March 1999

• I began the Spring Term in The Master's at OHSU today.
  (30 March 1999)

• Death of the Japanese American Community?
  Some discussion was stimulated on the JA*Net Ties Talk e-mail group by a recent article about San Francisco's Japantown (Nihonmachi) and ongoing heroic attempts to restore its vitality. With the notable exception of Los Angeles, North American Nikkei today no longer live in concentrated areas. "Suburban flight" has been accompanied by economic success, but at what price? You can read the archived posts on the Death of the JA Community? page.
  (28 March 1999)

• Taxi Driver (USA 1976; Dir: Martin Scorsese) [STILLS]
  I had a friend in junior high school who was able to grow a beard and so was able to get into a movie theatre to see this film when it first came out. He raved about it for most of Grade 9. It took until this year for me to finally see this film (BTW I still can't grow a beard). With the awful 1970s fashions and having heard the classic Travis Bickle (Robert deNiro) line, "Are you talkin' to me?" parodied in an SCTV spoof, I had a hard time keeping a straight face. Also, for a film which is widely regarded as a cinematic classic, this story about a Vietnam veteran's alienation has many sloppy moments and inconsistencies, apparently due to director Scorsese's tampering with screenwriter Paul Schrader's original script.
  (27 March 1999)

• Thursday's rain turned to snow so by this morning (Saturday) Mt. Hood had received two feet of fresh snow. Wanting to avoid the weekend lift lines at the alpine ski areas on this sunny (!) day, I went instead to the Hood River Meadows Nordic Center, part of the Mt. Hood Meadows ski area. The turnoff for the Nordic Center is unmarked -- it is about a mile past the turnoff for the Mt. Hood Meadows alpine area on Highway 35. For groups with split purposes, a shuttle bus runs from the alpine base to the Nordic Center. Alternatively, the alpine area can be accessed directly from the Nordic Center. There are 15 km of trails groomed for both classic and skating styles, which provide a couple of hours' worth of easy skiing. An afternoon pass is $7 (for earlier risers, a full-day pass is $9). For those seeking more of a challenge, the trail system connects to the US Forest Service backcountry ski trails. I went 1.8 km along one of them to look at Sahallie Falls.
  (27 March 1999)

• "Whazzat Thang?" Closes
  I have posted the solution to January's Unknown Thang from Dr. Dave's Museum. I have no more thang images to post, so this section of my website will no longer be updated from this day forward. I hope those who have visited and those who will visit the Museum page find it educational in its own small way.
  (26 March 1999)

• Today I paid a late-season visit to Mount Hood Ski Bowl, one of the three ski areas on "Portland's Mt. Fuji". The terrain was steep and challenging, made moreso by some fog and poor contrast on this overcast, rainy day. The snow was still plentiful, if a bit wet. But I had the place almost to myself, and at only $22 for a mid-week lift ticket, who can complain?
  (25 March 1999)

• Unagi (The Eel) (Japan 1997; Dir: Shohei Imamura)
  Ex-convict Takuro (Kohji Yakusho of Shall We Dansu? (Shall We Dance?)), has his carefully constructed reclusive new life overturned when he takes in Keiko (Misa Shimizu of Okoge and Shiko funjatta (Sumo Do, Sumo Don't)), a woman he saved from a suicide attempt. This was director Imamura's first film in 8 years and won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997. Some ideas return from previous films -- a barbershop with an aquarium like in 1966's Jinruigaku nyumon (The Pornographers)* -- and true to form, he populates his film with offbeat characters such as Keiko's insane mother, who thinks of herself as "Akita no Carmen", and the young man who borrows Takuro's electric barber pole for his UFO signalling device. Buddhism in modern Japan is portrayed as something only for funerals and practiced by madwomen or for show by unrepentant murderers. While I enjoyed this film, I thought it got a bit too cute at the end.
  Unagi at Cannes 1997
  The Eel - A Slippery Slide into Sentimentality

  I saw this film at the historic Hollywood Theatre. Its grand, unique facade has been a landmark on Portland's NE Sandy Boulevard since 1926.

  * Shoichi Ozawa, the star of Jinruigaku nyumon, plays the gynecologist in Unagi.
  (24 March 1999)

• This afternoon I stopped in to see "An Escher Celebration" at the Portland Art Museum. This exhibit included some early drawings by the Dutch graphic artist Maurice Cornelis Escher of scenes around Delft NL, which showed that he first mastered the conventional rules of art before going on to produce his famous drawings that defy the laws of perspective and woodblock prints that include repeating geometric patterns (tessellations).
  (24 March 1999)

• Blkfspthtttt!
  Here is the antidote to tonight's self-congratulatory Hollywood Oscar night excesses: The Razzies! The Golden Raspberry Awards have dis-honoured the Worst Achievements in Film since 1980. This year Joe Eszterhas, Leonardo DiCaprio and the Spice Girls figure prominently (and rightly so!).
  (21 March 1999)

• There's an update at the Nikkei Nexus
  (20 March 99)

• JA-ben (JA Dialect)
  If young Nikkei hear the Japanese language at all, it usually only at home. What is learned from one's parents and grandparents can deviate from "standard" Japanese, sometimes by quite a bit. Datedness is also a factor, especially given the relative isolation of North American Nikkei from the ever-changing modern standard in Japan. All this results in a unique variant of Japanese -- Nikkei-ben (Nikkei dialect). This topic came up on the JA*Net Ties Talk e-mail group, and proved to be a learning experience for some who were using terms without knowing their origins and/or actual meanings! You can read the archived messages on the JA-ben page.
  (15 March 1999)

• INTJ
  Final Exam Week for the OHSU 1999 Winter Term approaches. As I look back on these past three months, I think the most useful thing I learned was my Myers-Briggs Type Indicator result. Maybe the MBTI is just quasi-scientific astrology, but it goes further than my Zodiac sign (Virgo), Chinese calendar year (Tiger), or blood type (AB) to explain my life. I was so impressed, I posted an INTJ Page and made the Runker Room a member of the INTJ Ring!
  (14 March 1999)

• Real Japan?
  Last month a Japanese Consul General caused an international media flurry over a spousal abuse incident in Vancouver BC. I introduced this news story to the JA*Net Ties Talk e-mail group, where it sparked some interesting discussion on the issues of heritage and the effect of Western media coverage of Japan on those of Japanese ancestry. You can read the archived opinions on the Real Japan? page. (With apologies to Alisa Sanada's r e a l j a p a n)
  (09 March 1999)

• Dr. Scot Silverstein, a Fellow at the Yale Center for Medical Informatics in New Haven CT, recently opened a new website called Medical Informatics, Medical Information Systems and Healthcare Information Technology of the Future. It is still coming together, but what is there right now makes for interesting reading. Check it out!
  (08 March 1999)

• Suna no onna (Woman in the Dunes) (Japan 1964; Dir: Hiroshi Teshigahara)
  The men of a poor Japanese seaside village trick a visiting Tokyo entomologist (the late Eiji Okada) into staying for a night at the home of a young widow (Kyoko Kishida) at the bottom of a deep sand pit. In the morning, he finds he is a prisoner, forced earn rations by helping the woman dig the sand that threatens to bury her home every day. He initially refuses to dig and attempts to escape, but he eventually accepts his situation and his role in the local economy, finding pleasure in scientific experimentation.

  This is a thought-provoking allegorical tale on many levels. The woman is dependent on her captors for rations, but so do they rely on her to supply the sand they sell to a construction company. The man discovers interesting things about his place in life, making even the most difficult of circumstances enjoyable. The film makes the couple's bizarre daily routine seem almost normal. The soundtrack by the famous composer Toru Takemitsu is heard mostly between scenes, and is the voice of living, moving sand, beautifully captured in black-and-white. Sand is all around -- the viewer can almost feel it. As I left the theatre I wanted to shake out my clothes!

  TV Guide Review | Roger Ebert Review
  Teshigahara's Masterpiece film.com Review (05 March 1999)

• We(s)t Coast Winter Wrap-up
  The tally is in -- this was a very wet winter in Portland: there were 93 days of rain from 01 November 1998 to 28 February 1999. Thank goodness for Gore-tex!
  (02 March 1999)

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