Two Years Ago

Takahashi Wedding
Originally uploaded by Tokyorosa

The photo:

That's Aki and Hiroshi on their hyper-stylish wedding extravaganza at the Park Hotel in Tokyo. I can only imagine what it cost to pull that off for the 80 guests they invited. I seem to remember Aki mentioning a 300,000 yen figure. And that was the happy couple's cost. That little culture lesson of a day cost me about 50,000 yen, between the traditional wedding gift (30,000 yen in cash) and the special envelope for the gift and the transportation to the wedding and the fee to attend the after party. (But I figure with what they collected from their guests--and remember, 30,000 yen is a kind of minimal gift--they recouped most of it.) Anyway, Aki was kind of hamming it up in this photo while she and Hiroshi were waiting to make their grand entrance as husband and wife. That was some day.

Another Day

I don't know if I wrote about the last movie I went to a theater to see with Dave...hmmm. I don't remember and I'm too lazy to look. We went to see the new Coen brothers film No Country for Old Men. Judi, who saw the movie a week before we did, described it as grim. And it is grim. I enjoyed it in a detached kind of way.

Last night, we went to see The Golden Compass, which is getting a major pan job, but which I (having never read the book) enjoyed. The website is pretty cool. There's a feature where you can take a test and have a daemon chosen for you. Mine turned out to be a crow daemon named Cleon.

From that little children's fantasy, I moved straight into the world of Japanese (somewhat NSFW link ahead--and whatever you do, don't Google) "pink movies." Actually, it was only a very mildly pink movie called Vibrator in English. Donald Richie, who I despise, offers a decent review of the movie in The International Herald Tribune. I liked that this movie, though made by a man who used to make soft-core porn, showed some understanding of what women truly go through in this kind of relationship.

The rest of the time I've not been watching movies, but making Christmas ornaments. No, I don't celebrate Christmas. No, I'm not putting up a tree. I just felt crafty. I'll post photos of them tomorrow. Maybe.