kenleewrites in 日本

Neil attended the Vietnamese Festival the week before. You can read about this experience here. I had wanted to go, but when I had time, the weather decided otherwise… but last week was a different matter.

Last weekend there was an India festival. The whole section of Yoyogi Park right opposite NHK Studio Park was cornered off and dedicated to this event. Stores were set up and many were promoting tours to India, Indian wares, arts and craft etc. Basically almost everything Indian. There were also movies from Bollywood. I grew up in a multi-racial and multi-ethnic environment, so I’ve been exposed to Indian culture. Indian movies are quite interesting, provided they come with subtitles. ^^. Long movies though, with lots of singing and dancing. I find it fascinating that whenever a song starts, dancers just pop out from thin air. ^^.

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Panther told me of these series of vids detailing the creation of his latest figure in YouTube uploaded by sleepylafiel. It details the creation of a Japanese figurine. The vids are from a DVD whose cover is pictured here….

It’s a rather long vid, about 90 minutes total and it’s all in Japanese. Despite the language barrier (if you don’t understand Japanese), I’m sure you’ll be able to understand the techniques and attention to detail that is given to make just one of these figures just from watching the videos. It’s like a documentary really.

Although I recommend watching the whole thing, you can always start off with part 2 and part 8 to wet your appetite. In part 2, you see how the whole figure come into being and in part 8, see the attention to detail when it comes to painting the “cat’s ear”, the techniques used to make it look realistic under different lighting.

Here are the vids

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

Enjoy.

Found another one of these “Please do it at somewhere else” posters around Tokyo Metro. These posters are supposed to educate commuters on certain “do-s” and “do not-s” when using the trains. This particular one tells us to “please do it at the mountain”; be considerate of others when holding bulky belongings. Here’s another one “Please do it at the beach”.

I think posters like these are quite helpful. At least it helps raise awareness to certain issues. I would like to know how effective they are though.

If you know a little about Japan, I’m sure you’re heard of Shibuya. The place where just about every traveller to Japan will visit at least once. If you’ve been to Shibuya, you must have met “Faithful Hachiko”. Better yet, if you were meeting a Japanese friend (or one living in Japan), you must have been asked to meet up there. There is a rather touching story being “Faithful Hachiko”.

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My graduation experience in Japan.

Recently I’ve had the opportunity to attend a graduation ceremony. A couple of my friends were graduating and I was there for the pics. ^^. Not to be in them, but to be the one behind the camera taking photos.

So. About graduation ceremonies in Japan. Graduations are held twice a year (at least for my university). In April during Spring and in September during Autumn. Always during the school holidays. I’ve been to 3 so far, 1 of them my own; all at the same university. There’s no real dress code. No academic dress, no graduation cap. You don’t get your degree in a roll, but rather in a booklet.

It starts off with a big ceremony. The president of the university will hand degrees out to representatives from each batch; he’s a busy person, can’t individually give out degrees to everyone. Once the main ceremony is over, graduates separate into different groups and head off to different halls to receive their respective degrees from the head of their respective schools. *phew*. Photos here are from the smaller ceremony which includes everyone… except that representative.

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