Jeff over at Sushicam has done a mini review of Sayuri (or “Memoirs of a Geisha” for those of you in the Western part of the world).

Can’t say I’m suprised at his disappointment. As soon as I saw the trailer, I realised I probably wouldn’t end up watching it.
The thing that put me off was the Chinese actresses playing the role of Geisha. It’s not because they are Chinese as such, but because they speak English with a heavy Chinese accent. I mean, if they all spoke Japanese, with English subtitles that would be great. But seeing this is a US film, I guess I would have settled for Japanese-accented English.

Its a shame because Zhang Ziyi, Michelle Yeoh and from what I’ve heard Gong Li as well, are fine actresses. But all sense of immersion seems to be lost. Actually, Zhang Ziyi looks REALLY Chinese, so it ruins the visual immersion as well, whereas if you squint, Gong Li sort of looks Japanese. (Note, after living here a while, you can tell the difference a lot of the time between Chinese, Korean and Japanese. They DO NOT look the same).
Also, the trailer (and from what reviews I’ve read) the film seems to be all fancy art and colour, and no real substance. Shame :(

As usual Jeffs picture’s were great, and I hope I can get to his skill level one day. I was suprised at one thing. Japan has a lot of strange variations of pizza toppings (to be fair, the more normal ones are very tasty here), but Gyoza is pretty impressive!! I know it’s completely wrong, but boy does that look tasty to me!

Englishman in Osaka reports on the worsening state of Japanese trains in the Kansai area of Japan, after the big crash last year. Just shows how much JR West were pushing it before. Luckly, it seems that JR East (which operates around Tokyo area) were a bit more lenient with their timetable. So far, trains here are still running on schedule about 99% of the time.