Shinjuku, ten years on

There is a film project called Global Lives in which ordinary people from around the world have one twenty-four hour period of their lives recorded. The idea being that these will become important historical artefacts, giving future generations a chance to see how we really lived, worked, played etc.

Japan's entry concerned a woman called Rumi Nagashima, a mostly wheelchair-bound girl scout leader. It was filmed back in 2007 and, truth be told, not enough time has passed for this to feel like a glimpse of a lost world. In fact, it all looks quite unremarkable. It's all up on the Internet Archive for you to watch, along with many others.

Anyway, in October last year I visited Japan again and this time I spent a decent amount of time in Tokyo. Previously I was only there for four days and you really can't get a feel of a place in so little time. I'll do a post of things I did in a few days, but a recurring theme of my holiday was to revisit places that either I or someone else had been.

And so, when I found myself awake at two o'clock one morning, I took the chance to go to Shinjuku and photograph places I'd seen in Rumi Nagashima's film. To put things in some kind of context, it was late at night and she was trying to get the last train back after an evening out, and she needed to find the disabled access to Shinjuku Station.

So, for example, she heads towards the elevator to the station. As you can see, the artistic flooring (above) has been replaced by something more functional (below).

In the film, she was too late to actually use the elevator. If only she'd waited ten years, she would've found the elevator still open and operational.

Bits of Shinjuku.

More bits.

Sadly, the new album by Koda Kumi is not longer being advertised here.

Mostly the differences are minor, like a new logo on a shop front...

But this one bothered me. You see, I always thought that traffic cones were a temporary measure. Something used for a fixed period until a more permanent solution comes along. But in this photo, we can see that traffic cones have been used in the same area for about ten years. And what, exactly, are they doing?

Crossing a bridge. Kind of similar.

And once she's at the station, nothing much at all had changed.

As a piece of history, it seems quite faithful to reality. She talks to her mum about the TV news over breakfast, she works as a Girl Guide leader in the afternoon and goes out in the evening. While I expect they chose a day when she'd be doing something active, it doesn't seem particularly staged. In the nicest possible way: it's certainly dull enough to be real life.

Worth a look.

No subs, though.

Death On The Mountain (1961)

This film is tells a story about how a trip in the mountains ends in tragedy and how suspicions grow after an article about it is published in a magazine.

It’s a fairly short film that focuses only on the main event - the tragic but apparently accidental death of a mountaineer. There are no sub-plots or character development beyond that which moves the story along. This means that, every step of the way, you feel you’re getting closer to a solution even if the film itself isn’t that fast paced.

Perhaps the film’s greatest achievement is the introduction, halfway through, of a new main character. With only a few broad strokes, the actor manages to establish himself as likable and interesting.

This is especially important since the final third of the film concerns him and the apparent killer retracing the steps of the doomed mountaineering party to pay their respects. As they do, the new guy keeps making observations about how the events of that fateful day don’t make sense and the tension between them slowly increases.

But do all these small clues add up? And if they do, will the killer kill again?

This is an enjoyable film, written in a tight, economic style and with some beautiful photography of mountain ranges.

So where have I been?

Well, sleeping, mostly. It’s not been a great year for TV and apart from Running Man, the only series I’ve watched to completion since I last wrote were Twin Peaks, Doctor Who and Hyori’s Bed & Breakfast. Certainly not enough to sustain a blog about TV.

Also, in the past year or so, the J-drama community has become increasingly splintered and hard to follow. It’s been quite sad to watch, as one bookmark after another has been deleted from my browser.

Is this going to be the start of regular blogging? I have no idea. It’s just that I watched a film this morning, and wanted to write about it.

Currently Watching: Yuusha Yoshihiko to Michibikareshi Shichinin

Well, this came as a surprise. Five years after the last Yuusha Yoshihiko series, this new outing for our hopeless J-RPG stereotypes came out this season without me noticing any pre-publicity for it. I don’t know if it was a low-key release or if I’m just clueless. Either way, I was happy to see it back.

The format is the same: our hero Yoshihiko has to cross great distances and battle countless foes. And while they’re doing this, references to pop culture and video games pepper the dialogue.

The whole cast is back, including Yoshihiko’s sister who does very little except secretly follow her brother. Perhaps this time she’ll have more of a role to play.

Despite the long gap between series, it’s kept a lot of the amateurish charm of the original. It’s often hard to tell when the script ends and when improvising begins, and an eagle-eyed viewer should be able to spot various cast members trying not to laugh.

There is a story, but as I sit here and type, I realise I have no idea what it is. And it’s not important. It’s just a lot of very silly fun. Of course, how much you laugh will depend on how much you know about the thing they're making fun of. I especially liked the Final Fantasy episode but was less amused by the TV Tokyo story. I'm wondering if they're going to make fun of the Persona series of RPGs but that might be too niche, even for them.

Running Man: and then there were none!

Well, only days after I write about Gary leaving the show, I found out that the series would finally end in February 2017.

(EDIT 30/01/2017, Well, it seems that it will continue after all.)

This announcement came at the end of a confusing week in which SBS, the channel which makes the show, revealed that Song Ji Hyo and Kim Jong Kook would be leaving the show to make way for new cast members in Running Man 2 in January 2017.

Was this when they got the idea

for Running Man 2? (From ep 305)

Unfortunately, SBS didn’t reveal this to Song Ji Hyo or Kim Jong Kook until the day of the news release, which left them hurt and the fans angry. In the end, plans for Running Man 2 were dropped and the two regulars were reinstated with the announcement that Running Man would end for good in February 2017 with no second series.

My feelings on the series ending are mixed: I was still enjoying it, but at the same time I’m quite relieved. The cast aren’t getting any younger and both of the two mentioned above have had recurring injuries (Song Ji Hyo’s wrist and Kim Jong Kook’s knee). I’d been wondering how long it could go on for.

RM national rating 2010-2016

It seems that the high overseas sales wasn’t enough to save Running Man’s poor run (a ha ha) in the rating’s battle. As I mentioned previously, RM hasn’t been able to shift much from 6%-7%, no matter what it does.

There was a sudden drop in November 2015 when RM got squeezed between two shows: the massively popular new show Real Men 2 and the suddenly revitalized long-running 1 Night 2 Days. Since then, RM has never been able to claw back its share of the viewers.

Former regular Lizzy let's slip that she was sacked.

She's not the only one.

It’s not as if the show suddenly got worse. In fact, I thought that period (272 onwards) saw some very imaginative episodes. But public taste had left it for other shows and eventually SBS thought something had to be done.

It’s just a shame that they did it so badly. Sacking and then un-sacking members of the cast is never a good idea. However, The Korea Times says that the news was leaked and wasn't actually part of an official statement. Even so, it's a grand example of miscommunication. All of this nonsense happened around the 16th of December, so in a couple of weeks I’ll be looking very closely at those episodes that were recorded soon after the scandal broke for any signs of awkwardness. I hope they’ll mention it on air and have a good laugh about it, but I don’t think they will.

Whatever happened to this attitude?

Running Man: And then there were six

Ah, remember when there used to be nine regular members of Running Man? You know, back in the days when water was clean and bread was cheap. Well, those days are long gone and now we have to boil our water, slice our bread really thin and make do with only six regular members in Running Man. Something like that, anyway.

Once we were legion!!

Now... not so much.

Recently one of the regulars, Kang Gary, bid us all goodbye to concentrate on his music career and possibly also try to save his back which had, on and off, given him problems throughout his Running Man career.

While it was sad, it wasn’t a huge surprise. He’d made statements about leaving before and, apparently, he only stayed as long as he did after he was asked to do a few more months before he finally quit.

The finale was very sad and made me shed a tear, but it was slightly spoilt by the very end which suggested that Gary would be in the following episode, too. It kind of ruined the moment. Like winning a heated argument and leaving the room in triumph, only to have to sneak back in again and get your coat.

Mind you, the next episode (with Gary as a guest) was pretty funny and it was entertaining watching people squirm with having to meet him again so soon after a tearful farewell.

Since then, a Gary-less Running Man has carried on much as before, which I'm a bit surprised by. Ratings haven’t changed at all, seemingly stuck on 6-7% no matter what happens. Perhaps the biggest winner in terms of air-time has been Song Ji Hyo who now seems to feature more prominently.

So, no jumping the shark, no sudden drop in quality now that the seven cast members have been reduced to six. The chemistry is still there, which is a big relief.

Currently Watching: Cold Case

This WOWOW drama is something of a rarity: a foreign (in this case American) format adapted for the Japanese market. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of another example where that’s happened. There have been occasions where stories have been rewritten for a Japanese audience (Agatha Christie, for example), and Furuhata Ninzaburo clearly borrows in theme and style (but not in content) from Columbo. However, this is the first occasion that I can remember which has been such a strict adaptation.

This is no bad thing, of course, and it’s nice to see a Japanese police drama that's a little more down to earth. The performances, directing and photography are all top notch and I suspect that only WOWOW could make this kind of show in Japan right now.

Having never seen the US version I can't tell how closely the Japanese version sticks to the original. However, the new writers have been clever enough that it's hard to tell where the join is.

Episode six is my favourite to date, but I've always been a sucker for the “first victim of war is innocence” kind of stories. But all episodes have been good, and there's no guarantee of a weekly resolution as you'd expect from most Japanese cop shows and a remarkable lack of moralising.

Overall, this series stands some distance above anything else in this genre I've seen recently.