Nara is one of Japan's historical miyakos and a former capital city from 710 to 784 AD. It is also famous for its sacred deer. According to the legend, a mythological god Takemikazuchi arrived in Nara on a white deer to guard the newly built capital. Since then, the deer were regarded as heavenly animals which protected the city and the country.
This time around, Nara forms the backdrop of a weird comedy drama about a luckless man who finds himself posted to picturesque Nara as a result of office politics. Having been stigmatized at his previous work place by his reputation for being highly strung and neurotic, Ogawa Takanobu (played by Tamaki Hiroshi of Nodame Cantabile fame) thinks he's hit rock bottom when a deer starts to talk to him and commands him to save Japan...
Why I like this show:
1. Off-beat plot
2. Lots of interesting cultural and historical trivia about the city
3. Cute leads (Ayase Haruka as yummy Fujiwara-sensei ^_^)
Highlights:
1. A LOL pun about "my car"
2. A middle arc featuring a kendo competition
3. A nod to the Beatles (watch for the scene at the end where they walk across a zebra crossing!)
Saturday, May 10, 2008
鹿男あをによし(The Fantastic Deer Man)
Sunday, May 04, 2008
A LOL moment
The other day I checked one of my mail accounts and found couple of mails from some guy who had mistaken my email for his boss' account. This wasn't some run of the mill spam but the real thing. I wonder if there was any sensitive stuff inside as the sender account appeared to be from some diplomatic or foreign ministerial address ^_^;
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Blogging and BN
In the spectacular aftermath of the recent General Elections, the BN found themselves blind-sided by a motley crew of current/former ISA detainees, bloggers, activists, intellectuals and the odd amateur camera man...
The erstwhile Oppositionists (now the incumbent governments of 5 major states on the Peninsular), effectively utilized SMSes and the Internet to circumvent the BN's iron grip on the mainstream media.
50 years of nearly unchallenged power had effectively rotted the BN's collective brain. The BN had allowed intellectual cretins and cockerels into Parliament thereby violating the institution's sanctity. One of which was our former (Mis)Information Minister, whose name I shall respectfully decline to mention here. If you may recall, he dismissed the collective power of the "New Media" and displayed the depth of his ignorance by proposing to regulate Malaysian bloggers. I'm sure he would have had better luck scooping water with a sieve. Not only that, he humiliated Malaysians by making a fool of himself on Al-Jazeera. I was overjoyed when he was selected as the candidate for Parliament in my home town....because I got to play my part in voting him out of office v(^.^)v Needless to say, with the amount of ill-will he generated among Malaysians as a whole, he was decisively voted out. Now that he has more time on his hands I hope that he would take up blogging as a past time.
Interestingly, some other BN politicians decided to take on that idea and started blogging after the elections. However, from what I have seen so far, their attempts, as typified by the one by Malacca's Chief Minister are doomed to failure unless they grasp the interactive and real-time feedback essence of the medium. All the postings so far are of a condescending and sarcastic nature devoid of fact and research and does not seek to engage the readers. These BN politicians seem to be treating the new media as an extension of the old. I think it is sad that they are taking the wrong lessons from the recent GE, but then again, what can you expect when you have these low quality politicians ^_^;
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Cheng Beng 2008
To me Cheng Beng has always been an odd juxtapostion of fillial piety and crass consumerism. It is ultimately a reflection of the times we live in.
Traditionally, people burned paper "clothes" or houses for their ancestors' use in the afterworld; then came cars, TVs, radios and etc. This year we sent a N series "smart-phone" to my maternal grandpa. To make the whole occasion even more surreal, my uncle (my mom's sis' husband) who was away in Sabah for a business trip, decided to call in during the ceremony. Being the fillial son-in-law, he asked my aunt to put her phone on speaker mode...and proceeded to utter a Buddhist prayer for my late grandpa. Yes, the era of teleconferencing has now invaded another tradition ^_^;
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Elections are coming!
uh yeah...right....or maybe I should just flip a coin....
Monday, February 25, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
Shinai (竹刀)
Ever since I started kendo, I've been using a couple of cheap and cheerful made-in-china/taiwan shinai for my regular practice. Since I hardly ever tried anyone else's shinai it took me a while to figure out that the balance on my shinais were quite crappy to a "good" shinai. No wonder my single-hand wazas felt like molasses (^_^; )
My sensei explained that a well balanced shinai had a "fat" base which brought the centre of gravity closer to the grip and away from the monouchi. The sloping thickness also helps deflect blows away from the kote more easily.
I think I will get a better shinai for shiai purposes...
