Talking Chinese Butterflies

It has been an extremely busy week for me this week. Well, busy for what my job normally consists of, anyway. (Interesting fact: considering I'm an English degree student I just learnt that the word "anywho" doesn't exist.) More so in the evenings however. I've found that there is a lot of out of work hours with this CIR job. I can use those hours to take the time off on other days, nonetheless.

On Tuesday, I went on my first "business trip". It made me feel rather special.
We went to Sapporo, what I like to call the "capital of Hokkaido prefecture". Our trip was on invitation of a Chinese film festival, where they are going to be showing a number of Chinese films this week in the cinema(s?) of Sapporo. They approached our city asking if we would sponsor them, which we did, and in return we got an advertisement of our town in their brochure and the invitation to their Opening ceremony, a free viewing of one of their films and attendance to their Reception party. All in all, it was basically trying to stabilise the perhaps unsteady bridge of friendship between Japan and China.

So there we sat. My Head of section and I, in our specially labelled cinema seats about 4 or 5 rows from the front, me cocking my head at the 3 or 4 important representatives from China giving their speeches in their native tongue, then nodding in understanding and admiration at the Chinese interpreter who translated in Japanese afterwards. It did appear that he had notes of their speech beforehand, but he did perfectly well at interpreting the improvised dialogue that popped up here and there. Contemplating I may be considering a future in a similar career path, I realise that I still have a long way to go.


I had not seen a Chinese film before. Well, I suppose I had, but it had been one of the 'typical' Chinese films that come to mind, set back in the Ancient times but with a twist where people can walk slow motion through the air endlessly and the women all look like porcelain white dolls in flowing colours of fabric. But the film we were shown was nothing of the sort.
I had read a short synopsis of 'Rest on your Shoulder', but I had never imagined it to be the way it was. It was...extremely interesting. It was like Disney Pixar meets a cheezy rom-com, but with a little less comedy and a lot more cheeze. Personally, I was in stitches for most of it. I enjoyed the film, but in probably all the opposite ways that the Director had intended. It helped that the main actor was a rather dishy sight on screen as well. My overall view was that it wasn't a bad film, it was just not to my taste. Nonetheless, the reason they had shown us this film was that a lot of it was shot in different areas of Hokkaido. My lack of knowledge and short stay here meant that I couldn't quite point out which scenes had been shot there, however.

After the film, we made our way to the Reception party in a swanky hotel. Again, more greetings, more translating, more discipline in standing around. The actress from the film we saw was there, as were another Actress and an Actor from another film that they were showing this week, as well as 3 or 4 Directors. Sadly my not-knowing-of-them meant that my fangirl hormones weren't tickled, though my Head of section happily dragged us to snap a picture one of the white skinny beauties. They were very pretty, granted, but much too boney for my personal taste.

Still, it was rather a fun outing considering it was a so-called "business trip".