stephaniehaywood.com

Before you read this entry, know that it has absolutely NOTHING to do with Japan, or my adventures here thus far. For the next four paragraphs or so, this website is returning to its orignal place, where Stephanie writes about whatever she wants whenever she wants to. It is my place to vent, and venting is what I shall do now. I appologize for the disappointment.

This is MY review of Harry Potter 3. A disappointing film even from Japan. Sigh.

“You are not missing much by having to wait to see it…” says Savanna to me in an email. To which I of course blew up in her face and yelled and hissed and screamed that she could actually say such a thing. Savanna, I appologize. You were right. I hate that you were right too. It’s such a disappointment. The whole film was such a disappointment.

I read what everyone wrote, including Dave, who after seeing the movie a second time said it was brilliant. I must disagree. There was no need for that book to butchered in such a way. The first movies were flawless, great, nothing could have been better. Then we got word that they would switch directors for the 3rd movie. “What was wrong with the director they had?” I silently questioned…

Where shall I begin with my rage? The music perhaps. There should not have been so much music, and it wasn’t all that good. Some movies were not meant for a soundtrack, and this was one of them. The only music that should stick in your head after the film should be the openning credits. I am not saying the music was all bad, there was just waaaayyyy to much of it, and ALL the time!!!

Moving on from the music I will being to get into the speediness of it all. What were they thinking? The movie didn’t flow at all. Not in the slightest. The whole beginning half of the movie to me was in fast forward mode, the scene flew by so fast, with that annoying music faster than the Shinkansen flys through a tunnel (you would find that funny if you were in Japan right now). For the entire first half of the movie you felt as if you were on a roller coaster dipping and diving and turning and twisting, and not until midway through does it begin to calm down and some sort of plot develops!!! Ughh!

What they left out:

Far too much. For the non-readers in the theatre, way too many questions were left unanswered. There is one thing a director has to keep in mind when making a movie based on a book. They must be thinking at ALL times about the people who are paying to see your movie, even though they haven’t read the book. They have to understand what it going on at every moment, so they do not leave with a billion and one questions about “What exactly happened there?” or “What was the point of that?”

Here are some questions Noel had to ask me and ones I thought of myself, which, if you ask me, what I will list is far too many to have to list at all:

1. Why was he a dog?
2. Who was the rat?
3. What happened to the rat?
4. Why was there a horse at the end?
5. So they went back in time?
6. How did that guy know about the map?
7. How did that guy know Harry’s mom?
8. What was that for?
9. Who was that?
10. So that’s his God Father?
11. Why were they all sleeping in the hall?

I have more, but it is late, so I will end this now.

My next issue of maddness is the one of “feelings”. In the books you feel that they are at school, that they are struggling in classes, that they are having fun, that things are happening. I didn’t feel anything during those parts of the film, until about mid-way though. They weren’t even in their school clothes at all, which I found to be a very very nice change, but it was a little too much…

Dumbledore. I give the actor a thumbs down. He just didn’t have the compasion that the other actor had. He seemed a little less concerned about Harry, and the relationship between the two of them is more important than he showed on camera. Not that he didn’t do a good job, I just think he could have done better.

Well I think that is all I will complain about today. It just upsets me so much that such a great book can be butchered by a movie. “Butchered” may be a harsh word to use, but it is what I feel happened. I find myself not looking forward to the fourth movie at all. There is a reason that each Lord of the Rings movie was so long, and this new director seemed to have missed that reason when he made Harry Potter 3. I am going to buy Harry Potter 3 over here (The imported British version) just to read it how it should be. It wasn’t that bad of a movie overall, but compared to the book it was terrible. It could have been better. That is the one thing I cannot stand, when something could have been much better, but was not. Oh well. It’s over. Nothing will change now. It is a movie, based on a great book. Based. Badly Based. I only hope that other people share some of the same opinions I have to offer, and if there are so many of us that feel we have been cheated out of movie, perhaps the next one will be a little bit better.

That is all for the night.

I promise this next entry will be about Japan, and something fun and new and exciting. Goodnight

Here are more pics for your viewing pleasure. I am too tired to write descriptions about them, perhaps I will have more energy tomorrow to do so.

IMPORTANT FACT!

BIKE THEFT IS THE NUMBER ONE CRIME IN HIKONE! That’s the number one crime. I guess it just goes to show how safe Japan is, unless you are a bike.

And by the way, i am going to see a sneak preview of Harry Potter tomorrow and I am so excited that I can barely sleep!!!

Here are some pictures:

This is Hikone Castle. It sits up on a mountain in the city of Hikone. It’s a little hike to get up to it, but well worth the effort.

This is one of the views you can see from the castle.

The castle again…

This is us bike riding along the river, coming home from the Hiaku Yen Shop one day.

This is me looking all cute in my helmet. (Yeah right!)

This is noel eating a yummy ice cream bar thingy. Those things are good!

This is some of us at a Ma-ku-do-na-ra-do. (McDonalds if you wen’t sure.)

That is all for tonight. I must sleep. Goodnight!

It is night here and I am tired, so this entry will be short. However, it is not the length that counts, as you will soon see. Noel and I made a video one day when I noticed him “sliding” into the hallway. I then imported a song and made my first ever successful iMovie. I hope you enjoy it!!!

So TURN UP the volume on your computer right now and press the link below!

click here to see the movie

Hi Everyone!!!

It is Friday at 1:45pm and I am done with school for the weekend!! YAY!!! This week’s school was sooo hard. For Noel and the rest of the class it was all review, but for me it was all new crap and i couldn’t understand word of what anyone said. i must say though, i can already understand some of what people around me are saying just from this one week. which is awesome. i know one (yes they have more than one) of their alphabets now and can kind of piece together words. i squeal with excitement when i do of course, and people look at me like i am insane. I sound out one word, like this:

de…….n…….wa then i have to think of what denwa means, and then i yell out PHONE!!! it means PHONE!!!

Then of course i look right below the sign that i just read and there is a phone booth right below it.

I do stupid things like this all the time though, I am used to it already, and the people here just see me as a crazy tourist, so it all works out.

The rainy season has begun. It rains and rains and rains, and then stops for a half hour, and then it pours, and sometimes it rains in the morning and not in the afternoon, and vice versa. It’s not been bad though. Today on the board Nakozowa Sensee (Nakazowa - last or family name; Sensee - Professor) wrote:

Typhoon tonight and tomorrow.

Then he went on teaching like nothing wrong or scary was said. Some of us girls exchanged looks, as we shifted uncomfortably in our seats. At the end of class someone finally had the guts to ask: “What is a typhoon, what happens during one, and will we die?” (Or something along those lines…) Our teacher laughed and told us that a typhoon is nothing more than a big rain storm, and that they are very common here during the rainy season. It has stopped raining now, which is nice, but I am a little worried about that typhoon coming up later tonight…

Hmm, where should I begin with the cool stuff, ah fireflies.

Fireflies are rarely seen in Japan. You could think of them pretty rare in Michigan too. There are the nights during the summer that we see about 5 or 6 in our backyard, and we of course capture them in jars to have our own personal “light-up-butt-bug”. But here, in some spots, there are thousands and thousands of lightening bugs as far as the eye can see, IF… you know how to get there. Well Jeff’s teacher friend knew where a place was right by his house, and invited Jeff and Asusa, as well as Noel and myself. We drove out there and walked across the street, over the train-tracks, through a pretty large rice field, and down a road to them. We got there later at night so there were less out than there would have been had we gotten there at say 8:00 or so. But there were still so many of them, and they were so amazing to look at. We tried to take some pictures, to show how many there actually are, but I doubt any will come out. It was so cool to see them though. They nest on the other side of the rice field in a deep ditch with a river running through it, and that is where they were, in the ditch, along the water. They were all so cute!!!

So that was lightening bugs. Last night Jeff took out Noel, myself of course, and our friend Jenny to a store called Uni-Qlo. Asusa described it to me as: “The Old Navy of Japan”. We had walked into one in Kyoto, but didn’t shop that much. I did notice that they sold Kimono’s though, and Jenny and I wanted to buy one while we are over here, and so we could wear them at the Gion festival in July. Jeff told us he would take us there, and he did last night. I bought a light blue Kimono with pink and purple flowers, and Jenny bought a black one with red and pink flowers. They are pretty. As soon as we figure out how to wear them, we will take pictures.

Today we watched a movie, as it is Friday, and they want to have something interesting for us to do after class. It was the strangest movie in the world, I would have to say. I don’t even know where to start telling you stuff about it. Maybe another day. But one of the plots of the movie was about a woman who was trying to succeed in a Ramen Noodle shop and the whole time she is trying out all these different Ramen places to make her noodles the best. Well after watching every person in the movie eat Ramen, you begin to want Ramen.

So now it is 6:11 pm and I just got from eating Ramen with a group of people who also watched the movie. It was good. Now I am going to check on my laundry, and perhaps take a rest.

Oh! Tomorrow night Noel’s roommate Yoshi invited us to go out for Sushi with him. He is a very nice guy, and even though we don’t eat Sushi, we are not going to turn down his first invitation. So to eat Sushi we go! (I will be eating the vegetarian role, and some rice most likely, but the experience should be well worth the trip.)

Sorry I do not have a picture to add to this entry… wait let me see if there is a good one somewhere…

Okay, I will show you a picture of the “Massage chairs” in the hardware store we went to. Let me clarify the “hardware” store: Jeff calls it a hardware store, because the first level is all appliances and other things, like tools, but the next floor up is a more like an electronics store… but we call it the hardware store because… well why not just because??? So moving on, there are all these massage chairs, as you can see, and we all spent about an hour resting in them. They are nice chairs, but a little too HARD of a massage. There is a place to put your feet, and imagine you are getting your pulse taken at the doctors, that’s what they feel like, i was a little scared. And the “massage” part of the chair was wonderful in some spots, but in other areas it felt like someone was just pushing you really hard in your back. They are high tech alright, but trying to figure out how to use them is another story…

I know it has taken me a while, but here are a batch of pictures that I have finally had the time to put on my website. Above each picture is a comment about where the picture was taken and a little something about it. I hope you like them!!!

This is a common set at all the restuarants here. What I am asking you to look at is the white button you see in the center. There is no such thing as “waving over the waitress” here in Japan. When you need something, just press the button and someone comes over to your table. This is also what you press when you are done looking at the menu and are ready to place your order. I think it is great, and we should have this system in America. (I also think that in Japan they should give you regualar size cups and refills, it’s really killing me!)

Supersize Me??? We recently went to the Mcdonalds here, and Jason ordered a “Supersized” meal. This is what they gave him for the drink.

Over the past weekend we went to Kyoto with Jeff and Asusa. They took us to a temple (of course I forgot the name!) that was coated in gold. It was so beautiful!

Just in case you were wondering, this is Jeff and Asusa!

The first day we arrived we noticed that there was a 7-11 on every corner just about. I was happy until we went in one and I noticed that there was NO ICEE’S!!! Then, as we were walking into the golden temple, I saw it, like a mirage, an image that read Coca Cola in English no less. It was a familar machine, with a clear window, churning up icee!!! REAL ICEE!!! I was thrilled to say the least. Here is my icee:

Here is a PINK CAR!!! The cars here are little and cute and funny.

Here is a picture of Noel and I inside of a mall-place that we went to.

Those are all the pictures I have time for today. I hope you enjoy them!!! More pictures and stories will come soon!!!