms. Ikemoto didn’t want to leave until the match of the Rugby World Cup between Japan and South Africa had finished.

I had the 22nd off of school because of the enthronement of the new emperor of Japan. My host Rotary club counselor, Ms. Nagase, took me to Kanazawa (by train, because the roads were too crowded due to the holiday). She spent 3 years in England a while back, so she speaks fairly good English, which is good for smoothing out misunderstandings. She is a bit of an anglophile and is constantly asking me how to say things in British English. We briefly stopped in at the 21st Century Museum of Modern Art, but it was crowded as usual and we had to leave soon. There was a Moomin exhibition which I would love to have gone to, but the Japanese love Moomin and the entire floor it was on was packed (Moomin is 20th Century art, so how does that fit into the museum?). Next we went to the D.T. Suzuki Museum, which is a small, modern museum celebrating the famous Kanazawa-born philosopher that is its namesake. There were not many people and it was very peaceful. It was even free admission because of the Enthronement Day (upon seeing the sign, Ms. Nagase got very excited and took several pictures-apparently it is very rare at this museum). We went to a fancy sashimi restaurant near the train station for lunch-it was great food, and we got our own special compartment with sliding doors! After lunch, we went to a concert hall right next to Kanazawa Station for a piano concert. The Kanazawa orchestra has a weird mascot named Gargantua that is sort of like a caricature of a conductor. The orchestra was conducted by Keita Matsui, and the three piano concertos were Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, performed by Yukari Yamada, Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor, performed by Rikono Takeda, and Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-Flat Major, performed by Marie Kiyone. The performance was all very high-quality, and it was open-seating so we got second-row seats in the perfect spot to watch the pianists’ hands. At the end, all three pianists returned and played a piano trio all on the same piano, which must have been difficult. They were all wearing dresses that I would think would hinder playing (forgive me if I went a little overboard in description there, I am very interested in anything related to piano playing). Ms. Nagase and I returned to Hakusan City by train, then went to her house. Half of it is a 30-year-old addition to the other half, which is 200 years old and barely touched. She has a beautiful yard (a rarity in Japan) and back garden. She showed me around briefly, then we went to walk her dog. After we returned, her husband got home from work. Both of them are very friendly and kind. Ms. Oribe, another Rotarian, had been invited for dinner and arrived shortly, then we walked to a nearby restaurant and had tempura.

There was also no school the next day, to make up for the Saturday that we had come to school for the festival. I studied Japanese for a little while, then on a snap decision decided I wanted to go to Fukui, a city in the neighboring prefecture. I obtained permission, then left. It was only ¥1,100 for each way, and the train ride was an hour and ten minutes on the small trains that stop at every station. I arrived and got some maps at the tourist information center, then set out exploring the city. I walked past some animatronic dinosaurs (that seems to be Fukui’s big tourist attraction, as the prefecture is a paleontological hotspot) and the ruins of the castle (which is now the prefectural government office-what a great workplace! You get to drive across a moat every day). I eventually reached a beautiful mountain in the middle of the city that had been turned into a forested park. It was the closest I have gotten to nature since I have come to Japan. I stopped at a shrine and explored a little more before descending. I continued wandering some more in search of restaurants and candy stores, but the food map I had was either outdated or misleading, and I couldn’t find any of the shops I searched for. At about 4 PM, I settled for some rice balls and ice cream from a convenience store for lunch instead, then returned home. The sun sets so early here, it is difficult to stay much longer and still have a good time.

Yesterday was my school’s P.E. festival. I was told to study Japanese in the school library instead of participating, but all of the other students went to a big park and participated in races and other mandatory events for gym class. I had my Japanese lesson and watched a tea ceremony with a lady who was visiting from Germany who happened to be at the Cultural Hall at the same time before going to the Rotary meeting. This week, a delegation from Hakusan’s sister city, Columbia, Missouri was visiting, so they came to the Rotary meeting and presented in the first half before leaving for some other obligation.

Today has been a fairly normal day so far. I had an average school day followed by an average afternoon, as far as I am allowed to use the word average, being an exchange student to Japan. I have been studying my Kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese) quite a bit lately and seem to be making some headway. I am looking forward to being literate! I feel like it’s about time, now that I have officially passed the two month mark. Thank you all for your patience in waiting for this long-delayed entry.

Oyama Jinja Shrine:

Kanazawa Station:

I would add more pictures, but it keeps telling me there is an upload error, so I will try again later.

[funwiththoughts]

Paterson: A Poem About Love

"Paterson" is a movie of digressions... every one of them a love story. 

Each day, Paterson wakes up in bed with his wife. He walks to work past a waterfall, in the uniform he wears as a bus driver for the city of Paterson. Before he starts his route, he writes poetry in a notebook he keeps. We see the poems on the screen, and hear them spoken, and they're beautiful. And then he goes about the real work of being a poet. Which is to say, treating each encounter, each image, each conversation - no matter how mundane, or redundant, or familiar - as discreet, and worthy of his attention.

Paterson is in love, and his wife is in love, and their bulldog Marvin is an asshole, but even he's probably in love, in his own way. And the movie is in love with all of them - in a way which is rare enough to be worth rejoicing over. Too often, movies sit in judgement of their characters. They make them do things and then they say: "Look, look at them making mistakes that you the viewer would never make".

That "Paterson" isn't like that is perhaps because it was made by one of the cinema's most exultant optimists - Jim Jarmusch. I always feel, when I'm watching his movies, like he's making us listen to a band he just discovered, or taking us for the first time to a building he found that we just have to see, because it's so beautiful and has such a story to it, and can you believe it's been right here in the city this whole time? He's been accused of being aloof, or mocking, but I don't think so. I take him at his word. I feel like he really is showing us what he's showing us because he thinks it's great.

So, what is he showing us here? A city, which has a waterfall, and crime but also art. And the people who live in that city, each of whom - at least as we meet them - are creators of their own stories, and not just the objects of observation for us, or another gaze. It's all idealized, but that's okay. Movies can be for that, too, in my opinion.

He's showing us the present, placed alongside the past as if to say - the days of our lives are like brush strokes and every day we're building on the vast mural painting that was started before we were born. Or an epic poem. Or maybe just a cacophonous drum solo with a complex time signature nearly impossible to comprehend.

I think that's what "Paterson" is about. Nothing grander, or less grand, than the rhythms of daily life. How they can make us happy or unhappy, depending on their relationship to the rhythms of our hearts.. to our lifelong efforts to keep up with, or not get too far ahead of, what makes us joyful.. and content.

(Written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. Starring Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani, Barry Shabaka Henley, Method Man, Chasten Harmon, Willam Jackson Harper, Masatoshi Nagase. Featuring poems by Ron Padgett and William Carlos Williams).

[ethanalter]

'Paterson' Director Jim Jarmusch on His 'Film in the Form of a Poem' Starring Adam Driver, and a Look Back at Past Favorites

Adam Driver plays a bus driver/poet in ‘Paterson’ (Photo: Amazon Studios)

With his shock of white hair, eclectic artistic tastes, and longtime presence on New York City’s Lower East Side, Jim Jarmusch remains an aspirational figure for would-be Gotham hipster poets. It’s a status the writer/director has held since the early 1980s, when his scruffy black-and-white movies like Permanent Vacation and Stranger than Paradise enraptured audiences, preserving a period in Manhattan’s artistic and youth culture that, seen today, almost appears to be taking place on a different planet. Of course, the filmmaker’s canvas has long since broadened beyond his local stomping ground. Celebrated films like Down by Law, Mystery Train, Night on Earth, and Only Lovers Left Alive have taken him to other cities and countries, illustrating how his unique, dryly funny point of view travels well.

For his latest feature, Paterson — which opened in limited release on Dec. 28 and goes into theaters across the map this month — Jarmusch joins New York’s bridge-and-tunnel crowd, commuting across the Hudson to the titular New Jersey town, most famous as the birthplace of Lou Costello. Paterson also happens to be the name of the film’s main character, a bus driver and poet (Adam Driver) who finds creative inspiration, rather than frustration, in the daily grind of his work routine. It’s no accident that there are two Patersons in Paterson; the entire film is suffused with visual couplets, as if we’re watching one of the driver’s (or would that be Driver’s?) poems being written on screen in front of our eyes. Yahoo Movies spoke with Jarmusch about finding poetry in everyday life, his endless love for the Wu-Tang Clan, and his other 2016 film, the Iggy Pop and the Stooges documentary Gimme Danger.

Jim Jarmusch (Photo: Getty Images)

As befits a movie about a poet, Paterson’s structure is very poetic, with each day almost resembling the stanza of a poem. Was that always your conceit? I think it’s a film in the form of a poem rather than a poem in the form of a film, if that makes any sense. One of my favorite things in all art forms is variations, whether it’s in the music of Bach or in the work of Andy Warhol. And obviously a simple metaphor for variations are the days of the week and how things change slightly [from day-to-day]. In this film, the variations involve a guy who’s very much tied to his routine. He likes not thinking about what’s he going to wear, what time he gets to work, or what he’s going to do after dinner. I think that’s why he’s able to drift and be a poet, because he doesn’t have to worry about any of that. It’s already set for him.

The poetic nature of the film also applies to Paterson’s relationship with his wife Laura, played by Golshifteh Farahani. Even though they have wildly different attitudes toward creativity, those perspectives actually complement each other. It’s as if they rhyme, after a fashion. Yeah, I think there’s a yin-yang thing about them that makes them have a very compatible kind of love story. And you see that same sort of rhyme in other scenes, like with the twins that keep re-appearing. They’re a little motif woven in there without intended meaning; I didn’t want it to pay off in the end like, “Laura pregnant with twins.” Or the scene with the guys in the car who warn Paterson that his dog could get stolen. I didn’t want them to be dog-jackers; I was intentionally not having some of these things pay off in the expected way.

There’s even some rhyming with your own filmography. I’m thinking of the scene toward the end of the film featuring the Japanese actor, Masatoshi Nagase, who appeared in your 1989 film, Mystery Train. It becomes that, but that wasn’t my intention. I usually write scripts for specific actors and hope that then I can trick them into doing it somehow. The only actor I did intend [to cast] while I was writing was Masatoshi. I thought, “Now he’s a middle-aged guy, and he’s a wonderful actor — what a great chance I would have to have him be the angelic character that appears here.”

Do you think of your characters as inhabiting the same universe? No, I really don’t think that way. In this case, there are some similarities. In Mystery Train, Masatoshi played a young guy on a rock and roll pilgrimage, and this time, his character is on a kind of William Carlos Williams pilgrimage. So there’s something in there, but I try not to analyze that too much.

So we’ll never see Ghost Dog team up with the Lone Man from The Limits of Control, for example. I don’t know, maybe! The only time I really did that on purpose was in Dead Man where Gary Farmer played Nobody in that film, and in the end he was killed. I was very upset to have him killed somehow! So I brought him back in a totally different century in Ghost Dog where he’s on a rooftop in Jersey City. I consciously did that, because I didn’t want to think of him as being dead. [Laughs]

Adam Driver and Golshifteh Farahani in ‘Paterson’ (Photo: Amazon Studios)

You mentioned that you like to write your scripts with actors already in mind. Was that the case with Adam Driver? Oddly, I didn’t write for him or Golshifteh, but as I was trying to figure out the ideal actor, I told our casting director, Ellen Lewis, that I’d like to meet Adam. I’d only seen him in a few things: Inside Llewyn Davis, Frances Ha, and Girls, but I heard some interviews with him and I was like, “I just want to meet this guy.” He was the perfect guy to be Paterson. He’s a wonderful actor, and he’s a bit like Paterson in that he’s very observational as a person. He’s not analytical, like myself. He doesn’t overthink things, he approaches a character by getting a handle on that person and then just trying to react as that person in each scene. He has a wonderful presence and voice and face, and he’s a very compassionate person with a kind of nice, sort of reserved sense of humor.

He’s almost upstaged by the movie’s scene-stealing canine performer, Nellie, who plays the couple’s dog, Marvin. Yes, Nellie. She played transgender in the film. She was a shelter dog, and had incredible trainers. We got all of her scenes with little trouble. We loved having her on our set and in our film. The crew wasn’t really allowed to interact with her, because she needs to have her trainers be the ones that she listens to, as well the actors that she’s working with. Marvin is their surrogate child in a way, and the character has quite a strong personality, so Nellie pulled that off really well. [Nellie passed away before the film’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where she won the “Palm Dog” award posthumously.]

Nellie in ‘Paterson’. (Photo: Amazon Studios)

Paterson, the city, is another character in the film. Did you shoot on location? I wanted to shoot everything in Paterson, but for tax credit purposes, I was limited. This isn’t social realism, so I wanted to create an imagined Paterson that still had the feel of the real place. Obviously, the waterfalls and the bus depot are Paterson, but we shot several scenes in Yonkers and the bar where Paterson goes is in Queens.

It’s always fun to see members of the Wu-Tang Clan pop up in your movies, like Method Man in Paterson. Are you always thinking of ways to include them? I’m a big Wu-Tang fan, so my collaborations with RZA and GZA meant a lot to me. And I’ve hung out with Ghostface and Raekwon at certain points, too. So this time, I asked Method Man to do a little thing, and he wrote his rap himself, and even quoted William Carlos Williams all on his own. They’re a collective of brilliant, incredible people; I love their innovations, philosophies, and investigations into martial arts culture. They’re like Iggy Pop in that they’re intellectuals without being refined by academics. Wu-Tang forever! [Laughs]

Speaking of Iggy Pop, you collaborated with him this year on the documentary, Gimme Danger, which covers the story of his band, The Stooges. The Stooges are very important to me, so I wanted to make a film celebrating them. It’s not like one of these documentaries that’s looking for all the dirt you could find. It’s really more about, “Where did this music come from? Where did these guys come from? How were they treated? What do they give us?” That was a fun film to make. While we were shooting Paterson, I talked to Iggy on the phone, and he said, “I was voted the sexiest man alive by the Paterson Girls Club of 1970.” I said, “Come on, really?” Then we looked it up and he was! So I put that in Paterson. He’s currently up for a Golden Globe for a song he wrote for the movie Gold, and also a Grammy Award for his album, Post Pop Depression. He’s worth a lot in prizes, that guy. That’s in one of his songs: “I’m worth a million in prizes.”

His collaboration with David Bowie is mentioned in passing in the film, but not really explored. Do you hope to make a separate documentary about that period in his career? Well, our film was about The Stooges. If I wanted to make a film about Iggy Pop’s entire career, that would be 12 hours long! Bowie’s mentioned because he was involved in the last Stooges record, Raw Power, but a lot of the real collaborations between Bowie and Iggy came after The Stooges, so that was not the content of our film. He made incredible stuff when they went to Berlin together. Bowie even played keyboards with Iggy’s band during one tour, and did backup vocals.

Ghost Dog is a film that’s had a long cultural afterlife. Are there other films you’ve made that people are still eager to discuss with you? Dead Man comes up a lot; that one seems to resonate. It’s a favorite of mine, and there’s something about it that invites repeat viewings. We tried to put a lot of layers into it, including comedy and very dark historical things. It took a lot of work by all of us to get that damned thing made! RZA, Forest Whitaker, and I are actually trying to do a TV show based on Ghost Dog now. There’s even a script for the pilot, which I love. I didn’t write it, but it’s fantastic so I’m hoping that might happen.

One of my favorites of yours is The Limits of Control, which I think was undervalued when it was originally released. It plays like an anti-Jason Bourne spy movie. That was another case of us trying to not satisfy expectations. Much more so than Paterson actually, because there isn’t a lot of plot in The Limits of Control and there isn’t really any action. It’s more of an atmosphere that we wanted to see. We thought, “Can you make an interesting film without fulfilling those expectations?” And some people will say, “No, you did not!” [Laughs] Others sort of found a connection to it. I’m proud of that one, too. It was an interesting experiment.