Regina Glei's Blog, page 33

Intermission

This week’s entry is going to be a bit short, since I am running on low batteries.

It was a draining week at work. Although interesting, those workshops and trainings that I sometimes do are sucking energy out of me like a vampire hanging at my throat.

I am a bit ripe for holidays it seems. Well, one more month and there will be Golden Week and a short trip to Taiwan.

One of the signs of drainage is that I can’t get into bed… I’m up until 3 in the morning playing out scenes I am going to write in a sort of day-dreaming state. That in itself is nothing unusual and I have done that ever since I can remember, but at the moment it’s a bit extreme. When it gets to this level I can usually take that as a sign of being a bit over-worked.

I am entirely immersed in my good old Dome of Souls world again and I shall give in to these urgings and turn that into word-count now = go off-line. Cheers!

Writing Progress Report

So, what’s happening on the writing front?

Quite a lot (as always):

1) Revised version of Dark Matters. After giving up waiting for Edge SF and Fantasy to re-issue the revised version of Dark Matters (they sat on it doing nothing for over a year), I managed to get the rights back and am putting the revised edition out myself now. I’d very much like to have the book ready before the Hal-Con which happens on the 12th and 13th of April. Yuk! That’s in four weeks! It will be quite a race Let’s see if I (or rather CreateSpace) manage… The new Dark Matters has a new title: The Glow of the Dark and it has grown from 33,000 to 45,000 words.

2) That One Minute – my second novella with Dark Quest Books – is finished, the galley proofs are checked and now it’s up to Dark Quest to release the book. I don’t know yet when that will happen. It’s all a waiting game in this business (pained smile). Here is a bit of an excerpt from what I like to call a fantasy horror comedy

3) Hagen 3: It’s finished, last revisions are happening, the cover is already commenced to the great Katoh sensei and I’m excepting to get it around Japan’s Golden Week at the end of April / beginning of May. The actual book which concludes the weird adventures of my favorite alchemist will probably be available sometime around July or August.

4) My first full length novel with Dark Quest, the beginning of a high fantasy trilogy, is also in the making and it will probably see the light of day some time in 2015.

5) Two more novels are finished for quite a while already: A space opera and a historical fantasy/sf hybrid. Since I am currently pretty tired of traditional publishing attempts, I am contemplating whether to go the indie-pub route as well or whether continue to submit the beasts. With lottery-like odds it is hard not to get frustrated. I shall read some more Dean Wesley Smith advice and decide later.

6) Another contemporary fantasy I have written at the end of 2013 is now in the revision process and I’m intending to submit it to the Odyssey critique service and then again the question what to do with it once it had gone through final revisions. Try the traditional publishing lottery or forget about that and go on my own.

7) Since the books under points 5 and 6 can all stand alone but could also be the beginnings of series, I found myself at a loss as to what to write next now that the Hagen trilogy is finished. Which series to pursue? The answer is apparently none of them!

Instead I have big plans… it’s back to the Dome of Souls, ladies and gentlemen. It just does not leave me alone.

I don’t know yet if I will really write it all again (all that stuff originally written in TV script format (some hints about that here)) but at the moment something is foul in the state of Lei Lao.

It’s the year Lei Lao 898 and thus of course no characters from the “Dome Child” are around anymore. But the Dome of Souls is going strong and messes with the lives of Lei Lao’s, Jove’s, Vana’s and Shavendra’s successors in the conglomerate of Tonasa.

I’m not even looking at my old TV scripts, I’m writing the novel from scratch out of sheer memory, following the main plot lines and letting it have a new, reborn life of its own. It was just vexing me too much to have “Dome Child” as the only “result” of the ten years I have already spent constructing my future history of mankind, which spans many hundred years and which is held together by the Dome of Souls.

It’s amazing to now revisit the characters of the second leg in this (so far) six-legged monster, my hapless heroes Floyd and Marusar, and to let my lovely villain Master Darnar pull the strings again.

I don’t know yet how long it will take me to write this beast anew and how epic (= long) it will be, but I expect it to see the light of day maybe in early 2015? Let’s see how the Dome of Souls and I will be getting along

The Hobbit – Desolation of Smaug Review

So, two weeks ago I went to see The Hobbit – The Desolation of Smaug finally, at a huge cinema next to Kawasaki station in latest IMAX and 3D technology.

Overall I liked it, but I also definitely liked the first Hobbit movie or the Lord of the Ring movies better. It’s always an expectation game of course, too. I did not have high expectations towards the first Hobbit movie and was positively surprised that I could live with it despite being a bit of a LOTR fan.

Now of course the expectations towards part 2 were high and maybe that is one of the reasons for why I felt disappointed in several areas.

Before the “critique” here is what I liked about the movie.

Legolas is back and his evil daddy (I didn’t realize in the first part of the Hobbit that Thranduil was Legloas’ daddy) is pretty awesome. Half of a miracle that such a nasty father can have such a nice son. I found the blue artificial looking contact lenses of Legolas a bit thick, but anyway.

The humans were nicely characterized too, the honorable Bard and the nasty lord of Lake Town plus his sidekick were nicely done and portrayed.

But now let’s turn to the issues I had with Hobbit 2:

1) Movement:

Maybe it was not even such a good idea to watch it in IMAX 3D. My adrenalin level was high, due to driving to the theater by car, which still costs me quite some courage, and that may have played a part in it. But it was sort of a roller coaster thing and sometimes I had to avert my eyes and started feeling woozy… I found the whole movie very strenuous for the eyes. Usually I have no problem with 3D, this was the first time I did have a problem.

The constant movement got mightily on my nerves. Also with Smaug, just hold still for one second please so that I can take a good look at you! Constant movement loses its appeal if not counterbalanced with stillness. The barrel ride also didn’t knock my socks off. It was fun, yeah, but what does it add to the story? It was an action sequence for the 3D’s sake and not for the story’s sake.

2) Logic:

Of course this is fantasy, and yet… 5000 tons of gold do not liquefy in 5 minutes, not even with dragon fire….　This is about exceeding the strangeness budget – every story/movie has a strangeness budget (I’m sure I mentioned the strangeness budget in whatever other blog entry of the past three years or so). In principle every reader/movie goer is prepared to suspend his/her disbelief for a while. If I’m going to read a fantasy story or watch a fantasy movie the strangeness budget is of course much higher than when I watch a drama or a documentary. And yet, that does not mean that you can do whatever you want, things must be believable in the realm you are dealing with. I am ready to believe in dragons and wizards when I watch something like the Hobbit, but liquefying tons and tons of gold in five minutes is exceeding the leeway that I am giving the story as a reader/viewer, stuff like that throws me out of the movie and has this “pff” effect that usually you desperately want to avoid as the author or movie maker.

The thing that vexed me most though was the stupid back entrance. Why do they need to go in via the back entrance? Did I miss anything? Smaug is asleep, unless he has rigged the front entrance there is no reason why they couldn’t walk in at the front. Especially because in the end Smaug leaves via the front entrance and Bilbo too without any harm done, so what’s this whole show about needing to find the back entrance? Then, would Smaug leave his treasure and his enemies behind and fly an attack against Lake Town? Hmmmm….

3) Characters:

I can’t say I liked Thorin so much here… the tormented hero theme worked wonderfully in part 1 but not here, suddenly he abandons his heirs Fili and Kili? He is totally ungrateful to Bilbo all the time, despite him getting them out of the Elven prison and finding the key hole at the back entrance? And the entire key hole issue angered me too: Thorin and the other dwarves give up just like that, sun’s down, no key hole, see ya later? So it again has to be Bilbo who finds the key hole and stays until the moon comes up?

Then sending Bilbo into the dragon’s lair just like that? Smaug knows the smell of dwarfs, fine, but at least Thorin could send Bilbo off and not Balin. And when they meet again he gives him not even a pat on the back but – you got the arkenstone? and blocks his way with a sword? All this added up to me not liking Thorin anymore. I think there is a fine line between a villain being mean and a hero being unkind. You expect the villain to be mean and forgive him more easily, but a hero being unkind and ungrateful turns the milk sour…

Then I also have a great issue with Bilbo. I cannot shake the feeling that Bilbo is reduced to a back character when in a group. Alone he is fine and the initial confrontation with Smaug is awesome but otherwise Martin Freeman gets lost in the crowd. He just doesn’t fill a room. Elijah Wood managed to fill the room, he has a bigger presence than Freeman despite having been so awfully young when Lord of the Rings was happening.

The dwarves were also less distinguishable than before. Fili got a much bigger part and “shone”, but a bit at the expense of the others who would have deserved more time and room.

And last but not least, would Tauriel fall in love with a dwarf so easily? It was a nice twist, but it was all happening too quickly and came out of nowhere and was not believable to me either.

Oh, and Gandalf… also Gandalf is happily abandoning his friends to go off on a different quest? Hmmmmm… All this reminded me of the good old RPG rule – do not split up the group…

All in all the Hobbit has turned pretty darn dark. I admit that I never read the Hobbit, only the Lord of the Rings as a teenager, but it feels like nothing much is left of the original children’s tale.

Anyway, I shall buy it on DVD nevertheless once it comes out here and watch it again and I also want to watch the final part, but I am not entirely happy with part 2 I must say…

Rolling Stones at Tokyo Dome

Another band I can strike off my “bucket list” of bands to see before they die (sorry for the cynicism), other such bands include(ed) Judas Priest and Eric Clapton, or Bon Jovi for example. Another band on that list was/is the Rolling Stones.

Despite a steep ticket price of 18,000 yen (depending on the exchange rate that’s between 180 and 220 USD, or 150 to 180 Euro or so) I decided to go together with a Japanese friend, since in the Stones’ case it’s really a race against time. After all the gentlemen are between 66 and 72 years old already!

They had come to Japan again after an eight year pause and did three gigs in Tokyo Dome, which holds about 50,000 people = 150,000 tickets. Not bad.

There had been a lottery for the tickets and I “won” some for the last of their 3 gigs on the 6th of March.

The queues for the goodies were insane… when my friend and I arrived around 17:45 at the venue (official start was 18:30) the guardsmen at both goodies queues said it would take an hour to reach the booths. They presumably wouldn’t start at 18:30 sharp, but nevertheless we gave up waiting in the cold and good that we did, since inside the Dome they also had a small goods stand, which we managed to get to after a mere 20 minute wait and my friend was able to buy the desired t-shirts.

The Stones started at 19:00 and the additional half hour of waiting was necessary to let the 50,000 find their seats. The first song was Jumping Jack Flash and the start of two hours of non-stop action.

It’s pretty amazing what the 70 year old Mick Jagger is still doing there. He is hopping and running around on stage from left to right, which is almost a hundred meters and down the catwalk in the middle as if he was 30.

The amount of energy he still has in that super thin body is staggering. He only paused for two songs, which were sung by Keith Richards. Although they are the same age, Mick seems so much fitter than Keith, which maybe was the trigger for a lady some rows behind me to cry, awwwww…

A word about the audience. Everything was there, from young to old. A few rows in front of me a young European looking guy in his twenties was dancing around like mad and right in the row behind me stood an old Japanese gentleman, of at least 70 years, maybe more, who was shaking his fist and clapping with a shy smile on his face, so cute! I wanted to ask him how often he has seen the Stones already and since when he is their fan, but he seemed too absorbed to be disturbed. So, the fans are of all ages and that was wonderful to see.

I had been lucky by the way and the lottery had given us pretty good seats, arena, B block (only A block between the stage and us) a little to the left side but still with a pretty good view to the stage.

Back came Mick and rocked on. I only have one greatest hits album of the Stones and yet knew maybe two thirds of the songs. And yes, they did me the favor to play my two favorites: Sympathy for the Devil and of course Satisfaction (last song).

For Sympathy for the Devil, Mick showed up in a giant orange/black feather cape – uhhh!



Two special Japanese things happened as well. For one song, a Japanese rock’n roll veteran, the about by now 50 something years old guitarist and singer Tomoyasu Hottei was on stage as well. I even went to one of his concerts a couple of years ago. He also happens to be an actor and his best and most memorable performance is (at least in my opinion) the villain in the movie “Samurai Fiction” – a hilarious samurai comedy which you should try to see if you have the chance.

They also had a Japanese choir on stage for one of the songs and all the Japanese guest musicians looked so happy and excited to be there with the Stones

Mick was talking in (horrible pronunciation) Japanese quite a lot, kudos to him to have remembered all these phrases!

All in all this was a night worth remembering and yes, it was worth its steep price (in great contrast to the very disappointing Bon Jovi gig). The Stones are not an iconic band for nothing and I’m very glad to have had the chance to see them. Rocking for more than fifty years, and still going strong, wow, that’s amazing.

Smaugie?

I feel like writing an update about car adventures. I know, they are still trivial for the rest of the world, but for me they are BIG… Smaug-sized so to say… (more about Smaug at the end of this entry)

After two weekends of enforced break due to the never-seen-before amounts of snow that fell here, I finally got behind the wheel again last weekend to go to the Suzuki dealer for that twice snow-postponed inspection that would re-instate the warranty of Alfie (that’s what I named my car). I had to go there on Saturday, leave Alfie there over night and could pick him up again on Sunday.

Now I have unfortunately developed the physical stress expression of what I have named colon cleaning before riding the car. I still consider that to be better than throwing up like James Hunt before a car race, as mentioned last week.

So there I was again, maneuvering around snow heaps, parked cars and managed to bring Alfie successfully to the dealer. The dealer is not that far from my place, but it’s a few kilometers and I went back home via bus and train. Picking him up again (he’s all right and nothing needed to be replaced, though they talked about a rear suspension (is there something like a gear suspension? I couldn’t figure out whether the guy from the dealer said “gear” or “rear” in katakana Japanese) that should be exchanged some day and they’ll call me when they get the part and that’s covered by the warranty. So far so good.

The first time I went to the dealer to show them the car papers and to get that appointment for the inspection, I forgot to turn out the mirrors when I left the place and one of the dealer guys had to friendly remind me… ahem…

This time I made sure the mirrors = Alfie’s ears were perked up and boldly drove into the street. After a few moments, something started to beep hysterically. Shit! I parked at the side of the road and found to my embarrassment that for the first time ever I had forgotten to put on the seat belt… ahem…

Well, I find it mightily nice of Alfie and modern technology that he notices stuff like that and reminds me.

I did not go straight home but gave myself a push and curved around for a bit.

Now, during the past week I was gearing up to finally finally see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. It opened In Japan on the 28th of February. I boldly made the plan to go on an (un)expected car journey and bought a ticket for Smaug at the IMAX next to the Kawasaki train station. Well, so the plan is to go there by car tomorrow… aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh…. 17 kilometers, a giant parkhouse… and it’s supposed to rain tomorrow too.

That of course meant I had to do some practicing today, it was/is drizzling as well by the way.

First of all I drove to the gasoline station, first time since I received Alfie with a full tank from the used car dealer. I admit to have “cheated” and went to a serviced gas station of which we still have quite a few here in Japan. The tank was half empty, Alfie has guzzled 22 liters or so on the 240 km I have driven so far, not too bad

I experienced for the first time that the car is actually heavier with a full tank. Then I curved to “my” park, the Ikuta park, west entrance, to practice getting into a parking area with a boom (is that what it’s called in English?) and buttons and parking tickets and all that. I had calculated on the park’s parking lot being empty on a rainy day and that calculation was correct. Because I didn’t drive close enough to the machine, it was of course not enough to let down the window. I had to get out of the car, ahem…

On the pretty empty parking lot I tested all the levels or most of the levels of my windshield wipers, lol.

After a little stroll in the park the whole show again with paying the parking ticket and having to get out of the car to pay because of not driving close enough to the ticket machine

Last episode of today’s adventure was the scariest: the usual Saturday groceries shopping. Due to rain the parking lot of “my” supermarket was of course horrifically crowded and for a moment I was actually contemplating whether to go home and then to come back by bicycle, but then I told myself that that’s not as intended by the inventor as we say in German. Going shopping in the rain is what the darn car is for!

So I boldly entered the first parking lot of the supermarket which happens to have two. The first was almost full except for one spot with right hand parking backwards, which is more difficult than left hand. I paused and contemplated whether to try but behind me they were lining up already, no way I would have the nerve to try this with impatient drivers breathing up my neck. So I drove on to the second parking lot, which is smaller but there was a spot where you could park nose first, if not straight but rather diagonally. I somehow parked there, not 100% standing like I was supposed to but let’s say 85% and not in anybody’s way. puhhh…

Getting out of there after successful grocery shopping involved quite some maneuvering again, it’s all pretty damn narrow here, but I managed without hitting anybody

Then back home and parked pretty well in my garage. Puhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

Man… I am still so exhausted after stuff like that!

It feels like I’ve gone into Thorin’s castle and wrestled with Smaug! I am seriously considering to rename Alfie into Smaugie! When will this stuff get easier? Jeez…

I am wildly determined to drive to the IMAX tomorrow with Alfie/Smaugie and I hope I will find the courage to enter the castle, um, shopping complex with cinema park house. Inside the castle there are sooo many pillars and columns and other little Smaugies that you are not allowed to bump into, otherwise they get angry, cost money, shout at you, frown at you, spew fire at you! It takes the same courage to drive into that park house as to enter the castle, ladies and gentlemen. It’s a giant park house with space for 2000 Smaugies! Imagine that number, dear Sirs and Madams, it says so on the website – 2000 Smaugie places!

I shall let you know whether I will have ventured there and back again once it’s accomplished…

Constant Learning et al.

I firmly believe in the paradigm of constant learning and am very happy to have started with the piano lessons I mentioned in the blog entry from two weeks ago. After only two lessons and practicing a bit at home, I can firmly say that this will be great learning. It’s so tough to let your ten fingers do different things! It’s easy if the two hands work in parallel but most of piano playing means that the left hand does something different from the right hand and I can virtually feel the synapses firing in my brain when I am brooding over the exercises. It was similar with drums but piano is much handier to practice considering noise level and the amount of space that the instrument requires.

Such kind of exercise gives also instant satisfaction if you practice and practice and finally manage that particular rhythm or melody.

Also writing should be a constant learning process and one of constant improvement. I am confident that I know much more about writing now than I did a year ago and loads more than I did two years ago and so forth. So, hopefully, my writing will be better next year and the year after? We’ll see

I’m trying to do the constant learning also in my travels with the self-made promise to visit if ever possible a country I haven’t been to before every year. If that doesn’t work out due to financial or time reasons then at least a place I have never been to before once per year, even if it is in a country I’ve visited already. For example, last year I was in the Czech Republic for the first time, this year I’ve booked a trip to Taiwan over our Golden Week holidays here in Japan end of April, etc. Taiwan will be the 25th country that I visit, I know there are people with much more countries under their belt, but I’m working on it

I’ve hit a personal ceiling/challenge with the re-learning of driving a car and am still struggling with that task. A scene from the movie “Rush” around the 1970ties F1 racers James Hunt and Niki Lauda, which I watched recently, stands out like a big fat monument in my mind. I don’t know about reality, but in the movie James Hunt regularly throws up before getting into his car for a race. This little detail appeals so much to me! Yes! It’s like that still before I am getting into my car now. I’m scared! Laugh. And now I must work on doing what Hunt has done, jump into that car and go despite the fear and find the joy in doing so. My driving is of course far less dangerous than racing, but the principle of fear is the same

Another scene from that movie left me impressed – again, historical accuracy does not matter – it’s the scene when Niki Lauda tries to put his helmet back on after that horrific accident at the Nuernburg Ring that forever disfigured him and burnt half his face and head away. It’s incredibly painful to put on the helmet and his wife catches him trying and he says to her something in the lines of “if you love me, don’t say anything now”. This is the fight of will against external circumstances. In the movie the motivation to do this painful thing is that he does not want Hunt to win the championship. I’m not sure what the real Lauda’s motivation was for getting back behind the wheel of an F1 car only a few weeks after his accident. Whatever it was that drove him, something drove him. Without that internal motivator nothing happens.

So, learning the piano is clearly motivated by the wish for constant learning, but the wish to write comes from somewhere else and that’s simply that it’s the one thing I like doing most of all in the whole world

Now this has become one weird blog entry about learning, piano, travel, writing and a movie and I’ll leave it at that

Snow in Kawasaki

To commemorate our snow chaos here I shall make a photo blog today instead of a regular post

I know this isn’t a big deal considering the snow storms in the US or what we get in parts of Germany every year and it’s also ridiculous from norther Japan point of view where they have literally several meters of snow every year. However, for the Kanto region the current snow levels are stuff never seen before and our snow depths around here break all records since those are being taken.

Some of the pictures are also pretty beautiful, whilst some show the traffic chaos upon us

The pictures at night were all taken last night on the 14th when I returned from work at around 19:00 local time. Usually I go by bicycle from the station to my place (3km). If the weather is really bad I go by bus and sometimes, when it’s just too bad or too late I go by taxi.

The intention last night was to go by taxi as well, but there were hundreds of people waiting for the bus and dozens for a taxi and so I walked.

The daylight pictures are from today, the 15th and were taken on the way to a DIY shop. I wanted to buy a snow shovel after all, but wasn’t in the least surprised when a guy from the mostly empty shop told me they were sold out I bought a small broom but when I returned to my place I caught my neighbor snow shoveling and borrowed his shovel and have now dug a way to the road.

On the way to the DIY shop I saw two stuck cars and their owners desperately shoveling them free so as to not block the roads. It would have been a bit mean to take pics of their plight, so I did not

I feel really sorry for those people who got stuck in a 30-40 km traffic jam around Shizuoka on the Tomei highway (that is the closest highway also to my home – it’s one of the major traffic lines of Japan and connects Tokyo and Nagoya), they had to spend the nights in their cars on the road because nothing was moving anymore…

Now it’s massively thawing again but it will take quite some time for all the stuff to melt and on coming Wednesday we might get even more snow…

So – here are the pics from the new yukiguni (snowland – usually northern Japan is called the yukiguni).



Parked bikes at the station



Parked bicycles at the station



Along the way



Sugar icing



A mini park along the way



Where is the temple?



Ah, there!



Bamboo in snow



Abandoned crossing



Lonely stairs



My home street



Morning after



Side street



Winter it is…



Danger from above

For the full set of pics and higher resolution – I’ve put them also on Flickr.

And my back hurts from shoveling!

Let’s Make Noise!

For my musical education I was “forced” as a young child of maybe 8 or 9 to learn the flute (as in the ‘recorder’ – weird English name for this instrument!)

I never really liked it, I recall, but nevertheless even expanded my range from soprano to alto and had two of the beasts.

I don’t know if the rest of my family remembers this, but it stands clearly out in my mind that at some common dinner we talked about my musical endeavors and I caused a big laugh with the following statement:

“I’d like to play the piano, but the recorder is cheaper.”

It shall be added that my family was far from rich, so this was a very mindful statement from my side

I gave up playing the recorder when I became a teenager and did not touch any musical instrument until I went to Japan as an exchange student at the age of 24. Back then, in Fukuoka, I became a member of the “Rock Club” of the Kyushu University. A gathering of some 40 students engaged in several bands, playing rock music of all sorts and I sat down behind the drums having no clue how to play them.

This resulted in a love affair with drums, peaking in taking lessons in Germany and even owning a (used) black Pearl drum-set at one point, which I was allowed to keep in the multipurpose room of the student dorm I lived in. During these times I played in a music-school band and we called ourselves “It’s a Sushi” (Natsukashii ne, Tan chan!) and even had one or two gigs and recorded one song on a compilation CD of the school.

Moving to Japan, there were several years again of no music endeavors, until some Japanese friends and I formed a band called “Iguana Complex”. I had meanwhile more or less forgotten how to play the drums and found myself suddenly in the vocal position We had four “Iguana Complex” gigs in dark, tiny and secretive live-houses of Tokyo (awesome, these sub-culture live-house places) until also that band fell apart, mostly due to time constraints of the members.

Not wanting to give up on music, I started with vocal lessons at the Yamaha music school in 2007, funnily only after “Iguana Complex” disbanded. There was a year-and-a-half stint in between with some drum lessons, but then my teacher died suddenly (he was only around 60) and on came the financial crisis and salary cuts and I gave up on drum lessons with a new teacher also due to financial reasons.

I kept up the vocal lessons though and with it being 2014 now, I had vocal lessons for a good six and a half years.

There is only that much you can learn with vocal lessons and I was itching last year more and more to do something new.

So, here I am, going back to my childhood days and fulfilling a very old wish – to learn the piano! Finally!

I gave up on the vocal lessons and last night, I had my first (popular) piano lesson.

And thanks to modern technology piano is not at all that expensive anymore, this is my new 250,- something Euro (of course Yamaha) keyboard

I am now brooding over re-learning musical notation ;-), learning where the notes are on the keyboard and cricking my fingers around

It’s a weird and fun feeling to finally going to challenge the piano and I’m looking forward to the presumably long journey and the prospect of some song writing maybe in the future And today, being snowed in, is a perfect opportunity to practice a bit!

Car vs. Train

I suppose as a renewed car driver I have a special sensibility now to such topics and I wonder whether I would have bothered to make a blog entry about this happening a year ago, but that’s also the beauty of it – change! I love change. (Or I try to love it, it’s not always easy to love change).

Anyway, the story is this: On Wednesday morning, 29th of Jan., I had to get up earlier than usual for a big work event and arrived punctually at the office at 8:45 only to hear that many of my colleagues coming to this event from the Saitama region north of Tokyo were hopelessly delayed. There was a big accident on the Tobu Tojo line between Ikebukuro and Kawagoe. I lived on that line for four years, by the way, in a town called Shiki between Ikebukuro (one of the hubs of Tokyo) and the (very pretty) partially historical town of Kawagoe.

The only news I heard during the day was that a car had collided with the train but nobody had been hurt. Hu? That’s kinda odd, right? That nobody had been hurt.

Anyway, it was big event day at work and after lunch many of the missing people from Saitama arrived at the office, complaining that it had taken the train forever to get running again.

In the evening, I watched the 23:30 news at NHK (that’s the modern news with tweets from the audience and iPads etc.) and the incident had managed the national news.

So – the driver of the car, a lady, stopped at a railroad crossing, because there was a post office next to it. Her intention was to drop off some mail in the post box and drive on again.

Now, the lady forgot one very important thing… she did not put the shift lever of her automatic transmission car into “P” = parking, but left it in “D” = drive and she also did not pull the handbrake and what did her car do? It moved… It rolled in walking speed onto the rails and there came the train and poooooof!

OH SHIT!

There was a video taken by a security camera (hope it works and you can see it, the accident itself is shown in the last few seconds of this 1 min something video).

Luckily, nobody was in the car and nobody on board the train was injured either, so, in a way this is an accident you can to a certain degree laugh about.

The lady of course will not laugh about it… she lost her car and some incredible action followed when heavy equipment had to scrape her car from under the train. I guess her insurance will cover something, but I bet not all of it… This story is quite likely her financial ruin. I have no clue how many million Yen the operator of the Tobu Tojo line will invoice her and her insurance company.

And then the pain of having made the national news, the pain of knowing that you caused thousands and thousands of people a horrible morning on the Tobu Tojo line, not to speak of the shock of the train’s driver who probably thought for a while he had smashed a human being to pulp in that car. The same shock for the passengers on the train, who must have received quite a jolt and also thought their train just killed someone. And the pain of having the JAF – the Japan Automobile Federation, whose member I have become a month ago – to issue a statement that was also broadcast nationwide saying: Put your shift lever into “P” when you leave your car, please!!!

Jeez, the poor woman… I do really feel sorry for her. I hope she will get through this incident somehow… She of course did not do this on purpose and it was a very unlucky combination of circumstances (and her negligence).

But here it shows again, one single moment, one tiny thing, can change your whole life.

As an author I love this kind of stuff – one tiny thing and everything goes to hell – the sheer beauty of that. The fly that falls into the type-writer and changes the name from Tuttle to Buttle (or was it the other way round? ;-)) in one of my favorite movies of all times “Brazil”. Tiny and yet epic stuff like that are the jewels at the heart of great stories. The one moment where the lady forgot to put the shift lever into “P”…

And as a new car driver and owner – damn! I will pay super extra attention whether I put the shift lever into “P” and pulled the handbrake, I can tell you that!

Opposing the “Hunger Games”

I recently watched the first “Hunger Games” movie and am as annoyed about it as I thought I would be. Apologies to fans of that movie and its follow ups, but here is why I am pissed at it.

I think it sucks because it is a) absolutely not original and b) because I don’t buy the premise.

First of all the originality issue:

This movie is a lame remake/combination of two other movies: The Running Man from the 80ties, an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie where modern gladiators are fighting to the death in a televised spectacle, and the Japanese movie Battle Royale from the year 2000.

You can read their respective plot summaries on IMDb: The Running Man and Battle Royale.

Battle Royale is in my humble opinion an awesome movie – it caused a bit of a stir when it came out in Japan due to its provocative premise of a group of 40 high school students (teenagers around 15 or 16) being deported to a lonely island where they are killing each other until only one person is left who is allowed to go home. Sounds familiar?

I wonder whether the author of the Hunger Games knows this movie and is thus guilty of plagiarism.

It is quite possible of course that she did not know Battle Royale – I am unsure as to how far this movie made it beyond Japan. However, the parallels are so detailed, that I bet she knows the movie.

Battle Royale stars the also outside of Japan relatively famous “Beat” Takeshi, some may know him better under his real name Takeshi Kitano. He is an actor/director (whom I wrote my master-thesis about) who has quite a number of (rather violent) movies under his belt that made him known outside of Japan as well. He also starred in some Hollywood movies like “Johnny Mnemonic” and others.
So, in Battle Royale Kitano plays the nasty teacher who arranged for one of his classes to be sent to the deadly game.

And here comes in the issue about the premise.

Let’s compare the premises of Battle Royale and the Hunger Games.

Battle Royale: In a near future Japan, youngsters have become more and more rowdy and have no respect anymore for adults and the helpless adults have invented the Battle Royale Act in the desperate try to discipline and scare the students.

With military support, a selected class is deported to an uninhabited island and are given one rucksack each that contains a random weapon and some provisions (sounds familiar?) and they have three days to kill each other until only one is left. If they don’t kill each other all their heads will explode thanks to a neck collar they all received. (Did I miss this detail? Is there a time limit in the Hunger Games? Doesn’t seem to be – the little black girl nurses Katniss back to health after the hornets attack for days. So why do they even play the game? Why don’t they just refuse to kill each other (and sit it out and starve together)? To have no time limit is illogical)

So, the major conflict in Battle Royale is a generation one: adults vs. rowdy teenagers. They attack the teacher Kitano (as a nice piece of spice the name of Kitano’s character in the movie is Kitano) in his school and he’s finally had it with them and invokes the Battle Royale Act.

Now what’s the premise in the Hunger Games? In an imaginary future state a nuclear war has happened (some 75 years ago, more comments on that later) and the 12 “districts” that have lost have to pay an annual tribute by sending one girl and one boy between 12 and 18 to the “hunger games”. Eh? Why?

Why children between 12 and 18? Why not young men who just became fathers? Why not pregnant women? I can find no reason for the age of the contestants (as opposed to Battle Royale where the reason is generation conflict). The only reason seems to be that this was originally a YA book and YA protagonists need to be between 12 and 18 years old so that their same aged readers can identify with them…. dah….

Then why this kind of tribute (sending a teenage boy and a teenage girl to the games) and not any other? What is the motivation behind this “method” of “paying back debts to the victor”? If I was a dictator I’d want goods and money from the people I conquered, which apparently they are getting too, but why this gladiator game on top? To humiliate the districts, yes, but there are loads of “better” ways how to humiliate the people I conquered. The motivation for the teenage gladiator games seems to come out of nowhere.

Then, they are going on for 74 years already? You gotta be kidding me. Why hasn’t anyone revolted throughout the previous 73 years? Okay, the North Korean regime is around now for some 60 years but nevertheless, 73 years and nobody tried to knock out the regime in the Hunger Games before?

Next, the storyline: For me it was as clear as Tokyo on a sunny winter day that Katniss would win the tournament. Zero surprise, zero suspense.

Even though they show the “winner” of the Battle Royale at the beginning of the movie there is suspense, since we don’t know yet what’s going on and we also wonder why the winning girl is so young as soon as we see the class that will go on the Battle Royale = a mystery that needs to be solved.

Finally, the TV announcer of the Hunger Games seems to be a completely lame imitation of the incredible girl who explains to the Battle Royale students via video how the “game” works. This is my absolute favorite part of the movie. There is this silly 20ish fashion girl who explains in a funny, bright and over-the-top happy manner the gruesome rules of the killing game. The contrast between her delivery and appearance and what she says is gob smacking. And the contrast between her delivery and appearance and the reaction of the 40 students is equally awesome. Two die during her instructions. There is real terror and it’s totally believable.

So, the bottom line of these musings is that Battle Royale is a great horror movie, which deserves to go down in the annals of movie history, whilst the Hunger Games is a lame-ass, plagiaristic rip-off of something much better and more intelligent. I have no clue at all why this movie and the book behind it deserve any sort of attention!