everything I love about trains, I learned from the Japanese

[cris]

When I was still young and living in the Philippines, my father would come back from his occasional trips abroad with videotapes in his suitcase. Sometimes, they were three hours of American Saturday morning cartoons, which we would watch and re-watch until the tapes wore out. Other times, they were bootleg recordings taken from some hotel's HBO

Comments

Eating sushi on a train

[rojagato]

When I lived in Arlington, and took the train from West Medford to the layover at North Station and back up to Ipswich, I could get a entry into the paper journal and eat leftovers (sometimes sushi) for breakfast, then enjoy the prettiest part of the ride after Beverly in zennish daydreaming. On the way back, usually in the dark, I'd journal or write until after Chelsea, and enjoy the urban scenery and decompress in daydreams.

Now, with less than twenty minutes from the time I step on, or off, at Salem, it's hard to do anything but lock into the Android version of Bejeweled because my head is humming so hard from talking to my mother or getting my next day's to-do list locked down.

Don't get me wrong, I like having an extra 15+ hours a week to live, but I wish I could still eat leftover sushi while watching cows graze.

Re: Eating sushi on a train

[cris]

I had another paragraph that I ultimately deleted because I couldn't make it work that talked about how since the train is slower than flying but much more expensive than the bus, taking it nowadays is really a choice fore indulgent idleness. Like, sure, you could pay just as much money to be there in half the time, but you'd miss out on three hours of grazing on sushi.

All the same, I imagine the romance only works when this is a once a year sort of trip rather than a regular commute.

[sarah_swati]

Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh! Galaxy Express 999! I too stumbled on this movie at one point as a kid, coming in on it about halfway through late at night when I snuck downstairs to watch TV. I watched the whole latter half and had NO idea what I was watching, but I was fascinated by it. NOW I KNOW WHAT IT WAS. Thanks!

[cris]

Dude, if you ever track down a copy PLEASE LET ME KNOW! I haven't seen it since we left Manila and my parents imposed a strict toy and media quota on our packing.

[panzerkunst]

I am now wondering what "moderately dubbed" sounds like.

[cris]

More of a look than a sound, really. I think of bad dubbing as the sort of comically atrocious flavor that you see in old Godzilla films. Good dubbing actually tries to sync the voices with the lips. moderate dubbing is somewhere in between. Either it sacrifices accuracy for the lip sync or the other way around.

[panzerkunst]

Haha right, when they unecessarily stretch out words to match the mouths.

[ayun]

Oh, dude, food hall bento boxes from the department stores under Tokyo Station? YESSSSSS.