The Goodfellas of Kurashiki (revisited)

Tsutaya, the Japanese movie-rental behemoth, was having a half-price “campaign” (sic) on old movies this weekend, so I toddled down to the local shop near Nagai Station and rented Goodfellas, a movie I hadn’t seen since its theatrical release in 1990. I watched it last night and it seemed as though two DVD commentaries were running simultaneously in my head the whole time (an image I wouldn’t / couldn’t have used the first time I watched it because there was no such thing as a DVD).

The first commentary was, naturally, me comparing my reaction to that of the first time I saw the film. Often you can be disappointed when watching a favourite film years later (in college, I thought Amadeus the best movie I’d ever seen – yet the last time I tried to watch it, this past February, I could barely stay awake till the end). There are misremembered lines of dialogue, scenes whose sequence you’d confused and scenes you’d forgotten completely – but there was little of that when I watched Goodfellas. The movie had made such an impact on me that I remembered it virtually scene by scene. The violence didn’t shock me as much – was that because I now always knew when it was coming, or because nearly 18 years of the real thing on the internet have left me callous and jaded? The sequence (to the tune of “Layla”) where De Niro’s character has his accomplices bumped off in various interesting ways disturbed me deeply in 1990 – so much so that I replayed the whole thing in my dreams for years afterward. This time, I paused after they found the guy hanging from the butcher’s hook in the refrigerated truck, and unironically went to get some more Coke from the fridge.

Watching it the first time, you never know what Joe Pesci’s increasingly psychopathic character, Tommy, will do next. It is probably the last really unpredictable performance I’ve seen in a movie, so naturally, my eyes followed him the whole time in 1990. Second time round, I realized how strong the supporting performances were (and this is always one of Scorcese’s strengths – bringing out the ensemble-cast feel) – especially Lorraine Bracco as Henry Hill’s wife and Paul Sorvino as Paulie, the understatedly threatening mob boss. I noticed the camera work this time – the brilliant tracking shots, the very long, tense confrontation scenes, the disjointedness and speed of the action as Henry (the minor wiseguy from whose point of view the story is told) gets more paranoid from cocaine. The movie didn’t disappoint – it still holds up well.

There was however, one puzzling difference: the scene in which {SPOILER ALERT} Tommy enters a room and realizes that he’s not being made a full member of the Mafia family, but instead is about to be whacked. For 18 years, I’ve remembered his last words being, “Aw, shit!” But when I saw it last night, he said nothing. Misremembered, or second thoughts on Scorsese’s part when the DVD edition was released? {END OF SPOILER ALERT}

That was the first running commentary. The second one was comparing the contexts of both times I watched the movie. In November, 1990, a friend of mine invited me to Kurashiki for the long weekend of the then-new Emperor’s Enthronement ceremony (the Daijousai – it was declared a one-off national holiday that year). After seeing the sights of beautiful, downtown Kurashiki, we still had 2.5 more days to kill. The video shops had been picked clean (nobody watches these royal ceremonies, although they are duly televised – I’ve been told that video rentals were also brisk during Emperor Showa’s mourning period and drawn-out funeral). Goodfellas was playing on Saturday night at the non-cineplex movie house. We’d never heard of it, but knew De Niro. Bought tickets.

I still remember the pasta we ate beforehand (dinner and a movie! How last century can you get!), the cappucino which, in those pre-Starbucks days, was still a relative novelty outside of Tokyo, the acquaintances of my friend, who joined us for the movie (one of whom un-ironically stated, for some long-forgotten reason, “well, we must always protect our interests”; yes, some Americans talked like that even then, in the presence of impertinent foreigners like me). The theatre was old (at least that’s how I remember it). There might have been a dozen people there – it wasn’t a big hit. In those bucolic surroundings, watching Goodfellas was a bit surreal. But I never forgot it.

Cut to 2008. I’m sitting in my room, eating smoked salmon and avocado on English muffins (the first ingredient unaffordable, the other two virtually unknown in Japan, c.1990), watching a movie in a medium that didn’t exist the last time I saw it, able to pause the movie at will and look up info about cast, crew, on the IMDB or Wikipedia. I wonder whether the movie would have had the same impact on me had this been the first time to watch it. I doubt it – as much as I enjoyed it, I was too easily distracted, knowing that I could always pause, rewind, look up, go for a pee. It’s a totally different aesthetic experience. Don’t worry – I’m not going to get all Luddite now and say one is better than the other. But still.

A semi-related afterthought: I just recalled my grandmother’s little movie notebook, which she came across in a drawer some years ago, and showed me. In the 1930s, she and her school friends would take in movies all the time. She would make a note of what she saw, where she saw it, who she saw it with, the cast, and a comment or two. Although going to the pictures was cheap entertainment, it was still the Depression and no one would dream of spending a good quarter to see the same movie twice. Seventy years later, she can still relate some of those stories, describe long-forgotten starlets.

Canada Day/ Fête du Canada/ カナダの日

Canada is 141 years old today. I marked the occasion, here in Osaka, by going to the Eddie Bauer shop in the mall in Sakai and buying two shirts for half price. This is usually how Canadians celebrate Victoria Day, but when you’re living abroad, you have to adapt.

In lieu of a Canada Day parade, I put on the iPod and hiked, like a courier-du-bois, around Higashi-Sumiyoshi-ku for a couple of hours. I will, however, miss the annual Dominion Day July 1st Picnic in Enfield, Nova Scotia. I hope my mother bought me a book of tickets on the 50-50 draw.

Forgotten, but not gone

As I walked past a classroom this morning, on the way to my own, I immediately noticed the t-shirt worn by a girl of about 19. Peach-coloured short sleeves, framing the full-coloured, giant-sized, head-shot photograph of a young man – also about 19, very thin, rather preoccupied (a look also cultivated by young Japanese boys because it looks cool, apparently). Short, spiky hair, a few piercings – nothing too radical in this day and age. I recognized him immediately. Surprised, I looked in.

“Are you a fan?” I asked.

“Of who?” she asked.

“Him,” I replied, pointing to the t-shirt.

“I don’t know him,” she said. “I think he looks kako-ii (cool), so I bought the shirt.” Other students nodded in agreement, boys included.

“Do you like punk music?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Is it like pops (the Japanese always put an ’s’ at the end of that word)?”

“Kind of,” I sighed.

“Is he famous now?”

“Yes, but he’s dead, I’m afraid.”

“Ehhhh. Saikin (recently)?”

“No. Since 1979. Heroin, I think.”

“Well, he’s cute.”

“Yes. I guess he was (but not by the time he OD’d, I failed to add).”

I went to my own class, reflecting that Sid Vicious would be about 51 if he were still around.

New Bicycle

My bicycle was stolen last Tuesday from in front of JR Hirano Station. I had it for five years (almost exactly) and it was pretty beaten up, with a deformed basket, broken light and a bell which clicked more than rang. I was sick to death of the old thing, until I came back from an errand to find it gone. It was raining, of course.

I finally found the time today to go looking for a replacement to the old clunker. Bicycle shops are everywhere in Osaka, and prices start at about 9000 yen (currently about 90 bucks). Lance Armstrong probably doesn’t own one. I simply walked down to the nearest shop (well, not the nearest one – he’s a bit snotty, and charges 30 yen to put air in your tires), and checked the prices, then the kickstands (I hate the ones which are only on one side – they always tip over), then lights. Chose a black one with dark greenish blotches (trust me - it looks better than it sounds). The guy at the shop took it out, gave it some air, adjusted the seat, got me to register it, and then – after choosing a back lock and paying for everything, I cycled away. Time elapsed – possibly 10 minutes.

My Japanese friends are always appalled by my cavalier attitude toward bicycle shopping – aren’t you going to look around a bit, compare prices? Well, no. The features are pretty much standard within any price range, and the nicer the bike, the better chance someone will steal it. And since I’ve had my share of bikes stolen, I’m not going to buy anything too nice. I do regret having to buy it on the same day my three-month train pass comes up for renewal, but shouganai, as the locals say – it can’t be helped.

There is much talk about how the Japanese, who love heaters and air conditioners as much as anybody, and who not only drive cars, but produce millions of them, can keep their country’s carbon imprint so relatively low. One reason is that although many families own cars, a two-car family is a rarity (and many city-dwellers – I’m no oddity – don’t own and don’t need a car at all). Companies reimburse their employees the cost of their public transportation passes; Moms do the grocery shopping and errands on their mamachari. As do I. Even that short pedal to and from the subway station is more exercise than many people back home – who drive everywhere – get in the run of a day. And produces no exhaust (other than the feeling you get from pedaling up a hill).

So I can feel good that in my own way I’m contributing to to the saving of the environment. And that will distract me from the fact the only reason I bought the bike was that I’m too bloody lazy to walk to the station in the morning.

Rainy Season: Of course it’s early – it’s on time!

The Rainy Season is here in Osaka, and to the consternation of everybody, it arrived on time. Every year, the Japanese government announces the official beginning of the rains with much fanfare around now, and then, usually, nothing happens until June. “No Rainy Season this year?” I often ask during a particularly parched early June. “Oh no,” is the reply, “the Rainy Season began on May 21st at 5:30am,” or whatever the official date was. Usually, it officially ends sometime in early July, but in past years I’ve been drenched during many a summer festival (matsuri, 祭, which begin in mid-July and continue into August). “The Rainy Season is really hanging on this year,” I say. “Oh no,” comes the inevitable reply, “the Rainy Season ended on July 12th at 4:56pm. This is just rain.” For some people, I guess, a fictitious schedule is better than no schedule at all.

The skies opened up last night, Saturday. After reading till about 2 – I’m currently in a torrid love-hate relationship with the novel, Oh Play That Thing, by Roddy Doyle – I shut off the light and lay in bed listening to the rain bouncing off the balcony rail. Around 3, I went out and stood on the balcony – the rain was falling straight and heavy, the lights from Abiko glowed hazily in the distance, and the air was humid, but cool. The plants (herbs mostly) looked happy. Directly ahead, across the small street behind this building, is the neighbour’s expensively-manicured back garden, which – because it’s in my line of sight when I sit out and eat my breakfast – I think of as my own (although the rich old git would not be pleased to know it). His fuchsia azaleas and carefully deformed pine tree dripped in the glow of a porch light. The traffic light at the corner, where the bikers like to rev their engines, was quietly blinking yellow – no macho Japanese biker dude would risk getting his hair wet on a night like this. The light reflected off a fence, around a small cabbage patch, which features a poster of the bloated government backbencher who represents south Osaka in Parliament. The prime ministers in Japan have been coming and going with such admirable speed lately that the farmer, an obvious LDP supporter, has given up continually replacing their posters and has resorted to one of the local hack, who isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

After 20 minutes or so, I went back to bed, to sleep and dream peacefully, until the woman next door began driving nails into the wall at 7:30. Osaka, on a late, rainy night, is a peaceful, enchanting place. Osakans, though, are sometimes another matter.

Who Wears Short Shorts (in Osaka)?

… well, recently men do. Anyone who’s new to Japan would not notice it at all, but If you’ve lived here any time, you know that this is a fashion revolution of Napoleonic proportions – after all, it’s only May, and the temperature is only in the high 20s Celsius during the day. Japanese men wear shorts from July 1st to August 31st, after which they wear corduroys or other autumn trousers (even though it’s still 30 degrees in September here). That is all. I think it’s in the constitution somewhere. Perhaps the unusual heat wave last year, which saw some men wearing clam diggers into early October, screwed everyone up. Some TV star must have been seen wearing shorts in a fan magazine and started a boom – these things don’t just happen spontaneously

Next thing you know, people will start swimming in June, and all hell will break loose!

A 10 AM Geography Lesson

Golden Week is so named because some Japanese people happen to have four days off (only three consecutively) at the end of April/beginning of May. By chance, our company closes (grudgingly) for the full week. Many colleagues go to Okinawa; some go skiing; others stay in Kansai and enjoy one of the few weeks in the year when it’s hot but not humid. I was in the last category, more from inertia than any cool plans I might have had. No matter – for the first few days I was perfectly content puttering around the neighbourhood, making (ultimately failed) attempts at rearranging my apartment, and reading in the park. Come the weekend, genteel bacchanalia awaited. Life was good.

Around ten o’clock Friday I was on my second cup of coffee, second load of laundry (summer clothes), and the second hour of As It Happens (the CBC Radio evening show which, thanks to time zones, is a morning show here). The doorbell rang. Usually, unless I’m expecting a parcel, I don’t answer it (since I don’t want either a Japanese newspaper subscription or The Watchtower). This time, for some reason, I did. It was a young guy from Osaka Gas – my carbon monoxide/smoke detector had to be replaced, he said. Could he please come in and replace it?

Horror gripped me when I saw, in a flash, how a stranger would see my unkempt kitchen. The recycling was in a pile, waiting to be sorted. Dirty laundry was queued to go into the washer. My computer desk/table was its usual pile of books, papers, neckties, appliances and receipts. The previous night’s dishes were washed, but were still piled on the dish rack by the sink. There was a kettle on the floor. I pulled myself together: “Chotto motte, kudasai,” (one moment, please) and closed the door on him.

Clothes were thrown into the laundry nook and the door was slid closed, recycling was thrown haphazardly into bags, a dust mop was quickly passed over the floor, the door to the living room was closed, the shoes were rearranged in the genkan (玄関, the little entryway where you leave your shoes upon entering any Japanese home). This took about three minutes. Then I opened the door wide in a guilty “we have nothing to hide here!” gesture, and let him in.

It took him less than a minute to climb up on a chair, take out the old detector and snap in the new one (it occurs to me that Osaka Gas replaces these – free of charge – every five years: so that’s exactly how long I’ve been living in this flat). He then proceeded to fill out three pages of paperwork, in triplicate. He squatted down and wrote with his clipboard on his knee (there being, to my shame, no room on the table). A dust bunny hopped by, but he chose not to see it. While he wrote and checked boxes, he made conversation of a sort:

–Him: So where are you from?

– Me: Canada.

– Oh. So you’re American, then?

– Um, no. Canadian. It’s a different country. It’s above The United States.

– Oh, I see. does it have a capital city?

– Yes. Ottawa.

– Oh. I might have heard of that (as if we were talking about Mesopotamia).

He asked me what I did. I told him I was a teacher, and he made a great show of awe, as one must here ( although these days, that awe is sorely misplaced – I certainly don’t deserve it, and his geography teacher should be flipping burgers).

After giving my hanko to all the paper work, he left. I sighed, and locked the door. A minute later, the doorbell rang again – he had given me the wrong copies of the forms. He asked me to initial all the hanko marks (although I couldn’t use my signature, I could initial hanko mistakes – go figure). Then he left – presumably for another five years. I was always led to believe that getting a job at Osaka Gas was terribly difficult and required graduating from a good university. Guess I was wrong. He did at least put the smoke detector in properly…at least I think that’s what the little green light means.

“Arrogant Serpent”

“It symbolizes to the memory of people who boasting, high, arrogantly at times, and see it.. serpent that is bold and not suitable.. once “To twine, remain”.”

– Printed on the side of a bag, found in my closet while doing the spring cleaning. I have no idea what shop it’s from.

Yukio Mishima seen following the Dalai Lama in Osaka

Another big black van full of Japanese rightists was heard booming its way through Umeda at lunchtime today. The recorded voice was female (kinder, gentler fascism, as noted earlier this month), and the volume was such that I had no idea what she was saying (not that I can really follow their archaic jargon anyway). The only word I could decipher was “Chuugoku” (China, 中国). The Japanese right’s hatred of China is well-known, and today’s arrival of the Olympic torch is probably what’s got them rattling their cages. Business as usual.

But wait – what is that large photograph in the front windshield? I squint and stop in my tracks – it’s the Dalai Lama. Now, since the Japanese militarist right regards most other Asians as subhuman, fit only for subjugation (a theory last tested 70 years ago and still needing, in their opinion, more field work), I can’t understand their belated support for the Tibetans. I do know that the Lama is deeply respected by practicing Buddhists and the socially aware, and the right has also, somehow, cottoned on to this. They’re hiding behind the Tibetan struggle, the better to put the boot into the Chinese. Of course, they want a boycott; of course, they don’t give a damn about the Tibetans.

The truck rolled past. I smiled and waved politely, having learned that they hate foreigners doing that even more than being given the finger. They expect to be feared and respected (they certainly get the former, if not the latter, from the locals who don’t even look up). The truck was probably empty except for the dumpy, humourless, middle-aged driver (they all look the same, those guys), but with the windows all blacked out, it was difficult to tell.

On the back of the truck, to my continuing surprise, was an airbrushed portrait of the writer Yukio Mishima, shirtless, looking severe, and holding a katana. Like the portrait, Mishima has been airbrushed to suit the needs of the looney right. According to Donald Richie, who was acquainted with Mishima for nearly 20 years, the writer would have despised the unfit and ignorant thugs who now hold him up as a symbol of their cause. Besides, if you want to read some of his works abroad, you’ll often be directed to the gay literature section of the bookstore. Like most subjects pertaining to reality, it’s something the rightists (who are of course as homophobic as they are racist) are in denial about. In the unlikely event that I’m ever in conversation with one, the first topic I’ll bring up will be Confessions of a Mask. I’m sure he’ll never have heard of it.

Naturally, I didn’t have my camera, so no photos. Recently, though, late-April in Japan has become the watered-down, truck-driven equivalent of Marching Season, so I might have plenty more chances.

Starbucks has used up all the adjectives

Leaving only this for a little shop in Tengachaya.