1993 Studio Ghibli film Ocean Waves (海がきこえる) in Pittsburgh for the first time, January 20 - 26 (sneak preview January 17).

The 1993 Studio Ghibli movie Ocean Waves (海がきこえる) made its US premiere in December, and will play at the Row House Cinema from January 20 through 26. The theater has planned a sneak preview on January 17; tickets go on sale to the general public on December 22. The distributor provides a summary of the film that premiered in New York City on December 28 and nationwide in January:

Rarely seen outside of Japan, Ocean Waves is a subtle, poignant and wonderfully detailed story of adolescence and teenage isolation. Taku and his best friend Yutaka are headed back to school for what looks like another uneventful year. But they soon find their friendship tested by the arrival of Rikako, a beautiful new transfer student from Tokyo whose attitude vacillates wildly from flirty and flippant to melancholic. When Taku joins Rikako on a trip to Tokyo, the school erupts with rumors, and the three friends are forced to come to terms with their changing relationships.

Ocean Waves was the first Studio Ghibli film directed by someone other than studio founders Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, as director Tomomi Mochizuki led a talented staff of younger employees in an adaptation of Saeko Himuro’s best-selling novel. Full of shots bathed in a palette of pleasingly soft pastel colors and rich in the unexpected visual details typical of Studio Ghibli’s most revered works, Ocean Waves is an accomplished teenage drama and a true discovery.

Tickets for the sneak preview are still available online, and tickets and showtimes are available at the Row House Cinema's website. The single-screen theater is located at 4115 Butler Street in Lawrenceville (map).

New Asian hair salon coming to Squirrel Hill.

Renovations are underway at 5815 Forbes Ave. in Squirrel Hill (map), where Feng's Hair Salon will open in what was most recently a Kidz & Company children's clothing store. It will be the second Asian hair salon in the neighborhood, and the most recent in a line of Asian businesses to recently open in Squirrel Hill following Hair Lin's (名髮廊), two express mail services, an Asian clothing boutique, a Taiwanese restaurant, and Hi Sound KTV.

Josh Lindblom rejoins Pirates, by way of Lotte.

via 스포츠동아.

Major League Baseball's official site on the 12th profiled Josh Lindblom, a 29-year-old pitcher signed by Pittsburgh in December after two years with the Lotte Giants.

He learned some conversational Korean, came to appreciate the food, took part in team events and soaked in the unique baseball culture for two years. He pitched pretty well, too, starting 61 games with a 4.33 ERA in the hitter-friendly KBO. He became a fan favorite in a foreign country.

"We loved everything about it," he said. "I can't say enough about our experience over there. No words can describe the way they accepted us. It was unbelievable. … It was probably one of the best, if not the best experience of my career."

Lindblom was briefly in the organization in 2014. He returned to the US because of his infant daughter, who requires special medical attention.

On July 1, after one of those routine checkups, the top pediatric cardiologist in South Korea told the Lindbloms their daughter would be born with a rare congenital heart defect: Hypoplastic Right Heart Syndrome. The right side of her heart didn't develop properly.

. . .

Monroe was born on Oct. 20. She had her first open-heart surgery a week later, on Oct. 27. It won't be her last. She'll need another operation this summer, maybe one more after that.

You'd never know it by looking at her, Lindblom says. She's a beautiful, growing baby. But for now, he says, Monroe is "day to day." For her and her parents, some of those days are better than others.

"Essentially, she still has half a heart," Lindblom said. "Every day's a battle. You wake up and you're just thankful that she's alive."

Dr. Haifeng Huang and "China's Development through Green Economic Policy" at Pitt, January 17.

Dr. Haifeng Huang of the Peking University HSBC Business School will speak on "China's Development through Green Economic Policy" at the University of Pittsburgh on January 17. The talk will run from 5:00 to 6:15 pm in 4130 Posvar Hall (map) and is free and open to the public.

"Aristotle Meets Sei Shonagon--Figures of Speech in Japanese Advertising" at Pitt, January 20.

The University of Pittsburgh's Asian Studies Center will host Dr. Patricia Wetzel of Portland State University and her talk "Aristotle Meets Sei Shonagon--Figures of Speech in Japanese Advertising" on January 20.

"It would not come as a surprise to the fields of marketing and consumer research that language—specifically rhetoric—is crucial to effective advertising. But just how might linguistics look at the same figures of speech that fascinate the world of commerce? A meeting of the minds between business and marketing on the one hand and linguistics on the other is taking place through their mutual interest in semiotics and classical rhetoric."

"The questions I wish to address here are: What are the common rhetorical devices of Japanese advertising? And how do they compare with their western counterparts? The umbrella of rhetoric has a broad scope which may have to be expanded even further to accommodate tropes and schemes that may not be present in western texts."

The event begins at 4:00 pm in 4130 Posvar Hall (map) and is free and open to the public.

Colloquium "Transcendence and Return: Re-interpreting and Re-envisioning Urbanization in Contemporary Chinese Art" at Pitt, January 13.

The University of Pittsburgh's Department of East Asian Languages & Literatures will host MA candidate and her colloquium "Transcendence and Return: Re-interpreting and Re-envisioning Urbanization in Contemporary Chinese Art" on January 13.

From the perspective based on Chinese traditional aesthetics and philosophy, this paper discusses how the artistic representation of urban landscape, materials and performed bodies reflects on the contemporary context in China since the late 1990s. The artists include Zhang Dali, Chen Qiulin, Yang Yongliang, Xing Danwen and Chen Qingqing. On the one hand, the meditation, reflection and representation of urban transformation by these artists focus indicate not the urban conflicts but more importantly the cultural values, historical significance and spatial fluidity. Such specific time-space relation can be seen as the transcendence of universality and locality in terms of Chinese fast urban expansion and enter to the global market. On the other hand, the indigenous focus on the global issues of urbanization meanwhile entails the possibility to return on the tradition-based theoretical structures, such as Yi Pai, to rethink about the writing of Chinese art history and to reestablish the cultural identity in the temporal context.

The event begins at 12:00 pm in 4130 Posvar Hall (map) and is free and open to the public.

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.

Upcoming Chinese movie Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons 2 (西遊伏妖篇) in Pittsburgh, from February 3.

The upcoming Chinese movie Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons 2 (西遊伏妖篇), set for a January 28 release date in China, will play at the AMC Loews Waterfront theater from February 3. Ticket information has yet to be announced.

Filipino Marathon Film Series continues with Sonata in Oakland, January 14.

The 2013 movie Sonata will play at the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium in Oakland on January 14, the second installment in the Filipino Marathon Film Series presented by the Filipino American Association of Pitsburgh.

An opera diva, on the verge of a nervous breakdown after losing her voice, returns home to Negros Occidental and through a young boy rediscovers her art and life. As the world of the well-traveled opera diva collides with the world of a young boy in the throes of exploration, both discover the nature of art and the healing power of love.

The event runs from 6:00 to 9:00 pm at the Frick Fine Arts Building (map). Single tickets are $10 and proceeds benefit the Philippine Nationality Room fund.

Upcoming animated movie Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale (劇場版 ソードアート・オンライン -オーディナル・スケール) in Pittsburgh, March 9.

The upcoming Japanese animated movie Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale (劇場版 ソードアート・オンライン -オーディナル・スケール) will play at the Hollywood Theater in Dormont on March 9, the date of its US premiere.