When is a Pizza not a Pizza?

I finally had time to watch a movie this week. Hadaka no shima is a silent (no dialogue) film that I saw bits of when I was young, but never saw the whole thing until last night. I always thought that the black and white film was done in the 30s or 40s, but the wardrobe threw me. The clothes are definitely from the 50s at the earliest, as is the car driving through the village. It turns out that the film was done in 1960 according to imdb, but 1962 according to the video shop.

The video shop also considered the film to be subtitled even though its a silent film. Before shlepping all the way home to find out it was the wrong film, I went back into the shop to make sure that this was the right tape, where I overheard the following comments from a third person to whom I hadn't even addressed my question: "The Island? The Japanese one? Oh, Gimmeabreak! How many could there be?"
Assuming that I was not meant to hear these comments, I ignored them, but could easily have responded with something like this: "Give YOU a break? You're sitting on a stool in the back, not umm... working. How much more of a break do you want from me? It's okay, lash out. I feel your burden. You know more about film than most people because you go to film school, and supplement your tuition by sitting on stools in video shops earning close to minimum wage. You subject yourself, albeit indirectly, to stupid questions from customers stupid enough to shell out six bucks for a VHS rental and sometimes, especially on a Friday when all you want to do is chat with your co-workers about the ratio of gays to straights at the last party you attended, it can all be too much to take". But, since I never attended film school, and since I don't know you, I'll assume that I've caught you on a bad day and that my big ears weren't meant to hear your comments anyway and not say anything.

That was Friday, but now for Thursday. Alison had a day off and I wanted to do something fun. One problem, I had class that night. Alison and I went out to campus because she'd never been there before and she wanted to see the nudist beach. I wanted to show her the rose garden. Apparently this place is the shit, but I had no idea where it is, and had only seen it in films such as Pardes starring the great Amrish Puri, Mahima Chaudhry, and Shahrukh Khan, and in an independent short called Capture featuring Mikka Dargel, Brent Stait, Tobias Slezak and Tom Jones (a different one). The weather wouldn't cooperate and its February so we nixed the idea of the garden, and I only showed her how to get to the nudist beach I'd first visited at the age of seven. Good times, good times. Instead we went to Raku, or at least we tried. In another life, there was a restaurant in 10th Ave. at Sasamat called Raku, but now its called Wabi Sabi and is run by a different team. We started with an Asahi for me and an umetini for Ali. A new challenge! One I accept with some umbrage because it requires a flavoured vodka. Flavoured vodka is like, number 4 on my list of Things that Shouldn't Be. But I will get some and experiment with the following recipe: Vodka + Mandarin vodka + Cranberry juice + Lime cordial + Ume (plum) wine + plum pickles for garnish. It should take a few weeks to get down, but this drink is delish. I'll skip the garnish though. Then we had whitefish carpaccio with yuzu pepper, and experimented with a tuna sashimi pizza. I still have to figure out what yuzu is, but I would like to eat more of it. The whitefish had a strong taste which tasted a lot like basa and it probably was, but I'm no expert. The tuna sashimi pizza was not a pizza. At least not a piping hot great round pizza that one eats in wedges. It was a thin crust (read canape) pizza served in five pieces with an architecture of avocado, tomato, and tuna sashimi spotted with sweet mustard on top. No cheese or pepperoni here folks. I'm just saying not to expect a pizza pizza, but to expect something more akin to the hors d'oeuvres the caterer prepared for your most recent cocktail party. I asked Ali if she like hamachi sashimi and she said yes. Seeing that she hadn't eaten any of the carpaccio or the pizza, we ordered sashimi. Ali ate two pieces of her "favourite", and made me eat the rest because I hadn't eaten enough pitusa kurakaa or pizza crackers. I told her stories of an "uncle" who used to be a sushi chef and used to plate free hamachi for my family when we'd come to the restaurant. I didn't understand why people like hamachi so much - to me it tastes rather icky. I asked Ali why, and she said "aburaga notteru" which basically means "all the fat inside". Then she nudged my stomach and said it again adding "moto moto" which means "by nature." I swear, if Japanese can be this easy to learn, I should be fluent in no time. I'll be visiting Wabi Sabi again soon to try more. It really is a wabi sabi place.

So after we left the video shop with the correct movie, Alison made okonomiyaki which I've been wanting to try for a long time. I washed dishes and made 2 manhattans on the rocks (no junk for Ali), while we listened to Pizzicato 5. She made enough okonomiyaki for 6. She ate for 1, and I had to eat the rest. We sat down on the settee with our drinks and watched the riveting open scene of a man and woman shlepping pails of water -- silently. Hadaka no shima stars 4 people you've probably never heard of: Taiji Tonoyama, Nobuko Otawa, Shinji Tanaka and Masanori Horimoto. Some of the scenes drag, but there's a reason for that. When I first discovered this film, I had a hard time understanding it. At first I thought it was a true story of a family living on a small island, and that the camera was only there to observe. Why else would a film made in the era of talkies have no dialogue? This classic man vs. nature conflict allows the viewer to ponder, and to put oneself in the place of any one of the four characters. The film ended sooner than I expected, and we totally forgot about the strawberries Ali had brought. I drove her home because she had to work this morning, and munched on some leftover okonomiyaki. Oishi!