40 Days of Summer (in Japan) - Part Nijuunana

What I love about this class is that it's the study of Tokyo's history and culture, and studying culture usually means you get to watch movies. Today's movie was Gojira, or Godzilla as we in the English speaking world know him by.

Oh, and for lunch I had a corn dog.

We watched the original Japanese version, which was pretty interesting, even if it was in black-and-white. Typical of anything from the past, the main female lead did absolutely nothing but scream, faint, and be the object of affection in a very contrived love triangle. Gojira, being a man in a rubber suit, wasn't very scary, but I must imagine the special effects would have been mindblowing to audiences of the time.

The original Gojira is quite an interesting movie, filled with snide environmentalist commentary and a message about ethical science and nuclear testing. So of course, just after we see the brilliant original, we also need to see another example of how Hollywood ruins everything by watching the American "remake" called Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, which utilized most of the footage of the original Japanese film, but spliced scenes of an American actor and told the story from his point of view. It was pretty campy and terrible, and the actor, who was supposedly one of the most famous of the time, had one expression on his face the entire film. Thanks, Hollywood.

Biggest thing today: I bought an ice cream cone on my way home. Yum.

It wasn't really that giant.