On February 23rd, 2009, the Oscar for the foreign language film went to the movie Okuribito (english title: Departures), by director Takita Yojiro.
At the time, I was studying in Tokyo at Sendagaya Japanese Institute (千駄ヶ谷日本語教育研究所) and one of our teachers, Heya-sensei, told us about the Oscar and suggested to go see the movie in theaters as a school activity. Being a movie lover as I am the idea pleased me immediately, also because it would be my first time in a japanese theater seeing a movie in japanese language, and I was honestly curious about my ability to understand it. Read the rest of this entry »
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Some movies are made for success, and no matter what’s your opinion about it, Avatar is indeed a success.
According to The Money Times the movie’s total income is now well over $650 milion, which makes it the top selling film of all times (more than Cameron’s own Titanic).
Naturally, a movie’s success is not only in money it makes, and Avatar has its big share of critics, concerning mainly the script which to many is way too similar to movies like Pocahontas, Dance with Wolves, The Last Samurai, The New World, FernGully or the italian Aida degli Alberi. The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that people just name the first movie they saw whose story is close to Avatar’s. Don’t get me wrong, personally I saw Dance with Wolves and The Last Samurai and I gotta agree, they both are similar to Cameron’s last work, but still, they are also different.
Every filmmaker is by definition someone who loves movies, and every one of them, if asked, will tell stories about how he got into the idea of becoming what he is by seeing some old movie he still loves. Cameron himself was so amazed after seeing Star Wars in 1977 that he decided to enter the film industry.
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Finally there’s an official Wordpress application for Android phone, available on the Android Market. It’s strikingly similar to the wpToGo app that I blogged about last month, so maybe they bought it and modified it, no idea… anyway it’s a good one.
You can read about on the official website: WordPress for Android or in case you’re too lazy to go there, you can watch the following video.
At the moment there’s already been an update, so you’ll get 1.0.1 version which should fix some minor bugs.
Just testing out the android application Post-Bot.
If you can see this, well it means the application works, and I’m writing from my Motorola Milestone. \(^_^)/
And if you are reading this, means that the other applet works as well. This one is called wpToGo and it’s definitely better, lets you add some basic html tags and also add tags to your posts.
I’m obviously talking about android applications that help you update your Wordpress blog. There are probably more, but so far I checked only these two.
A week ago I finally got rid of my old cellphone (Sony Ericsson K800i) and got a Motorola Milestone, a smartphone based on the Google OS, Android. I took the Milestone for two main reasons: it’s the first coming with version 2.0 of Android, and it’s also a good bargain for its price (I got it at 478 euro), since similar phones equipped with Windows Mobile 6.5 or for example the iPhones have prices way more obscene.
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Just wanted to wish a merry Christmas to everyone! 
Since this new blog is still new, I’ll take some time to explain what is the small cat holding a golden coin you can see over the logo in the middle column.
In Japan that is called 招き猫 (maneki neko) and it litterally means beckoning cat, or welcoming cat. In the present days it is just one more clearly recognizable symbol of the japanese culture and traditions maybe, but its origin goes back in time. Supposedly it originated in the late Edo period (1603-1867) but the first documented evidence is dated 1870; by the beginning of the 20th century, the maneki neko was already popular.
As you can see, my blog is finally online again, and this time I decided to give Wordpress a chance, since I was sick of managing Joomla already. Plus I managed to find a theme I really like, so: here we are… hope you’ll see more action here from now on, can’t guarantee anything however! I’ll try to make this thing as multilingual as possible, but you’ll eventually see posts in italian only, english only (maybe) or even japanese only (that’d be crazy, right?). Anyway, stay tuned, I intend to unravel aspects of Japan and it’s language that may be useful for many, and surely are for myself (updating here will be another way to keep studying, so don’t take me for such an altruistic person already…!).
To whoever will stumble upon these pages: be welcome and be free to comment if you’d like, politeness required, of course. 
