[* title loosly inspired by the Australia Tourism Campaign:
So, where the bloody hell are you? if you haven't seen this comercial/spot, you must check it out on the website above -- you'll want to go to AU asap.]
Apart from spending geeking out on my jp language addiction, here's a digest of other fun stuff happening over the last week:
EU Film FestLast Thursday I had the chance to go to one of the EU Film screenings that were taking place as part of the "Friendship Week" put on in Tokyo by the European Union. I went with two friends from school, Ben & Ina, from AU & Indonesia respectively, and it was quite a treat to see both their and the rest of the audiences reactions to the movie we had chosen: the Swedish
Ketchup Effect. Should you want to know what it is like to be a teenager in Scandinavia this is the film to watch.
Hidetaka Lee Fashion ShowFriday last week Yu-Ching (former AMZN.co.jp) had invited me to her new company's first fashion show, held at a club/bar in Aoyama. I took two of the girls from my class with me (Opal & Vera, who both study design) and we were not disappointed. This was my first real pro fashion ever, and I loved seeing the fancy make + hairdos up-close, of course along with the beautiful Hidetaka Lee clothes. As a special bonus, i actually won a Hidetaka Lee shirt in a prize drawing - so i am now the very proud owner of a Japanese couture item - how cool is that?
Design FestaSaturday it was time for a visit to the Tokyo Design Festa - this is a biannual event where young and upcoming artists can apply for permits to put their work on display. The Festa takes place in a tiny part of the Tokyo Big Sight Convention Center, and still it is *huge*, in other words the TBS itself turned out to bit quite impressive - I don't think I've ever been to a convention center the size of the LAX airport.... We spent about 7 hours at the venue and made it through a good 2/3s of the exhibit. It was a fun mix of all kinds of more or less obscure types of art and design work: everything from Manga, to Pseudo-Porn (-- such as the "School Girl Karma Sutra Illustration Series" displayed by one artist, this is JP after all, anything goes...) to cutesy stuffed animals in every shape and color, to hip hop music, jewelry, clothing, bags, engrish language t-shirts, art work, body painting, you name it...
Yoriko-SanMonday of this week, it was time for my first get-together with Yoriko-san, who has kindly volunteered to be my new Japanese Conversation partner. Conversation Partners are Japanese 'buddies' assigned to the language school students to provide language exchange outside of the class environment. Yoriko-san is a 30 old Tokyo woman, working in Chemicals B2B and speaking English with a lovely Oxford, but who most importantly patiently listens to my nascent Japanese. She has also promised to help me learn 'informal' Japanese, which i am very excited about. This almost merits a post on it's own, but essentially the Japanese taught in Schools is always the formal way of speaking, which to some extend is good, as it means you won't end up being too much of a rude foreigner, however it also means that you are constantly addressing you buddies in a "how do you do today, sir?" kind of way, until you start learning the informal verb conjugations.
Hidden GemsTuesday was spent in search of hidden gems, but to make a long story short: upon wanting to visit an Indian Style temple I ended up having sushi at the
Tsukiji Fishmarket (the sushi btw. was ridicously good, by far the best i have ever had) and stumbling upon the
House of Shiseido corporate museum, a very cool little exibition space, with some very groovy interactive display cases (look for the 2nd floor "archive table" on their website to see pictures). After Sapporo's cool Yebisu Beer Museum and this one, I am seriously considering only visiting free corporate museums in JP from now on... What was quite funny about the Shiseido Museum as well, was that their current Art Deco show features mainly photographs of and from the Metropolitan Hotel in Shanghai, which in turn happens to be right down the street from where i stayed while i was there. I passed it everyday when heading for the subway and little did I know that it is considered a monument of Art Deco architecture...
ダウインチ コードThe week's final event, worthy of honorable mention: The Da Vinci Code, watched on Wednesday, which is Ladies Day at the movie theaters in Tokyo, meaning half price. Nice introduction to extremely fast moving Japanese subtitles (luckily they do not dub movies), but hey, I managed to catch a "Nani" and an "Arigato" here and there :)
This week's number one learning goal is improving my conversation skills: I met yesterday with Yoriko-san for a conversation practice dinner & today in Ueno Park with part of the class crew for a follow up. Being a very mixed class has the benefit that for some of the students, such as the Koreans, it is now easier to try to converse in Japanese than in English and this means lots of opportunity to practice. It's quite amazing what you can manage to get across even with a limited vocabulary, for example I learned today that "in Korea most pigeons living in tourist spots are so fat (from too much/generous tourist feeding) that they can no longer fly and hence only stagger about". Who would have guessed a few months ago that I would be discussing this wonderful topic in Japanese soon?
