Diary 1

These days not a day goes by that I don't listen to She loves you or I want to hold your hands at least once a day (Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry.) I think I got hooked. I also listen to the Hamburg live. Thanks to Wikipedia I learned quite a bit about the days before they became what we know they were. One of the anecdotes that intrigued me is that some people blamed the death of Stewart Sutcliffe on Lennon. I don't know how true it is. Who cares. The information offered by Wikipedia and external links it provides about Beatles is very detailed and exhaustive. Sometimes Wikipedia provides only sketchy information depending on the theme. The information it provides about Beatles is just amazing. One of the links gives a full list of their songs with comments on each song from the members. I was particularly moved by Paul's comments on his Your mother should know and Let it be. He said Mother Mary in the song was his own mother. Before writing the song he had a dream where his mother who died when he was 14 appeared. He said it was a very rare experience for him and led to the creation of the song everybody knows now. I remember him saying Yesterday was also created in his dream.
On a side note I remember someone arguing that the English used in Wikipedia is sometimes sloppy. I don't know how true it is. I'm not proficient enough in English to say anything, much less pontificate, about it. English is now the de facto "lingua franca" and I've come to realize that just because English is my second language, that doesn't give me an excuse to write bad English in this age of the Internet. The other day I found a site where people from around the world gather to exchange information and tips using only English. I've been spending quite a lot of time (or goofing off) there the past few weeks and even had the nerve to post a few comments despite my poor English. Most of them write very good English though many of them say English is not their mother tongue. I did pontificate on something about Japanese a couple of times, only to add to confusion on the part of askers. What I found out is that teaching Japanese to people overseas is not as easy as I thought it would be. I admit there were a few inconsistencies in what I explained to them. But overall I don't think what I said was wrong. When it comes to language, sometimes it could take a lot of words to explain even a seemingly very simple thing. One thing for certain is that if I were a little better versed in English than I am now, the whole thing would be a lot easier. At any rate this whole experience was enough to make me realize I should be much more serious about learning English as long as I'm interested in learning it. As far as this site, it's my own site, so no matter how bad my English might be, that's not that much of a problem.

 Today was the day I used my fan for the first time this year. I suppose people who are unable to open their windows for noise or air pollution concerns have also started using their air conditioners this week. I didn't stash it away last fall. It stays on my desktop all the year round though it seems to not fit on a desktop considering its large size. It’s supposed to be used on floors. My desk is so large that it can accommodate a PC, a bookshelf, loudspeakers, a printer, and the fan at once. During the winter, I usually store it in a closet, in the space that a heater takes up during the summer. The last winter was exceptionally warm and I didn't need any heater. It was the first time that there was no snow accumulation in winter in Tokyo since I was born. I don't know if it has to do with global warming. A couple of days ago I watched the Beatles' Budokan live in 1966 on DVD. About half of it was their interview and scenes of them landing at the Haneda airport, getting into a white Toyota Crown, making their way to their accommodation through a then-new Tokyo highway, staying in their hotel rooms, and ultra-right-wing people in Shinbashi protesting the use of Budokan for a concert of Western music for the first time in its history. Despite the fact that it was filmed more than 40 years ago, the city of Tokyo didn't strike me as archaic at all. Shinbashi city looked cleaner than today. At the interview, they were obviously sick and tired of having to answer questions that I found couldn't be more silly. One of the questions went like, "How highly would you rate your own music?" or something like that. Silly as it sounds, it was one of the least stupid questions they were asking. Paul McCartney answered, "We are not very good musicians, we're adequate, but not very good." I remember him repeating the word 'adequate' a couple of times. The concert was pretty good. In fact I hadn't expected it was so good. Some musicians out there are real pros, they are technically perfect all the time, the musical instruments and equipment they're using are of top quality almost all the time. But most of the time they have little or no appeal. When it comes to music, being technically perfect doesn't mean they can create music that's appealing to people. During the concert George Harrison put his Gibson semi-acoustic guitar aside for a while and strummed a red Rickenbacker only for his "If I needed someone." The same model is being sold in a shop in Ochanomizu. I kind of like it. Their performance of the song was a bit lousy but that seemed to make it that much more appealing.

 I watched "Day after tomorrow" on DVD. It's a story about the onset of a new ice age triggered by global warming and was made in 2004. It was a jaw-dropping experience for me because I didn't have the faintest idea that CG has advanced that much. It struck me as something different altogether from movies as we knew them in the last century. Having said that I wasn't as impressed by its digital wizardry as I was by its plot. At first I found it kind of boring. It got interesting midway. I got the impression that it was written by multiple writers. Maybe that's the way every film is written these days. The part about Gutenberg's bible seemed to leave a long-lasting impression, and I thought it could have been a much better flick had they taken more time and brains to come up with just a little bit better scenario. As overwhelming as the CG scenes are, they at times get almost as lame as those you'll find on films created at the time when CG technology was still in its infancy. I wouldn't say it was as tacky as those you'll find in movies like "Godzilla," though. There's a world of difference. CG wolves or dogs were awesome. The scene in Tokyo was awful. Not only far from the reality, it seemed too stereotyped. However advanced some of the images are, there would be no point in all this if they keep offering stereotyped images.

Last month I watched "Duel" once again on TV, probably for the tenth time or even more. That's because they rerun it over and over here in Japan. It seems like it has gained some popularity here over the years and probably its ratings have been fairly good. Sure enough, it seems like one of the masterpieces made just before CG and all that stuff came along. Everything in it looked like real things. The sunset in the last scene was the real one, the protagonist's car about to smash against an oncoming train was real. In retrospect all this was something of a feat. With all the latest filming techniques available, no one in their right mind would do the same thing today. I think CG films sure are great. But at the same time I sometimes find myself more comfortable with those pre-CG films.

 

 It was hot today. It felt like a summer day. Seemed like a perfect day for an outing. But I didn't go out. I spent the morning watching Matsui playing in New York on TV. I lost appetite. It's too hot for a day in May. The sky began to cloud up in the afternoon. Anytime I'm home, the weather is gorgeous. Anytime I go out, it starts to rain. It occurred to me a while ago that it would be good to buy a musical instrument. It would be nice to spend a whole day playing music on a day like this. The only musical instrument I have now is a toy balalaika I got during a layover in Moscow. It has only three rusty strings. I can hardly play anything on it. It's too small. Yesterday I bought a paperback in a used bookstore. It's one of Michael Crichton's. It's priced at 300 yen. I'm going to read it tomorrow. I also bought "Snow falling on cedars" because the front cover looked nice and promising. I wonder however if I'll ever get my hands on it. I browsed it and found Japanese names here and there. It has to be a story of Japanese.