Wildlife in Tokyo

A parallel universe…

Kevin: Badgers living along the rail tracks, a new litter every year as the youngsters move on, never to be seen again.

Naomi: What’s fascinating is the hunting. People might flinch from rats but rats learn to beware of the owl.

Kevin: And the hawks. They circle above then swoop on migratory birds roosting in Shibuya trees.

Naomi: The opportunists. Racoons eating food put out for cats.

Kevin: The species that have no enemies. So many varieties of ladybirds unpalatable to birds and even praying mantises.

Naomi: And then there’s the food chains. The insects eaten by a yamamori gecko and the gecko eaten by a giant mantis and the mantis eaten by a frog.

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Voice-over

Fascinating. Tokyo-Yokohama area is a megalopolis. It’s 37 million people. An animal census might reveal some surprising wildlife numbers, too.

Omotesando Hills: Times change

Dojunkai: Wiki

A return to Omotesando after 50 years…

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Walter: What happened to the Dojunkai?

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Norman: Demolished for redevelopment.

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Omotesando Hills

Walter: But, but those apartments, they were so unique. Bauhaus from the 1920s.

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Norman: They were an earthquake risk, the building was decaying, there was a lack of space and modern

Omotesando Hills interior

amenities.

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Walter: What’s this long green building?

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Norman: That’s what replaced the Dojunkai. Apartments above and shopping malls below.

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Voice-over

Eras evaporate, an area changes from residence to creative enterprise. What was once a leafy residential area is now a busy commercial space. Despite protests at the loss of an urban heritage (which could have been repurposed), the high cost of land brought in the fashionable firms and drove out quirky galleries. Have to say though that what Tadao Ando did with the flowing interior spaces, the sloping ramps, wide walkways and patterned floors and burying much of the building underground to keep a low profile level with the zelkova trees, is majestic.

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Tokyo International Film Festival winds up

Reflecting on the TIFF awards...

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Federico: Cuarón‎'s Roma didn’t win a mention, despite hitting the high 90s on Tomatoes. Maybe too stoic, not so heroic.

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Francois: Awards went to some films I did get to see, like the Danish film Before the Frost. Seemed to recall Bergman.

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Federico: Hollywood knows how to tell a story, and make blockbusters. European directors do art house cinema well.

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Francois: Margarethe von Trotta’s Bergman documentary on Bergman was good. Interviews with people he worked with. His passion for always creating something new. Cooler to his family. “Do you miss your children?” “No.” Gave up films for ten years, then came out of retirement to do Saraband. Digital, not film. Aged 84. Never too late to reawaken a reputation. That’s what staying alive is for.

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Federico: White Crow, the Ralph Fiennes biopic of Nureyev, deserved its prize for artistic acting.

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Ghost in the Camera:
Searching for Ingmar Bergman

Francois: But they missed my favorite. Non-fiction: Super talky. Great phrases like “an infinite minority.” Then Director Olivier Assayas turns up in von Trotta’s film saying he has a great debt to Bergman. We draw the full circle but the line doesn’t quite join up. The difference between Bergman and Assayas: Bergman’s characters talk little and leave long pauses; Assayas’s characters talk a lot and hardly have time to breathe. Is that a cultural difference between Sweden and France?

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Voice-over

Film festivals can be feasts. The films, finding the QR codes, the Q&As. Fan of TIFF.

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Japanese Aesthetic Garden

At Korakuen in Tokyo…

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Sam Po: It’s a promenade garden, designed to be strolled through, the winding paths revealing something new around each corner.

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Aesthetic rice harvest

Vizzie Torr: It certainly surprises. Mountains in miniature, rivers, lakes, forests, teahouse, pavilion, and at the end, a rice field.

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Sam Po: Where they actually grow rice. Aesthetics combined with pragmatics.

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Vizzie Torr: Well, I’d have to say that the rice-growing is more for show than to take to the market.

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Sam Po: But all this in the heart of Tokyo, outside the wall are hotels, schools, a baseball dome, an amusement park.

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Voice-over

Korakuen checks a lot of boxes in evaluating a Japanese aesthetic garden: miniaturization, concealment, scenery-borrowing, asymmetry. Japanese parks to be strolled through show the best of nature in a limited space.

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