Suntory time

Last weekend Thom and I were reading “Tokyo on One Cliché a Day,” a Slate travel journal by Seth Stevenson. It’s a fun read. (Which reminds me that I still haven’t gotten around to reading Wanderlust, Salon.com’s anthology of travel essays, which I bought a long while ago. Anyway.) That evening we happened to delve back into the American-in-Tokyo genre with Lost in Translation. I liked it a lot. Lost in Translation is quiet, confident, well-acted.

A bit from the key scene in which Bill Murray’s character, an action-movie star, reluctantly participates in a Suntory commercial:

Director (very brusquely, and in much more colloquial Japanese): Either way is fine. That kind of thing doesn’t matter. We don’t have time, Bob-san, O.K.? You need to hurry. Raise the tension. Look at the camera. Slowly, with passion. It’s passion that we want. Do you understand?
Interpreter (in English, to Bob): Right side. And, uh, with intensity.
Bob: Is that everything? It seemed like he said quite a bit more than that.

Heh. By the way, the behind-the-scenes video on the DVD rambles a bit I think, but has Bill Murray explaining one Japanese phrase he taught himself, which I think is useful in any language, really: “Who do you think you’re talking to!” (Marginally more useful than “I can eat glass…“)

[Related link (15 Mar): article in today’s Times books section about promoting translated Japanese fiction in the U.S.]