Long Last Week
Saturday. My Saturday night Japanese soaps seem, unfortunately, to be hitting a summer low. The hour and a half Korean series (over dubbed in Mandarin and subtitled in Chinese) which starts the evening has become close to incomprehensible. Lots of James Dean, young rock star twenty year old, but look like they're fourteen year old actors, one of whom (I believe from a hazily remembered earlier episode) has a bullet lodged somewhere near a vital organ which (he's been told) will kill him in the next few months - he, dead man walking - floats through the series like an oracle in a Greek play, commenting on the unfolding story.
Is this an accurate description? Not likely. Spoken in Korean, over dubbed in Mandarin, subtitled in Chinese? Still, I watch, but I'm not sure I should admit to it. Lately this has been followed by a commercially packaged promo about sushi restaurants, all of which seem to be located in Japan and who've undoubtedly paid a tidy fee for the exposure. I did learn it was considered OK to use your fingers when eating sushi. Or was that only a particular kind of sushi?
Then again, the sushi series is no longer followed by the Japanese detective series which features a posturing police detective who dresses in black and solves his crimes with cartoonish angst and Sherlockian cognition. Designed for, well, best not to say who it's designed for since I'm one of those who've watched it.
This is what you're writing about?
And writing it was like passing cement. For the writing this has been a long last week.
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