This movie was directed by Kwak Jae-young, the Korean director who was also behind My Sassy Girl and Windstruck. Cyborg She is supposed to be the last part of his Sassy Girl trilogy but I haven’t watch the others yet so I really don’t know what makes it a trilogy.

So basically, the movie starts off with love life-deprived Kitamura Jiro (Koide Keisuke) celebrating his birthday alone until he randomly stumbles upon a girl who seems to be amused seeing him and then follows him. The girl claims that it’s her birthday and Jiro tells her that it’s her birthday too.

They celebrate and make ruckus throughout the night until she tells him of a sad memory of how she was dumped by a guy because she walks in a weird way, eats too much, and punches too hard. She leaves him bemused and Jiro never got to see her again until exactly a year after when a girl who looks the same appears and celebrates together with him.

It is during that night that this girl saves him from a deranged man who just randomly shot his surroundings. He then finds out that the unnamed girl is a cyborg made by himself from the future to save him from something huge. This is when the real melodrama starts. But I’m not going to spoil anything for you here.

There’s just too much complex twists in this film for me to be able to write a decent review so I’m not going to say anything more about the plot. Besides the interesting and sort of mind-boggling plot, what amused me is how it would make you think you’re watching some kind of romantic comedy in the beginning – slapstick comedy courtesy of none other than the inhumanly strong cyborg girl and nonlinear random portrayals of her (i.e., electricuting with her eyes, imitating voices, super speed, etc.) that seem to be of great significance whatsoever to the plot.

After a the playful antics, the plot suddenly starts to have significance and shifts to a dramatic tone. If you’re lucky, it could elicit a few tears from you too. I recommend this to those who love being mind-boggled by time travel paradoxes and also to those who would enjoy a unique, melodramatic (neither comedy nor tragedy) love story.

• Movie: Cyborg Girl / Cyborg She / My Girlfriend Is a Cyborg
• Romaji: Boku no kanojo wa saibogu
• Japanese: 僕の彼女はサイボーグ
• Director: Kwak Jae-young
• Runtime: 120 min.
• Starring:
  Ayase Haruka – Cyborg
  Koide Keisuke – Kitamura Jiro

Cyborg She [Wikipedia]

After stumbling upon this blog with very casual and personal posts on Japanese immersion, I decided to give what this post says a try: “Listen to 10,000 hours of Japanese over the next 18 months.” I wouldn’t want to have my J-Pop tunes on repeat as that would probably make me sick of them in the end so I resorted to Japanese internet radio.

livedoor ねとらじ lets you listen to various user-created streams in Japanese (probably since livedoor is a Japanese portal and that the Japanese interface would scare off 外人 がいじん Foreignergaijins who have nothing to do with Japan). The streams vary from anime and J-Pop music to Japanese rants to random Skype conversations.

You can sort the list of user-generated programs (as shown in the image above) according to listener count, title, name of DJ, air time and bitrate. There’s also a refresh button to update the list of current streams.

I listen to streams every time I’m not watching anything or listening to my iTunes library and that includes the time I’m typing this post. It’s not too distracting (well, that depends on what stream you’re listening to) so I suggest you also listen to this in the background while working. As for me, I also leave it playing while I lull myself to sleep. Who knows, you might pick up an expression or two.

I use the VLC Multimedia plugin for FireFox (which is an optional feature when you install VLC) to listen to the streams.

livedoor ねとらじ　[Japanese net radio]

After watching Nodame Cantabile, I fell in love not only with the story, its antics, characters and the classical music but also with the actors behind the quirky musician roles. Tamaki Hiroshi plays the perfectionist, multi-talented, pianist slash violinist slash conductor, Chiaki Shinichi in Nodame Cantabile.

Aside from Tamaki’s awesome anime-like hairstyle in Nodame Cantabile, what caught my attention is his voice – both speaking and singing voice. He has an exceptionally deep speaking voice (it makes me want to melt just hearing it). The first time I heard him sing was this one scene in the Nodame Cantabile Special where he was singing a random song while strolling along the streets with Nodame. After hearing his voice, I just had this feeling he was really a singer off-screen so I did my research and found YouTube performances, an awesome music video and his official site where I first heard his single, SLOW TIME.

Tamaki Hiroshi’s D-Addicts profile

• Name: 玉木宏
• Name (romaji): Tamaki Hiroshi
• Profession: Actor, singer and model
• Birthdate: 1980-Jan-14
• Birthplace: Nagoya, Aichi, Japan
• Height: 180cm
• Weight: 55kg
• Star sign: Capricorn
• Blood type: A
• Talent agency: AOI Corporation

I think a lot of people would agree that he looks best (and youngest) in his Nodame Cantabile hairstyle. He also lost too much weight after NC. I’m looking forward to seeing him again with the same NC hairstyle (and BMI) in the Nodame Cantabile movie in 2010.

Everyone needs a little crack especially right before school time gets toxic – or so I thought. This is the very desperate excuse for watching Nodame Cantabile (Live Action) right before our midterms week. And I’m kind of hinting some regret here. With my current Nodame-smitten state, I don’t think it’s possible for me to even give my Stat notes a short glance.

For those who still haven’t watched, Nodame Cantabile is a [crack] story about the unconventional relationship between two very opposite musical figures. Girl is Noda Megumi (Ueno Juri), or Nodame, who’s exceptionally skilled with the piano but fails to look at music from a serious viewpoint (i.e. the inability to read scores [memorizes by ear] and use established techniques [plays sloppily]). Boy is Chiaki Shinichi (Tamaki Hiroshi) – cold, OC, genius and established pianist whose not-so-secret desire of becoming a conductor is probably half of what the drama is all about.

One of the main conflicts is Chiaki’s inability to study music abroad due to his fear of riding planes caused by a childhood trauma. Staying in Japan has been what was normal for him but obviously, meeting Nodame would eventually make everything anything but normal. The only obvious conventional part of this drama is how they, regardless of how bipolar, slapstick, and crack-ish they could be, would greatly affect the turn-of-events in each other’s lives and in turn, develop some [odd] sort of romantic relationship while at it.

• Title: のだめカンタービレ
• Title (romaji): Nodame Cantabile
• Genre: Romantic Comedy
• Episodes: 11
• Viewership ratings: 18.79(Kanto)
• Broadcast network: Fuji TV
• Broadcast period: 2006-Oct-16 to 2006-Dec-25
• Air time: Monday 21:00
• Opening song: Symphony No. 7 in A major by Beethoven, arranged by Hattori Takayuki
• Ending song: Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin, arranged by Hattori Takayuki

I finished it about a couple of days ago and since then I’ve been

1. reading the manga
2. lurking in all sorts of Nodame-related [forum] discussions and LJ-comms
3. researching as to whether Chapter 123 of the manga is *gasp* what I think it is
4. practicing the Onara Taiso
5. mourning over Tamaki Hiroshi’s loss of weight and change of hair
6. watching Ueno Juri’s very kawaii recording of the Onara Taiso
7. singing second voice to Slow Time by Tamaki Hiroshi
8. [suddenly and surprisingly] having a penchant for classical music
9. having an LSS over Beethoven’s Symphony no. 7 in A Major and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and …
10. [I'll stop here for practical purposes]

On the course of doing after-effect number 2, I stumbled upon this: Seven Reasons Why Nodame is the Best Kind of Crack. It practically explains everything I would’ve wanted to tell anyone else who I’d want to infect with my current Nodame-smitten-state-causing disorder.

And I’m not forcing you to watch it especially if you’ve got serious stuff coming up (oh no, midterms). But [please] DO SO ANYWAY! Onegaishimasu! (お願いします) ^^

Streaming is available in MySoju and if you’re longing for HQ, there are torrents in D-Addicts for that too.

I was born and raised a Filipino. To be honest, I’ve never set foot in any of the countries whose cultures I learned to love but I do love the cultures anyway and because of this, it was inevitable for people to question my love for my own country.

In an English class in my university, we were tasked to write a reflective paper with a common theme among our own groups. My group decided to have “The Filipino Identity” as our binding theme. How ironic. I am one whose “Filipino Identity” could not be seen by people who think I’ve forgotten all about it due to my very obvious liking for the Korean and Japanese culture. My fascination for other cultures clouded my “Filipino Identity.”

I think it’s time to clear things up.

My reflective paper: I Do Not Smell Like Raw Fish

NIHONGO TANGO:

韓国 (kankoku)

n – (South) Korea.

* “Raw fish” is a rough translation of malansang isda or putrid fish in English. It came from the Filipino proverb: Ang hindi marunong magmahal sa sariling wika, daig pa ang hayop at malansang isda. (He who does not love his native language is worse than a beast or a putrid fish.)

* The post header shows my name in Alibata ( Tagalog script which isn’t used anymore, by the way), Hangul (Korean alphabet), and of course, Katakana.