Letters from Iwo Jima

Friendship makes a world.

Winter boot from Mr. Hans at Svolvær! 

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to see a movie called "Letters from Iwo Jima", which was produced by Clint Eastwood and had a little impact in Japan few years ago. To tell the truth, it was my first time to watch that movie and was easy to understand because of the language. Though the directer is an American movie star but most of actors are Japanese and they speak Japanese. The movie itself was pretty good. As a student of politics even just to know about the history at the end of WWII, the movie was nice and I can easily understand what have done in there. Actually, I didn't tried to understand what was the movie when people and media trying to say something about movie which was 2-3 years ago. So, I cannot explain it well as they did but I will say something what I felt from the movie.

Firstly, the movie tried to explain how Japanese loyalty to emperor Hirohito was wrong. In the movie, I saw quite a lot of times that Japanese soldiers gave three cheers to emperor and even sometimes they died by their-selves as a name of loyalty to Japan moreover to emperor that I feel. Secondly, as the saw the another movie based on wars that this movie is also tells us how the war makes sad story and we never do the same mistake as we have done, which was the most important point of that kind of movies. On the contrary, if I would say some critical comment on the movie was that it was a little bit grotesque in some part and it was feels like bad. Was it just because the directer is from the States? Of course it is important to telll the rial story what have done in there but not necessary to make it such as strong impact as I saw. Lastly, the title was the "Letters" but I couldn't feels like letters have a lot of influence on whole movie. Was that because I missed in some important part of the movie?

The movie took about 2 hours, feels like a little bit more, but that was the longest time to hear Japanese since I started of my journey, which feels like that I was in Japan. Through this journey, I met some Japanese people but when I tried to talk them I couldn't even speak Japanese well because I haven't been used for a long time to talk with. That's why I speak to Japanese people with in English, which much more better to communicate then.

I saw the movie with my host , he is Norwegian and of course he couldn't understand in Japanese and he had to kept his eyes on subtitles, which he must be tough because the subtitle was English not in Norwegian. The funny thing that the point to laugh was different between us. Well it maybe just we grown up in different continent, wasn't it?    

Since I got a place to stay till 20th of Oct. I can make me comfortable to stay at his place.

Today, I got an interview from the student at Bodø to study about journalism. They wanted to make an interview to know about the story which I made and what I am doing at this moment. Still I have some language problems that why I cannot explain it well than that it should be. Hopefully it was good for their study!

Tomorrow, I will go to stadium to watch a football game between Bodø and Tromsø, which is the first game to see in Europe! I am really looking forward to watching it. 

Yuji @ 4th nights at Bodø, Nordland, Norway

PS. I sometimes feels like that I don't want to move especially if I stay at one place for over 3 days. That is one of the problems of this kind of journey, which I made a lot of time. How will I name? Looks like "winter sleep", isn't it? Too Lazy!!!