In which a grown man grouses for 600 words about a computer-animated comedy that left him cold. More like The Gaijin Grump, amirite?
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What It's Like to Stay in the Hotel Where 'Lost in Translation' Was Filmed
If you read last month’s blog entry, then you’ll know that The Gaijin Ghost is now a married man. When all is said and done, my wife and I will have enjoyed a honeymoon in three stages. The third and final stage will come when we take a trip to Florida next year, so she can meet my parents and sister in person for the first time (having only seen them on Skype or Facetime until now). If all goes well, we should be able to stay in the Sunshine State for about a week and visit Walt Disney World with my family.
The first and second leg of our honeymooning world tour already came this month, however, when we spent a night at the world’s oldest hotel in Yamanashi and spent another night at the Park Hyatt Tokyo, the 5-star luxury hotel where Lost in Translation was filmed.
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Closing the Book on 'Star Wars' in Japan
On Saturday, June 30, 2018, I sat down to watch Solo: A Star Wars Story on its opening weekend in Japan. It was a late-show screening at my local Toho Cinemas. By Monday morning, I would be a married man.
Like other international couples we know, we didn’t have a wedding ceremony. We just went down to city hall. The first part of our honeymoon comes next month.
This is obviously huge personal news, but it’s not often I let my personal life encroach on this blog. So what does me tying the knot have to do with the new Star Wars movie, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you …
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'Solo: A Star Wars Story' - The Gaijin Ghost Review
This was originally a capsule review that made up one section of the next post, “Closing the Book on Star Wars in Japan.” Solo: A Star Wars Story opened in Japanese theaters on June 29, 2018. Three and a half years later, on December 29, 2021, The Book of Boba Fett streamed its series premiere on Disney+. That week, I rewatched Solo and added in some more thoughts and screenshots to this review, expanding it into its own breakout post.
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Dance On Over to Koenji for the Awa Odori Festival and Vintage 'Star Wars' Memorabilia
[Update: This post has had better quality pictures and video of the dancers and musicians from the 2023 Koenji Awa Odori Festival added to it.]
It’s summer movie season now, but in Japan, it’s also summer festival season. One of the biggest summer festivals in Tokyo is the Koenji Awa Odori Festival. On the last weekend of August, over a million people descend on the Koenji neighborhood to watch dance troupes take to the streets in a three-hour parade. In Japanese, the troupes are called ren — no relation to Kylo Ren, though there is a Star Wars tie-in with this post.
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The first-ever Big Hero 6 parade float, featuring the characters Baymax and Hiro Hamada, in Tokyo Disneyland's 35th-anniversary parade, "Dreaming Up!"
Front-Row Pictures of Tokyo Disneyland's New 35th-Anniversary Parade
On April 15, 2018, a new daytime parade, “Dreaming Up,” made its official debut at Tokyo Disneyland as the park’s year-long 35th-anniversary celebration began. This parade replaced the long-running “Happiness Is Here,” which started out as the park’s 30th-anniversary parade.
Big-time, U.S.-based Disney blogs like WDW News Today and Disney Tourist Blog were on the frontlines for the earliest run-throughs of the parade, having descended on Tokyo in the days leading up to April 15. Incidentally, that day was a rainy Sunday—not the best parade weather. Since we didn’t want to contend with the opening-week crowds, my significant other and I opted to wait until ten days later before we ventured into the park.
The weather on April 24 wasn’t much better (they didn’t coin that phrase “April showers” for nothing), but we happened to get lucky and win the lottery for the parade viewing area. This enabled us to get front-row seats for “Dreaming Up” without having to stake out a spot on the ground hours beforehand.
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The "Kodaki Fuji" view of Mount Fuji, as seen across Lake Shojiko in Yamanashi Prefecture.
The Gaijin Ghostwriter - Fuji Five Lakes
The original idea behind The Gaijin Ghost was to have a travel blog that would de-emphasize the blogger and make the reader the main character, rather like a Choose Your Own Adventure book where the reader is invited in with the words, “You’re the star of the story!” For a while, I even tried to adhere to a mandate of never using first-person pronouns here on the site. It can actually be tricky to write like that when you’re trying to synthesize subjective experiences into travel blog posts.
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The Dual Nature of Rodriguez in Martin Scorsese's 'Silence' (With Photos of the Twenty-Six Martyrs Museum in Nagasaki)
In the film Silence, the character of Rodriguez, played by Andrew Garfield, exists simultaneously as a Christ figure and a Judas figure. The most pronounced instance of him being framed as the former is when he sees his reflection morph into the face of Christ while drinking from a stream. Yet like the movie itself, even this scene opens up a prism of interpretations if you mark it as an allusion to the Greek myth of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image as mirrored in a pool of water.
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Left: mural on the Nemo & Friends SeaRider building at Tokyo DisneySea. Right: mural on The Seas with Nemo & Friends building at Epcot in Walt Disney World.
Nemo & Friends SeaRider vs. The Seas with Nemo & Friends
Nemo & Friends SeaRider opened on May 12, 2017 in the building formerly inhabited by StormRider at Tokyo DisneySea. More than just a new attraction, this ride actually brought a whole new theme to the area of Port Discovery in DisneySea.
In this post, you can see 30 photos of the attraction and how it integrates into Port Discovery, along with 4K video of the ride from front row and center in the motion simulator. As we compare the ride with its Florida cousin, The Seas with Nemo & Friends at Epcot, you can also see some additional photos of that attraction.
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'Star Wars' at Disney's Hollywood Studios
This post serves as a companion piece to the Star Tours at Tokyo Disneyland - Guided Photo Tour. The 55 photos nested here should give a good comparison of what Star Tours and Star Wars look like at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. That includes glimpses of:
Characters appearing on stage in the Star Wars: A Galaxy Far, Far Away show
Handprints and footprints in the Chinese Theatre forecourt
Props and costumes on display in Star Wars Launch Bay
Captain Phasma leading a detachment of Stormtroopers in the March of the First Order
The kids show Jedi Training: Trials of the Temple
The exterior of Star Tours - The Adventures Continue and the Tatooine Traders gift shop
Merchandise in gift shops on Sunset Boulevard