Poets of the Piano - The Music of Quentin Kim, December 12 at CMU.

Korean composer and pianist Quentin Kim will perform at Carnegie Mellon University on December 12. From the website of Nathan Carterette, a pianist performing alongside Kim:

Quentin Kim returns to Pittsburgh for a concert of his chamber music, presented by Poets of the Piano at Carnegie-Mellon University. Also featured on this concert are Joshua Huang, violin and Cecilia Caughman, cello.

Variations on an Olden Korean Tune, for cello and piano (Cecilia Caughman, cello; Quentin Kim, piano)
Trio in c# minor (Joshua Huang, violin; Cecilia Caughman, cello; Nathan Carterette, piano)
Piano Sonata in g# minor (Nathan Carterette, piano)
Dreamscape, for violin and piano (Joshua Huang, violin; Nathan Carterette, piano)

The event is free and open to the public, and runs from 7:30 to 8:30 pm in Kresge Hall (map).

Bubblepop for the GLCC, December 16.

The next Bubblepop event is scheduled for December 16 at Brillobox in Lawrenceville. Bubblepop, explains its Facebook page,

is a dance party for K-Pop, J-Pop, Mando-pop and everything else fun and cute.

A $5 donation is requested for December 16 and will benefit the Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Pittsburgh (GLCC). It starts at 10:00 pm, and the venue is at 4104 Penn Ave. (map).

K-pop Dance Class at Yanlai Dance Academy from January.

The Yanlai Dance Academy in the North Hills will host a weekly K-pop Dance Class on Saturdays from January 7 through March 25. Classes run from 12:00 to 1:00 pm and are $13 for drop-ins or $10 per session for the whole term. The school is located at 2260 Babcock Blvd (map).

Hayao Miyazaki film series at Row House Cinema, December 9 - 15.

Lawrenceville's Row House Cinema will run a Hayao Miyazaki film series to run from December 9 through 15. The four movies---Ponyo (崖の上のポニョ), Kiki's Delivery Service (魔女の宅急便), Howl's Moving Castle (ハウルの動く城), and Castle in the Sky (天空の城ラピュタ)---haven't played in Pittsburgh theaters since their original releases. Row House ran a MIyazaki series last December with four different movies.

Tickets information and showtimes are available on the Row House Cinema website. The single-screen theater is located at 4115 Butler Street in Lawrenceville (map).

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).