しあわせ

暗殺　dir: 篠田正浩　1964

Another title in Eureka’s Masters of Cinema. This is by Masahiro Shinoda who was unfortunately eclipsed by his contempories Kurosawa, Ozu and Naruse outside Japan.

This is a jidaigeki, period drama, in the style of the Japanese New Wave. It’s set in Edo in the unrest after the Black Ships forced open the country. It was a time of impending civil war at the end of the hundreds of years of appartent peace of the Shogunate. It’s a fairly complex plot in some ways with a lot of political intrigue. So it’s definitely not an average Samurai movie.

What really attracted me was it’s look. Widescreen black and white, shallow focus, great composition, panning to cover dialog, freeze frames (I find this like the poses struck in Kabuki) handheld camerawork. For a film made in 1964 it still looks surprisingly fresh, maybe because it’s techniques have been mined by others.

Worth a rental.

日本語能力試験　直前対策　文法 ３級 (国書刊行会）

This is a companion volume to JLPT3 Kanji and Vocabulary Cram Session.

Again there are 15 mock tests interspersed with short sections of grammar. Again it is all in Japanese so the grammar explanations require a bit of work. There are also explanations for all the answers. However, as they are all in Japanese, they might not be simple to understand; although the extra practice might be useful.

The book is from before the changes made to the test 2 years ago. However the nature of the grammar questions haven’t changed. The only difference I can see is that section IV has an extra question. What the book doesn’t have is any questions for the 読解 reading comprehension part of the third paper.

As usual try to do these tests against the clock. Suggested times are: Section I ー13分; Section II ー14分; Section III ー8分; Section IV ー5分 . 40分 in total, leaving 30分 for the last two reading comprehension sections.

NoteBook 2.1 from Circus Ponies Software

I use my MacBook a lot to learn Japanese. I’ve got so many clippings from websites, stray urls, little notes I’ve written scattered all over my harddrive. I’ve also got loads of barely organised pieces of paper with notes. The solution? NoteBook!

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Skim 0.7

I came across this useful little program for the Mac today. It’s a pdf reader that allows you to add notes and marks to a pdf file.

I carry my laptop much more often than I carry my class notes. So what I do is scan in the handouts I get in class and annotate them so I have a ready reference without carrying large amounts of paper around. (It might be possible to OCR the handouts but I’ve never needed this step.) It’s also possible to make them searchable if you annotate them properly.

The drawbacks (or maybe it’s just a feature) are that the notes and marks are not part of the pdf so other readers won’t be able to display them. So if you want to share a marked up document the other person will need to use Skim as well. I’ve found that notes added in another program won’t open and as yet I’ve had no success with the line/arrow tool.

What I particulary like about this program is it’s layout of panes and the ability to set what font and size you want the notes in. I always found the fixed size in other programs too small to read kanji notes. Best of all it’s free

New Japanese Cinema at BAFTA.

On the 14th, 15th and 16th of September the Japanese Embassy is showing free Japanese films at BAFTA on Picadilly.

The films are
Memories of Tomorrow Tsutsumi Yukihiko 122 mins
Ten Nights of Dreams ten directors! 110 mins
Hula Girls Lee Sang-il 110 mins
(Screening followed by a Q&A session with director Lee Sang-il.)
Nitaboh Nishizawa Akio 90 mins
The Blossoming of Etsuko Kamiya Kuroki Kazuo 111 mins

There will also be foyer events such as origami and sumi-e demonstrations and workshops.

The catch is you are only allowed to go to a single film for free. You are allowed to bring a guest however. I suppose it is a possibility for two people to get together and escort each other so you can see 2 films. It’s equitable I suppose but last year the screening I went to was only half full. Bafta is has a nice cinema and an event like this is one of the few ways to go to it.

Anyhow, application is by email and first come first served. Details are at the Japanese Embassy site. (If the web site was more technically adept it could have been done more easily as a form on their site.) I’ve got my request in so it’s ok for everyone else to start writing.

If you want to see all the movies you can purchase a pass from BAFTA. individual films are £10 and a festival pass is £50 which is the same really unless you go to Memories of Tomorrow twice. If you’re a member of BAFTA the festival is free (but membership is restricted and expensive).

Another interesting set of handwritten 2byte fonts with what seems to be a full set of kanji.
Its available in 8 various weights and styles. The site, Sana’s Original Font Box however is written in Japanese.