Thoughts
I've been thinking a bit about my sister these past couple of days. I saw an advertisement for skiing in Nagano with the Sylvanian Families. The Sylvanian Families, are a group of collectible, small, furry animal families dressed up like people. The advertisements had pictures of people in human sized animal costumes skiing with little kids; it made me laugh inside as I wondered if my sister would have wanted to go to this event. Anyway, I'm pretty proud of my sister, she's teaching math in Chicago and for all I can tell she is really enjoying it. I feel bad for her though, as we're not expecting to have children anytime soon, my mother has sort of put pressure onto my sister to get married and have a grandchild. We had a talk about that over Christmas break. I admire my sister for living her own life, I know she won't settle for anything less than what she deserves, whatever that may be. I know she occasionally drops by here. Anyway, Sylvanian Families, bizarre creatures of the forest that made me think of my sister.

Movies
The Wife and I watched "Hero" or "Ying Xiong" last night and I must say I was impressed. I don't know if I liked it as much as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but it had the same, large scale cinematography. The director, Yimou Zhang, who directed such films as "The Road Home," and "Raise the Red Lantern," did a great job with the visual imagery, and each section of the story is told with a different color. What I think I liked best about the movie was the use of the narrative form to tell the story. The story that is told is a folkstory and so the use of the supernatural feats achieved by wires accompany the narrative don't really spoil the movie. The movie stars Jet Li, Zhang Ziyi, and Donnie Yen. The marital arts are, for the most part, subdued. There is fighting, but it is more similar to a dance then to actual fighting, but in the sense of the story it makes perfect sense and helps tell the story. I also like the interweaving of the stories shared between Nameless, Jet Li's character, and Qin King. As they share their stories the truth of the plot is made known, along with some interesting philosophy, "The highest achievement of a swordsman is to be without a sword." I would recommend you try to see it, but I know if you are in the states the only way that is going to happen is if you import it, as the American movie studios are planning to either not release it, or release a much butchered version of the movie. The region 2 DVD of the movie does have English subtitles, so understanding is not a problem.

That's about all for now, mostly been doing homework, so nothing really interesting. I did take a hike up to Shiro Yama and took some pictures. I love it up there, it is so silent.