-
Tokyo Story (1953)
In Tokyo Story, an aging couple take a trip from their city of Onomichi to Tokyo to visit their adult children and grandchildren. The movie opens with scenes of every day life in Onomichi: ships passing, children walking to school, and a train chugging along at the base of the mountains. In the Hirayama house, the aging couple are getting ready for a trip to visit their two oldest children, Kōichi who is a physician, Shige who is a hairdresser, and their widowed daughter-in-law, Noriko, who was married to their middle son, Shōji. Their youngest daughter, a teacher named Kyōko, lives with them and helps them get ready. The opening scenes…
-
Ocean Waves (1993)
Ocean Waves is a coming of age tale about a student named Rikako Muto who transfers to a new high school. Rikako is talented in academics and sport, but comes off as arrogant to many of the students at her new school. However one of her classmates, Taku, thinks that Rikako is unhappy after leaving Tokyo. Taku gets entangled in Rikako’s life after Taku lends her ¥60,000, which she fails to promptly repay. When Taku gets a phone call from Rikako’s friend Yumi, who is stressed because Rikako tricked Yumi into getting a plane ticket (which was paid for with Taku’s money) for a concert when the real destination was…
-
Prairie Moon Friends: Deer 3
-
Frank Lloyd Wright Allen House, Wichita, Kansas
Inspired in part by the prairie landscape of the region and in part by Japanese architecture (he was also working on the Imperial Hotel in Japan at the time), Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie Style Allen House was designed in 1915 and built in 1917 for Henry J. and Elsie Allen. The house is located in the historic College Hill neighborhood in Wichita Kansas at 255 N. Roosevelt, Wichita, KS. Get tickets and tour dates and times at the FLW Allen House site here.
-
Ran (1985)
Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (乱, meaning “chaos” in Japanese), an epic film inspired by Shakespeare’s King Lear, tells the story of an elderly warlord, Lord Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai), who decides to retire and give his empire to his three sons: the eldest, Taro (Akira Terao), who is to rule, his second son Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu), and his third Saburo (Daisuke Ryu). Hidetora’s announcement of this takes place in the opening scene on a idyllic day in the mountains with his sons, his men, lords from neighboring lands, and the fool. Hidetora envisions that his sons will rule as a strong unit, giving an example of three arrows and how they…
-
Onyx Cave, Eureka Springs, Arkansas
Just six miles east of Eureka Springs is Onyx Cave, a flowstone cave which opened in 1893 as Arkansas’s first show cave. Flowstone is also known as “cave onyx,” which is not the same as onyx. Two of its most notable cave formations are the Dragon and the Elephant.
-
Eureka Springs, Arkansas
-
Crescent Hotel, Eureka Springs
Opened in 1886, the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, is often referred to as the “Most Haunted Hotel in America” for its numerous ghost sightings.
-
From Up On Poppy Hill (2011)
When Umi Matsuzaki (Masami Nagasawa), a girl living in a boarding house that was once a hospital, meets a member of their school’s newspaper club, Shun Kazama (Junichi Okada), in their mutual effort to clean up the school clubhouse, they form a bond and begin to unravel their mysterious past. Set in Yokohama, Japan in 1963, this is a story of determination, friendship, and family. From Up on Poppy Hill was directed by Gorō Miyazaki (also known for directing Tales from Earthsea and Earwig and The Witch), with screenplay written by Hayao Miyazaki (who also wrote and directed Laputa: Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, and Kiki’s Delivery Service, among others) and…
-
Arrietty (2010)
Arrietty, Arrietty the Borrower (JP) or The Secret World of Arrietty (US) is a Studio Ghibli animation about Arrietty, a tiny girl who befriends a human boy, Sho. Arrietty and her tiny family live under the floors of Sho’s house and borrow little things that go unnoticed from the “human beans” who live above them, however they must keep themselves out of human sight in order to survive. The story is based on the book The Borrowers by Mary Norton with screenplay by Hayao Miyazaki and Keiko Niwa. The animation was directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Consistent with Studio Ghibli, this is a beautifully animated film with a lovely story, and it is the…
