deerstudio, llc日本語サイトトップへFor English, click hereTo top page
Alchemista - Katz Ueno

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Late Holiday Greetings

Season Greetings! (little late)

Last a couple days, I halted all my work and managing all my contacts and sent out Christmas greetings.

It may be just a ritual.
Some people hate season greetings.

I am one of those who don't really follow the custom.

But as I go through my e-mails, and letters, the memory of that particular person comes and goes.

Sometime, we did something crazy, fun or painful.

But I realized that chain of these encounters made me who I am.

I was just a guy who was just dreaming. Now I am stepping forward. Thank you for all of you who support me this year and the past years.

Season Greetings from Christmas Tree Katz.



Eric Byler’s "Tre" - my sound work will be released in select Theaters for the first time!

I think this is my first film that is going to be theatrically released!! I did sound editing on this.
I would like to announce Eric Byler's new film is coming to LA. Here is his message.



---------- BEGIN FORWARDED MESSAGE ----------








When actor Michael Idemoto first read the script for Charlotte Sometimes he thought the green light was a reference to The Great Gatspy. Actually, I never read The Great Gatspy and the reference to a green light was simply a description of the house where I planned to shoot Charlotte Sometimes -- the next door neighbor had a green light with a light-sensor that would go on any time somebody walked by.

In putting together the production team for TRE, we brought back cinematographer Robert Humphreys from Charlotte Sometimes. He smiled when he said he was thinking of putting green gels in the outdoor lamps. "Why not?" I said. I might like the feel of the green light better in TRE than Charlotte Sometimes. But then again, I haven't seen Charlotte Sometimes in ages. Maybe we should do a double feature somewhere.

TRE will open at Laemlle's Sunset 5 on Feb. 1st in Los Angeles. Other cities will be added soon.

Monday, December 10, 2007

deerstudio, inc. has launched!

It's my pleasure to announce that I have officially filed my first corporation, deerstudio, inc. and just now, my company was approved by Japanese government agency. It's Kabushiki Gaisha like C coporation.

The web site will launch at deerstudio.jp [ Link ]

But it's all gonna be in Japanese. And I am recreating deerstudio.com web site as well. I'll make an announcement later.


It's very exciting news that I can bring it to you.

However, having a company also means more responsibility.

But I guess I am making a progress step by step.

Friday, November 30, 2007

List of English Media In Japan

When I got back to Japan after three years in LA last Aug, I have realized the growing number of foreign workers, and foreign-language media in Japan even in-and-around my hometown.

8 years ago when I first left for LA, there were mostly so-called "blue-color workers" since my hometown is very famous for oil refinary factory, and stuff.

Now I see more white-color foreign workers resides in my hometown. This circumstances completely makes sense why there are rapid growth and demands for English media (or foreign-language media) in Japan.

I did a quick research what kind of English media is popular in Japan. (Only English though).

-- General --

Japan Today
http://www.japantoday.com/

Japan Times (The oldest English newspaper in Japan)
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/

News On Japan
http://www.newsonjapan.com/

Japan News Review
http://www.japannewsreview.com/

Daily Yomiuri (English version of major Japanese newspaper)
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/

Mainichi Daily News (English version of major Japanese newspaper)
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/

-- Business, Marketing and Economy --

Japan Corporate News
http://www.japanmarketingnews.com/

Japan Inc
http://www.japaninc.com/

Nikkei Interactive
http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/

-- Culture and Pop Culture --

Japan Probe
http://www.japanprobe.com/

3Yen Japan News
http://www.3yen.com/

Danny Cho
http://www.dannychoo.com/

Akihabara News
http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/

Spinshell.tv (Online Web casting in Tokyo)
http://www.spinshell.tv

Kirai.net (Also available in Spanish)
http://www.kirainet.com/english/


-- Others --

ELT News (News site for English teacher resides in Japan)
http://www.eltnews.com/

---

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Vote for Cafe Balcony!

Guys, Cafe Balcony is nominated for FOX11's best coffee shop contest!

You guys have to vote for my lovely coffee shop!

http://myfoxla.cityvoter.com/details.aspx?business=25492


xxx

Thursday, September 20, 2007

The Japanese Language Brain

"JAPAN CLOSE-UP", August 2002, published by PHP

The Japanese Language Brain
By Masaomi Ise

They Can't Hear the Insects?

Our story begins with the visit of Professor Tadanobu Tsunoda of Tokyo Medical & Dental University to Havana, Cuba, in January 1987 to attend the 1st international seminar titled "Central Nervous System Disease Physiology and Compensation." Cuba was still under embargo and Prof. Tsunoda was the only participant from a western nation. There was a reception on the night before the seminar began, with many scientists from eastern bloc nations in attendance. A Cuban man was delivering a fervent speech in powerful Spanish.

But Prof. Tsunoda was distracted by the extremely loud sound of insects that enveloped the meeting hall. Realizing that even in January Cuba was hot, Prof. Tsunoda asked someone around him what kind of insect it might be, but no one could hear the insects but him, while to Prof. Tsunoda it sounded like a loud outburst of cicadas or crickets!

When the reception finally ended at about 2 o'clock in the morning, Prof. Tsunoda made his way back with two young Cubans. On the quiet night streets, he could hear the same insect songs as before, but even louder now. Prof. Tsunoda pointed out many times the places in the bushes where he could hear the insects singing, but though the two would stop and stand still to listen intently, they couldn't hear anything. They just looked at him rather strangely, and said he must be tired so have a good night.

Prof. Tsunoda met with the two Cubans every day for some activity or another, but not until the third day did the man finally notice the insects' noise. He didn't seem much interested, however. The woman never did hear the insects during the whole one week seminar. To the doctor it seemed that the hearing of Japanese people and hearing of foreigners had to be very different.

Left Brain, Right Brain

Based on this difference in the sense of hearing, Prof. Tsunoda set out to research the physiological difference between the brains of Japanese and of the other races. The results of his research led to a surprising discovery. The human brain is divided between the left and right spheres, with each having different functions. The right brain is called the music sphere, because it is where the sounds of music, machinery and noise is processed. The left brain is called the language sphere, because it processes sound logically and intellectually, namely being where the spoken word is comprehended. Up to this point Japanese are the same as Westerners.

But Prof. Tsunoda found a difference in the location where the sound of insects is processed. His experiments revealed that while Westerners process insect sounds together with machinery and noise sounds in the music sphere, Japanese capture insect sounds in their language sphere, meaning that Japanese hear insect sounds as "insect voices."

For the Cubans, if one were used to hearing the loud insect singing that filled the meeting hall as the ordinary background noise, they would not even be conscious of it. This is the same phenomenon as living for many years next to a railroad and growing so accustomed to the noise that we wouldn't even notice a train passing by. But since Japanese hear insect sounds in the same language sphere as they hear human voices, we can't let insect sounds just go by as part of the background noise. The fervent speech in Spanish and the loud insect singing were in direct competition in the left brain of Prof. Tsunoda.

This unique characteristic is only found among Japanese and Polynesian people, while Chinese and Koreans exhibit the same pattern as Westerners. What is even more interesting is the fact that Japanese whose mother tongue is a foreign language follow the Western pattern, while foreigners whose first language is Japanese follow the Japanese pattern. So this phenomenon is not a matter of "hardware," or the physical structure of the brain, but an issue of software, namely what language was learned first as a child.

Right or Left Brain Experiments

Before examining this difference further, let's take a quick look at the experimentation that proved these results. The actual nerves that run from the human ear to the brain cross over, so that sound data from the right ear goes into the left brain, and vice versa.

When different melodies are played at the same time into the right and left ears, which melody does the person hear? The person always recognizes the melody that he heard in his left ear better. This is how we know that the right brain, namely the left ear, is better at music. Similarly, if different words are spoken simultaneously into the right and left ears, the right ear, namely the left brain, has better recognition. That is way we almost always put the telephone receiver to our right ear. There are other more complicated ways to test this, but this is the most fundamental experimentation method.

Using this method and many different types of sounds to find the difference between the left and right brains, it was shown that Japanese and Westerners alike heard music, machinery and noise sounds in the right brain and language sounds in the left brain, but Japanese heard vowels sounds, crying, laughing and sighing, the cries of insects and animals, waves, wind, rain, running water and Japanese musical instruments in the left brain, the same as language, while Westerners heard these sounds in the right brain together with music and noise.

Insect Sounds in America?

Speaking of insect sounds, I had the following experience. While driving through the mountains about two hours' inland from Boston far from human habitation, I came upon a beautiful spot, so I stopped the car to take a rest. I heard insects calling loudly even though it was broad daylight.

While I was listening to their sounds, I suddenly remembered that I never heard the sound of an insect while I lived in California for four years. Even in desert-dry California there is plenty of greenery along the coasts. But in my mind's eye, for some reason the woods that I can picture there were always completely silent. I couldn't ever remember hearing a noisy burst of crickets, or the insects that sing in the long nights of autumn.

What first comes to mind for Americans when they think of insects are mosquitoes, flies and bees, namely pest insects. There are still bees in America, but you hardly ever see flies or mosquitoes. That's why when you occasionally see a fly, you feel that you must be in a very unsanitary place. Where did these "enemies of civilized life" all disappear to?

Also, words that are used to define insects also tend to have bad connotations. The word "insect" when used about a person means "worm, good-for-nothing," while the word "bug" means '"annoy," and is also used to mean a software error, as in "programming bug."

If all insects are pests, and all their songs are just heard as noise, then it wouldn't be strange to think that Americans have used the same poisons they used to eradicate the fly and mosquito to indiscriminately destroy all the other species.

The Culture to Be Heard in Insect Sounds

In contrast, in Japan there is a whole culture to be heard in the sounds of insects. Even today there are websites devoted to images of crickets and recordings of their songs, and there are countless books about how best to keep them. The nursery rhyme "Insect Voices" is an example of how the art we hear in insect sounds is familiar to us from childhood.

Oh, the matsumushi cricket is singing
Chin-chiro, chin-chiro, chin-chiro-rin
Now the suzumushi bell-ring cricket is starting to sing
Rin rin rin rin ri-in rin
Calling out through the long autumn nights
Oh how beautiful are the insects' voices !

All the different kinds of insects like matsumushi and suzumushi sing with different kinds of chirps.

We can imagine the Japanese view of nature that says both humans and insects as part of all living creatures have "voices" and "feelings." The unique characteristic of Japanese people that hears insect sound and human voices in the same language sphere of the brain is very well reflected in our culture.

Dogs Say "Wan-wan," Cats Say "Nya-nya"

Prof. Tsunoda's discovery also showed that besides insect sounds, Japanese also heard other animals' cries, plus the sound of waves, wind, rain and bubbling brooks in the language sphere. In Japanese, brooks say "sara-sara," waves say "zabu-n," rain says "shito-shito," and wind says "byu-byu-." Prof. Tsunoda's discovery is in line with the ancient Japanese view of nature that sees gods living in every natural being, from mountains to rivers and seas, with man being no more or less than one of these natural beings.

The fact that this type of onomatopoeia is so highly developed is a special characteristic of the Japanese language. Maybe it is only natural for children who have been taught these onomatopoeia words from the beginning to learn to process all nature's sounds including insects and animals as language. Or, did these onomatopoeia developed so richly precisely because we started out processing natural sounds in the language sphere?

Either way, the physiological characteristic of Japanese to hear natural sounds in the language sphere of the brain, and the linguistic characteristics of the Japanese language which has highly developed onomatopoeia, together with the Japanese view of nature which finds gods residing in all natural beings, are all very well represented within the Japanese psyche.

Not the Man but the Language

The significant part of Prof. Tsunoda's discovery is that the Japanese pattern of hearing nature sounds in the language sphere is not a matter of ancestry, but rather dependent on whether Japanese was the first language learned.

Data collected from 10 South Americans of Japanese ancestry shows an extreme example of this. Nine of these 10 ethnic Japanese had either Spanish or Portuguese as their first language, and their brains all fell under the Western pattern. The only one who exhibited the Japanese pattern was a girl who had received a thorough education in Japanese language from her father and didn't understand a word of Portuguese until she was 10 years old. She then entered a Brazilian grammar school and stayed in Brazilian schools through university, but she was still the only one who exhibited the perfect Japanese pattern of processing natural sounds in the language sphere.

On the other hand, Koreas and Chinese follow the Western pattern, but Koreans and Chinese who live in Japan and learned Japanese as their mother tongue all follow the Japanese pattern.

This very likely means that the Western pattern or the Japanese pattern have nothing to do with race but rather with the difference in the mother tongue. We should not say "Japanese brain" but "Japanese language brain." In Prof. Tsunoda's studies so far, the only language he has found with the same pattern as Japanese is Polynesian.

Difference Gives Rise to Creativity

But what significance does this difference in brain function thus attributed to the Japanese language have for us? Dr. Hideki Yukawa, a scholar of theoretical physics, had this to say in a conversation with Prof. Tsunoda.

"In other words, Japanese have often been said to be somewhat emotional. In contrast to (Westerners who are) rational, that Japanese were said to be more emotional may well have been structural, functional or cultural, but the fact that there actually was a difference that applied in that instance has been made clear by Professor Tsunoda's research.

In that case, my thinking is that our direction should be to take advantage of that difference. Instead of worrying whether the difference makes us better or worse, we should put that difference to work for us…. From difference rises creativity. The roots of inferiority toward the West run deep among the Japanese people, but to see ourselves and our differences in that manner acts only to further deepen that inferiority complex."

"From difference rises creativity" coming from Dr. Yukawa, who won the Nobel Prize for his highly creative meson theory, these words have great weight. The difference in the Japanese language brain is contributing to increased diversity of the human race, and our culture, which turns its ears to hear each insect's voice, can be seen as a creative response to human life that can enrich and enliven all of human culture."

The respectful outlook toward nature that turns one's ears to the voices of all living beings is a valuable hint as to how to live in harmony with all the living beings on our Spaceship Earth.

It is our duty as Japanese toward the rest of the world to make a conscious effort to study the Japanese language brain that we have inherited in order to make better use of our natural creativity.


This article is adapted from the e-mail magazine "Japan on the Globe." Masaomi Ise is editor-in-chief of the magazine.

© 2002 [Masaomi Ise]. Some rights reserved.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Precious Gift

Yesterday, I went to Kyoto for sightseeing and meeting up my friends from LA. And my friend bought me a late birthday present in Kyoto. After I got back home, I opened the bag. It was a small cell phone strap. It says "Dream." I am very fortunate to have friends. Yes, I have a dream. And I will never forget that I have a dream. And I will not stop moving forward to my dream.

Friday, September 14, 2007

We Need Girlfriends

I don't really do this. But I think this video is awesome regardless they have ok acting skill. But somehow, I got stuck into it. They now have 10 episodes. Enjoy.



WE NEED GIRLFRIENDS - EPISODE 1






Add to My Profile | More Videos

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Friend

One thing that I'm really glad is to have met all of my friends in LA and Houston.

I'm soo glad that I decided to work in Houston and LA.

Busy as always.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Regret

I've been trying to be careful with my decision.
I've been trying not to regret.

All the decision that I made... I tried to take my responsibility...
I have tried not to say "should have" and "could have"...

But I now know... I shouldn't have made that decision that last Oct.
But I have to take my responsbility at the rest of my life....


This is the life.

Anyway, last night, I went to my friend's house to talk about our next project.
My friend told me "Katz your filmmakers blood is fading away. But you are filmmaker, man."

He made me re-realize who I am....
Even though I have some regrets... I still have something that I have to pursue...

Anyway, I decided to .....

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Asian Stories (Book 3) in Irvine, CA and Eugene, OR

Date, Mar 14, 2007

---------
TWO MORE FILM FESTIVAL
VIFF 2007 and DISORIENT FILM FESTVAL

----------

We are pleased to announce that there are another opportunity to see Asian Stories (Book 3) at Vietnamese International Film Festival on April 15, 2007 in Irvine CA, and at DisOrient Film Festival in Eugene OR.


We will let you know more detail.

Thank you very much for your continuous support to Asian Stories (Book 3). We are still trying to find the home (distributor) of Asian Stories (Book 3). The success of these two film festivals would definitely help toward our goal.

Please invite and encourage all of your friends to come and join us!

Thank you.

----
Katz Ueno
http://deerstudio.com

Asian Stories (Book 3)
http://asianstoriesmovie.com
http://myspace.com/asianstories

Americanese
http://americanesethemovie.com
http://myspace.com/americanesethemovie

My Life Disoriented
http://mylifedisoriented.com
http://myspace.com/mylifedisoriented

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Dear Friend

I've added new profile song on my MySpace which my friend composed for our friend who passed away in Japan recently.... who went to Japan, try to find himself... and turned into opposite direction.

He was in his 30s.

http://myspace.com/stackdj