Onigawara is a Jaoanese demon guardian. yakitori is like a fancy pub/eatery? and izakaya is a pub/eatery...with fewer lights?

What is the difference between a yakitori and an Izakaya?

Why does this mask's voice sound like Takeshi Kitano?

That mask is actually a mold of his face before stage make up.

What do you know him from? I wasn't familiar with that actor until I just looked him up.

Yakitori is the style like at a Benihana's right? Where the cooking is a performance and they'll make a volcano outta an onion?

I've been a fan of his acting and directing for quite a while now, and highly recommend his work. 😃🤘🏼

Thanks, I will. Just in case you have the only dissenting opinion of this movie I've ever heard, do you recommend the 2017 Ghost in the Shell movie?

I see he's listed in the credits there.

How could I recommend that leprotic snot of a "movie"? I have no idea where he shows up in said credits and those links are staying blue, but I'm sorry for my part in letting yours turn purple. 🙇🏽‍♂️

haha, got it. I'm waiting for the day that someone tells me it's worth watching for some reason or another.

If it's the same takeshi kitano, he's chief aramaki!

Yeah, I recall now. My guess is that someone was a fan of the original Battle Royale and cast him in an echoed role, decades later. 😅🙄🤷🏽‍♂️

hey, there we go. I haven't watched Battle Royale in like 20 years. He's in that?

oh yup the teacher, that's hilarious. Thank you for reminding me. I have to watch that again.

Since you like Battle Royale, are there any other movies along that vein you'd recommend?

Not so much the "teacher", per se. He's the cmdr or whatever that takes over the class and kidnaps them to the island (not that one, a different one), yes.

In the same vein as BR or you mean others w/ him in them? To the latter, I'd say "any/all listed", but the former may count the Takeshi's Castle series, and maybe even Sonatine and Brother, as well. 🤷🏽‍♂️🤓🤘🏼

in the same vein as Battle Royale, but I'm also interested in the movies you like takeshi in. thanks.

oh he's zatoichi too. alright.

Did you ever watch the live-action Lone Wolf and Cub movies?

any/all listed

uh oh GITS 2017 recommendation on you

In all fairness, I skipped through that pos so much, I'm surprised I can even recall seeing him in it —though I do now, and also remember hoping at the time that I could learn to forget it.

So, thanks. 🤣🤌🏼

FWIW, he's not just Zatoichi, he wrote and directed it, too. Add to that, it was at a time when depiction/discussion of sengoku-era homosexuality was still censored by the Japanese government if not the culture itself —particularly if said event/media was global in reach. (eg. Taboo was only 3 years earlier and initially panned/smeared, but Beat Takeshi wouldn't be, well, beat)

He's one of my favorite personas on screen, and so, to sum up:

Sonatine is a gem.

Brother is fantastic in its own right.

Zatoichi is a goddamned treasure.

The back-room origins of Takeshi's Castle are both hilarious and inspiring, even if the series itself is generally better in a Best Of format. 😜

That said, I'm happy to wax dorky on his filmography and related shenanigans anytime, neighbor. 🤘🏼

Also writing and directing is worth a lot, that's really interesting! Thanks, I'm definitely start with Zatoichi and then work around the rest of those recs. Do you know a lot of Japanese cinema this well, or is your knowledge here mostly based on your admiration for Kitano specifically?

Awesome! Love to hear it!

I'd recommend an earlier film to start with, if you're looking to get a fuller taste for his art —unless you're game to rewatch Zatoichi with new eyes. IMHO, the parts he's played so far seem to fit him internally, instead of the other way around (like so many actors), and the blind masseur ex-ninja role is one of his more emotionally complicated & subtle ones.

That said, I've been a fan of many Asian films over the years from b&w days to modern, and I'm down to throw out recommendations for whenever genre, director, actors, etc. you're thinking of delving into.

To start, I'll strongly suggest you read Lone Wolf & Cub from start to finish before looking into the film/tv adaptations (ie. they're all worthy attempts, but pale to the original work; each frame/panel of the comic is sublime in its simplicity, and challenging to fully recapture on camera).

I can also list films & series that stick out in my mind, or actors & directors that changed the medium completely with their style. The former would include works like

• Hard Boiled,
• The Burmese Harp,
• Tampopo,
• Dreams (honestly, Kurosawa's entire filmography is a goldmine),

and the latter'd include luminaries like (actors) :

• Takeshi Kitano,
• Keye Luke,
• James Hong,
• Nancy Kwan,
• Toshiro Mifune,
• Anna May Wong,
• Chow Yun Fat
• and Saloma

as well as (directors)

• Takeshi Kitano,
• Alira Kurosawa (of course),
• Kenji Mizoguchi,
• Nagisa Ôshima,
• Shohei Imamura,
• Hayao Miyazaki,
• Satyajit Ray,
• Apichatpong Weerasethakul,
• Bong Joon-ho,
• Park Chan-wook,
• Edward Yang,
• Hou Hsiao-Hsien,
• Tsai Ming-liang,
• Lee Chang-dong,
• Wong Kar-wai,
• Zhang Yimou,
• John Woo,
• Tsui Hark,
• King Hu,
• and Chen Kaige

for starters. 😅🤓🤘🏼

(p.s. would it be better to link their pages here for ya?) 🙇🏽‍♂️

Thanks! I'm very familiar with john woo, Zhang yimou, wong kar-wai, park chan wook, bong joon ho and hayao Miyazaki, and I'd be happy to hear movie recommendations for the other directors on that list you think I should start out with.

Maybe just the one that sticks out most for you, for each director I haven't listed above.

I'm familiar with the actors except for saloma, is that the singer?

Oh, and I've definitely read all the way through Lone Wolf and Club twice now. i only became aware of the live action movies recently, and I really got into them as supplements, but yeah the manga is unbelievable.

I actually went to the manga museum in kyoto and saw Kazuo Koike's plaster cast hand. They have this big display of like a hundred manga artist hands cast in plaster there.

I was just walking around, checking everything out, and then I realized that the hand I was staring at was kazuo's.

Apologies, fellow meanderer, i completely spaced replying and kept getting distracted when putting this draft together. 🙇🏽‍♂️ Please, standby 🤘🏼😜

processing...

ha, no problem, take yer time.

i watched zatoichi and battle royale, was shocked to realize they were only three years apart, then sonatine, which is also great.

I'll probably work my way through the rest of Kitano's filmography as well eventually, especially the films he writes and directs.

Zatoichi ::: spoiler spoilers
is already great, love the style choices and diagetic beats like with the farmers and the children using their instruments, but maaaaaan when the tap dancing started, I was like, oh wait, this is... the best...and then it just kept going for I don't know how long, seven, ten minutes. And I absolutely loved the ending to Zatoichi because of that crazy awesome dance sequence.
:::

Oh, one hundred percent! Honestly, after all the hype about his intent to do his version of the cherished classic being nearly sacrilegious in both his style and newness to the scene, I was hoping for something on par w/ the anti-authority shenanigans of Takeshi's Castle corpo BS hurdling, and ::: spoiler spoiler
that dance number was wonderful. 🤩🤌🏼
:::

Hey, sorry I missed your comment 2 months ago. Yakitori refers to a cooking method but in practical terms is an upscale pub in Japan where the food, decor and service is a little fancier than an izakaya(regular pub), skewers are often cooked over charcoal, and yakitori have certain cooking methods.

No performances, although these guys were very happy to talk to me despite my terrible Japanese and even gifted me a shirt after I closed out the yakitori with them.

Yakitori is basically grilled chicken on a stick.

Yaki -> 'cooked over direct heat'

Tori -> 'chicken'

(well, most literally, 'bird'. also, not to be confused with 'torii', totally different concept)

Its like a street food, sorta like street tacos or hot dogs: relatively fast, simple, but still quite tasty... you could think of it as a very specific kind of barbecued chicken, sort of.

Izakaya is the pub/eatery, the place, the building.

Its ... sort of a combination between a dive bar, and an all you can eat buffet?

Probably the westernized versions, they probably aren't having a section for people dining on tatami mats, charging you an entrance fee, and then feeding you for up to 3 hours, as you order things in the order of 'you know what will be cooked quickly, and what will take a while'... id imagine they're probably more like just a sit down restaurant, with booths or tables and waiters snd servers and what not... though a lot of izakaya have that as well, it varies.

Yakitori also refers to a type of mid to upscale Japanese pub/restaurant with a wide menu of small dishes/skewers as well as the cultural signature yakitori skewer. Thank you for the direct translation.

While you can find yakitori as a street food at night markets, both izakayas and yakitori restaurants are cozy comfortable indoor pubs/bars, with yakitori pubs generally having more service, room and tables as well as a bar, although even an izakaya a lot cleaner and more-maintained/serviced than a dive bar, and a yakitori will be a fancy hardwood upscale sort of place with a much wider menu.

Boyyyyyy do I wish it was an AYCE buffet. In both izakayas and yakitoris, you'll pay for each order/drink and can have them freshly prepared and delivered within minutes. So maybe 2 chicken hearts and a beer, then some tsukiji a little later, breathe a bit, get some shiso-wrapped pork. It's pretty fun and chill.

An izakaya is a different type of pub, definitely less formal, usually less service and much more cramped, often just a bar and stools. People go to izakayas after work to get a bit rowdy, and the main point is drinking, rather than the menu, and sometimes there isn't a menu at all.

I haven't been to a western yakitori restaurant in about 15 years now, so I'm not sure how they're organized these days. Back then, it was just like the Japanese ones, although the one I liked was owned and operated by a Japanese immigrant yakitori masterrrr, so he probably carefully traditionally controlled his yakitori pub more than a non-native or new-to-the-scene yakitori owner might.

... why did you ask the question ... if you knew the answer?

Oh, haha, sorry, this question was from 2 months to gauge if what I understood from previous visits was correct, but I've since lived in Japan for 6 weeks and been fully versed in the deets by a new Japanese friend and the staff of several izakayas/yakitoris.