The Lightning Tree (Raiou)

I saw another movie on RED last night, and it made me saaad again. I have to stop watching those cute but sad Japanese movie. But I can't help it. The star couple were so cute together. Anyway...

The movie was "The Lightning Tree" (Raiou), which was basically the Romeo and Juliet of Edo era. It tells the story of Narimichi (Masaki Okada), the son of a Shogun (dunno which one) who disliked his life in general. His father abandoned his mother when Narimichi was still a child, leaving the poor kid bereft of paternal love. To make it worse, the kid had a habit to collapse out of the blue.

One day, when Narimichi was already a gorgeous young samurai lord, he ventured out to a village called Seta to convalesce. There, he met a rascal girl named Rai (Yu Aoi), who taught him how to laugh, dance in the rain, and basically be himself. As expected, the two youngster fell in love slowly but sure. It was a beautiful cliche, full of laughter and promises. I cannot help but hope that the two lovebirds would find their happiness in the end.

School Days with a Pig

There is a good reason why I paid for a paid TV package that includes an Asian channel called RED. This channel, along with Celestial TV, has many good Asian movies. I like Japanese movies in particular, because somehow they often manage to make even a weird theme go alive as humanely possible.

One of such a movie was 'School Days with a Pig', which talks about a class of 6th grade elementary school kids (about 11-12 years old perhaps?) that has a weird class project. Mr Hoshi the teacher (played admirably with sweet cuteness by Satoshi Tsumabuki) wanted to give a life lesson for the kids. He chose to bring a piglet for the class to raise until they graduate, at which time the piglet will be killed and eaten by the class.

I’m waiting for this book...

Ramesh Menon’s Shiva Purana Retold. I’ve always wanted to read Shiva Purana, but I can’t bear the thickness of the book. Not to mention it must be expensive and laced with difficult prose. What’s the use of purchasing an expensive book without understanding its meaning? So when I found that Amazon UK offered this book for a significantly cheaper price than Amazon US, I bought it instantly from the UK site. But since the book won’t arrive until late this week (if I’m lucky), I often clicked around the ‘Look Inside’ to read the ‘Surprise Me!’ link. I found this beautiful passage that I cannot but share with you: