Imagine that! (Fo!F)

Japanese people have no imagination!

Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. A little one. lol.

Japanese society focuses on the whole. The group is more important than the individual. Quite the opposite of Western society.

This might seem like a little difference, but the group mentality is the root of a slew of differences between Japan and the West. One of the big ones for me: the inability/decision not to use imagination.

I found this out the hard way when I first came to Japan. I was playing a game with the elementary school 6th graders, and I let them choose team names. 10 minutes before class ended we were finally able to start the game.

Because they don't use their imagination, they expect the obvious to be spelled out. When they tell jokes, they often explain the punch line after they say it!

For me, one of the interesting forms this difference in thinkingg takes is in the naming of movies. It's never anything close to the English title. For example "Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac" becomes "Somebody Kissed Me"



"It's complicated" turns into the "Love-making Bakery"


"The Proposal" turns into " You will become my groom"



And "Up" becomes "Grandpa Carl's Flying House in the Sky"



Well, well. Imagine That!

And here's the 4th instalment of Iwate Swan.



And in case you wonder, yes I can do that dance :D

Getting RAWW! (Waw)

Today, I'm going to be black.

Having grown up on an island where 95% of people are black, I have always been just me. I wasn't defined as a black female (women are also in the majority), but by other factors. So it's not often that I come on strong in race, minority, discrimination discussions.

Did you notice the brand new sticker on the right of my page? RAWW- Readers against Whitewashing. What's whitewashing? It's where a person of a different ethnicity is portrayed as white. It happened a few times with novel covers, where the cover portrayed a white person, even though the character had been described as dark or black. The two covers at the top of this post were both for the book Liar. The one of the right was only removed after protests by the author and the public.

Now the phenomenon is becoming more prevalent in the movies. Remember Goku in Dragonball Evolution? Or long before that, Tom Cruise, the Last (white) Samurai!




I watched Tropic Thunder over the weekend, and they jokingly had Robert Dinero play a black man. It was funny. It was supposed to be. It was a spoof. But what I didn't think about is that spoofs are always based on something. While it's not often that a black character is played by a white person outside of comedy (I can only think of Worf from Star Trek) this happens to East Asians, Southeast Asians and Native Americans all the time.

The latest culprit: Avatar. Coming to the big screen as The Last Airbender, Chinese/Taiwanese/Tibetan/Bhuddist Aang and Inuit/Eskimo/Native American Katara and Sokka have been whitewashed. (Sokka is played by Twilight's Jasper- Jackson Rathborne.) In a random twist, Japanese Zuko is played by Dev Patel (from Slumdog Millionaire) of East Indian descent. "Hmmm, let's at least throw a minority in there, it should make everybody happy!" Or not!



What's really going on here? Non-whites are good enough for the pages of books, but not for the covers?? They're good enough for animated series, but not live action features??

Is that really what the Entertainment industry is saying? Black people should stick to rap and R and B, East Asians should stick to animation and restaurants, and East Indians should go to Bollywood or drive cabs?? (Forgive me Native Americans, I haven't forgotten you. I just can't think of a nice stereotypical thing the media moguls might want you to do.)

Whether or not that's what they mean to say, that's the message that's coming across. And what can we do about it? It's not so easy to just boycott. Is it the actor's or author's fault when the bigwigs pull these stunts? But they will suffer alongside them from a boycott.

I'm really at a loss as how to proceed, but I can only hope the recent outcries will make the industry pro's sit up and take notice. And next time the geishas, shamans, medicine men won't be the wrong colour.

Western Media

Most days, I like Japan just fine, but I miss certain Western amenities. Like central heating, for example. You'd think a prefecture which has subzero temperatures for more than half the year would have more in the way of preventing hypothermia. Instead, we heat our PAPER and WOOD houses with kerosene "stoves". It's like going on a camping trip from November to May!

But on rare occasions, Japan gets it right. Or at the very least Japan does not get it wrong.

One of these occasions is the media frenzy. I hate when a celebrity does something, inconsequential or not, and it needs to take up 36 hours of consecutive news coverage on all the news channels, and be featured on every local news show for the next 3 weeks.

Seriously??? X celebrity did Y. PERIOD. That's all I need to know. Move on folks!

But I guess I'm in the minority. The media runs on advertising. So somebody is clearly watching it, or they wouldn't be broadcasting.

This is it

I went to a conference in Morioka (the capital of my prefecture) on Monday and Tuesday. Since it was work, the Board of Education paid for my train tickets. I decided since I was already in Morioka (and I actually wasn't broke like I usually am) that I would stay the Tuesday night and watch a movie.

Since I am a movie-a-holic, a movie turned into two. I decided to see "A Christmas Carol" since we might put on a puppet show about it for the kids in town. When that was over, I went to see the Michael Jackson movie.

First off, to call it a movie is really misleading.It suggests some element of fiction, and "This is it" is anything but fiction. It was like watching a concert on tape, and yet it wasn't.

He didn't sing out, like he could have, because he was conserving his voice. And unlike the polished feel of a concert, with this documentary you could see the imperfections. It was interesting to see who an artist is behind the scenes. At the end of the film, he talked to his crew about saving the planet.

It suddenly occurred to me how many "message" songs MJ has sung over the years: Man in the Mirror, Heal the World, Earth Song, Black or White, etc. But sometimes when you package something too nicely, people get all caught up with the package and don't notice the content.

I also noticed that MJ was passionate about some good causes. But somehow being too passionate about something, even a good thing, makes you a weirdo...

It kinda made me wonder what would happen if Jesus were to come down to Earth right this minute and uphold the causes he's always stood for, how he would he be received?

As I walked back to the hotel with thoughts about the public views of people and standing up for what you stand for, I realised that I had some choices to make. I had to pick my path, and follow it; make it clear to the world where I stand. People disagree about what happens after we're gone, but one thing's for certain, we don't have forever in this life. We have to live it right, because we only get one chance. This is it!