Ride back to Main Moon

When I was around 13 years old one of my best friends came over to my house. It was a warm day and we weren’t sure what to do. We had bikes though, and through happenstance we found our way into a bigger day. I borrowed my mom’s Hollywood Video rental card and a handful of cash. We rode our bikes up the hill. We rode them down the bigger hill. We weaved crisscross through the neighborhoods. We were trying to cut into a town with the video store without going on the highway and I thought there might be a secret path to do so. It just so happens there was. We cut through a bible camp, a woman yelling at us with her hands as we did (there was no camp in session so who cares?) and we found ourselves on the other side of the barrier of fields and woods that prevented traffic from getting all the way through. We did it! We finished riding into town and found ourselves at the Hollywood video, staring down a copy of Princess Mononoke. I had never seen any Studio Ghibli film at this point. I absolutely loved anime. But what I had seen was rather limited in the year 2000.They accepted my mom’s card and we got the movie and then hankering for more we went to Main Moon, a Chinese restaurant that my family loved and is beloved to this day. We ordered some food, hopped on our bikes, I’m guessing one of us with the food in a bag, one with the movie and we rode all the way back. It was a lot of uphill, and I only remember it now upon reflection. The rest was so invigorating. We sat in my parent’s basement 2 levels removed from them. We ate the Chinese food. We watched the mind-bending movie. I experienced a taste of freedom and grew up as a person. I was a little bit older and different the next day.

I’ve thought about this trip on and off repeatedly over the years as one of those seminal childhood experiences. Hanging with your best bud, doing something wild and new and having a fresh experience. It was cool to bike a rather difficult ride and push ourselves. It was exciting to find a shortcut, sneak through private property and make your way into town. Once there we could do whatever we wanted. It was cool to rent a movie without your parents around, buy food on your own. Take it home, and then watch something that you’ve never ever seen before that by all accounts is quite incredible. Feast in glory of the day well spent and then doze off late in the night.

My idea was to recreate this experience. I had thought about this for a while and it crystallized when a railroad bridge across the lake was converted into a bike path a few years back. I realized oh, this is like a secret path into town again. See the town with the Hollywood Video and the restaurant Main Moon was situated on the side of a long lake. And although close proximity to all the other places around here you could only reach it via highways unless you took a comically roundabout way through industrial areas (or from the south via the bible camp shortcut). I didn’t really want to go back to my parent’s old house. My dad sold it a while back and it’d be weird to go there and then ride all the way and through that camp again. Cutting through a bible camp as a 30 something year old is a little different than the dozens of times I did it as a kid and teen. I can drive on the highway. I could politely knock on the bible camp door and ask them about it. I have options. And I now lived north of this lake instead of south and thought it would be cool to ride my bike down and across this bridge to recreate the experience.


The route past and present

I decided to go for it this year. I had been riding my bike to work all summer after an unfortunate incident where my failure to slow down in traffic resulted in a dead bird. I’m not sure if I struck it or the car behind me did, but it wouldn’t have been hit if I had been going much slower. I was devastated at the sight of this sparrow in my rear mirror with an entire wing missing. It wouldn’t get out of the road. My brain can tell me that something was already wrong with it, but I can tell my brain that’s probably not the truth. I rode my bike for many days. I took a test ride close to the bridge in September. It was gorgeous. Weeks went by and It got cold and rainy. I worked from home. I rode less. I traveled for work. My bike sat unused for a bit. The days got colder. I rode to work last week and was totally winded by the short distance. Dang… this is going to be difficult.

I had picked the weekend after Thanksgiving as my time to do it. My partner was leaving on Friday to visit some family and I was staying home to take care of my boy. The family has cats that don’t get along so we can’t always bring him. This long weekend would give me the perfect opportunity to do my trip. It’s about 12 miles each way from my house to the restaurant and back. If I did this I’d be in bed all day the next day. I decided to rent an eBike. This was a concession but I figured it would allow me to actually do the ride.

I ran into a few other hurdles. I had prowled the library near my house multiple times to see if they had Princess Mononoke available. They did! Several DVD copies and a blu-ray. I was planning on stopping by on Wednesday before Thanksgiving to get the DVD (HD might not have even existed when I first saw it) but I was running late finishing up work for the week and figured I’d go Friday instead. Well Friday rolled around and I waited outside the library for it to open and it didn’t. Good on them for taking the day off! Bad on my part for planning (and the google hours that lied.) My intention was to get the DVD early and drop it off somewhere around the Princeton Club Athletic center which is the former site of the Hollywood video. I’d need to stash it safely somewhere or else it could be lost or damaged.

I would probably have hidden it under this board

Then when I did the ride I would retrieve it as if I’d rented it all along. On Friday morning as I waited for the library to open I checked the weather. It was going to snow on Sunday. I’d need to do it Saturday (I ain’t crazy and riding in the snow). The temperature was dropping all weekend. It would be cold. I started to panic. What if I couldn’t get the DVD in time? What about the weather?

I went home. I acquired a 2 hour video about Princess Mononoke from the Internet Archive. It wasn’t the real deal, but it did spend the exact same runtime telling me everything I needed to know about the movie. And the quality wasn’t exactly great. This was an excellent fallback. But there was still the weather issue. It was going to be super duper cold and I wasn’t sure how long the eBike would last. Maybe if I got on it at a later station closer to the bridge that would be safer? That was the plan. I’d drive to the closest park about halfway there. Get on an eBike rented from the B-Cycle station and ride from there.

Friday evening I started to have my doubts. I wasn’t hiding the movie ahead of time. I wasn’t riding on my own bike. Or from my house. I wasn’t even bringing a friend with me. Wasn’t that a critical part of the journey? I had planned on bringing my boy with me. During the summer I acquired a special trailer to pull him around behind my bike. I wanted to take him on a fun journey and to go across the bridge. The bridge has a sign that says “No Dogs Allowed” but clearly they mean dogs that aren’t contained in a safe enclosed breathable bike trailer. I set up the trailer attached to my bike and threw treats in the back. He hopped in to eat them. As he hopped in the momentum knocked over the bike. He was terrified. Luckily the trailer is very smartly designed and if the bike flips 360 degrees the trailer still stays flat. But it was too scary and he never got used to it. I brought the trailer into the house and fed him treats. He still isn’t ready. Not to mention I’m not even riding my bike!

Was this whole idea absurd? Different route, no movie rental, no companion, different time of year. Wasn’t it an idyllic summer day back then? It had at least been fall or spring. Now it was practically winter, with snow looming. I didn’t have anything else to do and Friday was kind of a bummer so I decided to heck with it and went on my way.

I got the movie early Saturday morning and set it on the kitchen counter. I packed up my camera, gopro and some last minute water in a backpack. I drove to the park. I felt stupid.


The library copy was perfectly weathered

I got to the park and saw a 3 hour parking limit restriction. I thought surely I’ll be back in 3 hours. It was 12:15. Later than when I had originally intended.

It was good though, the weather was warmer than expected. I thought of the 3 hours and hustled to the bike rental station. I wasn’t sure how far away it was on foot. It looked like a short way on the map. It was close but seemed far because it was an endless curve on the sidewalk and it only appeared in view at the last moment. I fumbled with my phone. I unlocked the bike. I forgot a chain lock! No matter, there was a stop where I could drop off the bike somewhat near the end. And the map showed many bikes available there for the ride back. My gopro mount I had ripped off my own bike wasn’t sticky enough. It fell off my helmet immediately. I decided to just hold it. I got on the bike, looped around the parking lot twice looking for an exit and got on the path. I forgot, you need to pay to get on the path! I searched my wallet. I had the pass already. I was good to go.

I started biking. The eBike from B-Cycle was fast. I immediately cruised up to 15 mph and held there. It has a limiter. Traffic on the path was light. I saw the sights I had seen during my test run in September. I zipped along. I had my gopro in one hand, alternating it to my jacket pocket when I needed my hand free. The sun was shining. The wind whipping past my face. I was having a good time.

These things kick up to 15mph and then stay there. If you pedal harder, it kills your knees

I got past the stopping point on my test run earlier in the year. This was all new now. I reached another park on the opposite side of the lake from the town I was headed. There was a cool watch tower. I left the path and scoped it out. I took photos with my Pentax k1000.*I went to get them developed and the developer is broken so it’ll be awhile. I thought about all the possibilities. I zipped around the park. I saw families hiking. It was brisk, rather chilly but gorgeous out. I meandered through the woods faster than I ever would have ridden for such an errand. I found the bridge.


Who doesn’t love a stone tower

I stopped and looked at the water. The bridge was empty and all mine. I drank from my water bottle. It was warm from the tap because I hadn’t waited a few seconds for cold water. I took a few photos. I thought about traveling and bridges far and wide. I got back on the bridge.

I zoomed to the other side. I dropped off the B-Cycle #1 bike, in the #1 slot. I hoped it would still be there when I got back. I had cold weather on my side (who rents a bike when it’s chilly? Not so many folks) This was now a slog. I had to walk about a mile to get to the restaurant. I blasted up the road, feeling like Rambo at the beginning of Rambo. (There was no sidewalk here). On a bike I would have been fine. I felt out of place on foot with no sidewalk. I had my backpack and gear so it didn’t look like I was just on a stroll. I used to do this sort of thing all the time. It didn’t bother me but I was always aware it seemed odd to other people. That’s probably why I moved to an incredibly walkable neighborhood. The town I just biked to was cool but you have to drive everywhere. It’s not walkable at all. That’s why finding the secret path in as a kid was all the more special. I walked under the highway. I took a picture. That area unnerves me ever so slightly.

I rounded the corner and found Main Moon. I checked that it was open and seeing it was, went across the street to Walgreens. I bought some command strips to blast my gopro on my helmet so I could get a decent video on the way back. I bought a diet A&W rootbeer. I walked by a redbox. I could have hidden Princess Mononoke behind it. No one would have looked. Maybe a kid would have. It was dirty back there. I didn’t know Redbox was still around. I knew it was popular 10 years ago. I walked to where the Hollywood video used to be. It was still the Princeton Club. 11 years ago, my mom passed away unexpectedly. I had been working out at an Anytime fitness before this happened and my free month was set to expire. I walked into Princeton club days after she passed. I wanted to keep myself busy. When I offered my card to pay they said they had to have my bank account instead. I did not like this. I did not have the strength to resist. I got home. I was on the hook for some absurd amount of money direct from my account for years. I called the bank. I told them it was fraudulent and I didn’t want them to accept it. They had my back. They aren’t actually a bank but a credit union. They’ve had my back a lot of times. My brain was mush for a couple of years. In the present past I walked by the Princeton club, which still had the same facade and found a small restaurant around the corner. What’s that?! I thought to myself. I stepped back and saw it was a pizza hut. Huh. Was that always there? I looked around back for good spots where I could have hidden the DVD. I went back. I admired the flags at the pet hospital along the way. I love animals.

The perfect dirty hiding spot behind a redbox

I went to Main Moon. Inside there was a family coloring some activity books together. A woman in the group ran to the counter to help me. I picked Tofu and Broccoli, Vegetarian Egg Roll and Veggie Fried Rice. I tipped 5 dollars in cash in an overflowing tip jar that was a small plastic jack-o-lantern. I waited 10 minutes. I admired the restaurant. I loved it. The woman went back to her family. There was a guy in the back cooking up food. I used the restroom, not worrying about my backpack left in my chair. I saw the toilet seat had been snapped at the end. Like one side of it about 3 inches from the end. It’s the kind of seat that has a gap in the middle. There was dried glue where it had been snapped, and glued back together. I love it. I imagine that seat is like 12 dollars at home depot. But you can glue it and why not? Maybe they glued that 20 years ago. I got my food.

I hustled back to the bikes. It was after 2:15 and I realized I had slightly less than an hour until my car was past the limit. I blasted past the sidewalkless stretch of Rambo land and thought about Rambo again. Unlike Rambo I’m not sure how much damage I could inflict on a town for being mean to me. But if they were mean to others they better watch out. I got to the park. There were some hunters there with a deer. I thought maybe they shot it in the park. I readjusted my thoughts because that park is tiny. They must have stopped to make sure it was strapped correctly on top of the car. It was a small doe. There was a pie sized hole in its back where I guess a bullet mushroomed and exploded out of it. It was disgusting. I Hate Deer Hunting. They drove away. I picked up two plastic bags off the ground and threw them in the trash at the restaurant nearby. I think maybe my brother’s friend’s dad owns it. I hoped the bags weren’t dirty. I kept the bag hand away from things. I put the command strips on my helmet. I thought about eating some of the food. There was probably hand sanitizer in the porter potty nearby. I would have to leave the food outside though. I realized I was being a germaphobe and stopped worrying about it. I got the #1 bike back. I used to think the bikes charged their battery where they were locked up but then remembered they are charged overnight. Still it had a lot of power left and it was a good bike. I cruised back. I also mistakenly thought they charged more money if you the ride went past 30 minutes. My first ride was 36. I hustled. I zipped down the bridge. It was full of people now. It was gloomy and cloudier out. The day knew my bridge time was over and now I was allowed to use it but it wasn’t mine to have. That’s okay, I was happy the day gave it to me earlier. I zipped back in the chill, glad the gopro was now on my head. Cautious that it might fly off at any moment and shatter. I was close to the drop off point. I stopped to adjust my headphones that had been playing a Grand Turismo soundtrack. The bike fell over because there’s no crossbar, it’s low. I picked it up. Another biker appeared. Some of my food leaked from the bag but it seemed okay. I rode another minute. I stopped to take pictures of a cool cat in the grass. I dropped off the bike. The food left sauce all over the bike. I cleaned it with my gloves. I put everything in the plastic bag from Walgreens. I was glad I took the bag instead of ignoring it like I normally do.

I got back to the car with 6 minutes to spare. I didn’t see anyone waltzing around waiting for me, but you never know.

I drove home.

I ate the food on my delightful yellow green velvet couch. I started the movie. My boy was amazed by the blu-ray player tray popping out of the player. He also couldn’t handle this delicious food in front of him. I paused the movie. I finished the food quickly at the table. We watched the movie.

…

I was thinking about my friend who rode with me on the original ride way back when. Let’s call him Gus for his privacy. Gus was my best friend as a kid. We used to run around on his parent’s farm and hide in the woods and had the freedom you dream about when you read Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn or any other story about kids living free in the land. As we got older we grew apart a little, not a lot. Then he moved to Canada at 14. I saw him once or twice after and maybe at age 19 the last time ever?

He became an oil and gas man. He worked for multiple companies. He got a masters. He appeared to be successful. He went back to school for investment banking. He worked at a firm for the ultra rich? Was that right? This was so different from myself. I was poor for a dozen or so years holding dozens of bad jobs and now I work full time at a non-profit. I eventually got more details. He moved to an investment firm that works on climate sustainability, investing in tech to fix issues in the world. His boss, or at least the person who pays the bills is a double digit billionaire, one of the wealthiest in the world. He’s younger than me.

I gleaned almost all of this from Linkedin. When I was still on facebook I stayed in touch with my friend on and off for a few years. Then he dropped facebook to the barest of bones and I rarely saw anything. I looked him up every decade. Curious what he was up to. I saw a webinar he shared. Huh.

Did he remember this bike ride? I was sure he did. Did he remember Princess Mononoke? Did it have an effect on him?

In the film one of the primary conflicts at hand is the citizens and leader of Iron Town at odds (and violent ones at that) with the forest spirits of the Great Forest and the Mountain. As a 13 year old the environmental lessons were pretty apparent to me. Humans destroy the environment. We must stop and fix it. That was my internalized thought process, at least from school, film strips and playing Final Fantasy 7. The film gets far more complex. In Iron Town, Lady Eboshi is the people’s savior. A cunning and fierce capable leader. A woman in the feudal era. She saves both prostitutes and those suffering from leprosy, and gives them a greater life. She slays gods with technology. She is a folk hero. She is also a horrendous villain.

The apes of the mountain come each night and plant trees. Lady Eboishi sticks her head out of the roof of her garden den and aims an explosive blast at them. They run away. As I re-witnessed this my stomach curdled and I felt sick.

Did Gus think anything of the movie? Did he vibe with Lady Eboshi? She certainly acts like a modern movie hero in many ways. Why was he an oil and gas man past the year 2010? Who does that? Did he have a similar remembrance of the story? Did he order some Chinese food to his trailer on site at the oil fields and stream Mononoke one night? Is that why he’s working on sustainability?

Maybe not. I was going to contact him and see if he remembered the ride and catch up. But also I was scared. What if he was a supreme weirdo now? What if it was all a sham? What if he thought I was nuts?

I remembered the last time I had talked to him. I called his home phone drunk, via Collect in college. His mom answered late at night. I talked to him for a while. At one point his mom came over and said something. He uttered out loud “This call is collect?!” I hung up.

I’m sure I chatted him via text to apologize, but maybe I didn’t. I hope I did.

He probably wouldn’t take me very seriously.
I was not going to contact Gus for now.

Why was Gus working for a billionaire? Is that really what he does?

Billionaires are the scum of the earth.

Are they actually helping through sustainable investment?

In one of the webinars I watched they said they did not care if their investments fell through and the company went bankrupt because they said it was worth it for the technology breakthroughs because that technology could then be used by other companies in the market. Does a billionaire think this way? How much money are they giving away?

Looking at this now, is this like Lady Eboshi? Maybe it is.

When I watched the movie again, although I admired the character, I hated her. I hated her guts. I loved San. I loved Moro and her two other pups. I loved Ottoko. I loved Ashitaka. I liked Toki. I liked Gonza. San runs with the wolves and hates the humans. For the last year I’ve been spending all my time with my boy. He is technically a dog. Every week I donate money to countless animal charities. I love the wolves. I hate the humans. I liked the lepers though. When they are building a new rifle for Eboshi I was disgusted by the weapon itself but fascinated with this scene. I had often thought about this space when I thought of the movie. It was a welcoming one. It even made me want to go out and get a drink with friends after the movie. I did.

I think I hated what Gus was doing. But I was scared to contact him. Why was I scared?

I thought back about a lot of things in life. I feel like I’m often scared. Why was I afraid of so much? I remembered being too afraid too many times. Afraid to ask for help in college. Afraid to look stupid. Afraid to leave my friends. I was afraid to be myself, be vulnerable, be a person. I felt foolish.

Was this whole experiment even valid? Why am I even spending so much time on a journal about this tiny event, a bike ride, a meal, a movie. Common everyday things. Do people think I’m pedantic, or boring? Was my memory even correct?

Something else itched at me. Hadn’t I already reenacted this dozens of times? Not long after the initial journey at 13 I tried it again with another friend. He didn’t wear shoes so they wouldn’t let him into the video store. I didn’t want to leave him so we didn’t rent anything. He hurt his feet, grinding them into pointy pedals on the ride back and we took the highway, cars blasting past at dangerous speeds.

Since then I’ve ordered Chinese from that exact restaurant and watched a movie with friends or family dozens of times. Sometimes new Japanese films. Sometimes I make Chinese food at home and watch Kill La Kill with my roommate for the first time. Sometimes I make Chinese food on New Years and ring in the year drunk and singing and watching things together in our living room sitting on the floor.

The menu. About 175 items not shown.

Chinese food for me is synonymous with celebration. My earliest memory of anything Chinese was a Sesame Street special on the New Year. Every Christmas Eve my family went out for Chinese food. American New Years failed to ever be exciting, but the Chinese New Year I went to in Chinatown in 2013 was one of the highlights of my time in LA.

Dozens of restaurants I’ve loved here have closed their doors in the last couple decades. The city changes. Things change all the time. And I’m not even close to being old! It’s cause for celebration that this restaurant is still open, still delicious and I can still go there. I’m lucky I still get to try it out, and even that they accommodate my vegetarian diet and it’s still delicious (their steamed veggies are surprisingly good). So going to this restaurant is a mini celebration in itself. Getting there, without driving, bypassing the highway-only attitude is a gosh darn delight. I love eating at Main Moon. I love getting there on bike/foot. It rules.

This movie… This movie is good.

I have to admit, when I first saw it in the year 2000 or so I was a little freaked out by it. I’m not sure I’d ever seen anything like that boar demon, covered in wiggly black oil squirming (I hate squirms!) all over the place. It creeped me out. The forest spirit’s face scared me too. I had mixed feelings.

Watching it now I love all that stuff. I practically cried when the boar demon died. I was basically crying the moment we see Iron Town and hear about the destruction of the forest animals. I felt bad for the samurai getting killed. I felt bad for everyone. I hated all the humans who caused any destruction at all.

I brooded some more. I came to a conclusion. This ride was a simple day but it wasn’t just a ride. It was discovering a secret path. It wasn’t just a secret path, but a path towards freedom. It wasn’t just a movie, but a great one. Heck I went to film school eventually and later studied animation. It wasn’t just a delicious meal but one that i’d go on to share with friends and family and strangers again and again and again. It was a night with my best friend, but maybe even a night where we both learned something new and took something different from it. Even if we were destined to split apart, we did it together. It was a pretty great day. Why wouldn’t I want to explore it again for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon?

I thought about the concessions I had made to my original plan and how everything got thrown out of whack. Those concessions turned out to be good things. The 3 hour time limit imposed on my car was good because I had some urgency. I forgot my bike lock and other things and that added some complexity to the challenge. Renting the eBike was extremely fun and made me think about future rides on them. It was much better to revisit this entire scenario with a similar sense of novelty as the original time. I think if my friend was still around and we did the exact same thing we did before it would be fine, but not as fun. Speaking of my friend.

I don’t care about calling up Gus for this story. Maybe I will someday but for another time. We had a whole childhood together that was more than just this exciting day. I don’t really feel like playing journalist. Is that for my benefit or for yours? I don’t need his life story. If he can spend a billionaire’s money making the world a better place, more power to him. It ain’t gonna stop me from sleeping at night. I’m not actually afraid of contacting him. It was just something that made me uncomfortable when I thought of it in relation to this story. But I did think a lot about fear while dwelling on this. I do want to be less fearful of things. I wouldn’t say I’m living life scared out of my mind or anything like that. But I’ve often held myself back from being myself for fear of being made fun of, or thinking I’d look stupid. Multiple times I thought the whole revisit and rewriting of this was stupid, but then it turned out to be pretty fun. So as far as holding myself back from doing things.

I’d like to stop doing that as often, and I have an idea.

——-

Mononoke Thoughts.

So the movie is pretty great. I didn’t talk about it too much but there are some cool things i thought of besides the overall human vs. the environment impact. That said, I did find it amusing that the gray story bounced off me this time and I was rooting for the destruction of all humans within the first 20 minutes. I mean heck Ashitaka ain’t being a brat, can’t we all just be like him? It made me think of how different we all are. Some people are just naturally more self centered than others. We aren’t all stoic midwesterners, clinging to the rules we learned in elementary school (I’m not either but I think about them all the time!) just everyone be like the Emishi and chill.


How did this FBI warning play into the themes of the movie?

I originally thought my love of white wolves started with Inuyasha, but watching this I realized it may have started here. I have always pictured white wolves in the stories I made up since high school and interestingly probably my favorite game of the last decade or two is the Witcher 3 with ‘White Wolf’ Geralt of Rivia. Imagine my surprise that the wolves in Mononoke reminded me of this and reframed my history while my own white wolf was sitting on my lap. I hadn’t really put it all together until then but it was a fun string to follow.


My boy and I watching the movie

The movie is brilliant but the ending is a bit whack right? The forest spirit dies essentially, and although its life lives on in forest form it’s probably not going to be roaming around or having such an influence anytime soon. In a way this is fine as we don’t generally see spirits roaming around in real life and maybe makes it relatable to us now, but also - this happened in like a minute. Ashitaka decided to go help rebuild Iron Town. Lady Eboshi says she’ll do it differently. Will she really? What will they do? Become fishers? Loggers? I’m not sure what good options they have. The spirits are mostly gone now. There’s a couple giant wolves roaming about. Again the wolves are rad, and I thought of them just slowly becoming the dogs that live with us today. Those wolves hated the humans but also accepted them (San) as family. There is a happy ending for one brand of spirit of the forest in a way. The boars not so much. But again, will anything change? Are we the audience led to believe everything will be wrapped up nice and tidy? I think many films and television shows of this era often ended things this way. Here is a conflict and a resolution but also here is a nice little tidy bow at the end to leave it on a positive note. Don’t worry about the destruction of the forest. I’m sure we’ll figure out something. 26 years later, it’s still a catastrophe. I don’t mean to lump that onto Studio Ghibli, but it’s an observation of many things I’ve seen.

• It’s interesting how the curse which is formed from rage gives Ashitaka the strength to do great things, even as he suppresses it. Not how I would think it would play out. Definitely more to dig into there.

• The opening scene with Yakul and Ashitaka running through the woods was a really gorgeous and somewhat simple technique I’d like to try sometime. They sure do go all out in the first 5 minutes of this movie. Yakul is a joy.

• Emperors are trash. Jigo is a dick. Very spry though. I did really like his line that was something like “everyone wants it all but I might actually get it!” Very funny, but also the cost Jigo, the cost! Think about it man. Speaking of, I watched the English Dub, as I had originally way back when. I thought it was pretty good. I didn’t even really think of Billy Bob Thortons voice at all this time, but I did as a kid.

• The Forest unnerved me as a kid, but now it was calming and Iron Town made me uncomfortable.

• I’m still fascinated by Lady Eboshi’s garden and her house with the people with Leprosy making rifles. I don’t like the guns, but there’s something about it that I find very intriguing and welcoming. Well done.

• Dang do I like that rooftop battle. Good battle.

As a secret bonus when I was at the Library, I also picked up Pom Poko. I had never seen it, so it’s a new experience to me now. I’m digging it and also the contrast to Mononoke. But this post is awfully long now isn’t it? I suppose I’ll save it for another day.

-D