Thursday, January 12, 2006
there's plenty of fools, but a dearth of true beauty



Despite the busy-ness of my current schedule, I've managed make time to watch some TV... which is a pretty ridiculously thing for me to say, given my hatred for the squawking box of distraction and my picky nature about the shows I can actually stand to watch. While LOST and Battlestar Galatica were on break, I managed to get into a great Japanese drama series called Densha Otoko ("Train Man") thanks to a BitTorrent site link provided for me by the law student formerly known as GahLeiGai. I first remember hearing about the show in this Japan Times article.

The story of Densha Otoko follows a 23-year old nerd obsessed with anime (AKA otaku) named Yamada Tsuyoshi who by chance, saves a beautiful woman, Aoyama Saori, a train from harassment by a dirty drunken old man. Grateful, Aoyama mails a thank you present of Hermes teacups to the love-struck Yamada who hasn't stopped thinking about Aoyama since the night he met her. The story basically follows the genre of "bumbling man falls in love with beautiful woman" that has been explored in movies like My Sassy Girl, though an important twist to the story of Densha Otoko is that Yamada, looking for advice, posts anonymously on an internet BBS for single men asking for help (which made me laugh and think of the IIStix crew).

The girl on the right in the picture of above is the main actress in the show, Misaki Ito.

Another interesting parallel to My Sassy Girl is that the story for Densha Otoko is also based on a written novel, detailing the real story (for those who can read Japanese, these BBS chat threads archived here are supposedly the originals!)

Anyways, I think it may be the most entertaining Japanese drama I've watched inawhile, almost on-par with watching Long Vacation back in highschool Japanese class. The series has been really fun to watch, maybe because underneath my hardened, jaded, cynical exterior, I'm a nerd who loves toy robots, cartoons, and video games... though I sort of draw the line "descension to ultimate nerd-dom" at attending conventions or doing cosplay, haha. >=P


.:.


Speaking of geeks and beautiful women, there's a new season of Beauty & The Geek. They got a couple of Asian guys this time... one is an Indian American MIT grad who's into Indian dancing, and the other is a world's record holder for solving Rubik's cubes.

How geek-tastic.

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Comments:
Yikes, what did I do with the above post? (damn my crappy html skills) The above link was to the site with the English translation of the original Densha Otoko message board text. *bashes head on keyboard*
 
cori- no worries. ;)
 
that lady looks amazingly like this HK actress who i call 'cat eyes'. if i wasn't so lazy, i'd google it. -f
 
my mom was watchign this a few weeks ago. i hate to say i watched a j-dorama but... yeah..

and i dunno about you but i was mad jealous of that one guy's gundam collection. haha..

- akito
 
akito- you know you liked it. i totally recognized all the Gundam figures too... heh.

ore wa otaku da. >=P
 
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in?scrip?tion (n-skrip-shun)n.
1. The act or an instance of inscribing.
2. Something, such as the wording on a coin, medal, monument, or seal, that is inscribed.
3. A short, signed message in a book or on a photograph given as a gift.
4. The usually informal dedication of an artistic work.
5. Jeremiah 31:33

the facts.
name. Gar AKA "that Chinese guy" "Sleepy.McSleeping"
ethnicity/nationality. Chinese/American, 4th gen.
location. Sea-Town, WA, USA Kawanishi, JAPAN
occupation. less-cynical poor grad student
age. younger than you think, older than you know

 



 

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