Toshimaen Spa

Posted on 2006/08/27 03:18:30 (August 2006).

[Saturday 26th August]
It was mostly a fairly lazy day today. I spent some time in the morning and early afternoon back on the VBI, and managed to make some really good progress in a short time - I finally found out how to handle the unusual bit checking mechanism, so I can actually be confident that the demodulation I'm doing of the waveform is more or less correct.

I knocked together a quick pasta dish for lunch. In the afternoon we watched the other DVD we had rented out the previous evening - a rather disappointhng modern attempt at a Sherlock Holmes film. To my slight embarassment I realise I have become something of a Sherlock Holmes geek, and spent the whole film picking flaws.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337593/

Chie made a kind of vegetarian gyuudon for dinner, which was rather nice actually.

After dinner we headed out for the evening, to go for a late bathe at Toshimaen Spa. It was a similar sort of thing to some of the other spa places we'd been previously - like Enoshima and Yunessun in Hakone. I still think Enoshima was the best - whilst this place was a little cleaner and less full of kids than Yunessun, it was a bit on the small side and there were too many people even in the supposed quiet period. Anyway, I suppose it broke up the day a bit.

On the way back we popped into one of our old haunts - Grazie Gardens - the Italian style "famiresu" (Japanese English for family restaurant) in Hatagaya (the place where we had lived for a couple of months at the end of 2005 when we first started work in Tokyo. It's very cheap and cheerful, but I rather like this place, and it is quite handy that it is open until 3AM.

Ah! Now with reference to James D'Arcy - the Sherlock character - I've watched him in both a recent Miss Marple and a Poirot (both of which I'm an avid fan of!) He generally seems quite good. A big smoker in both I recall - not sure how he would handle Holmes. Probably quite efficiently I presume. Nowhere near Mr Brett of course!! (is anyone?!?)

Posted by Nigel at 2006/08/27 19:52:55.

I don't think the problems with the film originated from James D'Arcy's acting ability - I'm sure he is quite a good actor. It was the script that I had problems with.

The Holmes in this film was depicted as a binge drinking womanising publicity seeker. Whilst The "real" Holmes wasn't adversed to an odd brandy (although he never over did it) the other two traits are at the complete opposite of how he is portrayed in the books - he is generally uninterested in women, and makes a very strong point of shunning publicity (usually Lestrade gets all the credit).

If these oversights were put in knowingly, then I suppose they were trying to say this was what he was like when he was young, before he learned the error of his ways, or something.

Hmmm, oh well, clearly I am guilty of over analysing this film, but I for one couldn't really enjoy it.

One slight redeeming factor was a shot of a bottle of Highland Park at one point. Of course this was another blatant flaw in itself here in that bottled whisky did not become common until a much later point in history (it was mostly bought by pub landlords by the barrel). Anyway, I am starting to sound like an uber-pedant...

Posted by John at 2006/08/28 12:46:42.

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