MEPPI Lecture Series - The Japanese Spirit of an American Company, January 19.

The Japan-America Society of Pennsylvania will host the next MEPPI Lecture Series event on January 19 with Paul Francis, the Senior Director of Advanced Product Innovation at Nike, who

will present on the Japanese connection that continues to be a part of the culture at NIKE.

The event runs from 6:00 to 8:00 pm at the Frick Fine Arts Building in Oakland (map). It is free and open to the public, though registration is required and can be completed online.

Storytime: Chinese and English, December 5 in Squirrel Hill.

The Squirrel Hill branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh will host its next Storytime: Chinese and English on December 5.

Celebrate our city’s diverse culture as we explore new words through songs, action rhymes and stories in both English and Chinese. For children birth – 5 years and their caregivers.

The event runs from 4:15 to 5:00 pm and is free and open to the public. The library is located at 5801 Forbes Ave. (map) and is accessible by buses 61A, 61B, 61C, 61D, 64, and 74.

Princess Mononoke (もののけ姫) in Pittsburgh area for film's 20th anniversary, January 5 and 9.

The 1997 Japanese animated film Princess Mononoke (もののけ姫) by Studio Ghibli will play at several theaters in the Pittsburgh area as part of a limited release for its 20th anniversary. A 1999 Roger Ebert four-star review summarizes:

Hayao Miyazaki is a great animator, and his "Princess Mononoke" is a great film. Do not allow conventional thoughts about animation to prevent you from seeing it. It tells an epic story set in medieval Japan, at the dawn of the Iron Age, when some men still lived in harmony with nature and others were trying to tame and defeat it. It is not a simplistic tale of good and evil, but the story of how humans, forest animals and nature gods all fight for their share of the new emerging order. It is one of the most visually inventive films I have ever seen.

The film will be shown with English subtitles on January 5 and dubbed in English on January 9, and will play at five local Cinemark theaters: Monaca, Monroeville, North Hills, Pittsburgh Mills and Robinson. Tickets are now available online via the Cinemark website (for the January 9 showing, search by theater to purchase tickets).

Pirates infielder Kang booked for fleeing scene of DUI in Seoul.

via 중앙일보.

Pittsburgh Pirates infielder Jung-ho Kang was arrested for fleeing the scene of a DUI in Seoul early Friday morning. From the Korea Times:

According to Gangnam Police Station in southern Seoul, Kang was booked for fleeing the scene after crashing into a guard rail on his way to his hotel in Samseong-dong at 2:48 a.m.

A person in the passenger seat, whose identity was withheld, reported to police that he or she was the driver of the vehicle. After analyzing the car's black box, police determined that Kang had been behind the wheel and called him in for questioning.

Kang's blood alcohol content level was 0.084 percent, a level subject to the suspension of one's license. The legal limit here is 0.05 percent.

One Piece Film: Gold (ワンピースフィルムゴールド) in Pittsburgh, from January 10.

The 2016 Japanese animated movie One Piece Film: Gold (ワンピースフィルムゴールド) will have a limited theatrical release in the US in January, and will play at the Southside Works Cinemas from January 10 through 17.

2016 Park Chan-wook film The Handmaiden (아가씨) in Pittsburgh, December 9 - 18.

The 2016 Korean movie The Handmaiden (아가씨), directed by Park Chan-wook, will play in Pittsburgh from December 9 through 18. An October 21 four-star review on RogerEbert.com provides a summary:

Park Chan-Wook’s “The Handmaiden” is a love story, revenge thriller and puzzle film set in Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1930s. It is voluptuously beautiful, frankly sexual, occasionally perverse and horrifically violent. At times its very existence feels inexplicable. And yet all of its disparate pieces are assembled with such care, and the characters written and acted with such psychological acuity, that you rarely feel as if the writer-director is rubbing the audience’s nose in excess of one kind or another. This is a film made by an artist at the peak of his powers: Park, a South Korean director who started out as a critic, has many great or near-great genre films, including “Oldboy,” “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,” “Lady Vengeance” and “Thirst,” but this one is so intricate yet light-footed that it feels like the summation of his career to date.

Tickets and showtimes are not yet available. The theater is located at 1035 S. Braddock Ave. in Regent Square (map).

New Chinese movie Suddenly 17 (28岁未成年) in Pittsburgh, from December 2.

The 2016 Chinese movie Suddenly 17 (28岁未成年) will play at the AMC Loews Waterfront theater from December 2. An Associated Press write-up provides a summary of the directorial debut of Zhang Mo, the daughter of filmmaker Zhang Yimou:

Set for release next month, "Suddenly Seventeen" is based on a novel published on the internet. It's part of a hugely popular genre among young Chinese that focuses mainly on fantasy and romance tales and has spawned movies and web series.

In Zhang's film, the 28-year-old protagonist, Liang Xia, played by Ni Ni, is unhappy in love and eats a magical chocolate that wipes her memory and turns her back into a 17-year-old. Zhang says she seized on the short novel's premise and characters, but rather than keeping Liang at 17, her heroine flips back and forth in age every five hours, creating conflict and drama.

Tickets and showtimes are available at the AMC Loews Waterfront website. The theater is located at 300 West Waterfront Dr. in the Waterfront shopping complex in Homestead (map), across the Monongahela River from Greenfield, Squirrel Hill, and the rest of Pittsburgh.

So Long Asleep: Waking the Ghosts of War documentary at Pitt, December 7.

The University of Pittsburgh Asian Studies Center will present the 2016 documentary So Long Asleep: Waking the Ghosts of War on December 7. A summary:

“So Long Asleep” chronicles the decades-long project of exhuming, memorializing, and finally repatriating the remains of 115 forced laborers from the Korean peninsula who died constructing the Uryu dam in Hokkaido, Japan. A project begun by Jodo Shinshu priest Yoshihiko Tonohira in the 1990s, it grew into a collaboration with Hanyang University anthropologist, social activist Byung-ho Chung, and Ritsumeikan University physical anthropologist Kichan Song into an ongoing excavation and workshop that brought students from Japan and South Korea together in an effort to excavate not only remains, but histories, and in so doing create a community of awareness and mutual respect among the participants in the workshops. The film is a lyrical and haunting meditation on the ideas of return and closure, one that sensitively and thoughtfully addresses war memory, restitution, and the creation of communities not only to preserve memories but also to learn from them.

The event runs from 5:00 to 8:30 pm in the Frick Fine Arts auditorium (map) and is free and open to the public.

FRESA's Pop Asia Showcase, December 4 at Pitt.

Pitt's FRESA---Fresh Entertainment by Student Artists---will host its Pop Asia Showcase on December 4.

It's time for our end of semester showcase! Come and support our students as we cover some of this year's biggest K-pop and C-pop hits, by BTS, BlackPink, EXO, Red Velvet, Twice and more! Enjoy dancing and singing covers, refreshments and raffles!

Pitt Fresh Entertainment By Student Artists (FRESA) is a student group celebrating Asian cultures through music. Our club performs dance and vocal covers of music in the Korean, Japanese, and Chinese entertainment industries. Our students work hard to represent these cultures through performances, so please come and support!

It runs from 4:30 to 7:30 pm in the O'Hara Student Center Ballroom (map) and is free and open to the public.

Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し) playing in the Pittsburgh area, December 4 and 5.

The 2001 Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し) will play in select theaters as part of its 15th anniversary, and it will appear in several places in western Pennsylvania on December 4 and 5.