Well, as far as this holiday is concerned...
I spent the day relaxing, doing some last-minute souvenir shopping and sending some junk home by mail. Now, I'm going to pack the remainder of my suitcase, set the alarm for 4:00 and try to get some sleep.
It's been fun yet again; thank you, Japan. :)
I'm going to try and keep this blog alive, writing about stuff that caught my eye for some reason. You might have noticed the extra "Anime" category; I think more categories will be added in the near or distant future.
I expect to have some more pictures uploaded by the end of the week, provided that my house wasn't robbed clean in the past few days. ;)
Cheers, K.
I went to see Gedo Senki in the Apollo Cinema in Tennoji the day before yesterday, and I must say "Job well done" to Goro Miyazaki.
Gedo Senki (or Tales from Earthsea) is the latest feature film from Studio Ghibli, based on the Tales from Earthsea novels by Ursula K. Le Guin and directed by Hayao Miyazaki's son Goro.
It's nice to have a somewhat more serious movie coming from Ghibli -not that the other movies are bad, but a change of pace can turn out positive, and in this case, it did.
Gedo Senki is based on the third novel, The Farthest Shore, where Ged in his later years comes across a boy named Arren (schizophrenic, or so it seems) and a farmgirl called Therru. We have villains too; an evil witch and her henchmen, although not as comical as the villains in Laputa.
In fact; there is not much humour in this film at all. It's dark and serious, but without descending too heavy into gruesome details. I was also surprised... No, let's not give that away, but it's safe to say that something at the end was kind of something you rarely see in a Ghibli movie.
Konpirasan in Kotohira
Yesterday, I went to Kotohira to climb the 1300+ steps to the shrine up there. I heard the view is spectacular from there, so I hopped on the Shinkansen to Okayama, to transfer to a Limited Express to Kotohira on the island of Shikoku.
It was the first time I've been on Shikoku at all by the way.
Kotohira is a hole, plain and simple. There is nothing there, except for a run down shopping arcade and a gazillion souvenir shops. And the temple, of course. ;)
It took me about 90 minutes to get to the top; there is a little shrine where the steps end. And indeed; the view is stunning. You can see Kotohira and its surroundings, and really worth the effort.
My feet didn't hurt as much though; I guess there is a difference between slouching around in the city and going somewhere with a mission. :)
There is one major downside to climbing those steps in the sunshine, worth 35 degrees Celcius; sweat runs down your body like a river, and at the end of your descend, you smell foul. And then you still have to get back home. Oh, those poor people around me in the subway! O_o
So I made a brief stop in Okayama for some food and a spray can of deodorant to get rid of the worst; when I got back at the apartment, I tossed everything in the washing machine and took a long hot bath and a beer.
Today, I'm going to do some last-minute shopping, pack my suitcase and clean the apartment, as for tomorrow, we have to get up at 5:00 to catch our flight to Tokyo, get the connecting flight to Amsterdam and effectively bring this holiday to a close, unfortunately.
Cheers, K.