"Weekend in Japan" - Video Experiment

What is this? (Do you really want to read this "study guide"/spoiler?)

This short film summarizes a weekend in early April 2008 as experienced by the visual anthropologist. Beautiful spring time weather made cherry blossom viewing even more wonderful. Behind my house is a small stream lined with cherry trees. Up stream the neighborhood elderly people's association writes and displays senryu poetry among the cherry blossoms. Friday night I attended a deaf gathering at a bar in Osaka. The bar was dimly lit, making sign language a little challenging to see. However, we were doing OK when all of a sudden the disco balls started, showering us with rays of brilliant colors. All very beautiful, but once again it made signing a little difficult. But we adapted and continued with our fun. Sunday I was invited to a cherry blossom viewing party with deaf people, uniting my visual themes (key words) of cherry blossoms, deaf and sign language.

I experiment with ordered pairs and dichotomies. Traditional culture and modern practices; deaf and hearing; light and dark; sound and vision; self and other; humans and nature; stereotypes and reality - these things are not opposites or either/or. Rather they are mutually supporting, influencing and intermingling with each other; they are partial truths. The film is composed of sound and vision bites a la Bakhtin's architectonics. Sometimes things are smooth, sometimes they make sense, sometimes things are rough, sometimes things are utterly confusing. This is culture and life - at least for one visual anthropologist for one Weekend in Japan.

Comments and critiques, please. Special thanks to my VAOJ students who have already let me have it - very much appreciated...

"Japanese Belly Dance Fusion"

Last year a student in my Body/Comm class did a research project and paper on belly dance in Japan. Belly dance in Japan you ask? How conveniently globalized and visual! As my student found out, there is quite an active and thriving belly dance scene in Japan (come to think of it, I had another international student who was a belly dancer in the same class...). I myself remember a certain snack (drinking establishment) in Osaka where the young Mama-san was a belly dancer; she would perform informally from time to time and also hold special shows that her male customers flocked to see. My student actually participated in workshops and performed while in Japan. She found what she called a fusion between classic belly dance styles and Japanese culture. Since leaving Japan, she has incorporated this fusion into her own performance. So, not unlike the Thai band Neko Jump, Japan is influencing international pop culture once again. See an American woman perform a middle eastern dance style incorporating Japanese cultural elements.



Link to "Japanese Belly Dance Fusion of Scheherazade" on YouTube
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3-CO2EftkRE