New film 'The Eighth Day Cicada', university entrance ceremony and health examination / 新作映画『八日目の蝉』・入学式と健康診断

Yesterday, as I had this film card where if you see five films and get a stamp for each one you get a free ticket (but which had to be used by the end of April), my friend and I went to see the only decent-looking film that was on: 『八日目の蝉 (youkame no semi, The Eighth Day Cicada). It's about a girl who is kidnapped as a four-month-old baby by her real father's lover, and brought up believing this woman is her real mother until the age of four, when she's 'recaptured' and returned to her 'real home' by the police. It was a good film, interesting because of the fact that the kidnapper, though having committed a serious crime, is such a loving mother to Kaoru/Erina, whereas her biological mother is basically, well, a total bitch (admittedly with psychological reason) when her daughter, who obviously doesn't remember her at all, is returned.

'My loving mother was the person who kidnapped me.'

The film was emotional. As I sat in the cinema while all the sniffing around me built to a climax along with the film's denouement, it struck me as rather ironic that although it's not done to show emotion here, people really let it all out at the cinema. Oh my GOD, the tears! The buckets of tears! And they're not even ashamed of it, like we are in the UK, where you pretend you're clearing your throat as you attempt to shove down the tidal wave of emotion inside you provoked by the images on the screen. Or something. But in Japan, hell no, get the 'crying cloths' out (those little square hand-towels which women carry everywhere) and let that emotion out! Yet another example of 'certain behaviours being allowed within certain boundaries', I suppose, like openly gay people on TV (but only in drag and/or speaking like women).

Rather poignantly, someone had forgotten their damp and crumpled crying cloth on the seat when I was leaving the cinema. *violins* 

The only unfortunate thing about this film, which I did not realize until the scene in which she appeared came on, was that Koike Eiko was one of the two main characters. Unable to contain myself (and despite having already been shushed - during the adverts, may I add, an advert for air conditioning - by the more-rule-loving-than-most man sitting directly in front) I leaned across to my friend and hissed, 'She's a bitch in real life!' ... which apparently coloured my friend's view of Eiko's (very sympathetic and nice) character throughout the whole film. Oops!

But yes, Koike Eiko. I have met and worked with her, and suffice to say, although she has a crackin' bod, she is not very nice, or at least she wasn't at that time, and consequently I do not like her very much. Which is sad as I have a friend who despite having a completely unrelated name is known to all as Eiko due to her resemblance to la femme Koike.

In other news, I finally had my 入学式 (nyuugakushiki, university entrance ceremony) on Wednesday. Having never participated in one before, I was slightly taken aback when the master-of-ceremonies-guy, on introducing the 学長 (gakuchou, head of the university) said 起立！(kiritsu), which I hadn't heard before. Everyone else was standing up, though so I just followed the crowd. He then said 礼！(rei, in this case 'bow') and everyone gave quite a low bow to the gakucho up on his platform. This happened three more times with three separate 偉い人 (erai hito, important people). Sit, stand, bow, repeat. I haven't had such a quintessentially Japanese moment in quite a while.

Before the entrance ceremony, however, there was the dreaded 健康診断 (kenkou shindan, health examination) to be got through on the previous day. Just me, a whitey, and approximately five billion third- and fourth-year undergraduate girls, queuing to be poked and prodded in various state-approved ways. Ah, the Japanese university health check. I don't know about other countries, but we don't have this in the UK. They do it every year you're at university here. The actual content can differ from university to university, but from memory this time, in order, we had:

Please allow me to take a moment to talk about the psychological assessment. I have done this at two other universities in Japan, and it has never failed to crack me up. It always takes the form of a 'tick the box' list of statements, where you tick the ones which you feel apply to your mental state. At Seikei, when I first came to Japan, they had kindly prepared an English-language translation for us ryuugakusei. Unfortunately I do not have photographic evidence, but one of the statements has stuck with me since and probably will forever more:

3. You come to want to die melancholily.

If that is not the apotheosis of Engrish right there, I don't want to know what is.

The one I did at Tokyo University quite recently had another amazing statement. I wanted to do this in Japanese in the interests of actually understanding what the eff the questions were about, but there was some retarded rule that all ryuugakusei got the English version. I managed to sneak a photo (incidentally, did you know that all Japanese phones, including the iPhone, have a camera shutter sound which cannot be turned off? Make of that what you will *coughattempttocurbrampantupskirtphotographycough*).