James Andrews

I’ve been a fan of Ghibli films for a long time. I have most of the ones released on DVD in my collection, and have enjoyed watching them over and over. The artwork is always incredible, the stories are always interesting, and this usually keeps me coming back for more.

“Karigurashi no Arrietti” is the story of a family of tiny people who live under a house somewhere in Japan, and a young boy who is staying in the house to recuperate from an illness he has just recovered from. The family survives by foraging around the house. Using secret passageways in the house, and taking what they can. A cube of sugar here, a tissue or two there. Arrietti the daughter of the family goes out with her father, their primary forager for the first time. He shows her around the house, and where to get stuff.

Their “borrowing” though hasn’t gone un-noticed. The boy see’s Arrietti in the garden when he first arrives at the house. The old woman who serves as the Maid at the house has thought to have seen them as well.

Visually the movie is stunning. The watercolor like backgrounds are beautiful to look at. The attention to the little details like the droplet of water that rolls down the leaf when Arrietti pushes the leaf aside is what sets Ghibli apart.
The sounds are made custom for the movie as I saw on a Japanese television show, which showed them being made, are awesome, and that is where it leaves off.

The thing that I have liked about Ghibli movies in the past is the sense of adventure. I felt in Ponyo that sense of adventure was missing, and the movie just kind of went nowhere. I get the same feeling with “Karigurashi no Arrietti”. There’s a lot of character build up, but the story just kind of dullens out. Where’s the epic chase? It’s non-existant.

If you watch Ghibli movies for the art, it’s great for the theater, but I think you’re better off renting the DVD if you want to see this movie.

Recently I went to Japan to visit my wife. While we and a few of my relatives were at “Tokyo Disney” we stopped at a convenience store called “News Day”. We were looking for chocolate, but what we found was Banana flavored Kit Kats. I decided to pick one up and give it a try. I waited until my return to the US where I opened the bar up at work and proceeded to cut it into 5 pieces to share with my co-workers. I grabbed the bar, and it started to melt where my fingers touched it. Leading me to believe the base was a white chocolate. The flavor is that of fake banana flavoring. Reminding me a lot of the flavor of banana Runts. The texture was that of a normal chocolate kit kat.

While the concept is interesting, I can’t find myself buying a whole lot of these. I prefer the original.

As I write this blog post, I am on my way back to Boston. I am on Air Canada to Torronto, and then off to Boston MA. This morning before I left my wife’s house I checked in online. In doing so I changed seat locations. Little did I know, I had just won the Airline lottery. The Airline lottery is simple. If you win, it means you get an entire row of seats all to yourself. I am on a 13hr flight to Torronto, and I have 3 seats, and no one sitting in the seat directly in front of me so I don’t have a seat reclined in front of me. Making PC usage much easier. Yay for Japanese holidays, with the Japanese traveling domestically! <3<3<3

I have been in Japan for the last 9 days. It’s been fun. My wife and I did a little sight seeing, and we went shopping with her father at Costco and window shopping at Ikea. I took pictures of a Japanese cemetery, the Rainbow Bridge, and a few other locations. My first time driving a car in Japan. It’s not so hard once you get accustom to driving on the opposite side of the road. The more complex aspect of it is when you are on really narrow streets, or when turning onto a very busy road from a store or restaurant. You really have to have patients, and if you aren’t patient you really have to learn patients. The directions and wiper controls are switched so many times I wanted to signal, I would turn on the wiper blades instead. Oh yeah good times.

Sunday night I went with my wife to a post wedding, wedding party. Kind of on the lines of a Mr. and Mrs. in the US. A friend rents a location, and charges admission, though its usually the party room of a restaurant and instead of paying $5 or $10 it’s more like $60-$100. It pays for the meal that you are all about to eat, drinks, and then a little bit of money goes to the Bride and Groom. The party started off with appetizers being put out in front of everyone, and then soon after a small salad. A toast was made by a friend of the happy couple. Next was a very long speech by the Misses, and then a very long speech from the Mister. Followed by many long speeches by close friends. I think we went through 15 minutes of speeches before we were able to start eating the food that was growing cold on our table. The restaurant should have waited to deliver the food.

Towards the end of the party we played party games. The first was pastry version of russian roulette. There were 6-8 little Japanese pastries. All of them had An-paste (a Japanese sweet) except for one. The one had mustard in it. Everyone’s name gets put in a bag and if they draw your name you get to come up and get a pastry. If yours doesn’t have the mustard then you get to choose a name from the bag to be the next victim. When you get to 3 pastries left then the game changes. A name is chosen and the 2 people closest to them and that person each go up and choose a pastry. This part of the game I will call “Poker Face”. The idea is for each to member to eat their pastry. Then hold a straight face. Including the person who ate the mustard. The Mister and Misses then have to guess who had the mustard. Not sure if anything special happens, but my wife (who had the mustard) won a very cute Santa snow globe for being the victim, and for holding a straight face. I had An-paste, which I don’t care for, but it was better than getting the mustard.

Currently I am on my way to Japan. I decided this time around to take Air Canada. I have flown with them 4 times to Japan, so this is trip #5 with them. I am absolutely loving the experience. First my flight from Boston to Toronto was excellent. The economy class seat had an excellent amount of leg room. In between my chair and the chair next to me was a power outlet for my laptop. Since I only had slept 4 hours last night I slept. I was comfortable and was able to sleep well. I wasn’t woken for drink service, which was appreciated. YAY.

Now I am on my second flight from Toronto to Narita. It’s a 13hr flight. I have my window seat, not as much leg room as the previous flight, but about what I am use too. Ready for the long flight ahead.

I am assuming that I am on a new plane. The seats don’t look old. On each of the backs of the seats are private entertainment centers (on both planes). With a really good selection of movies, tv and music to keep you entertained. To the left of the 7-8″ LCD display is a USB port. I haven’t tried it yet, but I bet it’s for charging your USB devices. Either that or for the game console with they seem to have not available on the flight. On this plane there is an additional feature on the right of the display. That would be a 110/60Hz outlet. ROCK ON! I have my computer plugged in. If you don’t like Air Canada’s entertainment selection, you can watch my own.

I feel spoiled, and I am loving it. 13hrs of being able to watch my media, program and generally do what I want other than surf the net. Which I am sure is on their list of things to do since other airlines (ie Airtran) already have working high speed wifi on their flights

Now that I’ve praised Air Canada, I have a few comments that I hope they address. The seat in front of me falls back too far. My laptop is 50% on the tray and 50% off the tray. With it protruding into my stomach. If the tray came out a little further that would make me a little happier. The other thing. I’m hungry, yet there are no snacks for sale on the plane. I have to wait for the next scheduled “snack”. The waitress said she could give me some of the little snacks they gave out at the beginning of the flight, but well they sucked, and I am not that hungry.

If only the man in the isle wasn’t asleep so I could go into my luggage and get my bag of snicker doodles.

Friday night I spent the night at my parent’s house. While I was laying down getting ready to sleep. My mother was sitting at her computer trying to figure out if she still had Canadian citizenship or not. I say this because a few years back my mother went through the process of gaining her American citizenship. Come to find out that in order for her to lose her Canadian citizenship she needs to go to the Canadian Consulate and renounce it. That though is not the point of the post. My mother was born in New Brunswick canada. My father Was born in Athol, MA, USA. There is a law in Canada that states if you are born outside Canada and at least one of your parents is Canadian citizen at the time of your birth, then you are considered a Canadian citizen. This means that my sister, brothers, and I all seem to have dual citizenship with the US and Canada. While the US may not recognize our dual citizenship. Canada does, and so do many other countries.

Why is this important. Well at my current age, it’s not as important as it would have been say 10 years ago. Japan and many other countries have what is called “Working Holiday Visa” agreements with Canada. Which would have allowed me to go to Japan and work for a year while I was there. I feel a little sad that I missed out on the opportunity to live and work in Japan back when I was younger.

If you are a citizen of any other country an one of your parents is a Canadian citizen you may want to investigate getting your canadian citizenship. It may open a lot of doors for you that you didn’t realize you had.