Battle Royale 2nd edition

As you may already know, I bought a first edition copy of this novel a few years back at National Bookstore Cubao (the one that's beside Gateway Mall and a few steps away from Breadtalk) and was taken aback by how affordable it was. English translated works by contemporary Japanese authors would normally be more expensive and hard to find, so to say that I was ecstatic to get my hands on this Japanese bestseller at the cost of a John Grisham...

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Save Me, San Francisco : Train Live in Manila

We've had a lot of foreign artists over this year and though my sisters and I made a number of plans to catch some of them perform, we never really managed to watch anything because of our conflicting schedules. Most of the concerts were scheduled on a Sunday or a weekday---which meant braving traffic if you're coming from the other side of the metro and/or rearranging your work itinerary just to get to the venue in time for the concert, which...

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In the Company of Wilfred

"Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination." - Mark Twain This year saw the end of Friday Night Lights and the short-lived remake of the V series, and while there were a number of new shows and sitcoms that premiered this fall, I was more or less looking for something different from the slew of supernatural-horror-fantasy and crime procedural shows on U.S. television. November sweeps was fast approaching and the shows that were...

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The Kitchen Musical

Watching The Kitchen Musical is like a tacit admission that you have nothing better to do on a Saturday night. Seriously, anyone who gets to watch this thing on its given timeslot has either decided to stay in for a quiet weekend or was channel-surfing when the television-musical-bug decided to bite. Terrible, I know, but creator CheeK's concept of fusion entertainment---one that combines food, music, drama and dance in one show---has badges...

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The Frazzled Troubadour

Here's the thing, I don't really get out much nowadays with work and my part-time job teaching, so on the rare occasion that I do manage to catch a concert, watch a play or attend a ballet, I only go out of my way to see something that I'm inexplicably drawn to, really interested in or feel strongly about. So when I heard that Manila was going to be the first stop of Jason Mraz's "A Grateful Journey Tour", I immediately marked the date on my...

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Falling by the Wayside

お久しぶりです! I know it's been months since I've updated this thing but ever since I got a part-time job teaching college kids, I just never seem to have the time to sit down and blog properly (if there is such a thing). That second job pretty much sucked up all my time and energy that I even forgot basic stuff like renewing my driver's license. To top it off, I still have about a half dozen or so draft entries that annoy the hell out of me every...

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BECK's Heav[enl]y Silence

"Please don't put your life in the hands Of a Rock 'n Roll band and throw it all away" - Oasis, Don't Look Back in Anger (1996) Last month, I received the subtitles prepared by SkewedStudios Fansubs and Scanlations to the live-action version of BECK with instructions from the project leader to typeset the same, bearing in mind to place it on uber-hakaduper-higher-than-the-highest priority on my list of pending projects. Coming into it,...

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Eiga Sai 2011

Kicking off a month's worth of events and activities designed to promote cultural exchange and understanding in celebration of the Philippines-Japan Friendship Month (PFJM) this July is the annual Eiga Sai sponsored by Japan Foundation Manila, the Japanese Embassy and other partner organizations nationwide. Among the films that will be screened this year is Departures which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2009, along with an interesting...

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The Maid

Those who've seen a television or movie adaptation of  "Nanase Futatabi"" or perhaps read the manga "Telepathic Wanderers" would no doubt remember its heroine being hunted down by a secret organization intent on eliminating those with paranormal abilities. This book features the same Nanase Hiita only earlier in the timeline, prior to the events narrated in the second installment of the series. What's interesting though is that while the second...

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Down the Rabbit Hole We Go - Part 2

"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore." - Andre Gide Some of you might remember a piece on this blog last year about my strange and unsettling [ad]venture into the world of JE idols after coming into possession of and doing a weekend "viewing" marathon of a couple of JE concerts. To  be honest, I really struggled to approach this with an open mind and while I found it hard to put my thoughts...

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Spring Cleaning Blues

A new season's approaching which means another batch of jdoramas will be gracing the small screen and yet I don't even remember catching any of the ones that came out earlier this year. Can't really say I'm excited about the upcoming dramas because blurbs tend to be misleading and as experience would show, watching a drama on the basis of who's in it doesn't always do the trick. So I've decided to lower my expectations and watch things at my...

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A Foreign Perspective

An offshoot of watching Japanese dramas and movies is an increased awareness and/or curiosity over things that are Japanese. I suppose it's the same for anyone who's been exposed to a segment of Japanese culture or have fallen in love with an aspect thereof---be it art, literature, fashion, or  music; whether you're a manga or anime fan, or even a gaming enthusiast, it's not unusual to develop an interest in the country and the people from...

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Jungle Fish

  Most if not all the Korean dramas that land on foreign shores are sageuks, makjangs, or trendy dramas,  and while they're indeed quite popular, and very entertaining at that, seldom will one encounter a production that would speak of an ongoing issue or make an effort to address something that has some social relevance. Breaking away from the usual kdrama offerings is KBS2's Jungle Fish, a youth drama which came out in 2008. Winner...

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A Star's Lover in Pictures

No matter how maudlin, humdrum or disappointing a drama may turn out to be, people would often walk away from them remembering a specific thing that either struck their fancy or something that came off as somewhat odd or irritating. It might be a touching scene, a memorable line, an outrageous outfit or a striking motif; a person might eventually forget about the structure of the story or struggle to remember every detail of how things unfolded...

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