しあわせ

This post is prompted by an article on Doug’s blog Japan: Life and Religion. It made me think again of the issue of pitch accent in Japanese; a recurring topic on BBSes and Blogs but rarely covered in textbooks or classrooms. Rather than highjack his comments (as I tend to write lo~ng comments) I ‘ll post my thoughts here.
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As part of the Terracotta Film Festival at the Prince Charles cinema over the bank holiday weekend, there are three Japanese films being screened.

After School Saturday 23 May 16:15
High Kick Girl Sunday 24 May 18:40
Ghost in the Shell 2.0 Friday 22 May 20:45

Details at the festival site. There are also films from Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Malaysia if you are a fan of Asian cinema.

Thanks to Paul at London Japanese Language Meetup for the heads-up!

I first saw The Queen’s Classroom in Japan about a year ago. It has got to have the most evil bully of a teacher even in TV. Set in the sixth grade class in an elementary school, Akutsu-sensei has a heart of ice and rules with a mental rod of iron, introducing her charges to all the injustice they will encounter in the wider world.
Today I came across it on a Drama site with links out to Google Video. I’m enjoying it in an oh-my-God sort of way. In fact the lead is so~o evil they have to show her transforming back into an actress in the closing credits.

BBC Four has a season of Japan related programs at the moment called Hidden Japan. Also on their web site there is an amusing series of Japanese word of the day to watch. If you miss any you can catchup using iPlayer. Unfortunately online versions via the BBC are most likely restricted to the UK (or those with the knowhow to have their IP appear in the UK) so I’ve changed the embedded video to a YouTube video that should work for everyone.

For several months I’ve been following Okinawa Soba’s fascinating photostream at Flickr. He has an enormous collection of Meiji period photographs mainly by a photographer called T. Enami which he is generously sharing via his flickr account. His comments make for interesting reading as well. He is what might be called cantankerous and I’m sure would be an interesting companion over a drink or two in a izakaya.

(original photo from Okinawa Soba used under creative commons licence)