Funny things happen when you study abroad. I expected to make weird mistakes when I got here - it comes with the territory, really. And I have made weird mistakes, don't get me wrong. I'm pretty sure everyone who lives with me thinks I'm really odd, because I haven't said more than a basic "Hello, how are you?" ("Bonjour! Ça va?") since I arrived. Today, however, contained an especially amusing mistake.
Yesterday my friend Ben suggested that we go see a movie, and since we both like Studio Ghibli and there's a new film out, we decided to go watch it. The movie was listed as being both dubbed in French and subtitled. Naturally, we assumed that the subtitled version would be dubbed in English, and when I went to meet Ben at the theatre this evening, I was looking forward to a nice, relaxing evening watching another Ghibli film in English. We bought our tickets, found our screen, and chose seats. The previews started, and the fact that more than half of them were in English with French subtitles only furthered my belief that we would be seeing an English-language film. Then the movie started up, and as the first song began to play, we slowly realized that while there were indeed French subtitles, the film we had just paid ten euros apiece to go see was in its original Japanese. In retrospect, it shouldn't have been that surprising, but it was somewhat disheartening to know that watching this movie would involve some serious concentration. Ben was the one who figured out the time, but I suspect I would have made the same mistake had I been in his shoes. And really, it wasn't a bad experience. Actually, it was fun, although reading the French subtitles gave me a bit of a headache after a while. I'm just very glad I took two and a half years of French before coming to live in France, because I understood the movie decently well; I probably directly understood 60-70% of the movie, and figured out most of the rest due to context clues. I also took karate for about a year and a half and watched the entirety of Akage no Anne in Japanese with English subtitles, so I think I've picked up a view Japanese phrases here and there. All things considered, it was an interesting evening, and one I'm sure I'll laugh about later.
As for the film itself ... well. It was called Kokuriko-Zaka Kara in Japanese, or From Up On Poppy Hill in English, according to TV Tropes and IMDb. It's directed by Hayao Miyazaki's son, Goro, his second Ghibli film, apparently. The animation is gorgeous, and the art style is an interesting mix of anime and impressionism. That was easily my favorite part of the film - it was just incredible to look at, and as it's an aspect that is conveyed without language, I appreciated it even more. Plotwise, it was a little weird. Ostensibly it's about a high school girl and her friends saving the building that houses all their clubs from demolition, but it's also about how the girl, Umi, (SPOILERS) falls for a guy, Shun, who finds out he's actually the illegitimate son of her father, which means they can't be together because it would be incest, and that's wrong, but not really, because Umi's father isn't Shun's father after all, and Shun is really the son of Umi's father's best friend, but because they both died in the Korean War, Shun and Umi have to find this out from their fathers' navy BFF who conveniently shows up at the end of the film (Holy run-on sentence, Batman!). Yeah, I know, it's really strange. (END SPOILERS) Well, at least it was pretty to look at.
Off to Paris tomorrow. I'm excited and a little nervous. My hostel has wifi, so I expect to update my blog from there. A demain!
