Waseda High School parade

I took these photos back on the 23rd, more than a week ago. I was on my way back to the lab when I saw a parade of school clubs from the nearby Waseda High School (which is separated to Junior and Senior high, I assume the ones I saw were from Junior High)

Not something you'll see everyday, so I whipped out my phone and started snapping.

Review of KINGYO at Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow

Marc Saint-Cyr (you can check out his blog here) had posted a review of KINGYO on Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow. (one of my favourite blogs on J-films! I gave them a nearly-completed version of the film for the 1st anniversary celebration party they held last week)

Here's an excerpt.

What especially makes "Kingyo" a success is how its experimentation never reduces it to a chilly or pretentious aesthetic exercise, but instead remains constantly in service to its characters and their emotional states. Often, the professor and the young woman will inhabit the same space, yet they are nonetheless isolated through the split screen. There is also the scene on a bridge overlooking Akihabara, with special attention given to the two characters’ hands resting close to each other on a railing. Through such moments in the film, Yeo clearly focuses on the distance that can grow between two people, be it in the case of the man and his wife or him and his mistress.

Read the full review.

Remember, if you live in Tokyo, you can catch a test screening of Kingyo at Shinjuku Wald 9 next Friday.

Additional photos from the Sagamiko haikyo adventure

Just to expand upon my previous post about my ruins-exploring adventure at Sagamiko, here are some additional photos.

Exploring the ruins in Sagamiko

Ruins of buildings and abandoned places, known as 廃墟　haikyo in Japanese, are ripe for exploration and photography among enthusiasts. There are many blogs and websites dedicated to them, books published as well. Tokyo Times, for example, has a lot of wonderful photos of these tragic, lonely places.

Early this morning, Niklas, me and a mysterious lady friend embarked upon our own ruins-exploring adventure, which, come to think of it, is almost like treasure-hunting in a console role-playing game, but without the treasure, or leveling up. We headed off to Sagamiko, a town at the Kanagawa Prefecture, the train ride lasts an hour from our place.

New short film, AFTERNOON RIVER, follow-up to KINGYO

So yes, I have completed KINGYO last week, and gearing up for its screening at the FUYAJO CINEMA FESTIVAL in Shinjuku Wald 9 on the 5th of June.

Time to rest? Barely. After taking a breather for a couple of days, I began work on my latest short film, AFTERNOON RIVER.

Where are they now? The cast of SUMMER VACATION 1999

Last Friday when I was sitting in a class taught by the Director of Photography, Kenji Takama (the second DEATH NOTE film, WELCOME BACK, MR MCDONALD), he showed us a couple of his earlier films. One of them was a 1988 film called SUMMER VACATION 1999 (1999年の夏休み), directed by Shusuke Kaneko (the two DEATH NOTE films, AZUMI 2) The film is an adaptation of a shounen-ai (boy love) manga called Tōma no Shinzō トーマの心臓 (Heart of Thomas, or Thomas' Heart) by Moto Hagio.

Here's the synopsis from IMDB.

The Saddest T-Shirt In The World

I was hanging out at the Nakano Broadway shopping center when I saw this T-shirt.