went to a screening of "pom poko" (english title) as part of a film fest going on. damn, i really need to stick around wellington. so many cool films going on and i've already missed some. i left auckland just as the art stuff was happening there too. *sigh*

the film is about tanuki. a japanese creature all japanese know about. all of this is lost on westerners. so i thought everyone would just laugh because they think things are absurd and not understand the cultural background behind it. i was right. even the opening setups, people were rolling in their seats. i didn't see anything funny going on. but as long as everyone is enjoying themselves, it's alright.

the subtitles got the main points across. i had to read them because i needed the help! any plot that has a newscast, old people talking in old speak like warriors, and anything to do with religion/magic/politics/etc. i need help with. those sort of words are just not part of my vocabulary. i have the vocab of a child in japanese. my brain is an adult. it's very frustrating. there were some specifics translated into generics in the subtitles. i noticed this but realized it was for the benefit of the reader. what's the point in saying that some tanuki are living on the streets of harajyuku if no one knows what that means? just say living on city streets. (it's like saying living on the streets of hollywood.)

the film was pretty funny, but it seemed really long because the seats at the movie theatre were really bad. other cultural references that westerners will not get were all the ghosts depicted in the monster parade. very traditional, characters commonly referred to in ghost stories made their appearance. these are really scary to a japanese person, but are probably laughable to a westerner. much like how the children in the film enjoyed the parade, they were not scared of the ghosts.

the one thing that everyone was dying laughing over were the tanuki's use of testicle powers. let me just say that the japanese word for testicle is literally "golden balls". tanuki have golden balls. large ones. golden balls are pretty lucky. all the statues usually depict them as large, as well as having a bottle of sake. it's just a cultural thing. tanuki are tricksters, but lovable. that's how they were in the film. also, the japanese humor is a bit different too. so i think both cultures would view the film and laugh for different reasons. that is to be expected of course. it's just weird to sit inbetween both worlds.

i think i need to see this one again and maybe not read the subtitles! concentrate more on what the characters are saying in japanese. it could be a good way to add some vocab to my lexicon. also, it felt like one of the scenes got cut up in a weird way. you could almost hear the whole theatre say "huh?". so i'd like to see how it's really supposed to flow in that one messed up section.

one more little thing that westerners would've missed. a little joke i found funny. when the tanuki were on the boat, one of the signs said "tanuki soba". hahahahaaaaaaaa