Instants of Insanity

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Osaka PD puts all it has into a car chase. And we mean everything

Toward the end of The Professional, Detective Stansfield is about to go after hitman Leon, and Stansfield tells his second in command “Get me everyone.” When his second asks what he means, he screams “I… mean… EVERYONE.” Something like that must have happened in Osaka, Japan, when the police department got a bead on a man wanted for assaulting police officers.

Twenty-seven-year-old Hirofumi Fukuda, driving a white Lexus sedan, was approached by a patrol car for running red lights. When he saw the police, he did what any self-respecting lawbreaker would do: he took off. That’s the easy part. The double-take comes when it took 2,240 police officers, 460 police cars, and one helicopter two hours to catch the man. The city of Osaka is just 85.4 square miles — about the size of Baltimore. Which is a lot of police in a little space looking for one single guy. And in fact, they didn’t catch him: he crashed into a bridge support and sustained minor injuries. If he ever gets out of prison, he’ll be a great guy to play Grand Theft Auto IV with.

Click to view the video report (Japanese)

The next Beethoven?

BEIJING, Jan. 6 — Japanese pop icon Ayumi Hamasaki wrote on her fan club website on Friday that she would continue singing despite losing her hearing in her left ear.

Hamasaki said an ear examination last year confirmed her hearing loss.

“Despite this news, I still wish to be a singer,” she wrote.

Hamasaki started to lose the hearing in her left ear in the summer of 2000 when momentary deafness forced her to cancel several concerts, according to a media report.

The singer will start her second concert tour of Asia in April to mark the tenth anniversary of her singing career. The tour includes 19 concerts around Japan. The venues in other Asian countries have not yet been announced.

Source: China View

Hmm, how do you get this thing to accept Japanese characters?

Anyway… I have recently watched 1 Litre of Tears movie. Hmm, it takes a bit getting used to, especially after watching the drama series. One has to accept that they are different works, coming from different creators. It came before the drama, however, back in 2004. It seems like a movie made on a small budget or at least that is why it looks like, whether intentionally or not. They seem to have shot it depending solely on natural light and, hence, you get this real life feeling… it almost has this ‘pseudo-documentary’ feel to it. I suspect they may have done it on purpose and indeed it gives the movie a more realistic feel.

*Spoiler Warning: Read at Your Own Risk*

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Here are some impressions I have written on the drama series several months ago.

I haven’t had the chance to put them online, but I guess the time has finally come.

Taiyou no Uta

I could not resist downloading and watching this one. If anything, I wanted to see how SAWAJIRI Erika would handle her role in this drama; would she be different or would she live in the shadow of Aya from 1 Litre of Tears. I was glad to see she was quite different in the drama (even in the way she looked). There were similarities, yes, but there were also many differences. The main character AMANE Kaoru suffers from a strange and incurable disease (yes, once again!) known as XP. When I first happened upon the synopsis, I found it amusing that SAWAJIRI Erika was again cast as a girl with an incurable disease. It is like she has become the indisputable heiress of such roles. As soon as one starts watching, however, there is nothing amusing about it. XP, while not as evil as SCD, is still a nasty disease. Anyone infected with such a disease cannot be exposed to direct sunlight. The body cannot resist the UV rays emitted by the sun and has no means of repairing the damage they inflect on the body cells. Hence, exposure to the sun for more than 5 minutes or so could lead to death. The first thing that comes to mind is a vampire. I’ve got to wonder, though, about all the diseases that exist in this world and how little we know about them.

In any case, Amane sleeps during the day. Her close friend Misaki captures the daily events of the outside world for her on video so she can see how things are during broad daylight. During the nighttime, she usually goes to the nearby park and plays on her guitar. She aspires to become a singer despite the many rejection slips she has received from producers. She has no audience and hasn’t sold a single piece of her self-made CDs. The drama starts out as relaxing and peaceful. It loses a bit of that as it approaches the end. It is a pretty good drama, despite having its clichés. The soundtrack is amazing and AMANE Kaoru has got some pretty good pipes. I liked the acoustic versions she plays at the park. The 2 songs she sings are pretty nice. SAWAJIRI Erika has even adapted the character and used the name for her debut in the music world, singing the very same songs from the series. I may check out the movie version sometime in the future.

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