The final overall JYA episode, which serves as a review of all the cast trips:
This week was the premiere of my final episode from here in Japan. It is amazing how fast the time has gone, but, then I suppose that is said a bit too often, and acted upon too rarely. Still, today a plane will take me away from here, but let’s not think about that now.
Instead, I thought it might be nice to let you guys see a bit more about the final scavenger hunt I went on here in Tokyo: my final tour of the city before I leave it.
My seventh episode, Fall Colors, in which I take on a few small trips away from Tokyo, including Nikko and Kyoto, where I spotted three Geisha women (with a bodyguard off camera, of course):
Posts referenced here:
Whenever you travel, the focus really ought to be the food.
Being an island nation and incorporating stereotypes I already had, the food I ate in Japan was heavy in fish, rice, hot noodle soups and small portions. My favorite meal of the entire trip was a tonkatsu (breaded pork) dish from a tiny spot near Hachik? Square in the Shibuya section of Tokyo, and a few doors down from a pachinko parlor.
I featured an entire episode on FOOD, see it below.
Friday was another national holiday here in Japan: Bunka No Hi or Culture Day. Of course, culture day, along with a day off from classes, got me to think about Japanese culture, as I had explored it in my fifth episode, which premiered last week.
What is contemporary Japanese culture? What is any country’s culture? I’ve been here for nearly two months and seen a lot of Tokyo and surrounding cities. I’ve been to Kyoto in the south, Gunma and Nikko in the north. I’ve spoken to a sociologist who has lived in Tokyo for nearly two decades. I interviewed Donald Richie, who has lived in Japan for 60 years and has written 40 books on Japan. No one can really define the culture. It is too large and too diverse, not to mention the Japanese people do tend to take on styles from around the world. Especially here in Tokyo, there are so many contrasts.
Well, as you might have noticed, my fourth episode has debuted. I have gotten some emails and blog posts about the episode, both kind-worded comments and some questions.
(Find the episode below)
So, I thought it might be fruitful to supplement the segment with a bit more about why Donald Richie was my focus and offer a venue for any questions about the man, his work or his philosophy. For me, it was a great pleasure to interview Richie, truly a legend of academia and cinema.
As was clearly displayed in the episode, Richie has authored more than 40 books on Japanese culture and thousands of articles and reviews through his weekly columns and inclusion in anthologies and other publications. He is a legend of academia and the man responsible for introducing Japanese film to the world. Moreover, he is an authority on cinema worldwide, with a short tenure as the Curator of Film at the New York Museum of Modern Art being the only interuption of his six decades living in Tokyo.
By most standards, I am not particularly cultured. So, it might surprise you to hear that recently I was in a small, basement club in Tokyo watching Japanese avant-garde films from the 1960s. Yeah, it surprised me too.
I was there to see the event’s host, an 82-year-old author who has lived in Tokyo for some 60 years. Anyone who takes cinema seriously or who knows anything about Japanese culture has heard of Donald Richie. He is considered a central figure on Japanese film, and the man has pounded out more than 40 books on Japanese culture, in addition to his own films and weekly columns. There is scare a scholar known more widely than he.
In my sixth episode, I scaled the iconic 13,000 foot dormant volcano south of Tokyo.
Read about my experience in greater detail: Part One, Part Two and Part Three.
Don’t navigate by international chain restaurants.
My second episode, Disorientation, in which I get hopelessly lost my first week in Tokyo:
My first episode, introducing me: