Maborosi & The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief

Maborosi is an earlier film from Hirokazu Koreeda, who did Afterlife, one of the best Japanese films since Ran. This is not as good a film, although it also deals with memory, in a slightly less obvious way. A woman had her grandmother disappear when she was a young girl, and her husband (played by Tadanobu Asano, a great Japanese actor, even if he doesn't have a particularly big role here) also disappears, so she goes off to live in a remote fishing village with a new husband. This village reminded me of the west coast of Ireland, which, if you've ever been there, you know that it means it was breathtakingly beautiful. In fact, the film was so amazingly well-put together that I'm actually having problems thinking about what I could have possibly not liked about it. It's heavily influenced by Ozu, with long static shots, very few close-ups, and a slightly slow pace, but that's life in a fishing village or in an apartment where entertainment is listening to your neighbor's radio blare through the thin walls. The title, Maborosi is something of a translation of mirage or a light that may or may not be there, an interesting choice of a title for the film, considering it's about trying to understand something that may be impossible to understand.

The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief is an award-winning documentary about male host bars in Japan available on Google video and lead to me watching it with a friend and chatting about it with her at the same time.

female friend: hot bars
female friend: er. host bars.
female friend: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6186147595582048109
me: i was hoping for some burning pub action
female friend: good luck
me: and I don't have enough time for this now
female friend: watch it later
me: it's good?
female friend: it's funny thus far
female friend: strange and disturbing
female friend: the boys are...strange
me: you mean, they're androgynous in the finest final fantasy tradition
female friend: the culture of make pretend
me: I can't figure out if these are all men or not
female friend: heh, that's a common problem
me: the pictures are basically the same...
me: is this only about the male hosts?
female friend: yes.
me: something I didn't even know they existed
female friend: well, there are hostess bars
female friend: why not host bars
me: I'm sexist?
female friend: no, they're rare
female friend: (shrugs)
me: I'm not actually sexist
me: just never struck me as something that existed, even if I know that male strippers and prostitutes exist
female friend: there's disneyland for kiddies
female friend: porntastic androgynous!guyland for girls?
me: yeah
female friend: didn't you say that you didn't have time for this?
me: well, umm,
me: yeah
me: this is so disturbing
me: these women are so clueless...
female friend: idealistic?
female friend: hopeless?
me: they have to know he's a host, which means that he's getting paid to do this
female friend: yes, but still...
female friend: check out the guy at 12:23
female friend: eep
me: got two minutes
female friend: distuuurbing
me: nothing in this hasn't been disturbing
me: except for the hot!ness of the hosts
female friend: nobody doesn't like Sara Lee?
me: pretty much
female friend: 10 000 - 50 000 USD a month
female friend: eep
me: the semi-sexual aspects of their interactions are weird
me: plus, the whole wanting to get them to want to have sex, but not have sex is a bizarre goal
female friend: it makes sense
female friend: disturbing, but it makes sense
me: oh, I'm not saying it doesn't make sense, just that it's bizarre that this is the whole setup
female friend: Sigh
female friend: the attraction of stuff like this is...
female friend: sigh
me: well, there are a lot of lonely people
me: I'm just far more realistic than these people
female friend: yes
me: how do they have this much money?
female friend: a lot of these women probably still live at home
me: do they have jobs?
female friend: probably OLs
female friend: most likely OLs
me: OL?
female friend: office ladies
me: ah
female friend: not yet married
female friend: not yet moved out of their parents' houses
me: well, i certainly had far more spending money when I was living with my parents
female friend: yay rent
me: yeah
female friend: heh, the great ivy league nude posture photo scandal
me: ?
female friend: NYT mag article
female friend: very interesting
female friend: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE7D91131F936A25752C0A963958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
me: if by very interesting you mean how the hell did these people allow themselves to be photographed
female friend: ask the salarymen on Drunken Businessman
female friend: or Human Tetris
me: I was referring to the mag article
female friend: erm
female friend: well
me: well, at least they're prostitutes, so they know just how fake it all is...
me: argh, issei is just saying it's ok that the women are prostitutes because it allows them to have enough money to spend time with him
me: well, that's extremely depressing
female friend: sigh
female friend: champagne call
female friend: narcissists
me: it's just so wrong
me: i'd have less of a problem if it were just about sex
me: but they're paying for fake emotional attachment
female friend: even hostesses get lonely
female friend: ugh, soap girls
me: i'd never heard the term before
me: what's the etymology?
female friend: soap
female friend: on girls
female friend: so, soap girls
female friend: and not OLs
female friend: but OLs go to these things
me: so they're basically just clean prostitutes?
female friend: yep
me: bizarre
female friend: who comforts the pretty boys.
me: i thought that most people wanted to have clean partners
female friend: um, no
female friend: the girls soap themselves
female friend: and then they rub themselves on the men
female friend: ...
me: oh, so no penetration, just sumata and tekoki?
female friend: if I knew what they meant, sure, maybe
me: masturbating the men with their labia and handjobs, respectively
female friend: I see.
female friend: maybe? not like I did a lot of research into this
me: well, someone has to do that sort of stuff to make those terms known to me
female friend: okay.

In case you were wondering, those two things may be involved, but it's actually in reference to Soaplands. Wikipedia can tell you just about everything. The movie is quite interesting, and if you have 75 minutes, there are far worse things you could do online. More info about it is available here.