Iron Pyriten Week

This year Golden Week was a bit of a rip-off. Rather than 9 days off (2 weekends book ending the intervening weekdays), Monday and Friday were workdays for most. Here’s the washout:

Friday
Cruelly abandoned by Mari, who went to visit a friend, I spent the day watching TV and touching up Winston’s World with pictures and a new template. One can waste hours on such nonsense.

Saturday
Concerned about my immobility of the day before, I went to the gym in the morning. In the afternoon I met up with Allan and went to the movies to see Constantine. After that I went to his place and we watched Hellboy and King Arthur on DVD. This finished about 2am, and so Allan’s couch was my bed for what remained of the evening.

The Movie Maven

Constantine
Constantine has a great 3rd act, but little idea how to get there. It reminds me of those Batman stories where the Joker has a great plan. But before the Joker can do this great plan, he believes that Batman must die. This is because Batman is the only one who can stop it. So the Joker sends some minions to do the deed, and when they fail, as they always do, Batman is now alerted that something nefarious is going on. Lo and behold, the great plan comes undone. If only the Joker had just gone through with the plan, he’d be rich and retired now.

For those who want to kill 2 hours.

Sunday
In the morning Allan and I had breakfast at a local family restaurant. From there we parted company and I went 2 stops down the line to Chica’s place. Chica was having her annual Golden Week BBQ. Last year I got sick on the day and so wasn’t able to go, so I was looking forward to it. Bumped into Mari at the station, and we walked to the party. On the way we stopped at a local small goods store to buy drinks and found that it stocked Hardys wine at the astonishingly cheap price of ¥430. Bought a red and a white for the day.





It took place on the banks of the local river, and although the sun wasn’t streaming down it was hot enough to give my baldpate a slight case of sunburn.



I believe that the women in this photo were not coerced in any way, and not drunk enough that they didn’t know what they were doing.

Monday
I had the day off, but Mari had to work. As I had no plans I wasted away the morning reading in a coffee shop. I decided to use the afternoon constructively and so went into work to get ahead on some things. I’m really glad I did as I have now caught up on where I’m expected to be work wise. I could now have good sleeps without worrying about work for the rest of Golden Week. When Mari finished we met up, hopped on the bullet train, and went to her parents’ house for 3 days.

Tuesday
Not much to report here. Relaxed, ate, read, played with Kairi. He’s saying many words now. They’re his version of the word – kutsu (shoes) is kuku, obaachan (grandmother) is baba and ojiichan (grandfather) is jiji – but you can understand him. There’s no verbs yet, just concrete nouns. There’s also a lot of screaming as Mari chases him round and round the living room / kitchen / hallway / living room. He runs around on his tiptoes and never gets tired of being chased. Even if the game is a complete setup because he’s pestered her to chase him, he still seems to get immense enjoyment from it.

Wednesday
Partook of that curiously female pastime - a day of shopping. Mari’s folks live in the countryside, so a trip to the brand name stores necessitates a drive to a bigger city. Mari, her big sister Yoshiko, her husband Shunpi, and I left Kairi with the grandparents and drove to Gotenba. Gotenba is an outdoor mall of brand name shops. This drive takes about 45mins, but during Golden Week that translates to almost 2 hours in the car. The scenery is nice though as Mt. Fuji is almost visible all the way there behind the houses, trees and elevated freeways that line the route. And should that get boring I can listen to Mari and Yoshiko’s conversation in Japanese. And then when I’ve had my fill of which Hollywood star is the sexiest, or which fashion magazine model really isn’t as pretty as she thinks she is, then I can read my book. The time simply flies by.



Once there I accompanied Mari while she did her reconnoiter of the place, looking for what she wanted, finding the various sales and doing the price comparisons. The four of us met up for lunch in what must be the most crowded food court in Japan. We stood around like vultures at a carcass waiting for a table to empty to that we could snatch it from under the noses all the other starving scavengers. Once we had full stomachs I decided that I would find a bench somewhere and read, leaving Mari to make the purchases on her own.



Thursday
Went to Izu-Mito Sea Paradise. I was pretty excited go there as along with the dolphins, seals, penguins and assortment of aquarium tanks, they have a killer whale! I’ve never seen a killer whale before, and so was deliriously happy to be able to see one penned for my amusement. My, it was a big creature. And able to jump it’s whole body length out of the water, too.

Friday
Back to work. 'Nuff said about that. But we did order scrumptious pizza for dinner. With the ability to call pizza to one’s door, the telephone has cemented its place as one of the greatest inventions of all time.

Saturday
Yesterday we both, for some reason, woke up with mild headaches. As we had leftover pizza to eat, there really was no need to go outside. But we lacked entertainment, so I volunteered to go and rent some DVDs. Mari likes to watch DVDs at home, but she’s not a lover of films. She tends to watch chick flicks, and sometimes the odd suspense or drama if there’s someone in it she likes, or the reviews were really good. Thus she’s got great holes in her viewing that I feel compelled to plug.

She’d never seen The Last of the Mohicans, which is a real favorite of mine. Daniel Day-Lewis is, as usual, great. And the film delivers enough action, intrigue and romance to keep everyone happy.

It’s hard to believe, but she’s also one of the few people in the world who has never seen Star Wars. She recalls that she might have seen one of the recent ones, but can’t be sure. No loss there as far as I’m concerned. After watching the final video for season 9 of Friends, we sat down to watch one of the true classics.

Except it wasn’t. I’d rented the digitally rehashed version and just found the tinkering too annoying. I think that it was a good idea to use the new SPFX techniques to touch up the SPFX from the original. Now with its seamless effects the attack on the Death Star looks so much cleaner than in the original. But in this new version there is also the inclusion of so many tiny scenes that are completely new and add nothing to the story. I’m thinking of the entry in Mos Eisley spaceport. I was surprised at how much the first half of the film now drags. I’d spent so much time talking the movie up before we watched it, that now I felt kind of stupid as I felt it begin to drag. The second half is still classic cinema, but now the first half is leaden, and glossy in a pixilated way that works against the verisimilitude it is trying to create. Computer generated monsters don’t look real. Elephants with rugs over them do.