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Golden Slumbers
Today I slept late and spent the afternoon moving more crap around in my house and talking to Mike on Skype. The upshot is that there is now 5/6th of a wall splitting what used to be my huge 9-jo living room into two 4.5-jo rooms, one as a living room and one for Jenny to stay in when she comes here. I kind of did this now because when the KDDI people come on Friday to install internets, I want to be able to point like "Please hook it up so the router is in this room" and actually HAVE a separate room. Even if the wall between the rooms is made out of bookcases, cardboard, and a random door segment I found. I should post pictures at some point.
Then I went down to Takadanobaba and I registered for that 2-kyuu prep course at the SJI, starting tomorrow. I paid the entry fee and for the 2 classes now; I have to pay for the April->June class next week. It's like 2600 yen per 100-minute class, which really isn't all that bad. I know English classes were certainly tons more expensive!
I managed to pull some impossible train transfers and actually get from Takadanobaba to Saitama-Shintoshin in 29 minutes, which is nuts. (My phone kept telling me I'd be lucky, if I got to Baba at 17:48, to make it to SS at 18:26 -- that was the fastest it was giving me -- but I hopped a Saikyo train I didn't know about at Ikebukuro, then ran to a Takasaki train at Akabane, and bam, arrived at 18:17.
I wanted to see Golden Slumbers, since it's disappearing from the Movix theater there this week and the only daily show is at 18:20, but since today is Wednesday I can see it for 1000 yen instead of 1800 yen. I mostly wanted to see it because I've kinda wanted to just go to a movie sometime, but also, last weekend I met a dude who was an actor in it, so I thought I'd check it out. (And yeah, he really was in it, even if it was just a bit part as Rinka's manager.)
So basically, this movie is... a conspiracy/fugitive sort of movie. Sakai Masato -- who is one of my favorite actors -- plays this guy Aoyagi, who's just an all-around nice naive guy who's even a kind of local hero for saving an idol actress from a burglary a few years back (that is, people recognize him around town, even). Out of nowhere, he meets up with a friend of his from college, Morita, ostensibly to go fishing, but what happens instead is that Morita basically leads him to a car and drugs him so he falls asleep for a few hours until there's a parade going by -- with the prime minister in an open car waving to crowds. Suddenly, someone blows up the prime minister's car. And then Morita says that the cops are going to come check out their car and that Aoyagi better run for it -- and as Aoyagi is running away from the cops, Morita's car ALSO blows up. Then the next thing you know, Aoyagi is being accused of blowing up the prime minister. There's all of these random circumstances that fit -- a remote-controlled helicopter was seen on the scene and Aoyagi used to fly them with his girlfriend; Aoyagi had a summer job at a fireworks company once; various other stuff.
What ensues for the next two hours is basically Aoyagi on the run -- with his face plastered everywhere as "FIND THIS MAN, HE KILLED THE PRIME MINISTER". He ditches his cellphone fairly early as the cops -- or at least, the gang of men looking for him -- use it to track him. See, the weird thing is, it's never quite clear whether the people chasing him at any given moment are cops or if they're from this organization of scary big people who actually orchestrated the PM's murder and Aoyagi's framing. And as he goes to ask friends for help, they all either end up turning him in (in the case of a coworker) or getting the crap beat out of them (in the case of one of his other college friends, Kazu). He spends half the movie having flashbacks to college when he and Morita and Kazu and Haruko (his ex-girlfriend) spent time together as a circle, eating food and listening to the Beatles and working together at the fireworks place. The crazy thing is, in the present time he never actually sees Haruko, played by Takeuchi Yuko, but she ends up helping him out anyway. It's a little bit odd. His other helpers are this crazy old guy in the hospital who isn't actually injured at all, and a serial killer who happens to decide to help him (I wasn't even sure whether it was a guy or a girl for the first few times we ran into the character, oddly enough).
I dunno, there's a lot of crazy conspiracy and chase stuff that goes on and the upshot is, he does eventually escape from it all, but not without a cost. What bugs me is that I could not actually understand what the hell happened at the end -- I mean, I know what happened to him -- but I have this feeling that they actually reveal what really happened and who was behind the entire thing, and THAT part I utterly couldn't catch or figure out. Grrr. I did like the movie though, but it pains me to say that I really wish I could watch it again with subtitles.
Anyway.
I got a sandwich at Kua'Aina after that and then came home via a stop at Ito Yokado for an extension cord and stuff. Worked on the room a little bit and now I should try to go to sleep at a reasonable hour so I can go down to Yokohama and see Westbay and such tomorrow. Whee.
Then I went down to Takadanobaba and I registered for that 2-kyuu prep course at the SJI, starting tomorrow. I paid the entry fee and for the 2 classes now; I have to pay for the April->June class next week. It's like 2600 yen per 100-minute class, which really isn't all that bad. I know English classes were certainly tons more expensive!
I managed to pull some impossible train transfers and actually get from Takadanobaba to Saitama-Shintoshin in 29 minutes, which is nuts. (My phone kept telling me I'd be lucky, if I got to Baba at 17:48, to make it to SS at 18:26 -- that was the fastest it was giving me -- but I hopped a Saikyo train I didn't know about at Ikebukuro, then ran to a Takasaki train at Akabane, and bam, arrived at 18:17.
I wanted to see Golden Slumbers, since it's disappearing from the Movix theater there this week and the only daily show is at 18:20, but since today is Wednesday I can see it for 1000 yen instead of 1800 yen. I mostly wanted to see it because I've kinda wanted to just go to a movie sometime, but also, last weekend I met a dude who was an actor in it, so I thought I'd check it out. (And yeah, he really was in it, even if it was just a bit part as Rinka's manager.)
So basically, this movie is... a conspiracy/fugitive sort of movie. Sakai Masato -- who is one of my favorite actors -- plays this guy Aoyagi, who's just an all-around nice naive guy who's even a kind of local hero for saving an idol actress from a burglary a few years back (that is, people recognize him around town, even). Out of nowhere, he meets up with a friend of his from college, Morita, ostensibly to go fishing, but what happens instead is that Morita basically leads him to a car and drugs him so he falls asleep for a few hours until there's a parade going by -- with the prime minister in an open car waving to crowds. Suddenly, someone blows up the prime minister's car. And then Morita says that the cops are going to come check out their car and that Aoyagi better run for it -- and as Aoyagi is running away from the cops, Morita's car ALSO blows up. Then the next thing you know, Aoyagi is being accused of blowing up the prime minister. There's all of these random circumstances that fit -- a remote-controlled helicopter was seen on the scene and Aoyagi used to fly them with his girlfriend; Aoyagi had a summer job at a fireworks company once; various other stuff.
What ensues for the next two hours is basically Aoyagi on the run -- with his face plastered everywhere as "FIND THIS MAN, HE KILLED THE PRIME MINISTER". He ditches his cellphone fairly early as the cops -- or at least, the gang of men looking for him -- use it to track him. See, the weird thing is, it's never quite clear whether the people chasing him at any given moment are cops or if they're from this organization of scary big people who actually orchestrated the PM's murder and Aoyagi's framing. And as he goes to ask friends for help, they all either end up turning him in (in the case of a coworker) or getting the crap beat out of them (in the case of one of his other college friends, Kazu). He spends half the movie having flashbacks to college when he and Morita and Kazu and Haruko (his ex-girlfriend) spent time together as a circle, eating food and listening to the Beatles and working together at the fireworks place. The crazy thing is, in the present time he never actually sees Haruko, played by Takeuchi Yuko, but she ends up helping him out anyway. It's a little bit odd. His other helpers are this crazy old guy in the hospital who isn't actually injured at all, and a serial killer who happens to decide to help him (I wasn't even sure whether it was a guy or a girl for the first few times we ran into the character, oddly enough).
I dunno, there's a lot of crazy conspiracy and chase stuff that goes on and the upshot is, he does eventually escape from it all, but not without a cost. What bugs me is that I could not actually understand what the hell happened at the end -- I mean, I know what happened to him -- but I have this feeling that they actually reveal what really happened and who was behind the entire thing, and THAT part I utterly couldn't catch or figure out. Grrr. I did like the movie though, but it pains me to say that I really wish I could watch it again with subtitles.
Anyway.
I got a sandwich at Kua'Aina after that and then came home via a stop at Ito Yokado for an extension cord and stuff. Worked on the room a little bit and now I should try to go to sleep at a reasonable hour so I can go down to Yokohama and see Westbay and such tomorrow. Whee.
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