*fangirl squeal*

Okay, this is going to be another extraordinarily long post, so you might want to go get a drink of water or something.

Anyway.

This morning I got up, did laundry, and then went out on an ADVENTURE. This particular adventure was supposed to take me to Kitanoutenmangu, but when I got there, the shrine was closed and there seemed to be some sort of demonstration/protest going on outside, so I figured that it was a good idea to skip it. So instead I wandered around the northern half of Kyoto for half the morning, and somehow wound up at another hole-in-the-wall shrine, this one promising success in sports! There were seriously basketballs left as offerings. Also, there were a variety of articles about various teams who had come to pray at the shrine and then won whatever it was that they were competing for plastered up on the side of the honden (see previous post for explanation). Oh, and I picked up a crazy interesting piece of political propaganda. It was, once again, a flyer for the recent election, but one of the slogans on the flyer was

神道の心は日本の心

The heart of Shinto is the heart of Japan

Apparently she (the candidate) was endorsed by some sort of Shinto political society. Not surprisingly, she's part of the 自由民主党 (LDP; the conservative party of Japan).

In any case, I wound up wandering out of northern Kyoto all the way to Nijo Castle, and then I hopped on bus and rode to Kyoto Station because there was a movie theatre near there showing the new Studio Ghibli movie. Fortunately, I was paranoid, and gave myself plenty of time to get to the movie theatre, 'cause I got seriously lost in spite of (or maybe because of) my map. After wandering around fruitlessly, wondering why none of the streets had the right names, I asked someone, who told me very politely that I was on the wrong side of the station. DUH. So then I had an adventure through the station (seriously, the thing is like a friggin' labyrinth) and managed to make it to the other side, and lo and behold, my map suddenly started working! So I went to the movie theatre, which happened to be on the fifth floor of a mall, and found out that they offer student discounts, but I had forgotten my student ID, so I had to pay 1800 yen to get in. (That's a little more than $18, for anyone wondering.) The crazy thing, though, was that when I went up to buy my ticket, the woman behind the counter asked me which seat I wanted. Apparently movie theatres in Japan are assigned seating. SWEET. Even better, I got a really good seat because I was by myself. (The other people in the program couldn't come today! Sadness.)

So I got to wait until 10 minutes before the movie started, which was when they opened the doors. And guess what! Movie theatre floors in Japan aren't sticky! What craziness is this?! Also, it was stadium seating (with really, really comfortable seats), so there seriously wasn't a bad seat in the house.

So at the beginning of the movie, they had a little "please turn off your cell phones and don't try videotaping this or else" announcement, and then there were trailers.

Trailer #1: Redline, which appears to be an anime movie from Madhouse about a man with a mullet that is larger than I am tall who is competing in some sort of intergalactic race. I may have been biting back giggles for the entire trailer.

Fast cars, big hair, kind of Gurren Lagann-esque animation. Yay?

Then there was a trailer for Cats and Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. It was only slightly better in Japanese. Only slightly. A lot of lines were changed. Everyone was just sort of staring at the screen and twitching slightly.

Then there was a trailer for How to Train Your Dragon...in Japanese. But it was called ヒックとドラゴン (Hikku and Dragon).

Then there were two trailers for Kamen Rider movies, which looked ridiculous and cheesy. WHOO.

Then there was a trailer for this Korean movie (Japanese title translates to "His and My Castaway Diary" but the English title is "Castaway on the Moon"), which actually looks pretty interesting. Here's an English trailer, for those of you who don't want to suffer through the Japanese one.

So then the movie started and MY GOODNESS. It was wonderful. And I could understand about 90% of what they were saying. (I was really worried, because I've never watched a full movie in Japanese without subtitles before. I've never even watched an episode of something without subtitles.) Ranting and raving about its epicness below. No spoilers, but skip if you don't want to be bored by my swooning.

Synopsis: I don't remember a whole lot about the original book this is based off of (The Borrowers), but it stuck to the parts I remember surprisingly well. (They even get in the tea kettle of The Borrowers Afloat at the end.)

Boy (named Shou) with undisclosed illness (it's explained later in the movie, but like I said, no spoilers) comes to live with his grandmother for a bit over the summer because his parents are divorced and too busy to take care of him. Grandmother is also too busy to take care of him, apparently, because she never seems to be around, and instead leaves most of the taking-care-of-ailing-grandsons to her almost entirely incompetent hired hand, Haru.* Shou is, needless to say, extremely lonely, but is delighted to find that there are 借りぐらし (borrowers, although the literal translation is "people who live by borrowing") living in his house. Unfortunately, the borrowers aren't so thrilled about being found out. DRAMA ENSUES.

Animation is, as always, excellent, as is the music. (The theme song is, surprisingly enough, sung by a French woman. She has a weird accent in Japanese, but it's still super pretty.) In addition, whoever did the sound effects needs a pay raise. Seriously. There's this incredible scene where Arrietty and her father are going out borrowing for the first time, and the sound effects make me swoon. Also, there's another scene where the perspective is shifting back and forth between Arrietty and Shou, and the sounds also shift and...well, it was also pretty swoon inducing.

Also, Arrietty's father is pretty much AWESOME. As is Supira (a character who I don't remember from the original Borrowers series, so I bet he's been added).

Also also, the borrowing scenes? SO EXCELLENT.

Also also also, that movie made me even more terrified of crows than I already am. Seriously.**

It's a surprisingly melancholy movie. If you've read The Borrowers, you basically know how it's going to end, and the other main character (Shou), as he says partway through the movie, is "in the middle of dying." That said, it doesn't get overbearingly sad, although there were certainly some parts where I was getting a little bit teary. (Teary from the awesomeness, of course!)

Overall, not one of Ghibli's absolute best movies, but as a non-Miyazaki, it's phenomenal. I would say it's about on the same par as Kiki's Delivery Service or Ponyo. It's really short (92 minutes) so it doesn't have quite the time to develop its characters the way Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away (the two best Ghibli movies, in my humble opinion) do.

[/swooning over 「借りぐらしのアリエッティ」***]

So after that I rode the subway home and swooned a little bit more.

And then I got to eat at my host dad's restaurant. (He was kind of like, "Well, you came all this way, and it's your last weekend, so you might as well, okay?" which meant "DO IT.") I went really early (5 o' clock) before the normal huge wave of customers comes (because it's a really tiny restaurant), and IT WAS DELICIOUS. I think he is some kind of cooking wizard. But it was also bizarre, 'cause he kept using all the really polite service terms, and then switching into slangy Kyoto dialect, which kind of threw me for a loop. (はい、めしあがりください。無理しないでね。）So anyway, yes. I have now eaten at one of the hundred best restaurants in Kyoto. AND IT WAS DELICIOUS.

Tomorrow we're taking the Shinkansen (bullet train, for all you Japan-traveling n00bs) to Miyajima, where we'll be spending the night in a ryokan (traditional Japanese hotel). I have no idea if I will have internet access or not, so if you don't hear anything from me, don't assume that I'm dead. I could just be stranded in the middle of nowhere. I will definitely have internet on Tuesday, though, so if I go silent, it'll only be for a day.

Also, it is really hot right now. Auuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. 9 o' clock at night and 90 degrees. This kind of heat should be illegal!

(Thank goodness for vending machines. Today I had C.C. Lemon, which one of the other program participants is probably going to wind up marrying, because he loves it that much. I must admit that it is pretty good. And apparently has the same amount of vitamin C as 70 lemons. SCARY.)

M'kay, well, I'm gonna go pretend that I'm not melting to death and answer some emails. (Okay, some email, no plural. But it's the thought that counts.) Write more later.

*Who I thought was a man for the first fifteen minutes of the movie. Then Haru used "kashira" (a super girly word for "I wonder") and I thought, "Oh my goodness, Haru is a gay man!" Then I realized Haru the gay man had breasts. HELLO, I AM A GENIUS.

Also, I spent most of the movie mentally calling her Hatsue and expecting her to start killing babies.

**Anime has made me scared of many, many things. Some things I have learned to be scared of because of anime:

Dolls

Blue butterflies

Johnnies

Yellow scarves

Knives of any kind

The internet

Freaky deer god things

Chat rooms

Black goo

DEAD LEAVES AUUUUGH

Ramen

Older sisters

Onsens

Bunny girls

...and more...

Points if you can actually identify what each of those comes from.

**Potential translations:

The Borrower's Arrietty

Arrietty of the Borrowers

Arrietty the Borrower

The Borrower Arrietty

Knowing the weird naming scheme they use, though, it'll wind up with a completely different title.