Ten years ago, after graduating with a useless Master’s Degree in Japanese Studies, I panicked and fled the country for a wild and woolly trip around the world.
Five years later, after graduating with a largely useless Master’s of Fine Arts in Film and Video, I again panicked and fled the country. This time, I went to Kumamoto, to work at a Japanese production company and live with my then girlfriend and her family. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Over the three so months I was there in 2003, I shot two commercials that aired on Japanese TV (you can see them here and here), read Gravity’s Rainbow, and suffered a low level headache from speaking Japanese pretty much 24/7.
I documented my time there on my first blog Broad Spectrum Antibiotics and now I’m reposting them, cleaned up and with lots of pictures and links, on WITMOT. You can read the first entry here.
Additional material: I also posted blogs entries from my first visit to Kumamoto here. And you can look at more pics of Kumamoto that I took here.
A few years ago after graduating from CalArts with yet another master’s degree, I was faced with the yawning terror of making ends meet. I applied to a temporary employment agency and I landed in a mail room in the Reconstructive Loan department in a processing center for Washington Mutual in Chatsworth, California.
My job could have been performed by a well-trained chimpanzee. I was a temporary worker, replaceable at the drop of the hat. The office space was the sort of generic gray cubicled affair one usually associates with the bottom end of the white-collar employment. My co-workers seemed beaten down and tired. And though I really only had three hours worth of work, I was obliged to be there for a full eight. I had to fill the void somehow.
So I did Temp Art.
The rules of Temp Art I worked out my first day on the job and are as the follows:
1. One piece of art a day.
2. All materials used for Temp Art must be found at work.
3. All art must be created during company time. (So I would be paid to do my art.)
During my three months there, I produced about 60 drawings of varying size. I worked in private, and as far as I know my superiors never caught on to my strange project. You can see more pics of temp art here at Flickr.
Back in 1998, after I graduated from U of Michigan with a Master’s Degree in Japanese Studies that I knew would prove to be worthless, I panicked. I wanted to go back to Japan, but I really did not want to teach English again. I taught it for two years between 1994 and ’96 and I felt my brain softening a little more with each day I worked there. The few job leads that I had in Japan fell through and suddenly I had no clue what I was going to do with my life. The future looked confusing and uncertain and I was overwhelmed. So I did what any red-blooded lad hailing from the stout state of Ohio might: I sold my car and traveled around the world. Along the way, I wrote a series of mass emails detailing my adventures with included climbing Himalayas, getting chased by a Rhino and getting naked with a room full of Russians. I thought of them as a sort of proto-blog though blogs were at that point a good five years away. So now, ten years later, I finally have these missives in a blog format. You can read the first entry here.
Dear Friends and fellow Wesleynauts,
We are deeply saddened to report that one of our artists, Wesley Willis passed away yesterday, Thursday, August 21st. Wesley will be greatly missed by all that had the privilege to know him, as well as the fans who have been fortunate enough to experience his genius. Wesley was diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) at the end of 2002, and had to undergo emergency surgery on June 2nd to identify the source of, and to suppress internal bleeding. It is not clear if this bleeding was related to his leukemia or not, and the exact cause of death is still unknown. Wesley had been recovering at a Hospice in Illinois, and since the surgery his health had deteriorated rapidly. His songs were simultaneously disturbing, hilarious, blunt, and intoxicating. Wesley’s sheer excitement and unaffected honesty about every cultural phenomenon, defined his music as truly individual, and truly punk rock.
Wesley released well over 50 albums – 3 of which are on Alternative Tentacles, and a 4th, entitled, Wesley Willis Greatest Hits Vol. 3 (CD) had already been
scheduled for release in October of this year.
Six years ago, I witnessed a concert by Willis in Ann Arbor, Michigan, knowing very little about the guy or his obvious mental illness. Here’s a email report of it I sent to a friend.
Fri Nov 21 14:17:18 1997
Wesley Willis ambled on stage with an arm full of notebooks. He warmed up the audience with, “My demon’s been talking shit. I hate that mutherfucker. This ain’t the good Willis tonight. It’s the bad one. My demon’s been talking shit and I’m going to kill that fucker.” He picked a green notebook, propped it up on his Casio, sat and that’s where he remained planted for the entire show. That was it, no band. Then he fired up the Casio and started his set, which included:
Taste the Camel’s shitty hole
Suck the pussy’s dick
Don’t Drink and Drive
Lick a racehorse’s booty hole
Kiss my Rotweiler’s ass
Eat Donkey Shit
Suck a crazy sheep dog’s dick
Shoot down my happy music
Michael Jackson sucks little boys’ dicks
Jordan Mike suck my dick
Sonic Reducer
Avoid the splattered brains
Beware of the turd burglar
In between songs he ranted more about his “mutherfuckin’ demon.” It quickly became apparent to all but the beer swilling frat boys in the back that Wesley was legitimately nuts. None of this commodified tortured posing a la Trent “I’m so tragic” Reznor. This was the real McCoy. During the entire concert he didn’t react once to the audience’s cheers and shouts except to occasionally roar “Shut the fuck up.”
Wesley looks like the sort of person you would avoid on the subway–huge frame, army fatigues, a stained shirt with a gold “W” painted on it, a beat up and heavily duct taped CDman slung around his neck, and a completely glazed expression on face. The most notable thing about this guy was the large grey bruise on his forehead, assumably from delivering one too many of his hallmark headbutts of appreciation.
The audience’s reaction was perhaps more interesting than the concert itself. At first they were enthusiastically cheering, but slowly the audience slid into stricken pallor punctuated with nervous tittering. The fact that for each song Wesley used the EXACT same melody (the one used in his single “Kurt Cobain”) lead me to believe that he was hell bent on taking the audience with him on his spiral descent to loonyville. Imagine being trapped in a room with a constant loop of “We Built This City” and you get the idea. I doubt that Wesley actually ever touched the keyboard once, instead he limited himself to three function keys. Most soon left, but a few stalwarts (like me) held forth to the bitter end. My overeducated overdeveloped critical sensibilities groped blindly for some satisfying hook to hang this ceaseless onslaught of a mad man’s ravings. Part of me though that this was a true voice from the margins, unschooled and raw. And part of me thought that the concert was some freak-show brought about by a cynically hip Svengali-like manager. Anyhow, Wesley Willis was, if not good, then certainly memorable.
Howdy all. I’m back in the US of A, struggling to shrug off the waking stupor of jet lag. In the morning I feel fine, but as the afternoon progresses I can feel my brain spinning down, shedding IQ points by the hour. By the time 6 or 7 rolls around, I’m a drooling idiot who losses keys and who forgets what he was saying in mid-sentence. Feels like being old but without the bladder control problem.
The other day as the jet lag hallucinations were just beginning to cloud my mind, I was replenishing my food supply at Vons. While looking for a daikon radish in the vegetable section I heard the green grocer chatting with one of the customers –a middle aged woman with a great tan. He asked if she lived in Stevenson Ranch — a particularly loathsome subdivision in a town filled with loathsome subdivisions. She responded, “Hell no! I’m not one of those goddamned Stepford wives.” Wow. I sort of thought you might be tarred and feathered for airing such opinions in this town. Later while in the checkout line, I overheard one of those goddamned Stepford wives complaining about the new computer thingie where you swipe your credit card. The cashier, who looked like she spent most of her life standing in front of a cash register, patiently explained how to use the machine, ending her spiel with a sympathetic “Yeah, they’re kind hard to figure out.” Suddenly, Kenny the bag boy, who clearly was not all there, piped up. “Yeah. Imagine explaining how to use that to a 150-year old man. I mean an exactly 150-year old man. That would be really hard. That would be really really hard. And trying to explain using that thing to a 200-year old man would be really really really hard. Just impossible, really. (slight pause) I can’t believe I’m going to be 30 soon.” As Kenny continued his running monologue, the cashier wearily ignored him and rang me through. Kenny continues: “I see your name is Crow. I understand that they have a new rock star who’s also named Crow. Sheryl Crow, I believe. I really like her song Winding Road. Thank you for shopping at Vons, Mr. Crow. Etc. etc.”
I’m in Tokyo now watching a TV show with some Japanese starlet in Peruvian jungle suffering through a meal of turtle penis.
Every time I go to Tokyo there is some new building or development being thrown up. The other day I dropped by Roppongi Hills — a shiny new complex with a huge movie theater, a sundry of overpriced shops and an impressive collection of bad public art. This being summer vacation, the place was packed with family’s and young couples snapping photos with their cell phones left and right. The place looked like it would be more a home in West LA and I soon left feeling like I had seen the place before. Instead I sought out some of the bars where I danced all night in when I lived in Ibaraki eight years ago. My favorite bar had since been turned into a Starbucks. Tokyo has been wrecked and built up so many times, and each new building is more ridiculous and inhuman that the last, giving the place increasingly a feel of a dystopian sci-fi flick, that part of me simply wants to say: build more. Make Tokyo more gigantic and bizarre. But then yesterday, while R and I were looking for an over-priced macrobiotic restaurant along Omotesanto — Tokyo’s answer to the Champs Elysee — we noticed that the famed Dojunkai Apartment complex had been demolished. The Dojunkai apartments was one of first examples of Bauhaus architecture in Japan which somehow survived the 1923 Kanto earthquake and US Air force in 1945. They were elegant and gave the whole area a certain charm. In its place I sure they’re going to throw up some shiny glass box featuring another fuckin’ Starbucks.
Speaking of times gone by, the other day I ventured up to Ibaraki for the day. I first went to Tsuchiura, located on the far finger of Lake Kasumigaura. It was where my friend Ted lived and where I frequently went to escape from the tedium of Ogawa machi — small farming berg where I was placed. The place was more depressing than when I visited two years ago. The shopping mall where Ted and I bought used CDs and drank beer was a ghost town and all of the old department stores have gone belly up. There is a new department store monstrosity that opened up about five years back across from the train station. My friend Yuki predicted that it would go belly up too in a couple of years. Yuki and I spent most of the day catching up over okonomiyaki at one of the few stores still open in that shopping mall.
I told her about working at BIG and R and we talked about our mutual distaste for George W. Bush. She told me about her dumb job and her cat Godzilla who is getting on in years. We gossiped about mutual friends. One is working in a wedding salon as a hairdresser and another has expanded to an alarming girth. Yuki also told me about a dream she had in which she was along with Ted helping me move from my apartment in LA, which was literally on the beach. When the moving guys showed up they brought out a vast array of exotic vacuum machines to clean my house. I was apparently wildly fascinated by them and kept pestering the moving guys with questions. Eventually, they mentioned that they had a vacuum cleaner shaped like a dog. After repeatedly pleading with them, they grudgingly brought the thing out of their van. It was only a beat up plastic toy dog and clearly in no way a vacuum cleaner. I was very disappointed. It was good talking to Yuki. The more my Japanese improves the more I realize that I actually have something to talk about with her, which I’ve sadly learned isn’t always the case.
Speaking of that, for dinner I jogged up to Mito where I briefly saw Ikuko, an ex-girlfriend of mine. I met her at the used-clothing shop she opened up two years ago. The store itself is roughly the size of my bathroom in LA but the location was pretty good and her wares were cool if pricey. She introduced me to her ferret-faced boyfriend who scowled at me for twenty minutes as she closed up shop and then hopped in his Jeep Cherokee and left. We ate dinner at a Thai restaurant that her brother opened, talked about old times and R and ferret-face, and then I grabbed the last train back to Tokyo, which for some reason is at the appalling early time of 9:30pm. On the way back, the train stopped for an hour at the station closest to Ogawa-machi. Something was messed up because of the heavy rain and freakishly cold weather the area is experiencing. Across from me sat a young mother who passed the time staring into her cell phone and whacking her spastic child who was terrorizing the train car.
Anyway, it’s only a few days before my grudging return to the US of A whereupon I’m going to have to find a job fast or move into a cardboard box.
I’m in my last few days of living here in Kumamoto. On Tuesday or so, R and I are heading to the bright lights and big-city bustle of Tokyo where R is finally going to shoot the bulk of her thesis. Yesterday, before Chakko returned to Fukuoka with her mom — R’s aunt — she gave me a picture book that cataloged every weird ghost and spirit in Japanese mythology including a ghost for umbrellas that have been around too long, a disembodied horse leg that whacks unsuspecting victims in the head, and a truly bizarre ghost called a meoshiri which has a big round eye in its backside. In return, I gave her a couple tapes of my movies. Chakko also has a four-year daughter named Sakura who is the most relaxed, poised four-year old I’ve ever met. R’s mom tells me that kid’s preternaturally good disposition is because all the brown rice Chakko when she was pregnant with her.
Anyway, during some of the slow days at BIG — when everyone was planning shoots instead of doing them — I sometimes would take the company digital camera in hand and troll the city looking for things to shoot. The dangerous thing about digital cameras is that there are no worries about taking a bad picture. If you don’t like it, erase it. I ended up taking something like 400 pictures of things like street lamps, vending machines and ugly buildings. I don’t know why, but when it comes to photography I’m really not all that interested in shooting people; it’s architecture and physical space that really does it for me. I’ll spare you those pics, but I assembled a few photos that would give you, the loyal reader, a sense of my life here in Kumamoto. First the touristy stuff·
This here’s Kumamoto castle. As I noted earlier in this blog, this castle was used in Kurosawa Akira’s Kagemusha. The original burned down in 1868 during a final desperate stand against the Meiji restoration. The battle was famously bloody ending with much mirth for the victors and beheadings for the vanquished. The castle’s painstakingly detailed reconstruction in the 1960s is limited to the exterior. The inside looks like an East German municipal hall. But the really remarkable thing about this castle is that stone wall in the foreground, which is original. They were designed so that a gullible invading army might be able to scale half way up the wall before it curves up at a deceptively steep angle leaving flailing soldiers open for all sorts of missiles, boiling oil and the like. The castle apparently took 20 years to build and when it was done, warlord Kato Kiyomasa killed the architect and everyone involved with project to keep them from leaking its weaknesses to enemies. I suppose it’s only a matter of time before Halliburton adopts a similar policy.
This is the international headquarters of BIG. Actually, BIG takes up only part of the second floor — next to an acupuncturist — and part of the third. The landlord lives on the fourth floor with a dog that yaps incessantly.
And here’s a shot of me that Horita took during the Anesis shoot in June. That’s Miyazaki in the background checking his cell phone and that guy in the back is Fujita, Yamano-san’s assistant. I think Yamano was off smoking a cigarette or something. We were all waiting for the sun to set. That intense expression on my face is not because of my concern for anything going on in the shoot, but rather a profound concern that I would make an ass of myself from some half-understood command.
Alas, I have no still shots of the Touro maidens from my Yamaga shoot, but I do have this reasonably scenic shot of the town. Along with hot springs and pink clad women with funny lanterns on their heads, Yamaga is famous for making shochu and most of the buildings on this stretch of road are actually old distilleries.
Closer to home, this is Hachi, the Sumi’s emotionally needy dog. R’s parents are more camera-shy than she is, if that’s possible. But I was allowed to shoot pictures of Hachi with impunity. He doesn’t really bark so much as howl as if your were removing his hind leg with a butter knife. This is especially the case when he senses the slightest whiff of abandonment, such as going to the store or the bathroom. Today, I went shooting a bit in the morning with R’s camera. When I return, Hachi wouldn’t stop smelling my feet. He wouldn’t wait until I sat down either so I kept tripping over him. Anyway, strange dog.
You can see more pics of Kumamoto, mostly of the grim architectural variety, here.
At work today, I was merrily reading about the myriad of corporate interests plotting again Tyrone Sloproth in Gravity’s Rainbow, when I noticed that the single aging computer that’s connected to the web was free. After briefly checking my mail, I happened upon a startlingly bizarre news story that seemed like a continuation of Pynchon’s tome. Apparently John Poindexter at the Total Information Awareness agency (recently renamed the slightly less Orwellian Terror Information Awareness agency) has unveiled the Pentagon Terror Market Program. No, it’s not a correspondence course for the School of the Americas, it’s a surreal free-marketeer attempt to make (more) money off of mayhem in the Middle East. A quote:
Traders would buy and sell futures contracts ” just like energy traders do now in betting on the future price of oil. But the contracts in this case would be based on what might happen in the Middle East in terms of economics, civil and military affairs or specific events, such as terrorist attacks. Holders of a futures contract that came true would collect the proceeds of traders who put money into the market but predicted wrong.” (Quoted from an AP news story. The links has gone dead.)
Not only does this seem like something that’s in ridiculously bad taste, but it seems largely irrelevant to, y’know, finding and capturing terrorists. That is until the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency released a statement on Monday that justified the project in pseudo-mystical terms that Pynchon would surely adore.
“DARPA said markets could reveal Îdispersed and even hidden information. Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as elections results; they are often better than expert opinions.” (Quoted from same dead link)
I’m gathering that DARPA is also organizing a crack team of tarot card readers too. You can read the projects strangely laconic web site here.
In other news, Oshima and I went up to Yamaga to present my promo. Three or four middle-aged men grunted their approval and that was about that. Afterwards, Oshima and I ate at one of her favorite takoyaki joints.
Also, I saw on TV the other day that there is a new freshly scrubbed pop-starlet named You. One at imagine spontaneous Abbott and Costello routines popping during the most inappropriate occasions·
A: Hello, thanks for coming to the Strom Thurmond funeral service. May I ask your name?
It’s Monday and I’m not at work. Today is a holiday in honor of the ocean. In America, all our holidays are either political or religious — we honor dead presidents, dead soldiers, and the all-but-dead labor movement. In Japan, they natural cycles of life such as a holiday for the spring equinox, the autumn equinox and old people.
Well itâs still raining here. Like a bad case of the clap or the Strom Thurmond, the rainy season just won’t die. This weekend we’ve been drenched with such a massive amount of rain that the train system was shut down and 16 people died south of here from a freak mudslide. It’s probably too soon to start gathering pairs of animals in a houseboat but it feels like that time is near. One of joys of rainy season is the fact that mold seems to grow on every flat surface. There’s a corner in the tatami room I’m living in that seems to grow little civilizations of mold every two or three days, only to fall to the apocalypse of a damp rag and the Japanese equivalent of Windex.
I learned this week that I am susceptible to “Kourabyou” or AC Sickness. Electricity being insanely expensive and all here, they have these little tiny air con units that only outfitted to cool a single room and they are only used a few hours a day when the heat becomes so unbearably awful that everyone threatens to dissolve into great puddles of sweat. The problem is that these little AC things are great breeding grounds for all sorts of nasties and when the units are turned on these little nasties get spewed out into the air. Because of Ma Sumi’s mostly macrobiotic home cookin’ and a regular regime of nose washing (warm tea, add a pinch salt, then snort the concoct up your nose like you were Margot Kidder in a 1970s beach party), I’ve been remarkably free of allergies in spite of the presence of an emotionally needy dog named Hachi. That was until this week when while plowing through Pynchon at work, I started feeling all dizzy and phlegmy. Later while driving out to location scout in Yamaga with Horita-san, I complained that I felt like crap. He casually mentioned that everyone who sat at my desk developed some form of “Kourabyou.” The building manager is not especially fussy about duct cleanliness and my desk in fact directly faces the main vent. When I mentioned my problem to R’s mom, who is a fellow sufferer, she immediately made a big steaming macrobiotic potion of daikon radish and ginger — which tastes about as good as it sounds — and an extra round of nose washing. For now, it seems to be doing the trick.
On Tuesday, R and I had a rather ludicrous argument about post-structural theory. I accused her of not understanding Barthesian theory; she argued that I was not articulating myself clearly (a fair complaint, but you try to discuss Barthes in Japanese) and that I was a big poophead. We’ve more or less resolved the Barthesian theory issue, but the poophead issue remains a topic of debate.
But the big news of the week was that I directed with relative success that promo bit for the resort town of Yamaga. While the budget for this shoot was small and the crew limited to the staff of BIG, this marks the first time that I shot in a location where I wasn’t looking over my shoulder for the police. In fact, at one point I had the banners of a famous local kabuki house rearranged and the street in front wetted down by a band of city officials.
My big concern was whether or not Oshima, my producer for the shoot and a native of Yamaga, could cough up a cute girl. Yamaga was famous for its monochromatic traditional architecture and its touro festival featuring young maidens sporting pink kimonos and gold colored paper lanterns atop their heads. Horita-san said that the promo bit should be like an exotic fantasy directed towards the jaded city-folk of Fukuoka. Right, I thought, I’ll contrast the recto-linear lines of the architecture with the curvy pinkness of the touro maidens, culminating with a reasonably attractive lass flashing an enigmatic smile at the camera. Early this week, Oshima told me that the city government couldn’t find any cute girls with their own head lanterns, but they did find three who were “kinda ugly.” Christ, I thought, there has to be one or two girls per generation born with the gift of beauty in the town. My mind raced back to a painful conversation at the town hall in Ogawa-machi some nine years ago with a pair of civil servants who sat near my desk. They pointed out one woman after the next who worked at the city hall who they at one point or another had boinked. Most had crooked gold teeth, weather-beaten skin and that unfortunate frizzy hair-do that women pushing 40 inevitably get in some countries. If guys like that are calling the only three touro maidens available in the whole friggin’ town “kinda ugly”, I’m screwed. Fortunately, the guys at the Yamaga city hall not only proved to be harsh judges of beauty — the three women looked just fine — but they managed to dredge up a real babe for the close up.
Up until four or so in the afternoon, things were going swimmingly, most of my storyboard was shot, and Oshima came through with the touro maidens. Then disaster struck. We were shooting in a public hot spa of sorts where you can wile away the time soaking your feet in spring water. We had set up the camera just the way I liked it, when about two dozen Chinese tourists came in and camped out. In spite of the camera, the lights, and me glowering at them, the group ignored us and had a grand old time. While I would have been happy to forcibly remove them from the site, Horita seemed inclined to wait them out. Then the camera crapped out.
And then it rained. Hard. Since the touro lanterns are made of paper, shooting seemed impossible. Things worked out fine in the end. We gave up on the foot spa place when the Chinese tourists started breaking out picnic lunches, and went to the next location. We dug up a substitute camera and a stunt touro that could brave the rain. I saw the footage on Friday and it looks all pretty good. The stuff we shot in the rain looks great. Now I’ve got to edit it all.
If I wrote this missive yesterday, I would have said something like the rainy season is basically over and I’m spending most of the day feeling my sweat pool in my socks. My sweat may be still pooling in my socks, but it’s raining outside something fierce. The backyard, as such, of the Sumi’s is flooded and the tram has shut down. It seems that R and I are stuck in the house for the day. Despite the rain, there’s some sort of awful karaoke contest going on right now in the neighboring zoo. Someone is doing his best to bludgeon “Let It Be.” I’m trying to ignore it, listening to The Red Hot Chili Peppers of all things. Yesterday, R and her cousin’s daughter and I were rooting around in Sumi’s storage room, where I discovered R’s college CD collection. Apparently, she listened to exactly the same stuff I did back then. There are lots of Dinosaur Jr., Butthole Surfers, Sonic Youth albums here, and even a Nirvana disc too. Of course, after our respective college careers our musical tastes radically diverged. I started listening to Japanese neo-lounge and she started listening to stuff that sounds like surgery without anesthetic.
R’s mom just brought in a slice of melon. Yesterday, we started an English conversation class with Mrs. Sumi and one of her old friends. Even though the lesson seemed painfully self-conscious at the time, both women seemed to really enjoy learning English. Mrs. Sumi is now waltzing about the house tossing out English phrases to me and to R, who’s really embarrassed about the whole thing.
Anyway, the week started off slowly. Most of the planned shoots have been done for the immediate short term and most of the staff at BIG was busying themselves for the next spate of shoots next week. On top of that, Ruriko was off for a few days with her aunt and her cousin Chakko to the dubiously named Jigoku Onsen (Hell Hot Spring) over by Mt. Aso.
I had little to do but study Kanji and read Pynchon. I just got up to the part where Tyrone Slothrop pied a racist US army major from a hot air balloon when R’s dad called me up to go hang out. When I arrived at his office, there was a guy with a punch perm and lots of gold jewelry, sucking on a toothpick seated on the couch. I forgot his name but apparently he was the event coordinator for a traveling comedy show that Mr. Sumi was promoting for Kumamoto. When we were introduced he almost immediately asked me where my ancestors were from. When I responded, “England and Scotland mostly.”
He said, “Good. Like Bush.” When we went out to eat yakitori together, he talked about the wonders of his hometown Osaka, how he would never visit America because there are too many guns, and how the Chinese were always dishonest. He asked me what I thought of Bush, I said that he was an idiot and only interested in helping the rich (which, by the way, is not a particularly controversial opinion in Japan) he seemed vaguely disappointed. When I refused to agree with him that the Hispanics were mucking up America, he seemed more disappointed. Then, as we were all getting chummy, he mentioned that he would never let his daughter marry a foreigner. Later, Mr. Sumi and I parted ways with Mr. Punchperm guy and obliquely ridiculed the guy at a bar with only six seats and wall full of expensive bourbon. As I think about that night, I sort of think that Mr. Sumi intentionally invited me along that night to rile up Mr. Punchperm, who he spent three long nights wining and dining and listening to his racist platitudes.
On Wednesday after a fair amount of prodding, Horita-san let me take a crack at editing that Gambaru Zo ad that I shot last week. Aside from Horita, there are two other BIG directors I deal with regularly. One is Miyazaki-san, who is really sharp. When he mentioned that his favorite author was Abe Kobo and that he was looking to read some American books, I recommended Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. He immediately bought it and then lent me the first volume from his favorite comic book series 20th Century Boys. I’ve read about half of it and in spite of the fact that’s it’s peppered with Tokyo slang I’m finding it really addictive.
The other director is Oshima-san, who I think is still a bit cowed by my foreign presence. She was assigned to help me with the editing. When I banged out a version of the 15-spot that I thought was pretty good, she didnât say anything but clearly she thought that something was wrong. When Horita saw it, he said that the version was decently edited but wrong for the concept of the campaign and offered a few suggestions. The following day, I re-edited the spot and Oshima was quiet in that something’s-wrong-but-I’m-too-shy-to-tell-you-what sort of way. After about a half hour, she gets Miyazaki who tells me that there’s supposed to be text in the spot too. OK, that’s the first I’ve heard of that. Together with Miyazaki and Oshima, we eventually hashed together a commercial that not only features most of my editing choices, and a lot of my photography, but also a half-second shot of the back of my head. Anyway, assuming the TV high mucky-mucks like the piece, it should be airing in the next week or so.
It’s a little sobering to think that after all the pain, effort, and money that I spent on my films while in Cal Arts, this 15 second piece that took two and a half days to throw together will be seen by more people than all the others combined.
Ten years ago, after graduating with a useless Master’s Degree in Japanese Studies, I panicked and fled the country for a wild and woolly trip around the world.
WITMOT? 