Sunday, March 19, sunny @ Ueda, high 5 °C, low -1 °C

I saw a French film called “Petite Maman” by Céline Sciamma in Ueda Eigeki. When I heard the name of the director, I remembered her film “Portrait of a Girl on Fire” that I saw on a plane a few years ago. At that time I did not know her, but I was very surprised by the beauty of the images in this film.

As for today’s film, there were also a number of very impressive scenes and I thought again that I love this director. This film gave me a feeling of strangeness, as if the border between children and adults disappeared.

The French children are very independent and mature.

Saturday, March 18, snow @ Ueda, high & °C, low 0 °C

I went to listen to a biwa (Japanese lute) playing the story of Heike Monogatari. It seems that there are many types of biwa, and this time, it was a satsuma-biwa. The biwa is not played horizontally, but vertically, and the plectrum is very large, like a fan spread out, which surprised me.

She rubbed the strings with the plectrum to express the sound of the wind, or hit the belly board hard to create a rhythm. It was really great! She told us the famous stories of [Gion Shojya] and [Danno-ura] as well as [Kurikara-ochi] and [Tomoe], which she chose to tell us about the part of the story related to Yoshinaka Kiso, because the Maruko district of Ueda city is the place where Kiso Yoshinaka raised his army.

The interpreter was Mrs. Sae Ishida. I felt a little strange because her name was the same as mine.