Peaceful Sparta's Blog

This is a story of a real historic figure who lived in Japan. However, certain details of his life have been lost to time, altered throughout the years or glorified as legend. The Tale of Benkei Benkei was born Saito Musashibo Benkei. He was a sohei, who later became a rogue warrior. History records put him at 6"6' in height, at the age of seventeen. So, about the height of Mads Mikkelsen or one and a half Peter Dinklage standing on top of one another. A sohei means a warrior monk. The stories of his childhood vary greatly, with some calling him a child born of rape, an offspring of a temple god or even a demon-esque child with monstrous teeth. At a young age, Benkei chose to join the monastic body. He then travelled to many religious places such as monasteries in Japan. Now, unlike modern monasteries, the monasteries of old served the purpose of being a military establishment as well. It was during this time that he learned to use the Naginata, a crescent moon ...

As told to me in a campfire story. DISCLAIMER: Don't read this if you are eating food. Once there was a fat businessman who went to attend a Tshechu. He was a man who liked to show his wealth, everyone knew that. Therefore, it was no surprise to anyone when he attended the public gathering with five rings on each of the fingers of his right hand. Unknown to him, there was a slick thief at the same venue. This thief was a poor commoner who didn't usually aim high at stealing. He stole a few trinkets here, a few coins there - nothing serious enough to land him in jail for more than a few weeks. Usually our thief would leave something like the fat businessman's rings alone. But today was not a usual day. One look at the rings and the thief knew he had to possess them - in his hands. So, he made up a plan... Four nights later, the thief found himself inside the businessman's bedroom, standing next to a drugged up, out-cold businessman. He searched for the rings...

"The birds’ exhibit is coming up," Sonam said as they walked through the museum. "Look at that vulture, ha!" "I wonder if all these specimens are from inside the country?" asked Pema. She was not interested in birds. "Smells like naphthalene" remarked Sonam. Pema knew that it wasn't naphthalene. She asked "I wonder how bears smell like?" "Let's go check it out, then," yelled Sonam as he dragged her back to the mammals section. "Are there wolves here too?" asked Pema. "Yes." answered Sonam. He pointed at the corner. Sonam walked Pema home. "Bye" "Bye. Goodnight." When Pema woke up she couldn't see a thing. She was amused. Mother always told her that if she kept playing PUBG late at night, she would lose her eyesight. It was unusually hot as she turned in her bed, trying to search for her phone. Her left arm must have been pinned down underneath her body while she...

If you are one of the twelve Bhutanese people who watched the 2010 Japanese revenge movie, “Confessions”, you may read this article. This is a comparison of the movie and the novel, and discusses the few differences and variations from the source material. Note this: watching the movie is necessary to understand this article, but reading the novel is optional. Note this also: There are major spoilers for the movie “Confessions”. But come on, you had ten years. An entire character was left out As far as movie watchers are concerned, the Shitamura household consists of Momma Shitamura and Naoki. However, in the novel, a small section is told from Naoki's older sister's point of view. She explains her family's ignorance of Naoki's situation and ends up finding her mother's diary in which Naoki's slow descent into madness is detailed. This omission of a character is quite understandable from a movie-making standpoint. Naoki's sister was not an esse...

The reason why so many anime characters email each other instead of texting can be answered by looking into Japan’s mobile network system. Early on, Japanese telephone service providers would provide regular services such as calling, applications and so on. However, sending and receiving text messages could only be done between users within the same mobile phone service. For example, NTT subscribers could send text messages to other NTT customers; SoftBank users could only text other SoftBank customers. Think B-Mobile and TashiCell, if B-Mobile and TashiCell were each a secret club or a cult – sending messages to the other was forbidden.  Of course, if you could keep track of which of your friends and family owned cellphones subscribed to which network, you could send and receive texts normally. However, the text messaging service didn’t get used often because the Japanese are busy people and no one has the time and effort to maintain a list of which person has which s...

If you haven't watched Bong Joon Ho's 2019 masterpiece "Parasite", you should go and watch it. Don't worry. This article can wait. The critically acclaimed movie's win at the 2020 Academy Awards lit up my little, Asian heart; so much that I went on a Bong Joon Ho movie marathon. At the time I was planning to write a movie review, but everyone seems to have already done that. So, this is a top 7 list with only 4 items on it, 4 items in the movie which may have gone unnoticed by the casual viewer. How many of these did you pick up? Image courtesy: https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/movie-poster-of-the-week-the-posters-of-parasite 4. None of the rich people look down First, something obvious - this Oscar winning movie is a commentary on the gap between the rich elite and the common unfortunate, working class people. (That's how I write "poor" in a polite manner). One interesting thing is how in order to emphasise the distance between the upper...