Before last night, I was feeling a bit sceptical about the film. Is it just me, or so many action/fantasy films from Hollywood lately are remakes of The Matrix, Mission: Impossible or something of the sort? There is so much creativity (or lack thereof) spawning from the trunk of inspiration that goes from The Matrix to Blade Runner, all the way through Dark City and Ghost in the Shell.

Bullet-time, martial arts, alternative realities and simulations are cool. Those representations are also rich in suggestive images of urban decay and dark hypertrophied cities. I’m all for that, you know. But aren’t we overdoing it?

There’s a bit of that in Inception, too. Fortunately, in this particular case Christopher Nolan has managed to write a story that is both entertaining and provocative. And the intense soundtrack by Hans Zimmer fits very nicely.

I write about Inception first as an excuse. Truth is that, at the risk of becoming definitely a bore to my family and friends, this post is about Japan and my appetite for Japan. Again.

My emotions about Japan are difficult to explain. Even before I visited the country for the first time (and long before I told anyone close to me about this interest) I felt strangely attracted by it. In some sense it is only logical in my case, for I get easily bored with the environment I live in, and in Europe Japan (still) represents one of the most extremely exotic, yet reachable, places in the world.

Today it dawned on my that my image of Japan, and Tokyo, isn’t but an imagined, personal place that is utterly unattainable. My own particular vision of that part of the world is at risk of becoming a sort of personal “limbo” (in the Inception meaning of the term): an unreality that grows the more sophisticated and tempting the more you indulge in it… and one that can destroy you if you aren’t able to tell reality from dreams.

Japan is to me a perfect land of material progress, urban development, money, rules and the future.

Of course not.

I’m lying. I am well aware of the imperfection of anything that exists, by definition. Italy wasn’t my panacea eight or nine years ago, London didn’t make me happy either, and so far I don’t feel as comfortable as I would wish living in Madrid.

At times I find myself on the streets of Madrid, idly watching people talking and walking around me, when suddenly that particular smell I found in some hidden residential area of Kobe hits me out of the blue. There is a little girl skipping happy ten meters from me and I can’t help swapping the setting, so now she’s in a pier in Yokohama at dusk. There are wild colours in the sky all across the bay and silent old people on bicycles gently pass me by as they ride home. Or maybe it’s raining like hell. It doesn’t matter, because it’s beautiful and different and surprising anyway.

Why do I keep on seeing Japan all around, like Dominic Cobb sees his dead wife in every corner?

It is also a permanent contradiction for me: I’m pretty sure I could be in Japan by now if I had started working hard on it three or four years ago. I long for it, but I don’t seem to be able to commit to it. I’m procrastinating and writing posts like this one instead of directing my efforts towards that goal. That contradiction is the more annoying at times when I’m confronted with alternatives and need to make bold decisions. Did I mention I just became 30? I won’t deny the influence of such a symbolic date in this post (it’s such an stereotype), but I think there is more than that.

That contradiction of mine is another hint telling me that that Japan is not real, is not what I want. As if somewhere very deep I knew that it’s just an imagined alternative reality. As if I knew it will be disappointing at the end.

Or maybe I’m just scared of trying.

Categories: Films, Images, Japan, Life, Videos; Tags: dilemma, dream, film, goal, Inception, Japan, Life, limbo, video

3 comments so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

Categories: Politics, Spain, Videos; Tags: Barcelona, Catalan, conference, Díez, Faculty, fascist, news, Politics, protest, Rosa Díez, TV, UAB, university, UPD, UPyD

6 comments so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

I thought immediately that this is exactly the kind of video that we loved to share and comment, my ex-flatmates in London and I. I think they would appreciate it, and that it would provide some good references and in-jokes for a while.

Categories: TV, UK, Videos; Tags: BBC, Charlie Brooker, commonplace, fun, funny, Meta, news, Newswipe, parody, report, robotic, self-referencing, TV, video

3 comments so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

Categories: Videos; Tags: dive, diving, El Gran Azul, Le Grand Bleu, moving, touching, video

7 comments so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

Categories: Life, Videos; Tags: bautizo, fly, tripu, ultraligero, ultraligh, video, vlog, vuelo, YouTube

5 comments so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

«Si para ellos no existe un Dios , ¿como pueden vivir esos ateos? Mas racional que ellos me parecen (y se que es un mal ejemplo) los que dicen que Jesús e extraterrestre o que afirman adorar al señor de las tinieblas, y es que para los ateos la vida no debe de tener ningún objetivo, ninguna batalla merece ser peleada (para los ateos, claro esta), de que servirá todo lo que se vive, si nuestra existencia tiene limite temporal, a diferencia de la mayoría de las religiones que afirman existe una especie de vida eterna.»

— Timur

y ha hecho que me acuerde de esto:

Categories: Life, Videos; Tags: ateísmo, atheism, bitácora, blog, cita, goal, objetivo, quote, religion, Spanish, video

5 comments so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

As an appetiser (and while you download the archive) check out this live performance of an established classic, “Starlight” (can’t get enough of it), followed by one of the most interesting tracks from “The Resistance”: “Undisclosed Desires” (skip to 4:12 for the new song if you’re in a hurry).

Categories: Music, Videos; Tags: album, band, gig, live, Muse, Music, Starlight, The Resistance, Undisclosed Desires, video, YouTube

No comments yet        © 2006-2010 tripu        

“Tokyo”
by +joanjimenez
via @Xirick

Categories: Films, Japan, Videos; Tags: +joanjimenez, beautiful, city, film, Japan, Joan Jiménez, short film, Tokyo, video, YouTube, 東京

2 comments so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

Categories: Japan, Videos; Tags: Air, alone, beautiful, city, documentary, film, Kyoto, Music, street, Tokyo, video

6 comments so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

Categories: Spain, Videos; Tags: divertido, eso es así, film, funny, humor, humour, pijo, Sevilla, sevillano, Seville, video

3 comments so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

Categories: Life, UK, Videos; Tags: Birkbeck, Bloomsbury, campus, MA, SOAS, Spanish, study, talk, university, University of London, video, vlog

2 comments so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

He is, like George Carlin, a brilliant comedian with a soft spot for science.

Categories: Life, Music, Videos; Tags: atheism, Australian, comedy, English, funny, humour, Life, Minchin, Music, philosophy, rational, rationalism, rationalist, sceptic, scepticism, singer-songwriter, song, Storm, Tim Minchin, video, YouTube

3 comments so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

How was that? Did you feel that something didn’t quite fit in the picture?

That is the music video for 海雪 (umiyuki, “Ocean Snow”) the first single by Jero (ジェロ), released last February in Japan. Jero is a young black American from Pittsburgh… who sings enka.

Enka is a form of Japanese popular music which was at its height in Japan during the postwar period. Its main themes are loss, loneliness, unfulfilled love, even suicide. Female singers of enka have been especially popular. I can’t help noticing some striking resemblances to Spanish copla; not only in the themes, but also in the staging, the perceived attitudes of the performers, their use of vibrato and the way both genres have gradually become regarded by their respective younger generations as “uncool” and affected.

For samples of enka, watch 修羅の花 (shura no hana, “Flower of Carnage”), the beautiful theme song for 修羅雪姫 (shurayukihime, “Lady Snowblood”) sung by Meiko Kaji and later reused by Tarantino in “Kill Bill”; or listen to 川の流れのように (kawa no nagare no yôni, “Like the Currents of the River”) by Hibari Misora, which at some point was proclaimed “the greatest Japanese song of all time” (?).

As Jerome C. White himself explains in an interview with CNN International, his maternal grandmother was a native of Yokohama who married an African American. Jerome was born and grew up in Pennsylvania, close to his Japanese grandmother, listening and singing enka even before he could understand the lyrics. Apparently, his debut has been a great success in Japan, where black urban cultures from the United States have been trendy for some years now (as one can gather by the surprisingly large number of shops selling hip-hop-related products in cities like Tokyo and Kyoto).

This form of strong cultural hybridisation is still rather unusual in Japan. Although we can find similar cases in other countries, where an “outsider” is “allowed” to succeed in an area that is traditionally perceived as idiosyncratic to that culture, Japan is (still) among the world’s most ethnically homogeneous countries. Of course, Jero is not the first performer of enka born outside Japan, but I don’t think that there has been any other gaijin before him who brought such distinctive traits of race, nationality, culture and language with him to the genre, all the while being supported by the industry and the media.

That said, I must confess that I can’t see the influence of rap in his music. Would you have been able to tell, had you listened to umiyuki with your eyes closed?

Categories: Japan, Music, Videos; Tags: American, black, culture, enka, Japan, Japanese, Jero, Music, singer, Umiyuki, USA, video

3 comments so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

Categories: Music, Videos; Tags: Berlin, German, Germany, Music, Schiller, Sehnsucht, video

One comment so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

ところで今日日本語のじゅぎょうをさいかいしました！

Categories: Japan, Japanese, Videos; Tags: 2007, 2008, トリプ, Ghost in the Shell, Japan, July, Music, September, trip, tripu, video, 日本

5 comments so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

Categories: Life, TV, Videos; Tags: atheism, atheist, BBC, Dawkins, dilemma, Hardtalk, interview, paradox, Richard, Richard Dawkins, video

One comment so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

I got to know him only yesterday, thanks to one of @ampajaro’s tweets announcing his death first thing in the morning. That was followed by a chain of entries coming from a few of the blogs I (helplessly try to) keep up with.

I have read such striking superlatives about this comedian that I youtubed him. After watching a few of his routines I now feel that I have to share and honour his talent. So here you have two pieces of different shows by George Carlin. Caution — strong opinions (and language) ahead.

The first video is basically about religion being a pile of bullshit (kudos, we need more of that nowadays):

The second video is a somewhat furious yet brilliant sermon against those who are against abortion. (I personally don’t agree with all of what Carlin says in this video. I am not against abortion. But unlike most of other left-wing people I know, I am not that sure that I am undoubtfully in favour of abortion, either. Also, I don’t buy the theory that equates abortion to women’s rights, and to “the choice of one woman”. In any case, I’m an atheist and my position has nothing to do with religion, tradition or customs, so I very much support — and enjoy — Carlin’s mockery of religion’s mean and simplistic approach to abortion):

What I admire the most about George Carlin is the technique — the round, perfectly-delivered script. He can speak for ten minutes without stumbling over a single syllable, without humming or hesitating. Weaving long enumerations of words or examples, putting the stress in the right place and stopping precisely where required.

And I love his strong and brave position on issues as sticky as religion, politics, taboos, gender, death, PC language and abortion. Even if at times he looks more like a fanatical preacher than a comedian and some of his arguments seem debatable to me. But hey, conservatism needs to be balanced. Don’t miss his “Seven dirty words” routine (“shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits”), which apparently caused a radio station to be sued and sparkled a major debate about censorship in the American airwaves. Here, the video audio in YouTube.

Categories: Politics, TV, Videos; Tags: Carlin, comedian, funny, George, George Carlin, humour, video

6 comments so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

One video for the left hemisphere of your brain. Mathematics, Japan and genius. Part of a documentary about the amazing Daniel Tammet.

The second video is aimed at your right hemisphere. So much beauty and so many ways to invoke it. Imogen Heap knows a few of them.

Categories: Japan, Music, Videos; Tags:

One comment so far        © 2006-2010 tripu        

“Say ‘What’ Again” by Jarratt Moody. A brilliant reinterpretation of one of “Pulp Fiction”‘s most memorable scenes:

Categories: Films, Videos; Tags:

No comments yet        © 2006-2010 tripu        

Categories: Videos; Tags:

5 comments so far        © 2006-2010 tripu