Cultural Insensitivity without Matthew Broderick

I'll begin by saying that I am a huge fan of the Japanese Godzilla movies. Their delightful kitch-ness encapsulate so beautiful the often mocked sub-genre that is the Japanese Giant Monster Movie. Without these films, we would never have had the likes of Power Rangers, and seven decades of movie-goers would have missed out on the delightfully camp misadventures of everyone's favourite city-crushing radioactive dinosaur.

As such, when the first trailers for the new Hollywood version (let's forget for a moment 1998's travesty, after all, as Xander Harris so finely put it, "Matthew Broderick did not kill Godzilla. He killed a big, dumb lizard that was NOT the real Godzilla"), and indeed the trailers looked ruddy awesome, I was understandably excited. 

Fast forward to this evening, when with pick and mix in hand, I sat on the edge of my seat looking forward to two hours of deligful monstery fun. 

Now, admittedly, at least one hour of monstery madness was delivered, though had I walked out of the cinema when I was so very close to doing so, I would have missed out on the actual fun that is to be had in this picture. The first half of Gareth Edwards' canonical entry to the Godzilla mythology is so utterly insensitive that it manages to not only recreate an earthquake at a nuclear power plant in North West Japan, but also has giant beasties feeding from the destroyed core, before same beasties cause tsunamis along the Hawaiian coastline, all a mere three years after the Fukushima tragedy. Without dwelling too much upon my own experiences of the earthquake of March 2011, I'll simply say that I have never been so upset and offended by a film; the flippant-ness with which such a sensitive and devastating event is parodied is quite frankly disgusting and I am amazed that Ken Watanabe, star of the film and previously a big donor in the aftermath clear-up operation, did not think to point out the way in which history has been lampooned.

Indeed so close to the bone is the imagery that Manami, sat next to me, burst into tears halfway through the film; a great Japanese tragedy has been made a mockery using, sadly, a great Japanese cinematic icon. 

That said, the film is saved somewhat by some fantastic special effects, and the characterisation of the eponymous antihero is a spot-on homage to the original films. The main actors add very little; Watanabe makes a few occasional grunts, Elizabeth Olsen looks scared and cries a lot, and Bryan Cranston gives one of the hammiest performances of his career.

I'm very intrigued to see how Japanese critics react when Godzilla is released over there in two weeks' time; there has already been outrage at the original poster campaign, and I fear that a further backlash is to come. But at least Matthew Broderick isn't in it this time round... 

Ninja Japanesing with Chiaki Kuriyama

My Japanese is terrible.

That's not really a surprising statement for an Englishman to make, but when you consider I lived in Japan for over three years, it's actually quite embarrassing that my proficiency never exceeded that of a four year old child. 

It's mostly an aversion to studying; since leaving school, whenever taking up a new hobby, I have hungered to perfect it as quickly as possible. Whether it's cooking the perfect moules mariniere, or learning how to draw manga, I find myself either picking it up instantly, or simply deciding it's not for me. So when it comes to the hours of actual book-smarting required gain any level of fluency in a foreign language, I'm somewhat begrudging to sacrifice time that could be otherwise spent rewatching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

And so my skills in Japanese have been rather limited to those that have been acquired through an eclectic mix of anime and extreme gorno, many hours spent in karaoke bars and even more hours of general chit-chat with my girlfriend (a native of the Chiba area). As such, the four year old analogy is probably not best suited... Probably a severely handicapped alcoholic is a better likeness.

That said, my hold of the language is still better that 99.9% of non-Japanese living in the UK and as such, since my return from the Nippon, I have been having fun with a little pastime I like to call "Ninja Japanesing", a phrase coined by a very dear friend of mine during an excursion to London...

Soon after my return to the Uk, whilst on a jaunt around Soho, my friends and I passed by a tai-yaki shop. For those of you not versed in Asian baking, a tai-yaki is essentially a fish-shaped donut filled usually with either chocolate or sweet azuki bean paste. They are frankly bloody delicious!

As we passed by the shop, I began extolling my friends on the amazingness of this sugary treat, only to realise that the diminutive shop girl was at that moment turning the "open" sign to "closed".

With all the speed a slightly overweight chain-smoking dispraxic can muster, I jumped into the doorframe and begged in my best pigeon jap-lish for a handful of the tasty treats. So taken aback was the young shop girl that we spent the next ten minutes communicating in our linguistic hotpotch, establishing where best to find tai-yaki at that time of day (unfortunately, I established, their machine had been turned off and was not likely to be switched on again for the sake of three cakes). As we left the shop, my friends were dumbfounded, undoubtedly believing my Japanese to be much better than it actually is.

Since then, however, I have been having fun with tourists, whether it actually be being helpful when they're lost, or simply joining in random conversations with passers-by. Every time I still get that same bemused yet relieved reaction, and it means a lot to be able to give them a little bit of language relief when so far from home. Also I feel like a clever bastard. So I guess, as Joey Tribianni so rightly pointed out, you can never do a good deed without feeling a little smug about it somewhere inside.

Now, just to keep hoping for the day I can pull of some ninja-ing with the lovely Chiaki Kuriyama...