Cafe Lumiere

2003 marked the centenary of the great Yasujiro Ozu's birth, and as such, films in tribute were made. One such film was Taiwanese director Hsiao-Hsien Hou's "Cafe Lumiere". With Ozu so associated with deep Japanese family drama, it may seem difficult to believe that a non-native can take on a film in tribute to him. But with subtle styling and nuances, Hou shows clear touches of Ozu's influence, while still maintaining enough individuality to steer it away from becoming an Ozu paint-by-numbers work of nothingness.

Yoko - played by Taiwanese-Japanese musician Yo Hitoto - is some sort of reporter-type who switches her time between Tokyo and Taiwan. Researching Taiwanese composer Wen-Ye Jiang (for some reason), she seeks out a cafe/bar the composer frequented when based in Tokyo. And that's about that: a film low on plot and slow in pace, it's in the nuances along the way that make this a tribute to the Japanese master.

Family and its changing nature is a theme hinted at throughout, with Yoko pregnant by her boyfriend in Taiwan. However, she has a somewhat blasé attitude towards the pregnancy, and indeed her boyfriend, unconcerned as to whether she sees him again, let alone allowing him to father his child, reflecting a modern decline in the nuclear family, and particular Japanese attitudes to sex and declining birth rate.

Her father seems unimpressed with her attitude, while her step-mother tries to do what she can to please her. Living in the countryside, their visiting her in her small Tokyo apartment is reminiscent of Ozu's "Tokyo Story", with the elders feeling out of place in the modern metropolis; her father maintaining a silence. Her lack of hospitality, with little to offer her parents - having to borrow food and sake from her older neighbours - shows a further distance from the family unit of today's youth, solely concerned by her own endeavours.

This mirrors Ozu's take on the empowerment of women, as seen in the likes of "Late Autumn", with young females shunning the traditional expectations placed upon them. Obviously four decades along the line, Yoko is quite content to tackle the pregnancy alone and go about her daily life as she pleases, continuing her research of Jiang - though still in early days, it would be interesting to see how this would continue, finding herself alone on a train station platform, feeling sick.

Trains are an important theme in "Cafe Lumiere", Hou choosing to use extensive shots of Tokyo's various forms of railed transportation. This again is reminiscent of some of Ozu's later works, with Tokyo's morphing into a modern day megalopolis - a confusing and sprawling mass of rail networks - a modern equivalent of Ozu's shots of neon lights growing on the landscape.

Sexpot Tadanobu Asano plays Hajime, Yoko's book shop worker friend and Tokyo rail network obsessive: recording the various sounds of Tokyo's trains and creating digital artwork based on trains. The sounds he records, such as the infamous Yamanote Line station announcements are part of modern day Tokyo life. As an outsider, it's clear that the transport network was a distinctive point of Tokyo for Hou.

The extensive use of shots of changes slowly moving across bridges and weaving between bridges while a disgustingly beautiful shot the modern world summarise the film's slow pace. Low on story, you can't help but feel that the film's running time could be drastically cut. Hou captures life as it happens: trains trundle along; Yoko walks around Tokyo's various districts, taking breaks to sit in cafes and chat in bookshops. This is a documentation, the cast less acting, but filmed as they go about the tasks they are asked to perform. Watched in sections, "Cafe Lumiere" can work, but altogether, it can perhaps be a little repetitive and needing a bit of a kick-start.

This is not masterful work, but a well-considered homage and "Cafe Lumiere" can stand alone as a good piece of cinema, though perhaps knowing it is an Ozu tribute adds a little more to it in the audience's mind. Though perhaps this restaurant main could have been condensed to a cafe light lunch.

Photos of People Fishing in Japan

As you may know, Japan is a collection of islands; a bit like the Channel Islands, minus Bergerac. 

As a result, Japan has large collections of water surrounding it. And in water one will find fish (unless it's cod in the North Sea you're looking for).

Here be a collection of photos from Japan's islands of people employing various tactics to lure sea creatures to their collecting implements.


Kamo River, Kyoto. September 2008.

Casual midday types. 

Ichigaya Fish Center, Tokyo. March 2011.

Hardcore urban fishing.

Manzamo, Okinawa. April 2012.

What's he up to? He's fishing. 

Nagasaki. April, 2012.

Lonesome fish. 

Kawaguichiko. May, 2012.

Get in-volved fishing.

Silhouette fishing.

Nikko. May, 2012.

White water fishing.

Niigata. June,2012.

Rock and chips.

Kabira Bay, Ishigaki. May, 2015.

Fishing hat.

Fishing box.

Sukuji Beach, Ishigaki. May, 2015.

Fishing carrier bag.

West Pier, Taketomijima. May, 2015.

Always end with a penguin in a shop window (Akihabara, Tokyo. September 2008).

19 Photos of Japan that I done took...

What follows here be some photos that I have clicked using my fingers of that there Japanese land.

Favourites, some might say...if I could genuinely be arsed to look through each and every one that I have done took... 

Tsutenkaku, Osaka. 15/09/2008.
Battery power failing, I resorted to below standard camera phone usage for this rather cinematic effect.

Konbini, Yotsuya, Tokyo. 12/03/2011.
After the quake...I can't remember the exact one.

Yoyogi Park, Tokyo. 08/04/2012.
Hanami...with dogs.

Nagoyajo, Nagoya. 11/04/2012.
Cherry blossoms mit rain. It's like something from 'Hana-bi' or such. How romantic?!

Fushimi Inari-Taisha, Kyoto. 13/04/2012.
A photo I very much got right.

Gion, Kyoto. 14/04/2012.
Raise the red lantern...and have a beer.

A Bomb Dome, Hiroshima. 16/04/2012.

Kawaguchi-ko. 07/05/2012.
Fuji-san at dawn.

Hataagebenzaitensha, Kamakura. 12/05/2012.
Raise your flag.

Yokohama International Port Terminal, Yokohama. 12/05/2012.
Anglely...and moody...like a desk lamp...

Ajinomoto Stadium, Tokyo. 13/05/2012.
Tokyo Verdy 0 - 1 Fagiano Okayama. Boo...

Noshappu Cape, Wakkanai. 30/05/2012.
Vintage. Very, very vintage.

Cape Soya, Wakkanai. 31/05/2012.
She left.

Daisetsuzan, Asahikawa. 02/06/2012.
Obligatory holiday tour group photo.

Parent-Child Tree, Biei. 03/06/2012.
Self-explanatory.

Kabira Bay, Ishigaki. 18/05/2015.
One of many photos I have of random Japanese men fishing...it's my thing...I sleep with the fishes...

Taketomijima. 19/05/2015.
Riding a bike is quicker than walking.

Izakaya, Osaka. 21/05/2015.
Izakaya-style...Tinned sardines, please.

Daimon Gate, Koyasan. 22/05/2015.
Big, in'it?!

Tokyo Sonata

It was September 2008 that I first went to Japan, mainly Tokyo; eight years ago to this month. This is around the same sort of time that Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 'Tokyo Sonata' was released. Eight years on, my love-affair with Japanese culture, particularly its cinema, still holds strong, but can the same still be said for the film which I first saw in January 2009.

For me, a real test of any piece of art is: in ten years time will you still be watching/listening/reading/however you choose to consume it? While not quite a decade, I have recently re-watched 'Tokyo Sonata', a film I have now watched a number of times. While it is quite simple in its premise, and possibly in its conclusions also, it is a film that I always find more to appreciate with each viewing.

Around the time of the global 'credit crunch', salaryman Sasaki finds his department being outsourced to China as part of a cost-saving measure. Unable to find any other skill he can offer the company, he is left middle-aged and unemployed, but too proud to reveal his new status to his wife and family. He, therefore, spends his days queuing for free meals, at job agencies and finding ways to pass the time in his suit with briefcase to complete the facade of 9-5 mundanity to his wife.

But he is not the only member of the family keeping secrets: Wife Megumi takes secret driving lessons to attain her license; eldest son Takashi wants to join the US foreign volunteer army; and youngest son Kenji uses his lunch money to fund after school piano lessons. While portraying a perfectly ordinary family unit, the four lack basic communication and any real knowledge of each other's lives.

For a film with Tokyo in the title, this isn't perhaps specific to Japan's capital itself in terms of the modern problems faced. Referencing the global financial crisis of the last decade and war in the Middle East were problems for every country, and so nothing unique to Japan. What does make it Tokyoite though is its use of shots of some of the less obvious parts of Tokyo, focusing on the more mundane and ordinary parts of the metropolis, a far cry from the typical shots foreign-made films will use to portray Tokyo.

Filming much of the piece in more gloomy twilight also adds to this sense of the ordinary, but also the changing of state in the lives of the main characters, as they take a turn for the worse, reminiscent of Kore-eda Hirokazu's 'Maborosi'. While in parts clunky in how they get there, the father, mother and youngest son all find themselves hitting low points: waking in a gutter, an abandoned beach hut and prison cell respectively, as the most ordinary of families finds itself quickly dysfunctional from their own lack of communication.

Kurosawa is perhaps known more for horror, suspense and mystery than Ozu-esque family structures, but here combining the use of twilight with the film's soundtrack create a haunting image of Tokyo, different from most, showing the city in a different light.

While nothing distinctively groundbreaking in terms of moral message, warning of the dangers of modern isolation and its affect of traditional family structures, it is still a message that holds relevant today, despite its distinctively Naughties setting.

While not perfect, there are some brilliant scenes, notably the revelation of Kenji's piano lessons resulting in a trip to A+E and the film's conclusion where, for once, the family listen to each other. While fairly run-of-the-mill in conclusion, the blank-faced audience left watching them is less so, in anticipation of what is to come.

Tokyo Fist vs. Kids Return

It's Tokyo, the mid-Nineties and you fancy punching the shit out of someone. That's how total cult directors Tsukamoto Shinya and Kitano Takeshi felt, at least. Coming a year apart - much like your mother's sex life - both made Tokyo-based films centred around boxing: 'Tokyo Fist' (1995) and 'Kids Return' (1996), both bringing their own unique flair to the art form.   

To start, the films are very similar: 'Tokyo Fist' starts with salaryman Tsuda bumping into an old school friend, Kojima, a part-time boxer. Likewise, 'Kids Return' begins with former best friends from school, Masaru and Shinji, happily bumping into each other on a Tokyo street, both recognising that their lives have taken a downward spiral since they last saw each other. However, due to the nature of both directors, the similarity largely ends there.

'Tokyo Fist' is very much along the lines of Tsukamoto's most famous work: 'Tetsuo: Ironman'. Focusing on ideas of revenge and aggression, Tsuda soon becomes paranoid that his old classmate might be knocking up his missus, Hizuru. His paranoia gradually drives Hizuru away, as their quiet life becomes loud, aggressive and full of blood-splattering scenes, with her ending up in the arms, and bed, of Kojima, played by Tsukamoto's brother, Koji. The anger and rage building inside him, exemplified by the ever-present loud music, Tsuda joins Koji's boxing gym, determined to beat him in the ring, much like Koji is doing to Hizuru.

The film then becomes a loud, brash experience, with fast camera movements, editing and thrashing music, leaving the viewer out of breath just watching it. And, as ever, a confusion is created as to what exactly is going on, throwing in extreme moments to push things just that little further.

Rage, obsession, and fetish are themes running throughout Tsukamoto's works, and 'Tokyo Fist' is no exception, working as a more polished version of 'Tetsuo: Ironman'. The special effects are still a little budget, but creative in the excessive blood pouring and Hizuru's new fetish for piercing any part of her body possible. Punch, punch, punch is the style for the boxing scenes, with Tsukamoto creating a work to seep into your mind and punch your brain into dazed confusion.

But where Tsukamoto chooses to show graphic violence and gore, this is the very thing that Kitano often avoids. Since starting with 'Violent Cop', the violence is Kitano's films is more in the mind than on screen. The use of still cameras and editing means that actual acts of violence fall out of shot or are skipped for comic timing. The majority of punches thrown in 'Kids Return' are at punching bags or in sparring practise.

'Kids Return' is seen as Kitano's most autobiographical work, set in the part of Tokyo where he grew up and featuring events and job roles that he himself experienced while growing up. The two friends, Masaru and Shinji drift through school, seen as the ultimate prodigal sons by their teachers. Neither has much direction; simply wreaking havoc on the lives of their classmates. Meeting his match, Masaru decides to take up boxing, but soon realises he hasn't the discipline for the sport. His perennial sidekick, Shinji, however, does, and his talent is quickly spotted by the gym's coaches. Masaru then drifts away, becoming a low level yakuza.

For Shinji, boxing is a sense of direction after days drifting, rather than an act of aggression. 'Kids Return' is all about direction when entering adulthood, mirroring roles taken by Kitano himself. Meek Hiroshi tries his hand at selling scales and driving a taxi on finishing school - two jobs Kitano had - but soon finds that neither provide him with what he wants out of life. Two students forming a school double act perform stand-up comedy to their classmates with a manzai act similar to that brought Kitano his initial fame.

If anything, 'Kids Return' is quite a depressing film. On leaving school, hopes and ambitions are quickly lost for all characters, with all left feeling lost and abandoned by their seniors. Hiroshi is repeatedly criticised by the bosses of his various jobs; Masaru is expelled from his yakuza family for speaking out of turn; and Shinji's coaches give up on him once he is led astray by an older boxer who takes him drinking.

The boxing in 'Kids Return' is exactly that: there is more emphasis on the sport, with more realistic bouts and styles. 'Tokyo Fist' goes down the Stallone-form of boxing with non-stop punch fests that would lead to permanent brain damage in seconds, but with blood spurting out of eye sockets, this is the only way Tsukamoto of the Nineties would work.

Both made in the mid-Nineties, set in Tokyo and with boxing as a key element, the films are very different. Tsukamoto favours high-octane fight scenes and special effects to create a visually spectacular gore fest, while Kitano chooses a more mellow-paced drama. At a time when two former boxing film legends return for the undoubtedly terrible 'Grudge Match', 'Tokyo Fist' and 'Kids Return' are both blasts from the past that fall under the same weight class, but see a clash of styles. 

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

In the UK, if you’re a half decent chef the pattern to follow is: get a bit good at cooking, open your own restaurant, get your own TV show, open your own range of Sainsbury’s couscous, get caught shop lifting. It’s all become a bit boring and predictable now, with famous chefs becoming bigger television personalities and businessmen rather than ding what their supposed skill is: making bloody good beans on toast.

This is not the case with Ono Jiro, a sushi chef working out of a small bar in Ginza, Tokyo. As with many restaurants in Tokyo, that sit in the basements of building complexes or Metro stations, Jiro’s restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro, looks small and underwhelming from the outside. But with three Michelin stars to its name and worldwide fame among the world’s top chefs, this is an exclusive restaurant where only the most fat and/or annoying can dine.

David Gelb’s documentary is one without narrative or particular linear structure. The focus is more on interviews with the man himself and his wider team about their relationship and the fine details that go into the set up. After 75 years in the sushi game, the mentality comes across as keep it simple and stay on top of each and every fine detail. So far, only one other restaurant has been opened: by his younger son in another Tokyo district.

Staying in control is Jiro’s main aim, wanting to still be able to determine what happens in his restaurant each day, rather than relying on others to take charge. Indeed, the most interesting part of the documentary is his relationship with his elder son, Yoshikazu, who by tradition will take over the restaurant when his father is no longer able.

With his father 85 at the time of the filming, Yoshikazu is starting to take greater responsibility for the restaurant under the watchful eye of his father; an eye that makes both chefs and diners nervous.

With his age and masterful nature, Jiro is able to spout various words of wisdom, showing a man that, as Craig Charles will slightly offensively put, is a a ‘happy, slappy, Jappy chappy.’ Complete with various money-shots of freshly prepared sushi throughout, the film, much like the eating experience at Sukiyabashi Jiro is made out to be, is a short but enlightening one. 

End of Days: Tokyo

So, I’d reached the home straight of my journey with a final week in Tokyo to put an end to my three months of laziness. Having covered large chunks of Japan by this stage, I was perhaps ready to return to London, looking forward to seeing some old faces again after several weeks on the road alone.

But being that this was to be the umpteenth time that I have visited Tokyo I didn’t feel like I was going there as a tourist at all, but a traveller returning. All the major tourist spots in Tokyo done, my last week was more one of hunting round record shops, seeking out any good graffiti and sitting in pubs watching football. It, therefore, served as a good spot to ease me back into London living before the twelve-hour flight.

Shibuya

My first night was that of England-France in Euro 2012, and so I had the fun task of leaving the hotel at 01:00 to find a pub showing it. I found one, no trouble, though it also advertised itself as closing at 25:00 (the Japanese for 01:00). So, it was both showing the game at 01:00 and closing at 01:00 – do I have to watch through the window? Ordering a pint of Kirin in Japanese during ‘God Save the Queen’ confirmed that I didn’t have to watch through the window, as well as my patriotism. I got chatting to an American, who surprisingly had some useful comments to make about the Premier League, and a Scot from Hertfordshire living in Australia. I remember little about the game and left the pub at 3AM to be offered numerous massages by the night ladies of Ueno. I ventured back for Portugal-Denmark – where I was the only person still watching by 02:30 – and France-Ukraine – which was fun as the match was postponed an hour.

Shibuya

The days were filled by trawling through the ¥250 and ¥500 shelves in Book-Off and Dick Union, where you can find a surprisingly large amount of cheap, rare hip hop wedged in between old Gina G and 2Unlimited CDs. I came away with seventeen newly bought albums, all ranging from around £2-£6 in price and adding to the dilemma of how I was going to pack everything. It was amazing as to the things you could find if were prepared to look that little bit harder: US hip hop rarities nestled between 1990s UK boy bands and Ugly Kid Joe in endless shelves of forgotten CDs that have all made their way to Tokyo. It was a reminder of just how much shit music gets made, with the works of bands long-forgotten sat there to probably never get bought – unless that bloke I met in Sapporo ever pops in – but also a moment of nostalgia when seeing something you recognise and thought was ‘you know, okay’ when 12: Dodgy, ‘Good Enough’? BOOM! ‘Good enough’ being both a title and review. Where are they all now?

Saitama 2002 Stadium

Nissan Stadium, Yokohama

In my quest to visit all ten of Japan’s World Cup stadia, I made journeys to Saitama, to Urawa Reds’ home stadium: Saitama 2002 Stadium, which is an easy enough journey from Ueno, provided you get off at the right train station; and back to Yokohama to the Nissan Stadium: home of the F. Marinos and the 2002 World Cup final. This left me with a total of eight out of ten stadiums visited – not bad for a pointless task. I also visited the National Stadium in central Tokyo for my fourth Verdy game of the season: a triumphant 4-1 win over FC Gifu. Boom! Top of the league! Take that JEF Chiba Utd!

Verdy 4 - 1 FC Gifu

I also made a quick stop in Kawasaki on the way back from Yokohama, as I’d never actually stopped in Japan’s ninth largest city. Type Kawasaki into Google and you’ll get a lot of information about racing bikes, which is probably fair, as Kawasaki is one city in Japan that you can call a dump. It’s almost as if Tokyo said let’s take all the things we need, but might make the place look less attractive and dump them west of the Tama River and call it Kawasaki. Housing was pretty low-rent and there was lots of heavy industry going on. I didn’t see much of it, so probably being harsh, and if you take the time to walk in between the various factories in the bay area, it can probably get quite interesting at least, but don’t plan any picnics.

Kawasaki

My last week, though was less of a travelling experience, and more a living one. I’ve got quite used to Tokyo and can find my way around pretty easily, knowing where I need to go, and so after weeks of seeing new and different things everyday, I spent my last week back in familiar surroundings, getting myself back on European time by watching the Euros in preparation for my new life in Balham…

Oh God, let me go back!

Three months in drum and/or bass...