Tokidoki

The Second Annual Let's Film Festival

Top three things to do with the state-of-the-art video camera you bought in Japan:

3. Leave it in the box and wait for obsoleteness to increase its value as a kitsch item.

2. Make a sex tape in hopes that you’ll become famous and need it as an internet-exposure boosting PR stunt.

1. Join the 2nd Annual “Let’s Film Festival” in Fukuyama on April 22 and make a movie you can refer to anecdotally for the rest of your life!

Now, should you have already been through the box and sex-tape options, and are ready to put some serious mileage on your camera by, say, entering a film festival, here’s what you need to know:

Content
Entrants must produce one of the following:
A) a 30-second commercial for a product or service of your own creation
B) a five-minute film featuring three “ingredients”: a line, a prop and a location. These elements will be universal to all the movies entered and determined by way of a semi-democratic process. As for the rest of your film, the sky’s the limit.

Format
All films must be in digital format, burned to DVD and readable by common software programs (Windows Media Player or Quicktime).

Entrants
ANYONE is eligible to enter the Let’s Film Festival, be ye JET, NOVA, AEON, GEOS or otherwise acronym enabled, and whether you’re English or Japanese-speaking. Films in either language are welcome and make for a much more interesting playbill.

Timeframe
1) The deadline to announce your intent to participate is March 8. Please write us at letsfilmfestival@gmail.com with a team name and contact information for at least one of the participants. Teams may be of any size and you may enter as many times as you wish in as many different incarnations as you wish. Once you’ve signed up, we’ll send confirmation along with this year’s three ingredients.
2) The deadline to submit your finished film (and the event itself) is April 22.

Judging
Let’s Film Festival winners are determined by audience vote so it’s in your best interest to stock the place with friends, family and co-workers.

Details
Date: April 22, 2007
Time: From 4 pm til it ends
Place: Otagai-sama Yokocho, 1-11-20 Minami Miyoshi-cho, Fukuyama. (Close to Ito Yokado/Happy Town)
Contacts: Grahaeme Cowie or Natasha Mekhail at letsfilmfestival@gmail.com
Fee: Registration is free but there will be a small door fee to cover costs. All profits go to charity.
Inspiration: Check out last year’s films on the links below.

Hope you can make it. Now dust off your camera and Let’s Film Festival!

Let's Film Festival-Part One:The Movie Is Online

A Grand Review

The first ever “Let’s Film Festival” happened Sunday, June 25. Considered a “great success” by at least one of the attendees, the evening’s guests were not daunted by the monsoon-style rains or the fact that the film count shrunk to a mere four from the originally promised 12. In all, about 50 people with varying levels of English took in the film fest from a makeshift theatre in Fukuyama’s fashionable West End district.
(Rice paddies are still fashionable, right?)

As part of the competition, each film had to contain three elements. These were:
1. Prop: A rubber ducky
2. Location: A castle
3. Line: “Not hung well enough, I’m afraid.”

Not only did the two of us organize the event, we also produced one of the films. You can watch our little slice of cinematic genius, “Black to Basics: A Ninja Story,”below.
This link has a word file you can read. Also, here's the google video link, it's bigger, but possibly just as difficult to read. Please follow the links below to the other contributors who put their films online.

Josh Zimmerman’s blog plays host to “Pocky.” Not only the name of a tasty pretzel snack, “Pocky” is a Japanese-influenced spoof of Sylvester Stallone’s triumph-of-the-will classic. One word of caution, though: this movie may contain a montage.

Helen Truax and life-commitment-partner Jessie produced the short, sweet, yet sometimes disturbing “Philip Goes to Europe.” In this film, the title character (a rubber ducky finger puppet) sets out on a seemingly harmless tour of the Louvre. However, conflict arises when Philip finds himself experiencing an unrequited attraction to Venus de Milo.

The night’s winner was Jackie Hoffart (incidentally, a former Edmontonian) who wooed the audience with her film “Just Not Enough, I’m afraid.” A wind-up robot named Galaxy stars in this semi-animated short. Turns out the poor little thing has a lot of trouble with public transport and the same-system dating scene. Fortunately, the evening’s big think piece prompted more than enough votes for Jackie to take home the coveted Golden Ducky Award. See the movie on her blog.

Again, thanks to everyone who helped out and everyone who came to watch the films. A special thanks to Yoko and Rob who were super helpful in getting the space lined up.

Finally, here is the link to Liz's photos of the event. She came and shot some really nice black and whites and they're great so check them out.

Stay tuned for details about the next Let’s Film Festival which may or may not be held in Onomichi and may or may not contain subliminal messages urging viewers to drink tea.

Sakura Season

Cherry blossoms (sakura) mark the beginning of spring in Japan. The Japanese absolutely adore this seasonal marker. The whole country goes pink to commemorate it. From "sakura" Kit Kat bars in the grocery store to sakura inspired kimonos in the high end shops, there's no escaping the little flowers. What's really sad is every convenience store plays the song "Sakura Sakura" over and over all day. It's one of the songs Natasha is learning to play on the koto, and she's recently been warned that it's the Japanese equivalent of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" from sheer overexposure. Her koto sensei is not daunted and has suggested they play a picturesque duet of the song under a blooming tree.
Of course, this being our first spring in Japan, we've been taking it all in. A few weeks ago, we went to Kyoto and Osaka to see the trees. In Osaka especially, it seemed that the whole city was out in the park throwing picnics and sucking back the sake in sakura's honour.
Then, last weekend, we went to Fukuyama Castle with a bunch of friends to start the Hanami (flower viewing party) at noon! Did we "view" flowers? Maybe a little. You can see for yourself in the photo gallery.
The fun is still going on. Not til the last blossom blows off the trees will the sakura fanaticism end. We're not complaining.

Tokyo

Natasha and Grahaeme went to Tokyo last weekend to visit Jeff on his way back from Thailand. As always it was a blast seeing what Grahaeme would call "a baai" from home in Japan. We didn't get to show him around where we live but we got to hit Tokyo and do some wicked sight seeing and Karaoke singing. Natasha got some shopping done and Jeff and Grahaeme went and saw the Yasukuni shrine. Jeff took some great pictures while he was here.

Grahaeme may or may not have chosen Brian Adams for one of his Karaoke selections, but we can't really get our hate on for that. Maybe sometimes people just wanna sing a little Brian. Maybe some people just miss rock radio from back in Canada playin there Rush-Brian-Tragically Hip CanCon requirements. Maybe people who don't like Brian Adams are just jerks. Maybe.

Another thing we love about Japan are the crazy ads and signs. No one in the world compares with Japanese Ad Execs. Japan is a one country wrecking ball when it comes to weird adverts. This one's all about how you should turn off your phone. Or maybe it's about two crazy people activating giant killer cell phone robots to tear Tokyo to shreds. Who knows!!

Click here to see more photos.

Test Entry

There may be a few typos when I write, but i will try and catch them.

Birthday Party

Jesus. Looks like someone just turned another year older. Grahaeme turned 29 last Thursday and we all went out to enjoy a lovely ShabuShabu dinner. Shabushabu is the onomatopoeia for the sound beef makes when you dip it into a hot broth to cook it. One-two-three swipes and these razor thin slices of beef are cooked. As you can see there is a hot plate around the base of the broth bowl where you can sizzle the shit out of your beef if you want to. The meal was 2 hours all you can eat for around 26 bucks Canadajin. The meal also came with vegetables but seeing as this was our first red meat meal in a very long time, not many vegetables were consumed. I'd say Grahaeme ate none.

It was a really nice get-together with all the ALTs from work and their pardners. Saya, Eric, Nick, Josh, Jess, Jeremy and the rest. Tamaru-Sensei from city hall and Nori Fujita from Ichiritsu came out as well. To top the occasion off Natasha had a surprise for Grahaeme. She made a special (and especially delicious) chocolate cake with the number 30 on it. Very, very funny. It was a great dinner and we were both so happy to have everyone out to enjoy Grahaeme's 30 minus one birthday.

Check out the photogallery for more pics.

Grahaeme's Trip To Mihara

I sit behind a Social Studies teacher, Mr Kato, who is into walking pilgrimages all the time. He puts on his big old sun hat and goes walking from temple to temple. To keep track of how well he's doing, he wears a step counter to work. He's pretty serious about his walking. But the thing is that as he visits temples along the way, he takes a zillion photos and collects stamps in a little book he keeps. So this last weekend he invited me out to a temple with him in Mihara. It was up in the m ountains and there's been a cold snap recently, so it was a little chilly; but it was really nice. So Kato-sensei's book, like one of my sketchbooks but with a nicer cover and you collect stamps in it. When you visit a temple you can pay 300yen and the local priest/monk will write the temple's god name in lovely calligraphy. So he got a book for me that I have now used and when we visited the temple we got this done. (see picture to the right) Then we hit the Onsen, which was a salt water Onsen from the ocean and an all you can eat buffet. The view from the onsen is really nice looking out over the inland sea. You can watch the ships roll in and out of port, or just watch a little fisherman roll on the waves. We went to one other temple in Onomichi, which is a small city just 20 minutes away from Fukuyama. The temple we visited there was up on top of a hill, so we drove up and walked down. On the way home we stopped for a coffee in a little coffee shop on top pf the hill. It's sort of a mountain, but not really.

This blogs full of shit like this

So, Miyamjima is apretty interesting place. It's got a famous temple some lovely mountains and deer that come right up and bite you on the ass. Well not all of them come up to you and bite you on the ass, but these ones were certainly biting this guy. I can understand why so many Japanese tourists come to Banff and Jasper and try to feed the animals. Well, Japanese people from Hiroshima anyway. We headed out here on a Saturday after we had been in Hiroshima for a conference. We visited the Peace Museum on the Friday and then out here to Miyajima on Saturday.

One of the beautiful things about Japan is how much they love food. Everything the Japanese prepare always LOOKS great. Every 'ken' has different specialities and those specialities change from season to season. The seasonal food this time of year is oysters, so every place we went to was serving freshly caught oyster. Now i know that trying new food is one of those great things about travelling, but man I cannot eat those oysters! I try and try but it just does not happen.

Anyway, Miyajima is a really nice little island and theres lots to do. We managed to fit in a visit to the local aquarium, where they have all sorts of crazy looking fish and aquatic life. There was one huge tank right as you walk in that was full af around 25 different kinds of fish and 2 sting rays, plus a couple sea turtles to boot. But the catch was there were only one, maybe two of each kind of fish. They must just catch what they need for the aquarium, then when it dies catch another one.

It was a very beautiful place and once we figure out how to get the photo gallery up and runing there will be a lot more pictures of it to look at.

We've got a lot of catching up to do...

Well, there you go. This is the format through which we will be communicating with home. To some extent for friends i guess, but mostly this is for the moms. So they stop calling. Just Kidding.

I guess the only place to start is to describe where we live and how. At this point it should be clear, since neither of us have shown up for work or come out for beers, that we live in Japan. So this is a break down of where and how.

]]> This is the view form our front door. The street is relatively quiet and the neighbourhood is full of kids, so we get more shouting and squeeky bikes than the roar of cars. Every so often a potato salesman will roll by in his truck and blast a dreary song about potatoes. It's like an ice cream van, but think hot potato treats instead of ice cream.

This is the interior of our apartment, this is Natasha in various areas of the house (but most of that was covered in the DVD so we wont repeat.)

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