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About dpkworldwide

Native Californian, water rabbit, aries, lover of travel, trains, history, music, wrestling, anime, minimalism, stoicism, objectivism and things Japanese.

Review: DIVE!!

Note: this is a review of the Japanese film about the sport of diving, not the lame US documentary by the same name about dumpster diving.

Height: 10 meters! Speed: 60 kph?! The summer they risked it all on a mere 1.8 seconds has begun!

When I was last in Japan in the summer of 2008, this film had just been released and there were posters for it everywhere. I wanted to go see it in a theater while I was there, but alas, it never happened.

Then I had the DVD in my Amazon.co.jp wishlist forever, but when I finally got around to trying to order it, I found they wouldn’t ship it outside of Japan. But the third time’s the charm, and I ordered a copy off eBay and finally watched it–what a great film!

To tell the truth, even though I study the Japanese language and am a huge anime fan, I find that I don’t really watch a lot of live action Japanese films. The few that I have seen have been a mixed bag of pretty darn good and rather hokey. But this one was surprisingly good. The story was really engaging, the performances of the actors highly believable and the cinematography top-notch. The film is based on the novels by Naoki Prize-winning author Mori Eto (which I have also been reading) which tell a combination coming-of-age/summer/sports story that I thought rang very true to life. I have to admit to enjoying the movie a lot because it’s much easier than reading the novel–attempting a novel of this level with my still fairly rudimentary Japanese language skills is really, really hard!

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MRI Results are in…

Status

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My doctor just called with my results: it IS a tear in my meniscus–and a tear in my ACL to boot. I’ll be referred to an orthopedic surgeon and get more details later, but it looks like it means surgery. Bad news? Hardly–at least I know what it is and how it can get fixed. Besides, I’ve done it before on the other leg in ’06.

What are you teaching your kids?

I just received another excellent email from Simon Black at Sovereign Man. The more I watch the news about the giant morass the world economy is sinking into with the full complicity and collusion of governments everywhere, the more I appreciate the rational things he’s saying.

Today’s post was very thought-provoking. What do people tell their kids about money nowadays? What does it really matter, since everything that used to be true about finances and money are now being thrown out–indeed, being turned completely on their heads. As I sit here at my computer keyboard watching my equity and savings melting away before my very eyes, how am I supposed to believe anything that the world’s bankers and politicians tell me (in between their lavish vacations and multi-course gourmet meals)?

I think this section of his post really hits the hardest:

I have to imagine that any child watching the goings-on of American politics would conclude that:

– debt is wealth
– living beyond your means is completely sustainable
– if anyone tells you otherwise, denounce their mathematical errors
– if at first you don’t succeed, keep trying the same thing over and over
– working hard and saving money is bad
– spending money and not working is good
– if you have a problem, the government will bail you out
– people are entitled to things that they didn’t work for
– no one should be held accountable for the consequences of the risks they take
– it’s not illegal if the government does it
– despite what our eyes and ears tell us, inflation is not a concern
– everything is going to be OK simply because the government says so

Herein lies the tragedy that is going to engulf us all very soon. I’m sure we will shortly see London-esque rioting and criminality on our own shores.

Do yourself a favor and go read the entire post here.