Red Cliff 2

Well after waiting a few months I finally was able to see the second part of John Woo’s Red Cliff. It was fantastic! The strategy of the epic last battle was so ingenious.

I think it’s the first movie series that I’ve seen that really captures what’s cool about the Three Kingdoms story. The personalities of the main characters is the important part. When they need thousands of arrows, Zhuge has a really cool and ingenious way of getting them. I really want to get these two movies on Blu-ray someday. Too bad the Japanese release only has Japanese subtitles (because only Japanese people live in Japan, right?).Anyways here’s a trailer so you can see some of it yourself.

Doraemon Is That You….?

Doraemon is a super popular character in Japan. He’s a magical cat from the future, who’s always helping his pal Nobita by producing the most fantastical gadgets from his magic pocket.

He’s popular all over Asia, including in Hong Kong, where they have an interesting version of the show. Check it out in the video below….

Huh!?

Year Of The Cow

Another New Year’s tradition in Japan is that every year is assigned an animal from the Chinese zodiac. This year is the year of the cow. Most houses will have a decoration of that animal some where in their house. Here’s ours.

Also everyone sends New Year’s postcard to each other, much like Christmas cards in western countries. Most of them have a picture of the animal for that year on them too.

From China

On Saturday we had a visit from one of our friends from China, Cliff. He was in Japan just for 24 hours to pick and his daughter and go back to China. What he brought along with him was a beautiful antique Chinese mahjong set for us. You can see the case has a nice painting of two quails (at least i think they are quails).

Inside the case is all of the mahjong tiles, a set of english instructions, and some dice. The set is so nice.

The tiles have the traditional wood backing on them so they’ll make a really nice sound when you slap them down. I can’t wait to play mahjong with this set. Thanks Cliff and Megumi!

The Red Army

On our recent trip to Shanghai I couldn’t resist picking up some interesting historical items of days gone by. The first was this magnificent alarm clock.

When the clock is wound Chairman Mao waves his red book passionately at the adoring crowd. I got some playing cards too.

Each card has a different propaganda slogan and an old propaganda poster on it.

The next item I bought was a nice watch. The Chairman waves his arm to the adoring public. The second hand has a nice red star on it too.

Not pictured here is a commie T-shirt that I bought as well. All of these items cost me less than $10 Canadian. How’s that for a bargain!

Shanghai Part 2

Later in our trip we went to one of the oldest parts of Shanghai. There wasn’t many tourists here, mostly just Chinese people.

There was a lot of really old and beautiful buildings here. Many shops and restaurants.

We went during lunch time so it was quite packed with people. they had lots of different things to eat like dumplings,soups, and lots of kinds of meat, including all of the gross parts like pigs noses and pigeons on a stick.

There was a nice picturesque river running through the area too.

The only bad part was quite a few places had a dish called stinky tofu. Which is basically rotten tofu that smells like very vile garbage. I wanted to take a picture of it to show people, but the smell was so bad that I didn’t want to get too close to it!

Shanghai part 1

As you may or may not know, we just recently went on a trip to Shanghai in China. Shanghai is a very fascinating place. It’s super busy all of the time. People always seem in a hurry. They also drive like maniacs. I’ve never seen driving like this. Every time we took a taxi (which was a lot because it’s super cheap) I felt like i was in a scene from an action movie. It’s also very smoggy there too. The first couple days my lungs hurt a little bit. Above is the Oriental Pearl TV Tower.

This restaurant is one of the most famous places in Shanghai. They make delicious dumplings that are filled with soup and meat. You have to be careful when you eat them because they are super hot inside and they also have a tendency to spray burning hot soup out if you bite into them wrong.

In the area near the restaurant there is a lot of places to buy Chinese things, mostly souvenirs. There was a lot of tourists in this area. Chinese people constantly came up to me and asked if I wanted to buy a bag, shoes, wallet or watch. They would have a picture of Rolex watches and Vuitton bags. All of these were bootleg.

Tomorrow is part two so come back again.