American ways to eat sushi (Warning: some contents might be offensive to some people)

How the Japanese sushi would look like

Nigirizushi

After working in a sushi bar for more than a year, I have found out some hilarious American ways of eating sushi.

They tend to use low sodium soy sauce for a "more healthy" reason, but they also like to dunk their sushi onto the soy sauce to a point that the rice falls apart, and the end up consuming more soy sauce than good sushi eaters who use full sodium soy sauce.

They think eating sushi is health, perhaps because the Japanese have the longest life expectancy in the world and good marketing, yet a majority of them also love the deep-fried rolls, tempura rolls, and rolls that uses a good amount of mayonnaise sauce. Yummy!

They love oversized rolls because they think the bigger the better.

They do not seem to like the traditional sushis (which are actually more healthy), like the nigirizushi, cucumber rolls, and tuna rolls, but they crave the fancy looking rolls with loads of fattening sauce like eel and mayonnaise sauce.

Similar to Chinese food, once healthy Japanese sushi had changed its face into the more fancy-looking, high fat and calories content Americanized sushi rolls.

Deep-fried roll

Another oversauced roll that was marketed as healthy

Thoughts on Boat People

Boat People is a political drama film released in 1982 about the lives of people under communist Vietnam by Hong Kong director Ann Hui. The protagonist is Shiomi Akutagawa, a Japanese journalist who travelled to Vietnam in 1975 to report the lives in post war Vietnam. Like other communist countries, he was escorted by officials to take photos that the government want him to take, in order to show the Japanese a "good" image of Vietnam. He thought Vietnam is a peaceful country until he ran into a Vietnamese girl, Cam Nuong. As he spent some time with her and her family, he started to learn the painful lives that common people faced daily in post-war Vietnam...

I do not want to spoil the movie, so I will only put my thoughts about the film and the political status of post-war Vietnam.

The film reflects a good example of a bad government: people are so used to be around with dead bodies that they do no longer feel anything when they see dead bodies, rather, they will take away the valuables from the dead; government take away young men and to "recreate" them into "revolutionists" by send them into dangerous missions, like removing land mines; government do not want foreigners to speak to the commoners, afraid that the foreigners will report the bad things from the country and tarnish their image. I have not traveled to Vietnam to see if the present Vietnam is still like this, but there are still many countries in that world that have a horrible government, for example, Burma. The Burma junta finally allows foreign aids into the country to rescue the victims, but after almost a month. I think as I live in a safer country, I should not take peace as granted, as there are still many children that are suffered in wars, poverty, and hunger.
I think Ann Hui wanted to use this film to relate the Vietnamese lives with the people that were under the rule of communist China. Because of the nature of the film, the film was banned in China. 8.5/10.

Thoughts on July Rhapsody

July Rhapsody is a 2001 Hong Kong movie directed by Ann Hui. It is a drama film that focus on
several social problems of Hong Kong faced during the 1990's to 2000's.

Lam Yiu Kwok is a secondary school teacher that teaches Chinese literature. He is living as a good student, a good father, a good hyusband, and a good teacher (as he said in the film, and chronologically). He tries to make the boring lecture topics exciting by giving his students vivid lectures (although none of his students seems to pay attention). He also went to the reunion with his secondary school schoolmates and he has sharp contrasts comparing to his old schoolmates (although he was the best student in his class, he was far less successful than his friends, after he chose his career to become a teacher). He chose to accept the crush from Wu Choi Nam, after finding out that his old schoolmate and wife Chan Man Ching is trying to visit his dying estrange Chinese literature teacher (Mr. Shing) that once loved and later hate.

The plot was well written. It shows the audience the secrets behind a perfect family. The contrast between Lam Yiu Kwok and Wu Choi Nam was also great - Lam being a conservative, boring man and Wu is a girl that does whatever she wants to.

This is what Lam Yiu Kwok wants to do in his life, and that is why he continues to accompany her because he wants to observe why Wu can do whatever she likes, while why he has to stick to his role. Lam was hurt by Chan's decision to visit their old, dying literature teacher and audience will find out the secret behind their teacher that will tear their 20 year marriage apart. The three main characters did very well to make themselves as deep, multi-dimensional characters that made the audience feel for them. This is film that is definitely worth to watch. 8/10.