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blodeueddI feel I should preface this post with a warning that I have had some extremely uncharacteristic moods lately. Namely bad ones, despairing ones, foul ones... you get the picture. Partly it's hormones (what the hell, I'm nearly 30 and for the first time experiencing typically female mood swings, why NOW?!), partly it's other stuff, but at least this post will get happier toward the end?
Originally, I wanted to reprise last night's meal, but with the way I was feeling when I left the ballet studio, I [rightly] figured wine was the last thing my fragile emotions needed, so I got some sushi from the department store instead. It's a step up from grocery store sushi, I guess? XD;
Anyway...
I really love dancing, but I'm incredibly thankful that I never for a second (okay, maybe when I was four years old, before I'd ever even taken lessons!) thought to do it seriously. I just don't have the body for ballet at all. Among other things, my shoulders are stupid huge man shoulders, my hipbones jut out and look really strange from certain angles, my thighs are weird and either they're too big or my calves are too small, and my bum is too big (even though a lot of it is muscle now) and the fat on it makes my arabesques look stupid. And let's not even talk about my arms and my hands, because they usually look horrible and I don't know what to do with them to make them look less horrible. And that's not even taking into account my ridiculous lack of flexibility. It's not age, because I was never really flexible as a child, either. My back certainly never was, and I've never come even close to doing side splits (I've managed straddle splits at different points in my life, though not very often. The last time was when I was... 18, I think). I have awful extension -- or no extension, basically. I try very very hard to give the illusion of having it -- occasionally it works, most of the time not.
Sometimes during class, I'll get something right and I see myself in the mirror and I look good. I mean, ballet-good. The rest of the time, I'm glad if I can do the exercise properly. I've been finding my centre lately, which is encouraging, and though I still flub my double pirouettes more than half the time, that's still better than I ever did before. But I still hate assemblés. I can't do them fast, which is embarrassing because they're such a small, basic thing, and yesterday's assemblé exercise was a complete disaster, even the second time I did it.
@$@%^#^#%^@!@#$!@#!
Does anybody have any suggestions for how to motivate myself to do more stretches and exercises at home so I stop sucking so bad? I've been able to get myself to do other stuff, like writing and knitting and keeping my apartment relatively clean and tidy, but not that. :P
I watched some movies recently! If you care about spoilers, don't click.
Team America World Police
No, I hadn't seen this before! It was one of those movies, like The Sixth Sense (which I've also never seen), that everyone was talking about at the time, so I knew all about it without having watched it. Though, unlike with The Sixth Sense, I really did want to see it when it came out, as I'm a fan of South Park, I just never got around to it. So I'm a few years late, but the jokes haven't aged too badly for the most part -- yet. It helps that it references many things that happened when I was still following the news fairly closely. I doubt this will be one for the ages, though the montage song was quite good. Annoyingly, I had "America, Fuck Yeah!" stuck in my head for half a day afterward!
I seem to recall people finding the puppet sex rather disturbing, right? Not anyone I knew, but I believe much ado was made about it. Well... It's puppets having sex, so it's not actual sex. Which is shocking how? Because it's explicitly shown? Far more disturbing is the fact that since it's a satire, there are actually people who seriously think that kind of stuff. Now that's disturbing.
7/10
Lucky Brand Refrigerator
This unpretentious little Taiwanese film is low-key and sweet. I still can't decide whether the ending was all happy; even though Bo Bo found the refrigerator in the end, he'd given up his dream...
There were some particularly good scenes in this, like when Xiao Jie's characters come to life to complain about how, because of her writer's block, they've been stuck in a bunker for over two weeks. The scene where she tries to kill the cockroach, telling herself, "If I get it, it means he likes me!", the little montage filmed from inside the fridge, and the "shopping for baby clothes" scene were all great.
When simple love stories are told like this, without a dramatic score or lots of close-ups or endless angsting, I will gladly watch. There's no need for excess sap or sentimentality, as this movie proves.
8/10
Animals Are Beautiful People
Some of you may have seen this clip of drunk animals before. No? Then click, it's highly amusing! That's how I found out about this movie, and the other night I wanted a bit of light-hearted fun.
This is a documentary, yes, but a funny one. The editing is superb, and the animals really do come across as people, with hilarious facial expressions. Still, no documentary on animals would be complete without a tragedy of youngsters not making it to the next rainy season, and my heart ached for those poor little pelicans.
When I watched Team America and failed to be shocked by puppet sex, I wondered what it would take to shock me. Well, now I know! At one point in this film, the narrator describes an animal baby as being "a sissy who wants to stay close to Mother". I sort of gaped at that. But apparently it was considered an okay thing to say in 1974 when the film was made!
8.5/10
Happy Together
Sometimes, a movie reels you in slowly, building up the emotion so subtly that there comes a breaking point when you least expect it, and the moment is perfect and beautiful and it makes you cry. When Chang told Fai about the place where people go to "leave their sadness behind", the look in Fai's eyes just made me lose it. There were plenty of other sad, poignant moments in the film, but that conversation, and when Fai holds the tape recorder up to his face, (and at the very end, Chang's "The tape recorder must have broken") did me in.
Goddammit, I'm crying again just thinking about it.
It was odd to see Tony Leung with such short hair, and playing a character who loses his temper so much! He was excellent, as usual. I'm always amazed at how much he can say with his eyes.
What a gorgeous, thoroughly depressing movie. Would I watch it again? I don't know... With Lan Yu, in spite of the tragic ending, the happy parts are so good that it all balances out. With this movie, there's a lot of grief and destruction and precious few good moments. I'll still give it 9/10.
And here are the daily memes:
Day 14 - What is the hardest thing about living in Japan versus your home country?
On the day-to-day front, definitely not being fluent in the language. I'm equally comfortable in English and French, so no matter where I was in Canada, this was never an issue. Here, though my Japanese is passable (nowhere near fluent), there's just so much I don't understand, especially what's written. At least I do well enough with things I need to understand, as opposed to stuff that might be fun to understand. In a way, though, it's kind of nice to be able to completely ignore advertisements; if they were in a language I could read very well, my brain would automatically read them without my permission.
On the personal front, it's hard sometimes to be so far from my family and friends back home. Since I'm going home for Christmas, I've been feeling this more acutely. For the most part, though, I can't see myself moving back anytime soon, and I love my life here. One of the problems with nostalgia is that things will never be that way again, so it's pointless to try to recapture a past moment. Friends move away, people change, and I can treasure the memories for what they are.
Day 01 - A picture of you "in Japan". (doing or wearing something "Japanese")
Day 02 - Describe your neighbourhood in Japan.
Day 03 - Most interesting person you've met.
Day 04 - What's your favourite place that's not in any of the guidebooks/lists of places to visit?
Day 05 - Which, if any, Japanese mannerisms or expressions have you adopted?
Day 06 - Food that you swore you would never eat but now love (or tolerate).
Day 07 - Which Japanese words do you use in English? (hanami, shinkansen, etc.)
Day 08 - What thing(s) or product(s) from your home country do you refuse to do without in Japan?
Day 09 - Favourite stores/shopping centers.
Day 10 - Something about Japan that sets it apart from anywhere else.
Day 11 - What did you find most overrated and underrated about Japan?
Day 12 - Describe a fail!gaijin moment. (Where you did something wrong or completely misunderstood because you couldn't ~read the air~ or just plain had no idea what you were supposed to do because you weren't born and raised here) Describe a gaijin!smash moment (Where your foreignness was to your benefit)
Day 13 - How is daily life in Japan different from how it was back in your home country?
Day 14 - What is the hardest thing about living in Japan versus your home country?
Day 15 - Weirdest food item you've seen, and weirdest food item you've actually eaten.
Day 16 - How you realised you'd acclimated to Japan. (if you have)
Day 17 - Your karaoke top 5, your sushi top 5, your conbini top 5.
Day 18 - Post some amusing/cute/faily purikura.
Day 19 - Your favourite Japanese character(s) and Gachapon/UFO Catcher toys
Day 20 - Favourite Japanese festival or folklore.
Day 21 - Favourite and least favorite Japanese fashion trends.
Day 22 - Your favourite Japanese saying or kotowaza (proverb).
Day 23 - What is something you have/do in Japan that you wish you had/could do in your home country?
Day 24 - Your favourite Japanese slang or borrow-word (外来語), e.g. セフレ "sex friend"
Day 25 - Most interesting vending machine find.
Day 26 - What's your favourite/least favourite train line?
Day 27 - Place you avoid going to if at all possible.
Day 28 - A picture of you looking like a weaboo/A picture of you trying to blend in and failing.
Day 29 - What's the thing you [will] miss the most about Japan when you leave (either on vacation, or move away)?
Day 30 - Did Japan meet your expectations, both good and bad? What has been the most surprising thing about Japan for you, or the thing you least expected?
Day 14 – What you wore today
Again? I changed several times today, so this'll take a while.
Outfit #1: I woke up wearing a t-shirt and panties, then put on striped socks and my old gym pants. Basically what I described here.
Outfit #2: After my shower, I had a skype date with my parents and a couple of family friends, so I had to put some clothes on (otherwise, I would have just worn my towel robe until I went out). I put on a black not-bra, a turquoise tank top, my plaid pants (with belt); later, when I got a bit cold, I added green and yellow socks that I knit last year, and a pink knit cardigan.
Outfit #3: To go out to lunch with Tiffany, Jamie, Hannah and Eda, I wore black tights, black shorts, a pink t-shirt (it has cupcakes on the front and says "Let Them Eat Cake") over a long-sleeved grey t-shirt, the white scarf I bought in Austria, golden hoop earrings with dangly turquoise crystals, and the green sequined shoes I got for my Halloween costume.
Outfit #4: For my ballet rehearsal, I wore black tights, a black leotard, black shorts, a red t-shirt with white stars on it, cream leg warmers, and my ballet shoes.
Outfit #5: Because I put my lounging-about-indoors outfit in the wash this morning, when I got home from rehearsal I changed into black velour pants, my bright pink Dream Live 7th t-shirt, dark turquoise sleeves (all that's left of a shirt), fuzzy blue socks, and my Ile d'Orléans sweater.
Day 01 - Introduce yourself
Day 02 - Your first love
Day 03 - Your parents
Day 04 - What you ate today
Day 05 - Your definition of love
Day 06 – Your day
Day 07 – Your best friend
Day 08 – A moment
Day 09 – Your beliefs
Day 10 – What you wore today
Day 11 – Your siblings
Day 12 – What's in your bag
Day 13 – This week
Day 14 – What you wore today
Day 15 – Your dreams
Day 16 – Your first kiss
Day 17 – Your favourite memory
Day 18 – Your favourite birthday
Day 19 – Something you regret
Day 20 – This month
Day 21 – Another moment
Day 22 – Something that upsets you
Day 23 – Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 – Something that makes you cry
Day 25 – A first
Day 26 – Your fears
Day 27 – Your favourite place
Day 28 – Something that you miss
Day 29 – Your aspirations
Day 30 – One last moment
I feel slightly better now, though I wish I could take a week off work and... I don't know, sleep, or try to feel less screwed up about things.
Originally, I wanted to reprise last night's meal, but with the way I was feeling when I left the ballet studio, I [rightly] figured wine was the last thing my fragile emotions needed, so I got some sushi from the department store instead. It's a step up from grocery store sushi, I guess? XD;
Anyway...
I really love dancing, but I'm incredibly thankful that I never for a second (okay, maybe when I was four years old, before I'd ever even taken lessons!) thought to do it seriously. I just don't have the body for ballet at all. Among other things, my shoulders are stupid huge man shoulders, my hipbones jut out and look really strange from certain angles, my thighs are weird and either they're too big or my calves are too small, and my bum is too big (even though a lot of it is muscle now) and the fat on it makes my arabesques look stupid. And let's not even talk about my arms and my hands, because they usually look horrible and I don't know what to do with them to make them look less horrible. And that's not even taking into account my ridiculous lack of flexibility. It's not age, because I was never really flexible as a child, either. My back certainly never was, and I've never come even close to doing side splits (I've managed straddle splits at different points in my life, though not very often. The last time was when I was... 18, I think). I have awful extension -- or no extension, basically. I try very very hard to give the illusion of having it -- occasionally it works, most of the time not.
Sometimes during class, I'll get something right and I see myself in the mirror and I look good. I mean, ballet-good. The rest of the time, I'm glad if I can do the exercise properly. I've been finding my centre lately, which is encouraging, and though I still flub my double pirouettes more than half the time, that's still better than I ever did before. But I still hate assemblés. I can't do them fast, which is embarrassing because they're such a small, basic thing, and yesterday's assemblé exercise was a complete disaster, even the second time I did it.
@$@%^#^#%^@!@#$!@#!
Does anybody have any suggestions for how to motivate myself to do more stretches and exercises at home so I stop sucking so bad? I've been able to get myself to do other stuff, like writing and knitting and keeping my apartment relatively clean and tidy, but not that. :P
I watched some movies recently! If you care about spoilers, don't click.
Team America World Police
No, I hadn't seen this before! It was one of those movies, like The Sixth Sense (which I've also never seen), that everyone was talking about at the time, so I knew all about it without having watched it. Though, unlike with The Sixth Sense, I really did want to see it when it came out, as I'm a fan of South Park, I just never got around to it. So I'm a few years late, but the jokes haven't aged too badly for the most part -- yet. It helps that it references many things that happened when I was still following the news fairly closely. I doubt this will be one for the ages, though the montage song was quite good. Annoyingly, I had "America, Fuck Yeah!" stuck in my head for half a day afterward!
I seem to recall people finding the puppet sex rather disturbing, right? Not anyone I knew, but I believe much ado was made about it. Well... It's puppets having sex, so it's not actual sex. Which is shocking how? Because it's explicitly shown? Far more disturbing is the fact that since it's a satire, there are actually people who seriously think that kind of stuff. Now that's disturbing.
7/10
Lucky Brand Refrigerator
This unpretentious little Taiwanese film is low-key and sweet. I still can't decide whether the ending was all happy; even though Bo Bo found the refrigerator in the end, he'd given up his dream...
There were some particularly good scenes in this, like when Xiao Jie's characters come to life to complain about how, because of her writer's block, they've been stuck in a bunker for over two weeks. The scene where she tries to kill the cockroach, telling herself, "If I get it, it means he likes me!", the little montage filmed from inside the fridge, and the "shopping for baby clothes" scene were all great.
When simple love stories are told like this, without a dramatic score or lots of close-ups or endless angsting, I will gladly watch. There's no need for excess sap or sentimentality, as this movie proves.
8/10
Animals Are Beautiful People
Some of you may have seen this clip of drunk animals before. No? Then click, it's highly amusing! That's how I found out about this movie, and the other night I wanted a bit of light-hearted fun.
This is a documentary, yes, but a funny one. The editing is superb, and the animals really do come across as people, with hilarious facial expressions. Still, no documentary on animals would be complete without a tragedy of youngsters not making it to the next rainy season, and my heart ached for those poor little pelicans.
When I watched Team America and failed to be shocked by puppet sex, I wondered what it would take to shock me. Well, now I know! At one point in this film, the narrator describes an animal baby as being "a sissy who wants to stay close to Mother". I sort of gaped at that. But apparently it was considered an okay thing to say in 1974 when the film was made!
8.5/10
Happy Together
Sometimes, a movie reels you in slowly, building up the emotion so subtly that there comes a breaking point when you least expect it, and the moment is perfect and beautiful and it makes you cry. When Chang told Fai about the place where people go to "leave their sadness behind", the look in Fai's eyes just made me lose it. There were plenty of other sad, poignant moments in the film, but that conversation, and when Fai holds the tape recorder up to his face, (and at the very end, Chang's "The tape recorder must have broken") did me in.
Goddammit, I'm crying again just thinking about it.
It was odd to see Tony Leung with such short hair, and playing a character who loses his temper so much! He was excellent, as usual. I'm always amazed at how much he can say with his eyes.
What a gorgeous, thoroughly depressing movie. Would I watch it again? I don't know... With Lan Yu, in spite of the tragic ending, the happy parts are so good that it all balances out. With this movie, there's a lot of grief and destruction and precious few good moments. I'll still give it 9/10.
And here are the daily memes:
Day 14 - What is the hardest thing about living in Japan versus your home country?
On the day-to-day front, definitely not being fluent in the language. I'm equally comfortable in English and French, so no matter where I was in Canada, this was never an issue. Here, though my Japanese is passable (nowhere near fluent), there's just so much I don't understand, especially what's written. At least I do well enough with things I need to understand, as opposed to stuff that might be fun to understand. In a way, though, it's kind of nice to be able to completely ignore advertisements; if they were in a language I could read very well, my brain would automatically read them without my permission.
On the personal front, it's hard sometimes to be so far from my family and friends back home. Since I'm going home for Christmas, I've been feeling this more acutely. For the most part, though, I can't see myself moving back anytime soon, and I love my life here. One of the problems with nostalgia is that things will never be that way again, so it's pointless to try to recapture a past moment. Friends move away, people change, and I can treasure the memories for what they are.
Day 02 - Describe your neighbourhood in Japan.
Day 03 - Most interesting person you've met.
Day 04 - What's your favourite place that's not in any of the guidebooks/lists of places to visit?
Day 05 - Which, if any, Japanese mannerisms or expressions have you adopted?
Day 06 - Food that you swore you would never eat but now love (or tolerate).
Day 07 - Which Japanese words do you use in English? (hanami, shinkansen, etc.)
Day 08 - What thing(s) or product(s) from your home country do you refuse to do without in Japan?
Day 09 - Favourite stores/shopping centers.
Day 10 - Something about Japan that sets it apart from anywhere else.
Day 11 - What did you find most overrated and underrated about Japan?
Day 12 - Describe a fail!gaijin moment. (Where you did something wrong or completely misunderstood because you couldn't ~read the air~ or just plain had no idea what you were supposed to do because you weren't born and raised here) Describe a gaijin!smash moment (Where your foreignness was to your benefit)
Day 13 - How is daily life in Japan different from how it was back in your home country?
Day 14 - What is the hardest thing about living in Japan versus your home country?
Day 15 - Weirdest food item you've seen, and weirdest food item you've actually eaten.
Day 16 - How you realised you'd acclimated to Japan. (if you have)
Day 17 - Your karaoke top 5, your sushi top 5, your conbini top 5.
Day 18 - Post some amusing/cute/faily purikura.
Day 19 - Your favourite Japanese character(s) and Gachapon/UFO Catcher toys
Day 20 - Favourite Japanese festival or folklore.
Day 21 - Favourite and least favorite Japanese fashion trends.
Day 22 - Your favourite Japanese saying or kotowaza (proverb).
Day 23 - What is something you have/do in Japan that you wish you had/could do in your home country?
Day 24 - Your favourite Japanese slang or borrow-word (外来語), e.g. セフレ "sex friend"
Day 25 - Most interesting vending machine find.
Day 26 - What's your favourite/least favourite train line?
Day 27 - Place you avoid going to if at all possible.
Day 28 - A picture of you looking like a weaboo/A picture of you trying to blend in and failing.
Day 29 - What's the thing you [will] miss the most about Japan when you leave (either on vacation, or move away)?
Day 30 - Did Japan meet your expectations, both good and bad? What has been the most surprising thing about Japan for you, or the thing you least expected?
Day 14 – What you wore today
Again? I changed several times today, so this'll take a while.
Outfit #1: I woke up wearing a t-shirt and panties, then put on striped socks and my old gym pants. Basically what I described here.
Outfit #2: After my shower, I had a skype date with my parents and a couple of family friends, so I had to put some clothes on (otherwise, I would have just worn my towel robe until I went out). I put on a black not-bra, a turquoise tank top, my plaid pants (with belt); later, when I got a bit cold, I added green and yellow socks that I knit last year, and a pink knit cardigan.
Outfit #3: To go out to lunch with Tiffany, Jamie, Hannah and Eda, I wore black tights, black shorts, a pink t-shirt (it has cupcakes on the front and says "Let Them Eat Cake") over a long-sleeved grey t-shirt, the white scarf I bought in Austria, golden hoop earrings with dangly turquoise crystals, and the green sequined shoes I got for my Halloween costume.
Outfit #4: For my ballet rehearsal, I wore black tights, a black leotard, black shorts, a red t-shirt with white stars on it, cream leg warmers, and my ballet shoes.
Outfit #5: Because I put my lounging-about-indoors outfit in the wash this morning, when I got home from rehearsal I changed into black velour pants, my bright pink Dream Live 7th t-shirt, dark turquoise sleeves (all that's left of a shirt), fuzzy blue socks, and my Ile d'Orléans sweater.
Day 02 - Your first love
Day 03 - Your parents
Day 04 - What you ate today
Day 05 - Your definition of love
Day 06 – Your day
Day 07 – Your best friend
Day 08 – A moment
Day 09 – Your beliefs
Day 10 – What you wore today
Day 11 – Your siblings
Day 12 – What's in your bag
Day 13 – This week
Day 14 – What you wore today
Day 15 – Your dreams
Day 16 – Your first kiss
Day 17 – Your favourite memory
Day 18 – Your favourite birthday
Day 19 – Something you regret
Day 20 – This month
Day 21 – Another moment
Day 22 – Something that upsets you
Day 23 – Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 – Something that makes you cry
Day 25 – A first
Day 26 – Your fears
Day 27 – Your favourite place
Day 28 – Something that you miss
Day 29 – Your aspirations
Day 30 – One last moment
I feel slightly better now, though I wish I could take a week off work and... I don't know, sleep, or try to feel less screwed up about things.
