August 1997

  • I made my now annual trip (driving slowly!) to nearby Stratford ON for the Stratford Festival:
    Richard III **
    Average, not great. There were a few good supporting performances-- the Duke of Buckingham was in especially fine voice-- but Richard was bland and neither charming nor menacing enough to make this a believable or memorable production.

    An interesting movie about the inner workings of an R-III production is Al Pacino's Looking for Richard (USA 1996).
    (31 Aug)

  • I came home from the movies to learn that Princess Diana had been tragically killed in a horrendous high-speed car accident in Paris FR. It's always a bit of a shock when someone around your age dies. She led a privileged and sometimes scandalous life, but is to be admired for having used her position to promote some worthy causes and help those in need.
    (30-31 Aug 97)

  • The 1997 Toronto International Film Festival is coming soon, and I hadn't seen a movie in a while, so I decided to prepare my eyes and seat with a couple of films:

    • Female Perversions (USA 1997 Dir: Susan Streitfeld; with Tilda Swinton and Amy Madigan) ****
      The theme is how women pervert their images to fit men's concepts of femininity. A smart, complex, well-made, entertaining film, centering on a young lawyer and her troubled sister.

    • The Pillow Book (GB 1995 Dir: Peter Greenaway; with Vivian Wu and Ewan MacGregor) ****
      The story of a Japanese fashion model with a liking for calligraphy on skin. A beautiful film, interestingly constructed. The divided screen is like a "frames" format website! (Partly in Japanese with English subtitles)
    (30 Aug 97)

  • Hello to those of you who have come here on the recommendation of the "Mind and Matter" article published today in the Globe and Mail newspaper! You must be very creative and perseverent, as there was a typographical error in the URL. Rui Umezawa, the author of the piece, found my website by chance while doing his job as a freelance writer-- he just happens be my friend, too! Rui's central idea is that Internet linking isn't used to its full potential on many webpages (including some written by people who should know better). I agree that hypertext links are certainly what makes the 'Net unique and useful, however another important quality of information on the 'Net is its availability (at least to those of us with computers), so link-free sites have their place. WRT my website, personally, I don't see what the fuss is--I don't claim to be a professional at this, and anything I do (or don't do) is based on what I've learned from the rest of you out there. Thanks for your undeserved attention!
    (30 Aug 97)

    Sam and Me

  • I was at the NAJC Bazaar/Bake Sale today, demonstrating the Toronto Chapter's new website. Socializing, tasty food, and live folk guitar and jazz music made for a pleasant enough afternoon, but I was treated to an unexpected thrill when Robert Ito dropped by! His new show John Woo's Once A Thief (synopsis | review) is filming in Toronto. In person, he is quite friendly and down-to-earth, and is unnecessarily humble about his impressive acting career ("It's just work, you know."). Of the many characters he has played, his role of "Sam" on the Quincy series stands as a landmark: it was the first realistic portrayal of a modern nikkei-jin on network television (and to this day is one of the few). More recently, he was "Mr. Kawashima" in the CBC's 1995 movie The War Between Us. That project was particularly close to his heart, since he was one of the Japanese Canadians interned in central BC during World War II. Between parts, he practices aikido. He gets the most fan mail for his guest appearance on the X-Files episode "Nisei" in which he didn't have a single word of dialogue!
    (24 Aug 97)

  • It's obon in Japan-- time to use the virtual ohaka
    (14 Aug 97)

  • According to the Globe and Mail newspaper, today is International Left Hander Day. I come by my left handedness honestly--I inherited it. Apparently my father was once left handed, but he was taught to use his right hand instead, as was the custom back then in Japan as well as most of the world. I suspect left handedness would be more of a hindrance in Japan than North America-- kanji (Chinese characters) have a strict stroke order and direction, and I can never get mine to look quite right.
    (13 Aug 97)

  • I spent an afternoon of "Beer and Loafing" at Toronto's 2nd Annual Festival of Beer, held again at Historic Fort York. Sunshine, music, food and about 100 different kinds of beer! The People's Choice Award for festival favorite went to Raspberry Wheat beer from Peterborough's Kawartha Lakes Brewing Co. I agree!

    In Japan, I've only seen one brand of Canadian beer, from one of our two big national breweries. This is unfortunate, because Canada's international beer image could be significantly improved by featuring any of the more interesting and better tasting products of the many microbreweries that have sprung up across the country over the past ten years. The brewing scene in Japan has also been changing lately, with a few microbreweries making ji-biiru and challenging the Big Four.
    (10 August 97)

  • Today I attended the wedding of one of my Japanese Canadian friends from Edmonton, who is now working in Toronto. His family came to Canada shortly after mine. Unlike us, their intention (according to him) was always to eventually return to Japan, so the importance of learning the Japanese language was stressed in their household. The wedding guests heard at the reception following the ceremony that as a child he took this to heart, to the point of fighting with his younger brother whenever he didn't speak Japanese! Radio listeners in Tokyo should thank my friend, for they otherwise might not have had their popular bilingual deejay Ken K. during the early 1990s! My friend's beautiful bride is an English-speaking second-generation Singaporean Canadian. I don't think he'll be as tough on her! The intermarriage rate of younger Japanese Canadians has been estimated at 95%--highest among the visible minorities.
    (09 August 97)

  • One of the haiku read at this year's Hiroshima Day Commemoration in front of City Hall:

    A-bomb anniversary
    the colors of the thousand paper cranes
    fade each year

    (--Murakami Mineko)

    Hopefully never completely.
    (06 August 97)

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