Running Wild

It is now no longer exaggeration to say that it is freezing here in Tomari. I learned a new word on Tuesday: 初雪 hatsuyuki, literally "first snow." The sky was dark and gray, the snow was generally light, and the ground was warm enough that nothing stuck, which is to say that I didn't manage to take any pictures of the occasion. However, most accounts indicate some pretty sizable snowfall will be falling as the month progresses, so I should have no problem getting some good shots to share soon enough.

In other news, this past weekend was the HAJET Fall Meeting in 函館 Hakodate, which I attended especially to audition for the JET musical, "Alice in Japan." It remains to be seen exactly which drug-addled creature or personage I will be depicting, but my rendition of Georgetown's admittedly oddball fight song went over pretty well at auditions, so we'll see.

Best Movie Ever
"Hom Rong" ("The Overture") directed by Ittisoontorn Vichailak

I was flipping through the TV channels a couple weeks back when I came across an interesting-looking movie from Thailand, called The Overture in English. The dialog was entirely in Thai, with subtitles entirely in Japanese, so it was very fun (read: mentally draining) trying to follow along. I stuck to it though, partly because of the interesting characters, costumes, and such. However, they were merely sideshows compared to the awesome climactic scene of this movie, and the reason why I recommend it so highly. It can be summed up in only three words:

EPIC XYLOPHONE BATTLE.

Yes, my friends, The Overture is a xylophone movie like Remember the Titans is a football movie: historically rooted, defiant against restrictions of freedom, playing out the moral battles of the time through a narrower, local lens, and finishing with a ringing affirmation of national spirit. Personal rivalries rise and fall over the course of years, marked by complex, frenetic, and virtuosic xylophone melodies that have to be seen and heard to be believed. Seriously, when a review refers to one character as "the Darth Vader of xylophone musicians," you know it has to be pretty amazing.

I wish that I could do justice to the final scene of the movie, which features a literal xylophone duel between our hero and the aforementioned "Darth Vader," judged by the ruling elites of Thailand-- in fact, I have already gone through two drafts of this paragraph just trying to describe it. In the end, though, I will have to leave it to you to buy, borrow, or imagine it yourself, which will certainly be more vivid than my prose can capture in any case.

Best Conversation Ever

Explanatory note: At my school, like most in Japan, everyone has to take off their shoes at the entrance and either put on a clean pair they brought themselves or take a set of slippers set aside for visitors. This conversation took place in the staff room where all the teachers have their desks together; I am sure not every sentence and detail is 100% correct, but all the funny parts are true. I did not personally take a speaking role here, but was pleasantly surprised to understand almost all of what was being said.

"Did we ever figure out what was up with the shoes?"
"What shoes?"
"He doesn't know about the shoes?"
"The shoes left in the entranceway?"
"Somebody left some shoes behind?"
"Yeah. There's a pair of pink Asics that's been sitting there for a while. They're facing in like somebody just slipped them off but never put them back on to leave."
"Pink. So, probably a girl's shoes?"
"Yes, but you can't rule out that it could be a boy."
A thoughtful pause.
"How long have they been there?"
"Oh, maybe two days now I think."
"Which is to say, somebody came in two days ago but hasn't left yet."
"So somebody's been living alone at the school for the past two nights?"
"Maybe they've crawled away somewhere and died."
"Ha, yeah, that's probably it."
"The school's not even a year old and it's already haunted by ghosts."
"Does anybody want to search all the rooms for the dead body?"
Silence.
"Or maybe we could just announce it to the students and see if anybody knows anything about it."
"Okay, let's do that."

Epilogue: As far as I know, they never did figure out whose shoes they were, though they are no longer sitting in the entranceway.

Best Picture Ever


I am terrible with identifying wildlife and plants, especially those found in an unusual region of a foreign country, but I'll be darned if this stuff doesn't look a lot like wheat. More likely it's some variety of local wild grass. Looking at this panorama, I very much expected a certain Maria von Trapp to come spinning onto the scene, and indeed one of the folks I was with did attempt to reenact the musical number in question-- however, it turns out these plants are quite tall and the undergrowth is almost impossible to walk through. So, no living hills or laughing brooks for us.