Day out with Uncle Takizawa

I had quite a strange day out on Sunday. You may remember that a few weeks ago I went to Fubou school, a primary school with 4 kids and 3 teachers. The head of that school, Takizawa-sensei invited Karen, Mai and me to the local Autumn festival. So off we went to frolic with lambs, make butter, watch people fishing, eat yakisoba, and generally enjoy the fresh air and goodness of nature. Takizawa-sensei is a hilarious little man. He's small and bald, never stops talking, smokes like a chimney, chuckles endlessly and is generally a bit of a legend. Karen spotted him in the supermarket with his wife and apparently they're very cute together.

All morning Takizawa-sensei had been telling us about his new favourite film, hura gaaru. Apparently it was so good that he'd been to the cinema to see it 3 times, and was thinking about going for a fourth. When I expressed polite agreement that it probably was a rather good film, he pounced on the opportunity and invited us to go and see it straight after the Autumn festival. With nothing else to do, and not wishing to offend, we agreed. (In fact, poor Karen agreed because she can't speak Japanese and thought he was taking us home.)

So we hopped in the car and drove for over an hour, into a whole other county (cinemas are a bit scarce 'round these parts). It turned out that hura gaaru was a transliteration of 'Hula Girls' and the film was a massive rip-off of The Full Monty. Synopsis: 40 years ago, mine about to close down, all the miners and their families need new jobs. They randomly decide to set up a Hawaiian centre as a tourist attraction, and hire some hot-shot dance teacher from Tokyo to teach them how to hula dance. Whole film is about them learning how to dance, with hilarious consequences. Verdict: all-round splendid family fun. And now I know that I can pretty much understand films in Japanese, a whole new world of cinema-going has opened up for me.