In recent months, I have been discovering that, for every 3 persons I know, 1.75 of them are serious Japanese anime fans. I am talking about the very non-hentai, non-manga-looking friends that I have known for months in church or at work. I have witnessed, on more than a few occasions, small groups of anime-ists huddled to together after Sunday service, animatedly exchanging silver vinyl discs and the latest anime blog news. Of these people, 0.75 of them are known to have developed a common pattern of rushing home from work and downloading anime series from those mysterious sounding websites, watching them into the wee hours of the night, while husbands are left to tuck themselves to bed, and the rest of us throw anime sheep at one another on Facebook.
Well, I am not exactly in that rapid-growing percentile of the population yet, but I do enjoy a good Miyazake film once in a while. In any case, it seemed like a great excuse to get good folks together for an evening, to use the condiments I brought back from Hokkaido a few weeks ago, and so we had the Episode III of Japan Hour at the Treehouse last weekend.
With the help of skilled tofu chefs, crab declawers and yaki grill experts, it was another cheery evening of hearty but relatively healthful eating. C&H even provided brilliant "real-time" Hello Kitty fireworks displays on their laptop which they video-ed in Uji, Kyoto. We were a tad disappointed with the anime movie chosen to be screened that night - Goro Miyazake (son of Hayao Miyazake) does have some way to go before he captures true Ghibli magic. Generally however, I think people were glad to have found new soulmates in one another and we toasted the happy occasion variously with Choya, Asahi and of course, Yakult. :)
