31 October 2005, night Happy Halloween! We watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown on TV this morning. I love the flying ace sequences with Snoopy sneaking through the French countryside. There's also a great scene with Snoopy listening to Schroeder play piano, and getting all emotional. Snoopy definitely steals the show on the Halloween special, while the Christmas special is Charlie Brown's vehicle. Kumiko made me a lunch this morning, and I actually remembered to take it to work AND eat it on my break. I typically forget one of those two steps and end up buying my lunch as usual.
A lamp at the sake museum in Nishinomiya.28 October 2005, night It's a short weekend for me. I was conned into working overtime tomorrow. Why oh why did I give in? I've been working on a gallery show. I talked to the owner a couple weeks ago, and it looks like I'll have an exhibition of the train shots in April or May. Hope it continues to work out. I have a lot of shots to choose from, but I'm still shooting for it, because the prospect is exciting for me. Today I rode the loop line around Osaka, but didn't feel inspired to shoot much. When I got home, I made some scaled down mock-ups of the displays I'm planning. Kumiko whipped up an awesome dinner tonight, even though she's feeling sick: an omelette, tuna salad, and some little Chinese shrimp things. I'm a big fan of her tuna salad. It's the best I've ever had.
The Solar Sombrero rides again! I could do a whole series on bicycle names..25 October 2005, night I bought another camera, a very old (1932 -38) Rolleiflex Standard. I have to wait for delivery from Slovakia. It's going to be the first TLR (twin lens reflex) camera I've ever used. Recently I've been using my massive Kowa Six SLR to take pictures on the train. It's super heavy, but I really like using the ground glass viewfinder. You look at it from the top, so you never have to put the camera up to your eye. That means it's easier to take candid portraits, which is what I want. With my rangefinder cameras I can always shoot from the hip, but I can't frame my subject very precisely. The top-down viewfinder lets me compose the shot without being too obvious. I just pretend I'm playing with the camera and checking out the features. The Rolleiflex has the same kind of viewfinder, and looks less serious than the Kowa, so I think it may work even better for my sneaky purposes.
brothers.24 October 2005, morning I don't know what's been keeping me from writing in my journal, but it must be something. I've had a decent week. Work has been jam-packed (not jelly-filled), but that's not how I judge a week. Kumiko had a big test on the 16th, which she'd really been studying for like mad, so after that, she felt relieved, and we were able to proceed with social engagements such as dinner out with Brian and Keiko last Friday. We went to Star of India in the Hankyu Grand Building, and it was great. I'd been there once before, and thought it was just ho-hum, but this time I loved it. We had sag paneer and chicken masala curry and cheese nan. Cheese nan may not be the most traditional Indian bread, but it was awefully tasty. Brian and Keiko treated us to this one, so it was good on a much deeper level as well. The restaurant was playing Indian music (thankfully not j-pops), and at one point, the CD started skipping, and just went on skipping through the same 4 second loop for several minutes (I'll say 5 minutes), and no one seemed to notice but us. It was so obvious, but the staff seemed to have no idea. We had to tell them about it. But that reminds me of another recent music experience, on the day we went to the Imatake Shichiro exhibition. We went through Nishinomiya Kitaguchi, where I worked for a couple of years, and had lunch at a sushi shop where I always order the engawa (the fringe part of a soul) because it's so danged good and cheap. They had the worst, worst variety of j-pops playing. Songs you just couldn't imagine anyone making or liking. I wanted to savor that engawa, and I wanted Kumiko to experience it without distraction, so after conferring with her on the probabilities, I asked the sushi guys to change it, and they put on some cool enka, which works perfectly with sushi. Speaking of music again, my "band" is growing. We now have a guitar player, Chris, in addition to Brian on piano and me singing, an very possibly Ai on alto saxophone, although she's never rehearsed with us. We just go to a bar in Toyonaka to rehearse on Sunday nights. They have a piano and very few customers, so the owner doesn't seem to mind us playing the same song four or five times in a row. We had to cancel this week's practice though, because Brian got into a wrestling match at another bar, and hurt his arms.
Kumiko at the recent beer summit..15 October 2005, evening Art Day! I'm not a very museum kind of guy, but every once in a while I like to descend to the ranks of the common gawker. Today was one of those days. Kumiko found a show in the latest issue of TOKK (the newsletter of the Hankyu Railway company) that she thought we might like, and she was quite right. This was an exhibition of a graphic designer named Imatake Shichiro. He died recently. He was a contemporary of Yumeji Takehisa, whom I've written about before, and his style is pretty reminiscent. Like Yumeji, he designed commercial art for department stores and manufacturers and did propaganda/public service posters for the government as well. This show was at the Otani Museum in Nishinomiya. Not surprisingly, I'd never been there before, but it turned out to be a pretty big place. Despite the rainy weather, it was a good day. Before in my journal, I said that October was the best month of the year, weather-wise, but I have to take that back. It's been nothing but rain this month, and none to cool. I'll put my faith in November this year. We also watched 2.5 movies today: parts of Napoleon Dynamite in the morning, The Bourne Supremacy after the museum trip, and National Lampoon's Vacation just now. We have Dynamite and Vacation on DVD, so we can watch anytime. But Bourne is a rental. That reminds me of something Ernesto and I always had fun with back in Austin. We used to shorten movie titles to the shortest recognizable fragment when buying our cinema tickets: "One for Nap" or "Two adults for National". I don't know why it was so much fun. The box office guys never laughed.
A couple of cool Daimaru Department Store posters from 1929.8 October 2005, night International Beer Summit day today. I met Kumiko after her class. Her school is in the same building as the beer summit, so it was easy. I showed up about 30 minutes early so I could get a head start on sausage eating. I started with a bratwurst on a bun, followed up with a Spanish pilsner called Cruzcampo, which was quite good, then went for a Turkish doner kebab. The kebab was good enough to make me think I wanted a Turkish beer, so I went for something called Efes, which was pretty watery. I couldn't see finishing it with stomach room at such a premium, so I poured it out and continued unfettered. Kumiko became available about that time, and we began to patrol the outer borders in search of the ultimate beer. She ended up with another of the Spanish beers, called Ambar Negra, which she quite liked and I thought was just okay. I stuck with the German plan, and just went for the coolest label: Aecht Ochlenferla Rauchbier, which I enjoyed because it tasted like smoked bacon. It wasn't really right as a carrying-around-at-a-festival beer, but I can see that it would be really nice in smaller quantities with a meal, or at least sitting down. Kumiko was having a hard time making her mind up about food. I decided to be a good example, by going straight for the nearest tent and ordering without hesitation. This happened to be the Moroccan tent. I ended up with another kebab, this one Moroccan style and superior to its Turkish kin. The Moroccan guy who served me was funny. He couldn't speak much English, but he asked me where I'm from. He immediately identified Texas as being the home of George Bush, and told me that "this state can go to the hell". Then he said "merci" and gave me my kebab. I smiled and said "merci" back, because I don't know any French. Kumiko still hadn't made up her mind when I finished the Moroccan exchange, so we just watched the Hungarian dancers for a while. Then she took my advice and got a bratwurst. These were American bratwursts, and although they were mighty tasty, they paled in comparison to the much more expensive German one that we tried immediately afterwards. It was very similar to the ones we bought from Huis Ten Bosch in Nagasaki last year. We washed this ubersausage down with another German beer called Maisel's Weisse. We didn't like this beer, despite a pretty cool label. Never trust a weisse.
The best of the bottles.6 October 2005, night Fourth meal from the curry this evening. Still delicious, but I hope that was the end of it. We also had sanma, which is a river fish very popular in autumn. Kumiko disagrees. She says it's an ocean fish. Now I don't know. Anyway, it's a tasty little thing. It's kind of pretty too (before you grill it), long and sleek with silver skin. I remember trying to cook one of these in my bachelor days back in Kitasakurazuka. I cut open the belly to take out the gross stuff, and I was so grossed out by what I saw, that I threw the whole fish away without cooking it. I think I saw some kind of little worm that was still alive inside its guts. It was pretty barf-o-rama to look at. You're not really supposed to open them up before you cook them, I've since found out. You just throw the whole thing on the grill, then serve it with grated daikon and a piece of sudachi (like a lime). It's scrumptious.
We watched most of The Thin Man last night. I've seen it a million times. It's one of my favorites. I just got a box of DVDs I bought from an Ebay store. I got:
- The Thin Man
- Mr. Moto's Final Warning
- Dead End
- The Kennel Murder Case
- Laura
They were all cheapies. I'm a big Charlie Chan fan, as well as a Peter Lorre fan, so I thought I'd try out some Mr. Moto. This movie was actually much better than most Charlie Chan films. Mr. Moto is a Japanese detective, played by a German actor, while Charlie Chan is a Chinese detective, played by a Swedish actor. They're both ridiculous in their roles, of course, but Peter Lorre is just a much better actor than Warner Oland. That seems to be the only Mr. Moto title easily available on DVD however, so I won't be able to get any deeper into the character. There's actually a third player in this oriental detective genre. There's a series called Mr. Wong, the title character played by Boris Carloff, but I've never seen it. He looks even more ludicrous as an Asian than Warner Oland.
The Thin Man just gets better with every viewing. The pairing of William Powell and Myrna Loy is magical. They're so loveable. We fell asleep before the end of the movie though. We started too late, so we'll probably wrap it up tonight. This movie makes you want to drink liquor like no other movie can.
We may go to the International Beer Summit tomorrow at the Umeda Sky Building. I went last year by myself, and had a pretty good time sampling the world's brews, so it should be great with Kumiko.
Guy playing guitar at Osaka Station. He was good.5 October 2005, morning Curry for breakfast today. I love curry because it gets better with every meal. We're watching one of our favorite shows now on Animal Planet (cable station). It's about dogs who have special roles (movie dogs, helper dogs, airport bird-clearing dogs, etc). The stories are always uplifting. Dogs are such amazing animals. Why do they love people so much? I wish I could go play with a dog now, but I have to go to work.
1 October 2005, night The Hanshin Tigers (Osaka's favorite baseball team) secured the Central League title two days ago. It's nice to see everyone so happy about a common interest. Some stores are having sales to celebrate the victory. Hanshin department store especially, but also Yodobashi Camera. They've added 3 percent to they're standard 10 percent point card system. So now everything you buy gives you 13 percent of the purchase price back, which you can use on your next purchase. At one time, Kumiko and I had about $500 in Yodobashi points, after we stocked our apartment with appliances. To take advantage of the extra points I stocked up on photographic paper. I bought 100 sheets yesterday, and today I used about half of them at the self-printing lab I found in Osaka. It's a really cool, un-Japanese kind of place, and I love it. It's un-Japanese in that it's not too expensive, and it's really straight-forward. You just go in and use the enlargers and chemicals, and bring your own paper and pay by the hour. I was expecting some kind of elaborate pricing structure with a lot of weird rules. If anyone reading this is interested in doing their own black and white printing, I recommend this place highly. It's called B-koubou and it's in the Kitahama area. Today I printed only 5x7s, from my medium format negatives. I spent 3.5 hours in the lab and then more just sitting around talking to the owner and other customers, and listening to him play the shamisen. He showed my how to play as well. He told me that expensive shamisens are covered in cat skin, but this one was covered in dog skin. What an animal-lover's nightmare! He assured me it didn't come from Japanese dogs. On Friday I spent 2.5 hours there, and it was such a good experience that I had to go back today. I have a lot to learn about printing though. I'm excited and afraid to start digging into my archive of 35mm film. There's just too much.
Yesterday, Kumiko and I went to USJ and had a really good time. We ran into a million of Kumiko's old friends and coworkers. They were all nice and some were a lot of fun. We got to go into the very elite Panasonic Lounge, above the Terminator shop. This is a place reserved for Panasonic employees. As sponsors of the attraction, their employees can relax on leather sofas and get free soft drinks. Other attractions have these lounges too, but sponsored by other companies. One of Kumiko's friends is a Panasonic representative at this lounge, so we could go right in through the secret door (I can't say where it is), and into the secret elevator, and then get buzzed into the top-secret lounge. Pretty exciting stuff. One of her other friends who works there is a girl named Sugara. She was a lot of fun, and has a special talent: quantity eating. She told us that when she was in college, she once ate 70 plates of sushi (140 pieces)! The most I ever eat is 20 plates. I could probably push that to 30 if I was properly challenged. 70 is crazy! Sounds impossible, but we've no reason to doubt her. She also claims she can sit down and eat a whole rice-cooker full of rice. Incredible! Anyway, we started the day with the Universal Monster Live Rock-n-Roll Show which is just totally awesome. So much fun to see Frankenstein playing guitar and singing La Vida Loca. The Wolfman, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, and Betelgeuse sang and danced as well, but my favorites were the sexy-scary human dancers "Hip" and "Hop". I think I liked Hop better, but I'm not really sure which was which. The title of Sexiest Girl We Saw at USJ, however, definitely goes to the girlfriend of the Pink Panther. Mama Mia! Okay, so after the Monster show, we ate at Mel's Diner, went to the Panasonic Lounge and watched the Halloween parade, then checked out Shrek 4-D, then had a lovely Bass Ale, and a black and tan and excellent fish and chips at Finnegan's Irish Pub. Then we walked through the San Francisco area to Jurassic Park (a water ride), where the line was less than 15 minutes. We couldn't resist, and we got pretty soaked. I had a big wet butt for the rest of the day. We then met Kumiko's friend Kubo-san, who went to eat ice cream with us at Amity Ice Cream in the Amity Island (JAWS) area. I got a strawberry cone, Kumiko got mint chocolate chip, and Kubo made us look silly by getting mango milk flavor, which blew ours away. Kubo-san works part-time at a sushi shop outside the park, and after we left we all went there to eat again. We topped up our gullets and craws (23 plates between the three of us) before going home. Oh, and I forgot to mention, we went to an awesome toy museum outside the park as well and saw lots of kick-ass robots. It was a good day.
Now we're watching Miss Teen USA on FOX. Very entertaining as long as no one is talking.
spoils of the toy store close-out near my office
