{"id":2271,"date":"2009-06-03T09:25:19","date_gmt":"2009-06-03T16:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/?p=2271"},"modified":"2010-03-21T00:37:38","modified_gmt":"2010-03-21T07:37:38","slug":"the-bird-people-in-china-%e4%b8%ad%e5%9b%bd%e3%81%ae%e9%b3%a5%e4%ba%ba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/2009\/06\/the-bird-people-in-china-%e4%b8%ad%e5%9b%bd%e3%81%ae%e9%b3%a5%e4%ba%ba\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bird People in China (\u4e2d\u56fd\u306e\u9ce5\u4eba)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> The Bird People in China, or \u4e2d\u56fd\u306e\u9ce5\u4eba<\/a>, is one of the few, highly-rated, Japanese DVDs available through Netflix. I watched it last week. <\/p>\n

The movie has many layers. Initially I thought it was a comedy. What else could you have when you strand a member of the yakuza<\/i> with a “salaryman” in the middle of nowhere? I was laughing a lot during the first half hour or so.<\/p>\n

The layers change however. The laughter mostly disappears for the mid and later sections of the movie. The characters transform and are transformed by their environment. I was reminded of extended vacations I have experienced which can turn a person into a different person, if only for a while.<\/p>\n

The thought of multiple lives within a single lifetime also rises to the surface. I can certainly relate to that layer. Life is too short to get stuck doing the same thing, living the same way, or in the same place for too long.<\/p>\n

The scenery is breathtaking. I was reminded of other films like Out of Africa<\/a> and The Painted Veil<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Japanese is relatively easy to understand. One reason is the characters are frequently speaking to a Chinese man whose first language isn’t Japanese. <\/p>\n

Be prepared to be impressed, on many levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bird People in China, or \u4e2d\u56fd\u306e\u9ce5\u4eba, is one of the few, highly-rated, Japanese DVDs available through Netflix. I watched it last week. The movie has many layers. Initially I thought it was a comedy. What else could you have when you strand a member of the yakuza with a “salaryman” in the middle of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[262,5],"tags":[9],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2271"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2274,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271\/revisions\/2274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}