Mitsuko Mori (1920-2012)

Mitsuko Mori
courtesy of Ken Mat
from Flickr

Thursday November 15, 12:28 p.m.

Over the last couple of days via NHK, I heard that veteran actress and show business queen, Mitsuko Mori, passed away on the 10th at the age of 92.

She was in so many stage plays, TV shows and movies. And for those who saw the Hayao Miyazaki classic, "Princess Mononoke", Mori played the role of Hii-sama, the wise woman of Ashitaka's village, in the original Japanese version.

I wasn't particularly a fan of hers but she was ubiquitious on the screen. Until the last few years, various channels seemed to make it an annual custom of showing her in her most famous play, "Horoki" where her character was required to do a gleeful somersault. And that is where I admired her. This is a lady...well into her 80s....who could pull off a move like that, let alone keep up the hard schedule of appearing on the stage daily or nightly. For a society that still reveres age to a certain extent, Mori must have seemed like a divine inspiration to many.

Unfortunately, in the last few years, even she couldn't stave off age indefinitely. That sparkly glint in her eyes disappeared as she entered her 90s, and her speech slowed a fair bit so that she decided to retire a few years ago. But she still retained that youthful lustrousness right up to the end.

This is Mori back in 1978 singing enka karaoke favourite, "Love Letter from Canada" with the David Bowie of Japan, Kenji Sawada.

Potpourri Entry of the Week

Tuesday September 11, 8:41 a.m.

Yesterday was pretty much devoted to translation. I got a bit of a good-natured chewout from the boss for handing an admittedly half-assed assignment, but it was very difficult...all of those pharmaceutical terms. Actually, my boss didn't even jump on me but he told me matter-of-factly that the editor really had to earn her pay with my hand-in. I apologized for the work but he kindly brushed it off saying that it was a learning experience and he knew how it difficult it was. In a way, he rather reminds me of that Warner Bros. cartoon bulldog....not the aggressive one who was always chasing after Sylvester the Cat, but the one who counseled the other cat like a good buddy. Still, I've been served....I'm gonna have to be at the top of my game. Fortunately, I did hand in something yesterday that I think is a much better product, and I will be getting a pretty big payday in about a month for another large product. And there is another much smaller and hopefully easier assignment for today.

I'll be taking off for downtown on somewhat of a TIFF journey. The Toronto International Film Festival is past the halfway point, so I expect that the celeb population is starting to peter out. However, I will be taking a look at the Hot Docs Cinema near Bathurst and Bloor since that's one of the venues, although in my case, I don't think I'll be lucky enough to catch any celebs. In fact, I'm more interested in seeing what food trucks will be there for lunch. If they've pulled out, I can just head over to The Thumbs-Up Eatery for a bit of Korean. Afterwards, I will walk over to Yorkville and see if the fishing is good there.

The big chewout I'm expecting to get is from my brother. I received that new laptop from him about 10 days ago, and I managed to destroy it over the weekend due to some stupidity on my part. Suffice it to say, my wonderful palette of software is no more. I've already sent him the bad news and going hat in hand to see if there is some way to salvage any recovery.

I've gotten some good news from my former students-turned-friends back in Japan. Two of them sent me a package of Kaki-P (a snack mix of rice crackers and peanuts) that I used to engorge weekly but haven't had in 9 months since returning to Canada....I can probably buy them here, but I'm not gonna shuck out a ton of cash and take the TTC all the way to the boonies to J-Town to get them. Apparently, they'll be heading over to France next month for a vacation. Then I received word from another student that she and her family will be coming to Toronto in October for a bit of a leafwatching. So it'll be time to put on the tour guide hat once more. Too bad they couldn't come over during the TIFF.

Apparently the Kanto area has been going through some major water rationing blues because of the extreme heat and the extreme lack of rain this past couple of months. One of the major reservoirs in Gunma Prefecture currently looks like a nearly-drained bathtub at just 6% capacity. The government had called a major crisis several years ago when the reservoir had been at 30% capacity, so things are pretty dire over there. I miss Japan but the summers are one thing I have been happy to do without. It was like swimming through atmosphere.

Toronto Comic Arts Festival

Sunday May 6, 2:53 p.m.

Made a rare trip downtown yesterday. Saw Yorkville for the first time since I returned for good. Not too bustling but then again it was a Saturday morning. But it made for a nice walk. I noticed some of the old names have disappeared.  I knew that the old Movenpick had long gone, but so has Bellini's, the Italian place that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman had frequented years ago when they had been still married.

The reason that I did go was to take a look at TCAF, the annual Toronto Comic Arts Festival which has been active since 2003. Shard had invited me and so I joined him and another friend, John, to take a look at what has become a growing international festival of graphic novels and their authors.

 It was held at the Metro Library just north of Yonge & Bloor. There have been some renovations underway there for the past few years. But they didn't get in the way obviously. We got there at about 11, a couple of hours after it had officially opened, and there were already a ton of people inside. By noon, the first floor looked like Shinjuku Station during rush hour. According to the official website, the organizers took pains to insist that this was NOT a Comicon by any means since the event was sharing the library with regular users and not holding its own party....the message being that cosplayers were not really welcome. However, I did see a few flamboyantly dressed characters.

And TCAF wasn't really about the conventional Marvel and DC superheroes, although the timing of it with the general release of "The Avengers"was strangely coincidental. This was about the serious graphic novelist and his/her works. There were some very slick and serious productions out there on the tables, manned by pretty amiable authors and publishers. I had initially thought that at least some of them would be the sullen withdrawn types who communicated in well-inflected grunts.

 There was also one room that was devoted to indie video games. Who'da thunk it? I thought that the label was only for music and movies. "Choose Your Rock God" was pretty nifty.

Ah, there is one flamboyantly dressed young lady.

Yup, I did my fair share of karaoke parties in the past. English teachers were basically drawn to them like a moth to a flame.

Hey....what a concept! I think I did something similar.

 Now, I don't know all that much about the serious graphic novel industry nor do I have all that much passion about it, but I was pretty envious of all who were around me since they seemed to be in some sort of love-in with their fellow fans and heroes. I would put John and Shard in that group; they were bantering with some of the authors here and there. Of course, the good thing about a certain detachment from the proceedings was that I wasn't particularly desirous to part with my money....the $10 I had in my wallet was good enough for a cheap lunch at Starbucks.

 I think the Hero of the Day would probably be French artist Hugues Micol. John and Shard were quite enamoured with his work, "La Chien Dans La Vallee De Chambara"...a work which involved a female warrior of sorts in Edo Era Japan. Some minutes later after my friends had asked about him, he showed up and proceeded to draw the protagonist right in their autographed copies of the novel. Shard pointed out that a lot of other artists would've just scribbled something in 20 seconds and asked for 20 bucks. Micol took 20 minutes to painstakingly draw the woman in full kimono on the inside cover for both John and Shard. The advertising side effect was great since Micol's drawing attracted a few other folks to his table.

Here is the man himself with his tubes of paint in full action.












A very interesting experience and perhaps a good primer if I ever attend an actual sci-fi convention someday. I can only hope that the Hollywood crowd would be as nice and generous as Hugues Micol was yesterday at the Toronto International Film Festival. Not that I would ever ask any actor to re-enact a scene at the Bell Lightbox. I'd probably compare the ever-increasing TCAF to a hermit crab. It just perpetually needs to get into a bigger shell. I think even the library was perhaps a bit too small to hold everyone. Perhaps it will need to get deposited into the Convention Centre next year.

Oasis of the Seas, Part 3 -- Entertainment

Tuesday May 1, 9:55 a.m.

Despite what I wrote about food on a cruise ship, one can't merely enjoy a weeklong cruise on noshing alone....and I say this as a foodie. Nope, there was plenty of opportunity to partake in entertainment. My brother and I participated in a couple of loosey-goosey trivia contests in the Schooner Bar on Deck 6 while my niece doodled bunnies on a scoresheet.

There was also the more professional kind. On the second night, the aft Aqua Theater presented "Oasis of Dreams", a mix of diving, synchro swimming, flying, and interpretative dance. A bit on the rococo side for me but it did its job and got a deserving standing ovation from the assembled audience.

I can finally say that I got to see "Hairspray". On the third day, there was a matinee performance, one of two I believe during the cruise, at the 1,350-seat Opal Theater. The most famous actor there was Jim J. Bullock, acting as the big mama, Edna Turnblad. I remember him as the hapless thorn in Ted Knight's side on "Too Close for Comfort" decades ago.

I've had a casual like for American music of the 50s and 60s (re: Billy Joel's "An Innocent Man"), but I can't say that any of the songs I heard were toe-tappingly memorable. And the audience which were leaning toward the elderly demographic applauded politely throughout the performance although there was a generous standing ovation during curtain call. The only screamout moment was when Jim J. and the actor playing hubby Wilbur made some sort of blooper during their duet which prompted a couple of minutes of laughing fits from the two of them.

A couple of days later, there was ABBAcadabra, the tribute band for the legendary Swedish group, ABBA. This was a disappointment. But I wasn't disappointed in the foursome so much as I was disappointed FOR them. The group had pulled out all the stops in pleasing the audience, including throwing out glowsticks and doing some intersong schtick. But the audience wasn't biting. ABBAcadabra may be big on Broadway but when an onboard performance comes as part of the overall cruise cost, it doesn't necessarily translate into huge numbers of rabid ABBA fans flooding the theater. The audience was either just too old or too casual. I could see the four whispering to each other during the performance....probably desperately thinking about how to liven up the folks. A lot of glowsticks were thrown out during that less-than-1-hour gig....I kinda wondered if that was really the intended length or if the band decided to cut their losses. But that is show business.

To be honest, the most bang out of my buck that I got from shipboard entertainment was watching a video concert of Michael Buble one afternoon on the Aqua Theater screens.