Sarcasm and cynicism aside (at least when it comes to relationships), I'm a huge sap. Sometimes, it's very embarrassing.

I just finished watching the final episode of Basilisk (and yes, I haven't done any work so I feel guilty too) and I was weeping. The story is so sad. And this is what happens in Japanese anime. The endings are usually very sad or very ambiguous. I like that. There's no happy ending per se, but more like, it's up to you, to your imaginations, your hopes, to life itself. After all, life does not have happy endings. There's no such thing.

Maybe that's why I disliked "Memoirs of a Geisha" - the book and the movie. Golden's "masterpiece" is simply a romanticized (from a "Western" perspective) outlook of geisha culture. I have to admit that I couldn't finish the book in a linear way. I actually skipped pages and went directly to the end only to return later to previous pages to see if something in the middle could make the book interesting.

Don't get me wrong. It's an okay piece but the style of writing didn't appeal to me. The information provided was interesting in some occasions, and in others, it simply left me appalled or confused. I'm not a Japanese major nor am I a Japanese expert, but having friends who study the culture, have lived there, and are familiar with many things has given me a somehow empathetic point of view about Japan and its people. While I do admit that some things mentioned in the book could be considered as veridical, they were exploited and exaggerated just to appeal to the readers - which is understandable. But I hate it when people assume that they "know" about one country or one culture just after reading one single book, a fictional one for that matter (even if the book was based on Mineko Iwasaki's life).

So, perhaps my dislike is founded not necessarily on the information of the book but on the people who self-righteously use it as a realistic and sound source to understand geisha. It's like the people who have asked me if I rode a llama to go to school just because I told them I'm from Peru. O_o Misconceptions are easily accepted as true because they're convenient or fit people's purposes. I find myself falling into that same pot but I also try to get out of it.

But anyhow, tangent aside and going back to the initial topic, I'm reconnecting with my love for anime. I haven't watch it for a very long time and it is nice to be able to do it now - even if I have work to do. ^^