Archives For Japanese

I thought I could hate Sonam Kapoor and Fan Bingbing with a passion, but hey! Look at Mainland actor Huang Xiaoming or Japanese actor Masaki Okada, they never fail to make me want to punch them in the face. While Masaki Okada does have a sizable fandom of girls, I’ve yet to find someone (ANYONE!?) who likes Huang Xiaoming and his smug face. LOL

huang-xiaoming-vs-masaki-okada

Battle conceded to Okada, I guess. xD

One go, not much thinking and over-thinking. Yup, this looks about right.

amys-15-years-of-oscar

  • 2000 – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
  • 2001 – Moulin Rouge!
  • 2002 – Gangs of New York
  • 2003 – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (because I have to)
  • 2004 – Finding Neverland
  • 2005 – Munich
  • 2006 – Letters from Iwo Jima
  • 2007 – There Will Be Blood
  • 2008 – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
  • 2009 – District 9
  • 2010 – Toy Story 3 (because you HAVE TO)
  • 2011 – Midnight in Paris
  • 2012 – Life of Pi
  • 2013 – 12 Years a Slave
  • 2014 – Boyhood

I struggled a little with LotR and (maybe) Toy Story, but I’ll give it to them anyway~ I’m also a bit lukewarm about Finding Neverland and Midnight in Paris, and I totally warmed up to Life of Pi… though I don’t mind Argo. With Boyhood over Whiplash (despite me liking the other one better xD), it makes the list a lot more larger than life.

Oh, man~ my Japanese has gotten so bad. Or at least, my non-food related Japanese. I ran into these interviews Yu-chan did to promote the release of her last interview-PB Yu Diary book, which includes the nugget that she almost quit acting at age 23. But please, feel free to guide me through all these chunks of text.

The other interview includes info on the process of making the book… as well as these three photos of her.

— August 20th 2015 —

Ran into more shots of this shoot [1][2].

docomo-entame-yu-aoi-nov2014-001

Yasuhiro Yoshiura’s Time of Eve is one of my favorite animations of the decade so far, though I do prefer the series, I think. I don’t know how I missed the Kickstarter, though I’ve grown tired of them and it brings the Time of Eve release at the same price of the Japanese release. Sighs. Japanese products.

But look at this beauty~

time-of-eve-the-movie-store

The ones offered through Amazon, do not offer shipping to my location :( but The Time of Eve Shop does… at a kinda expensive price. Nearly $20 USD in shipping!

Yu-chan doesn’t get much social media play, but she showed up in (Twitter via) the Facebook page of the Isenoumi Sumo Stable (伊勢ノ海部屋) (WHY is it called a stable?). It takes me back to that Glee Japan commercial, ne?

isenoumi-stable-sumo-yu-aoi

o-hisashiburi desu, Yu-chan~

It’s really been a long time since the last time I saw you SAW-YOU, thuogh it’s only been a year since Wakamono-tachi. So much time that your hair is no longer short. LOL I still got plenty of movies to catch up with, but it’s good to see you as an Osen-san-meets-Omoto-meets-Mina type of character. I’m not sure how Dr. Rintaro is dealing with the topic of clinical depression, considering how Asians view mental illnesses… but I’m interested in seeing why your character acts the way she does- is it Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)? Or are you just blowing Dr. Hinorin off xD
Also- can’t complain when this thing happened:

dr-rintaro-ep01-yu-aoi-train1 dr-rintaro-ep01-yu-aoi-train2

Many more screencaps and some GIFs below the break~

Continue Reading…

Of course I need this in my life~

When I visited China — already nearly a decade ago — I got myself a seal with my name on. It’s made of jade, square, and it’s pretty big, to be honest. I’m also not fond of the font used, so I scanned the print to illustrate it and did a digital seal of my own that I use to sign photographs and whatnot. But ever since, I’ve wanted to get a new proper seal. I’ve only got my grandfather’s old seal.

Though most websites dealing with Japanese seals (hanko) look sketchy, I finally ran into Hankoya.com — I didn’t know they made titanium seals! Woah~ The website is, of course, so chunky and hard to browse if you can’t read Japanese. I doubt they’d do international shipping.

But~ my gosh~~~ they even do silver and gold seals! There’s also wood ones (like maple or sandalwood), but how sketchy is it with ivory and horns? Is it legal to even sell anything remotely done with ivory?

The amber resin and the Satsuma cornus kousa (薩摩本柘) look so good too~

Oh, Happy Chinese New Year! Let’s start my (supposedly) bad-luck Goat Year with the now-mandatory Letterboxd list of my film collection~

amys-film-collection-letterboxd

I have a really weird history with films– born in the late 80s, you’d think I would’ve grown watching loads of 90s kids stuff, but I actually grew up with a lot of Silly Symphonies (which were released in the 30s) and loads of Disney 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s stuff, plus a lot of more grown up 80s movies. Poltergeist, The Thing, The Fly and The Stuff were particularly scary stuff (and I’m pretty sure I was scared of yogurt or white stuff at some point).

I don’t ever remember buying any original VHS tape, except for the rare birthday gift of a Disney’s Sing-Along Songs chapter or that X-Men tape I have. My first DVDs buys were Coyote Ugly, She’s All That and Loser — you can’t blame me. I was a 15-year-old girl. The collection grew bigger, and possibly exploded during my years abroad. I’m nearing my 500th movie.

I’ve mentioned this before [1], Hula Girls was shot in Iwaki prefecture, so when the tsunami and eventual nuclear meltdown affected the zone, the Hula Girls team as well as the dancers lent their support and/or donated money. Now, Yu-chan is lending her time (maybe there’s money too, though I’d like to think this is from the bottom of her heart) to jump-start visits to Iwaki with the campaign Tadaima Iwaki (ただいま! いわき).

It doesn’t matter, I’d watch 1hr. of Yu eating savory things and visiting places if they’d made a movie about it. LOL As naturally charming as ever~ I’ll watch this 30-sec clip instead.

yu-aoi-tadaima-iwaki

I said it before and say it again~ the best thing to come out of Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken was to see Miyavi being fabulous on carpet events in the US where so many oblivious in the west got to see him. [My favorite is Lainey who’s gushed over Miyavi twice] And now to see him on Ellen playing his guitar- that’s really more than I could hope for.

And I love that he did a bit of What’s my Name on top of Let Go.