Kosen emerges from a narrow, covered alleyway as she returns to her okiya.


Kotoha and Yasuha headed back to their okiya after a long morning of visits beneath the brutal summer sun.


Kosen and Koyuki slip through a noren, carefully stepping into the street with her black laquered okobo. Kosen wears the typical susuki kanzashi ( Japanese Pampas Grass hair ornament).

While many maiko wear kanzashi (hair ornaments) based on summer grasses, Mameteru wears a rare asagao, or Morning Glory, perfectly complimenting the flowery theme of her kimono.


Teruyuki also wears the asagao, but as a senior maiko her hair is ornamented with only a single, large blossom.

The shimmering silver kanzsahi sparkle in the sunlight.

Remember how I said this would be the next movie I saw? That was before I found out that Seven Samurai was playing at the Cleveland Institute of Art's Cinematheque . I've been wanting to see it for ages, and the chance to see it on the big screen was just too much for me to bear!

When watching Seven Samurai, movie lovers will immediately recognize that several of its key elements can be readily detected in countless similar films made during the last half-century. The audition scenes, in which several samurai are recruited for the difficult task of defending a farming town from a group of bandits, strikes a particularly familiar chord, as do those showing the samurai training the lowly villagers to fight and use weapons. Indeed, the theme of a highly experienced group of "tough guys" taking up the cause of the disenfranchised has become something of an action film cliche, portions of which echo throughout the American western, as well as its progeny (think The Dirty Dozen, The Road Warrior or even television's The A Team).

What really stands out in Seven Samurai are its characters. They run the gamut, from elder teacher to hopeful youth, stoic warrior to undisciplined brigand. Kurosawa even finds room for a youthful romance, not to mention the mix of poor and beleaguered townspeople he depicts within the setting of the town. Perhaps its no wonder the enemy bandits are virtually faceless-- there is so much conflict and passion present within the group of protagonists, the villains need not be more than a vague threat.

Through it all Kurosawa never forgets who these people are and where they stand in comparison to one another. Obviously, the samurai are samurai, while the townspeople are merely peasants, lacking even in funds to pay their noble defenders... The film thus wraps a a portrait of class conflict in a cloak of solidarity. The samurai unite to defend the poor peasants, but the ending is not exactly happy for them. Nor are the peasants completely honorable. We learn, for instance, that they have in the past murdered defeated samurai and looted their bodies, and it becomes apparent late in the film that their claims of poverty are perhaps not as truthful as at first seemed apparent.

So why do the samurai defend them so valiantly? For honor? For love of adventure? The answer to this question is left intentionally vague; it is up to each viewer to draw his or her own conclusions. It is to the film's credit that it forces such questions upon us while never allowing them to cause the motivations of its characters to seem untrue...

A smiling Suzuha, Gion's most successful geiko. Yes, that's right! More images from Hassaku, my final day in Kyoto, with the promise of still more images to come. What can I say? I am a picture-taking machine! (^_<)

What makes Hassaku so special? Most people would say it's the special sort of "uniform" many maiko and geiko wear for the occasion: Formal black, silk gauze kimono adorned with the family crest of their respective okiya. It is possible, however, to see many senior geiko dressed in lovely, subtley colorful kimono looking every bit as beautiful making their Hassaku visits.


Why? It's true that independent geiko own all of their own kimono, but before earning their indepen- dence, they rely on the collection of the okiya. Since these special silk gauze kimono can only be worn once a year, even independent geiko choose to rent them from the okiya.

In some okiya, however, there are many maiko and geiko. When a large family of maiko and geiko must make their Hassaku greetings together, there may not be enough of these special kimono for them all. In these cases, the most senior geiko gives up her claim on the kimono so that one of her juniors may wear it.

Big Dreams Little Tokyo is the story of Boyd, an American with an uncanny ability to speak Japanese. Boyd aspires to succeed in the world of Japanese buisness but finds himself mostly on the outside looking in. Meanwhile, his roommate Jerome is a Japanese American who has always felt too American to be Japanese but too Japanese to be American. He aspires to be a sumo wrestler but finds his weight and blood pressure are thwarting his dreams. Together they struggle to find their place in a world where cultural identity is seldom what it seems.

Hmmm... I wonder what that's like.

Anyways, I'm really looking forward to seeing it! Not to mention, his next film, White on Rice! Tonoshimi ne!