The annual retreat back into wilderness and the embrace of everything natural continues this year with a 5 day travel itinerary to Takasaki in the Gunma Perfecture, hometown of my very good friend Takeshi. Here ample thanks and gratitude must be appropriated to my hosts Takeshi+Kojima whom without them this trip would never have been possible. We travelled far and wide for hours to distant mountains and waterfalls, cabbage farms so huge and wide it was like standing in the middle of the world; quiet, undiscovered villages that could only have appeared in quaint old Japanese films. One night a miraculously timed, passing glance into the starry skies had us catching a beautiful, long tailed shooting star. What are the odds.



Takeshi's father is a farmer so every trip back to Takasaki is like a dietary detox session; an astonishing variety of homegrown vegetables are eaten and meat consumption drops to a virtual zero.



Kojima attempts a Kodak moment.



The Ito residence.





No, I didn't digitally enhanced the colours on these flowers; they were of the very same intensity I saw with my own eyes, but Takeshi quickly informs : "Erm..these are actually the flowers of...weeds." Killjoy.

Takeshi+Kojima+loadsa'cactus.

Bloody crazies Vol II. Pizzacato5ive art directs a soon to be released print ad for the Takashimaya NAC scholarship. Too radical perhaps for MITA, but stylish nontheless. Photography by Kenneth.



Bloody crazies these blokes. Image courtesy of Pizzacato5ive.

Babes galore, rush hour in Shibuya station. This is but only half of the entire ad spread.

I don't ever remember seeing a Macdonald's print ad as hip as this one in our ( Singapore ) Mac's. Not even remotely close. Simple and clean, yet screaming coolness, its interesting how a mere Macdonald's tray sheet can tell you about a country's culture and fashion sense ( or lack thereof ).

My second trip to Miyazaki's Ghibli Museum. I must have been too excited during my first visit to have missed thess 3 blokes perched on the top of the entrance signboard. Charming folks.

Revisits to familiar tourists' spots like the Meiji Jingu and Shibuya's 109 junction as I accompanied my 2 friends Gabriel and Waimeng from Singapore had me tuning my accustomed eyes to little hidden nooks and corners, delightful sights I never knew existed; indeed, god is in the details.

I would like to take some comfort in believing that the jetlag suffered from the flight back to Tokyo after my annual Singapore holiday is the genuine cause of my recent bumming and inactivity in all matters big and small ( school doesn't start till the 2nd week of April. I think. ), but a full week would be pushing it. even for someone particularly susceptible to disruptions in their circadian rhythm. Its astonishing how a mere 3 weeks of indulgence in convenient Singlish ( there's virtually zero chance of communicating in english here in Tokyo, much less singlish for that matter ) and the all too familiar, snug comfort zone can do to one's hitherto half-f**ked Japanese; it was as if my inner brain functions have been all this while waiting for the opportune moment to steal back, realign their native, singlish languaged neurons from the spots where the Japanese *once* occupied.



I was a tourist by the time I touched down in Narita; already I could foresee nightmarish days when school starts, awkward lost in translation moments, but we'll deal with that as it comes along. Before crunch time sets in I think I'll just catch up on a few more dvds, yes please.

As far as I can remember I've always had bad things happen to my everytime I board a flight, bizzare as it seems. Take for example my first momentous trip out of Singapore to LA for the Siggraph convention in 1999. As our plane was descending to LAX I started making out ( it was a window seat ) pinpricks of red, flashing lights all over the runways and no, they weren't guidelights but the entire LA fire department waiting to douse out our plane which incidentally had a leak on its wing and was just waiting to explode into tiny little bits, myself a part of that. Great.



The 2nd time was on a photography job to Brunei with my boss in 2004, 10 minutes after the plane took off my ears started hurting really badly and I was fully expecting blood to come pouing out any second, genuinely fearing for my life. I later found out the excruciating episode was due to the plane ascending too quickly ( due to the short flight time the plane ascends faster than long flights ) and the change in air pressure wrecking havoc on my ears. Now the return flight wasn't too comfy either.

Finally, during my first trip back to Singapore from Japan last year, I yes, lost my wallet at customs 10 minutes before last call. I was tripping, almost turned into a raving madman just waiting to get arrested by airport security and had to settle for home minus my wallet, with all my important documents inside. Just minutes before take off this angelic, beautiful Japanese airport attendent raced down the aisle and handed me my precious. Darn. Should've gotten her number.

So, what's going to happen on today's flight back to Singapore ?

*UPDATED 24TH FEBUARY* Either the gods or someone must have cursed me to suffer a life time of inescapable, horrible fates everytime I board flights because it has happened again : I missed a perfectly good opportunity to meet this beautiful japanese lady Kiyomi ( now living in LA but was in Tokyo to stay with my ex-sharemates Takeshi and Kojima ), heck, she probably even arrived at their house right about the time I was boarding my plane back to Singapore. See here for a photo of Kiyomi ( the girl applying makeup for Kojima ): http://www.lionbus.undo.jp/

They always say if something's not broken, don't fix it, but heck, I really felt like a change. (picture for blog header). To usher in the new year, a breath of fresh air, the works. I just hope it still runs in parallel to the "halcyon realms" theme. Tell me what you guys think. Shot on a beautiful evening near the train tracks near my house.

Watching Reality Bites (1994) for the first time in its entirety brings back very fond memories of my early secondary days where the nostalgic soundtrack featuring Lisa Loeb's "Stay" was one of the first CD's I ever owned, and this was still way back in the early 1990's where the now mesozoic cassette tapes were been slowly but surely supplanted by CDs, a fate they themselves seemed doomed to reiterate in the wake of digital music.



That aside, Reality Bites is an extremely important film in recent cinematic history not only because its serves as an irreplacable memory bookmark in an early chapter of my life ( the transition from bespectacled, nerdy primary school kid to bespectacled, nerdy secondary school kid ), but more importantly because its the emblematic teen-angsty, quasi-intelligent, 90s era defining film, just as what the Matrix Trilogy had done for the new millenium years. This once again demonstrates the power of the cinema and its ability to change worlds and shape lives, deliberate or not. Now the debate of whether Bites was a good or bad film requires another article altogether, but undisputedly, it had one heck of a bloody good soundtrack, bar Sharona or none.

The gods must be lazy this year as they clumped Tokyo's annual worth of snowfall into one single serving, those huge flakes of white crystals transforming a once familiar landscape into an almost unrecognizable winter wonderland; I woke up finding snowflake shadows cascading past my frosted glass windows; 10 minutes later I was out of the house, stepping into fresh snow, my d70 clasped readily in my hands.

On location in Minami-Sunamachi. Principle photography has wrapped and editing is in the works for a short film about 2 ladies who start a cat fight over a cheesecake. As the cameraman for the shoot I also got a humble cameo ( actually almost everyone else in the team did a cameo )as an english teacher ( in a TV advertisement within the film )who tries unsuccesfully to instruct proper pronounciation for the word Cheesecake ( read as chee-su-ke-ki in Japanese ). Now that was great fun.

Article on an online Japanese newspaper, quote : "Japan says its research whaling is in accordance with international rules" International rules my ass. I've never heard of any research that kills its subjects with harpoons and whose meat eventually turns up on someone's menu in a Japanese restaurant. Leave those whales alone you fucking bastards.

Ok, the person in the bottom photo's not me, but its going to be one day, I promise you that. (You just wait Jason. Ha. *green with envy*) Still not getting the picture ? Watch Iwai Shunji's Love Letter.

I wonder if the collective filmmakers ( I would like to think at least half of them had to be sane when the film was shot ) who took part in Chen Kaige's latest film The Promise knew how *beep* ridiculous the notion of a man capable of running faster than the speed of light is. ( trivia; not even our fastest, most advanced fighter plane today can reach even a mere 1% of light speed, which if possible, would already be at an astonishing 30000km/sec. Yes, that's just 1 measly percent. )Sure, you say, its a movie, but this is way more than pushing the audience's ability to suspend their disbelief; its downright insulting. Contestant No.1 for this year's worst film watched. AVOID AVOID AVOID.

So beautiful and realistic is Weta's rendition of King Kong ( with the chompy chirpy Rexes coming in a close 2nd, though I still feel the Rexes from Jurassic Park are the most realistic ever ) that barely five minutes past his first appearance in the film I have lost the ability to visualize him as a CG character generated from mere pixels and texture maps but instead saw him more as a real performer with an emormous, overwhelming presence. King Kong is an oversized silverback with a soft spot for beautiful blondes such as Naomi Watts, and I wonder how Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey would feel if they ever sat through this film, admiration or distaste. There can be no ambivalence however, that King Kong is going to be one of the best effects films released this year.

Films Retrospect 2005

Total tally for films watched in 2005 stands at 28 in theatres and 150 on dvds, making that 178 in all ( Click here to see the entire list ), averaging out to about 1 film every 2 days for the entire year. Here are my top 10 favourite films viewed in 2005, in no particular merit.

1)The Machinist (Brad Anderson)
2)Not One Less (Zhang Yimou)
3)Tony Takitani (Ichikawa Jun)
4)Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan)
5)Cha No Aji (Ishii Katsuhito)
6)Bourne Supremacy (Paul Greengrass)
7)Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood)
8)Life Of Mammals (Documentary, David Attenborough)
9)Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders)
X)Majo No Takkyubin (Miyazaki Hayao)

Certainly it was tough trying to sift just 10 films out of 178, there were many other entertaining capers like Constantine and Starwars EP3, as well as films that had very outstanding visuals ie Lemony Snicket's, also others worth mentioning like Hotel Rwanda and Daremoshiranai. Due to the exorbitant price of tickets here in Tokyo, exacerbated by its cretaceous release dates the abililty to view the latest films plunged dramatically, but the silver lining was that rental stores here stock many old titles that I was able to catch up on.

With that, here's to another bountiful year ahead for movie viewing ! :]

Having tried out the great Meiji Jingu Jam ( Check out this entry; )in Harajuku during last year's New Year's Eve I figured I'll go see something else this year; the great Ameyoko Jam, a very popular shopping street in Ueno, think a Japanese version of Chinatown on Lunar New Year's Eve. Mingling into the crowd I was literally carried around involuntarily by the human traffic and I soon decided to just go with the flow, snapping whatever interesting that came into view. After that it was a laidback, quiet New Year's dinner with some friends ( most others had gone back to their hometowns to celebrate New Year ); and yes, still secretly yearning for that intoxicated, sloshed out PVD party.

Today, the 29th of December, 2005 will go down in my personal history as the day where I, an infinitesimal and paltry existence on this planet, meets Miyazaki Hayao, world renowned animator and master of the Ghibli Universe. No, I didn't see him at a premiere for a new animation film; nor was it at a press conference or anything of this loud, official nature; I meet him while he was on his way to work ( at Ghibli Studios in Musashino Koganei, not far from where I live ), driving pass my bicycle as I stopped at a junction, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding a cigarette, the smoke trailing from his vehicle as he drove away. I stood flabbergasted for a long time, anticipating Totoros to trod along too, but they did, in a way I guess, in the spirit of their brilliant inventor.

Tokyo's metropolitan landscape stretches as far as the eye can see from Ebisu's Garden Place, as breathtaking as it is dizzying. Taking the elevator up to the top viewing levels I almost felt like a character playing in Otomo Katsuhiro's Akira as I gazed upon this colossal, hulking entity, the hectic home to 12 million denizens.

Winter holidays are here and I've taken this opportune moment while taking a short breather from school to indulge in a little creative pleasure; taking s**tloads of photographs with my newly acquired, long overdue and hitherto much desire(d) Nikon digital SLR D70s. I'm loving every second of it; the handling and feel of the camera, the expanded creative options I have ( check it : ISOs from 200 to 1500 at the flick of a switch ), and I've barely even started. Now before any film purist lambast me as been unfaithful to the medium, no, I'm not a digital convert; I still love my good old Nikon FE10 and the romantic look of film; but the wise auteur utilizes all tools available to him so as to advance his level of work; not that I'm claiming to be one.

Here's to many more happy and rewarding shooting days. :]


Dusk near home in Tanashi, West Tokyo.

Winter are the days when I have to roast my Nutella Chocolate spread over the kitchen stove before I can apply them on my bread because the cold weather have had them frozen; Winter are the days when I feel I have the rabies because any contact with water is like having dry ice pressed against my skin; Winter are the days when snow, glittering, tiny little flakes of crystals descend from the heavens, the harbinger of wintry days.

Winter is here.

Its a memorable day at this year's Toho Video Festival (TVF), a film festival with works from all the different faculties of my film school. Chosen from a hundred pieces of film submission by a panel of judges, notably Yukisada Isao ( director of Shouting Out Love, ), my short film Robot Dreams ( a renaissance piece built from a culmination of unfinished work including Memento Mori, Do Robots Dream and recently shot video footage. ) managed to enter the grand finals, one of the top 10 films screened today at the festival vying for the grand prize of a Apple G5 FCP editing suite worth about 5K. Regrettably, I eventually lost out to my classmate from Shanghai ( we were the only two year one students in the top ten; the rest were graduation students ), whose impressive CG piece created to the likeness of Chinese watercolour paintings awed the judges, and deservedly won the best film award. Well, better luck next year with my graduation work ! :]

The initial impression upon watching Hou Hsiao Hsien's Millenium Mambo, ( especially the first scene where we have Hsu Chi strolling down this bridge as the camera follows behind her, shot perhaps on a 48 or 60 framer ), was how much it reminded me of the splendid Korean film Take Care of My Cat. 2 things : 1) The dreamy and carefree, immediately memorable music ( I liken it to the pleasurable feeling of intoxication, without any of the nasty side effects )that give both films their characteristic mood, and 2) each fall into that risky category of cinema where there is no clearly established plotline; nothing important seem to be happening most of the time onscreen; there is no apparent premise or conclusion, and in the case of Mambo the potential bore factor skyrockets because the photographer is Lee Pingbin, who loves to lock down his camera and shoot empty compositions where the actors are completely out of frame. 3 other directors who have an affinity for this form of narrative comes to mind : Hu Jinho, Tsai Mingliang, and Robert Altman.



I cannot better explain their style of storytelling by this saying : The journey is the destination. Next stop, Hou Hsiao Hsien's latest film Zhu Hao De Shi Guang ( Three Times ).