Brian Ruh
@brianruh
Independent scholar (that's what they call it when academia doesn't want you), PhD in communication and culture, occasional writer, always looking for a new project. I wrote a book on Mamoru Oshii’s films.
My take on ep 1 of the new Ghost in the Shell (because I’m sure you were all wondering) - it’s okay. I wanted to like it more than I did. The designs and colors are good, but pacing seemed choppy, which wasn’t helped in places by the odd choice of score.
This is apparently the top news story from what used to be our local paper.
That reminds me - it was 25 years ago this month that I was in Japan for the Japan-America Stident Conference. Our first site was Kyoto, and we met in the Kyoto Museum for World Peace. There are a couple of murals from Phoenix in the halls there. Here are the pics I took at the time.
It’s like people didn’t understand the main lesson we were supposed to take from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Another thing I really like about this book is that it provides kanji in the margins for the terms under discussion. I got this book early on in my academic career and was always puzzled why this approach wasn’t taken more often. It seems quite useful!
Reading this made me break out my copy of “Religion and Society in Modern Japan”, which was one of the foundational texts in getting me interested in Japanese religious thought.
Since the Utena movie was playing this weekend but I didn’t get a chance to see it - Q: Why were the classes at Ohtori Academy so popular? A: They were all offered for duel credit.
I’ve been going through some of my old Japanese textbooks recently. Did anyone else use Situational Functional Japanese? That was the text here at Purdue in the mid-90s. That title isn’t nearly as catchy as Nakama or Genki, I must admit.
Oh, nice! Not my pic, but we recently acquired a Christmas ornament that is a bag of HEB tortillas.
A valiant effort, Japan. You still have a ways to go to compete against an Indiana tenderloin sandwich, though.
My major acquisition for today - one of my favorite albums, which just turned 40 earlier this month. I used to have it on cassette, but never on CD.
Sometimes you see fun cover edits when you’re looking through old records at Goodwill.
When they were cleaning some things out my parents found my old high school class ring.
I never got around to picking up the English edition of Somehow, Crystal (1980) by Yasuo Tanaka. Somehow, the book seems to have disappeared from all major sites. I can’t find any copies for sale, even expensive ones. I’m going to see if ILL from my local library will come through for me.
What about Yoji Yamada? He’s also older by 8 days, had directed 30+ more films, and as far as I know is continuing to work. Not that it’s a competition.
The Atlantic, 2015: Philosophy is a great major with earning potential The Atlantic, 2026: Philosophy is a finally a good major and it’s because of AI
I saw this listing of old tv guides on eBay and thought of one of my proposed PhD dissertation ideas. I was going to write about English-language media in Okinawa via base TV and radio broadcasts. I really wish I’d gone in that direction - it would have been really interesting and unique.