Just touched down in Tokyo yesterday morning and so far, touch wood, I don’t seem to be too afflicted by jet lag. Went for a quick spin around Shinjuku last night to re-acclimatise after so long away, picking up a couple of books in Kinokuniya including Yoshiko Yamaguchi’s autobiography Ri Koran o Ikite and a wonderful recent photo-book about Shintoho studios, before popping off to Shibuya with my kind hosts Karen and Koichi for some fodder, stopping at Tower Records on the way where I discovered my Behind the Pink Curtain proudly displayed in the book section. I couldn’t resist taking this photo…

Behind the Pink Curtain at Tower Records, Shibuya

I’m off to Yubari Film Festival this thursday where I will no doubt come across a whole host of new discoveries by young directors, which I hope to share with you by way of this site over the coming weekend. Popping out to an Ainu restaurant in Nakano tonight to prepare myself for my trip up north! My return to Tokyo next week seems to be rather serendipitously timed with a series of screenings of nine Japanese films with English subtitles at the Athenee Francais, a definite rarity around these parts which I shall be indulging in as fully as my schedule allows. Among more familiar titles such as Takeshi Kitano’s Sonatine and Naomi Kawase’s Hotaru (Kawase will be there at a talk event introducing her film next monday), as well as some classic titles I’ve not seen since I lived in Tokyo 5+ years ago – Hiroshi Shimizu’s Notes of an Itinerant Performer and Tai Kato’s brilliant By a Man’s Face Shall You Know Him there’s a couple of rare gems I haven’t seen before, including Kazuhiko Hasegawa’s Youth to Kill (Seishun no satsujinsha), Kohei Oguri’s Muddy River (Doro no kawa) and Hiroshi Inagaki and Masahiro Makino’s Duel in Takadanobaba (Takadanobaba no ketto). The series also includes free lectures from Aaron Gerow, Roland Domenig and Chris Fujiwara. Great stuff!

Posted at 4:27 on 23 February 2010 Filed under news.

• Tagged

0