I can feel a little Japanese film season blending in with my 'classics I've managed to miss' period I'm going through. I was recommended Tampopo by Tim over at Cultural Snow. It's almost a Japanese slapstick movie with lots of comedic and random story digressions that are irrelevant to the central plot while not harming the overall movie. It's very funny in places and rarely fails to charm.
Above I've posted one of the more drole pieces, and below is the oyster catcher scene which had me choking on my Sriracha sauce. It is for my money barely legal Japanese Adult Video (JAV) in the making as he eats the oyster from her hand (I'm sure there's no metaphor intended).
She's either eight or eighteen depending on the camera angle. The Japanese are outrageous that way. Once I had an unpleasant Japanese boss who allowed me to send an email from his notebook in Tokyo as my adaptor wasn't working. As I typed in a URL there was all sorts of school girl stuff in the drop down list. So when he fired me after a magnificent meeting in Shanghai where I was on shamefully top form, I sent him an email saying I was quite broad minded but the advertising community might have a few problems with this kind of content. It was naughty of me because I didn't know all this school girl stuff is pretty normal for lots of Japanese men but blimey they push it to the edge don't they?
