{"id":39834,"date":"2016-05-26T19:00:50","date_gmt":"2016-05-26T23:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=39834"},"modified":"2016-05-31T13:51:58","modified_gmt":"2016-05-31T17:51:58","slug":"wit-lif-301-%e6%98%af%e6%9e%9d%e7%9b%a3%e7%9d%a3%e3%81%ae%e6%96%b0%e4%bd%9c%ef%bc%81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2016\/05\/26\/wit-lif-301-%e6%98%af%e6%9e%9d%e7%9b%a3%e7%9d%a3%e3%81%ae%e6%96%b0%e4%bd%9c%ef%bc%81\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Lif #301: \u662f\u679d\u76e3\u7763\u306e\u65b0\u4f5c\uff01"},"content":{"rendered":"

WIT Life <\/strong><\/em><\/a>is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/a> (Kumamo<\/a>to-ken<\/a> CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends along with h<\/strong><\/em>er<\/strong><\/em> own obse<\/strong><\/em>rv<\/strong><\/em>atio<\/strong><\/em>ns.<\/strong><\/em>\"\"<\/p>\n

I seem to have a knack for timing my business trips to Japan in sync with releases of my favorite director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s films<\/a>, and this time is no exception.\u00a0 Last night I had the chance to check out \u6d77\u3088\u308a\u3082\u307e\u3060\u6df1\u304f (Umi yori mo m<\/em>ada fukaku)<\/em> or After the Storm), a welcome addition to Kore-eda’s impressive body of work.\u00a0 It features the familiar cast of characters who can be found throughout the rest of his films, such as Hiroshi Abe and Kirin Kiki paired once again as mother and son, and Lily Franky.<\/p>\n

Abe plays Ryota, a character with the same name as the one he played in Kore-eda’s \u6b69\u3044\u3066\u3082\u6b69\u3044\u3066\u3082 (Aruito mo aruite mo<\/em> or Still Walking).\u00a0 This Ryota is a formerly award-winner author who barely makes ends meet by gambling and his job as a private investigator.\u00a0 He struggles to pay child support to his ex-wife in order to be able to see his son on a monthly basis.\u00a0 Despite being accustomed to Kore-eda’s leisurely pace, I found the film a bit slow at the beginning.\u00a0 However, as the story unfolded I started to be drawn more into the stories of the characters.\u00a0 Perhaps it was because I’m far from home and missing my own family, but I found my eyes filling with tears during some of the tender family moments.\u00a0 I loved the deceivingly simple but significant shot of the four bowls and four sets of chopsticks, drying after being washed following a family meal.<\/p>\n

I was blown away by the extremely nuanced performance of Taiyo Yoshizawa who plays Ryota’s son, and thrilled to see Yukiyoshi Ozawa (the very crush-worthy Katsuragi Sensei from the NHK Sakura morning drama!) in the role of Ryota’s ex-wife’s new boyfriend.\u00a0 It goes without saying that Kiki was amazing as Ryota’s mother who just lost her husband and lives in low-rent housing while longing for a condo, and Franky has a humorous role as Ryota’s boss at the detective agency.\u00a0 Ryota is a lost soul at the beginning of the film but at the end we somehow have hope for him, an idea reflected in the beautifully haunting closing song “\u6df1\u547c\u5438” (shinkokyuu <\/em>or deep breath) from \u30cf\u30ca\u30ec\u30b0\u30df (Hanaregumi<\/em>).\u00a0 Its lyrics include “saying goodbye to the me of yesterday” and “hello again to the me of tomorrow.”\u00a0 Abe is masterful at subtly conveying this change, with the film’s last scene showing him walking upright as opposed to the slouched shoulders and defeated gait he had for the majority of the film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WIT Life is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends along with her own observations. I seem to have a knack for timing my business trips to Japan in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[263,18,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-amu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39834"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39892,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39834\/revisions\/39892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}