English Blog
I enjoy Laemmle’s “Exhibition on Screen” Culture Series! It was shown at Pasadena location. This movie depicts an immersive journey into the life and the art of Venice’s famous view-painter, Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto. No artist better captures the essence and allure of Venice than Canaletto. The remarkable group of over 200 […]
This week is the 75th Commemoration of Atomic Bombing in Hiroshima, August 6th, and Nagasaki, August 9th. Hear my voice and grant insight and strength so that we may always respond to hatred with love, to injustice with total dedication to justice, to need with the sharing of self, to war with peace. O God, […]
Music of Hope: An Online Third@First Concert Saturday, July 18 at 4 p.m. would have been the last event of the 2019-2020 Third@First concert series. The pandemic, however, caused the cancellation of our spring plans. Even though we cannot gather to enjoy music together in the Sanctuary, art and beauty are more important than ever. And so we […]
It is a quiet and inward movie, setting in Germany and France in the post First World War era. “Frantz”, the name of the young German soldier who was killed during trench warfare, depicts an endless mourning period through the eyes of the war’s “lost generation”. Anna (Paula Beer) lost her fiancé, Frantz, and is living […]
I have been practicing Robert Schumann’s Fantasy Op. 17. I have so many things I want to say about this great piece, and will write it in a separate blog. Schumann uses quote from Beethoven’s “To the Distant Beloved” song cycle in his Fantasy. The quote comes from the 6th song which is very touching […]
他人の罪は目の前にあり、自分の罪は背中にある。 Other men’s sins are before our eyes, and our own are behind our backs. 神に見られているかのように人間の中で暮らし、人間が聞いているかのように神に話しかけよ。 Live among men as if God beheld you; speak to God as if men were listening. およそ惨めなものは、将来のことを不安に思って、不幸にならない前に不幸になっている心です。 不幸な人の共通の過ちは、わが身に幸せが訪れることを、決して信じたがらないことである。 True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either […]
I read this book in Japanese before (Japanese title misses “aspects” and just “Chopin”), but English translation is much better. Somehow the Japanese translator tried so hard to make it really complicated and difficult to understand… I practiced Cortot’s “Rational Principles of Pianoforte Technique” every day when I was young! He was one of the […]
I truly enjoyed watching this movie. It is truthful, yet funny. It is soulful, yet silly. It is very entertaining and soul searching. The movie follows a Chinese family’s journey to search Chinese belief (I share this belief as a Japanese too) and to help the family’s difficulty together. It happened when they discovered that […]
Today is Pentecost, the Christian festival celebrating the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples of Jesus after his Ascension, held on the seventh Sunday after Easter. I think those are beautiful poems for Pentecost. Unless the eye catch fire, The God will not be seen. Unless the ear catch fire The God will not […]
I love French wine countries. The location of this movie is picturesque Burgundy, and actually we can learn the process of wine making. 3 siblings reunite at their family vineyard when their father was terminally ill. The old brother escaped from their family business and 10 years later he came back to see their father […]