Do and Don't

Sushi!!! Yes, siapa sih yang ngga kenal makanan asal Jepang yang satu ini?? Sekarang sudah banyak sekali restaurant Jepang di Indonesia yang menyediakan sushi. Dalam penyajiannya, biasanya kita disodori kecap asin (soy sauce) dan wasabi, sedangan untuk memakannya, kita bisa menggunakan tangan atau bisa juga dengan sumpit yang tersedia. 

Kita sebagai orang Indonesia juga harus mengetahui tata cara untuk menyantap hidangan yang satu ini jangan sampai merusak tradisi orang Jepang lhoo..><

Saat makan sushi, dimana saja, sebaiknya kita memperhatikan beberapa hal berikut ini ^^.

Ponyo

Ponyo, literally "Ponyo on the Cliff, initially titled in English as Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, is a 2008 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. It is the eight film Miyazaki directed for Ghibli and his tenth overall. The film stars the voices of Tomoko Yamaguchi, Kazuhige Nagashima, Yuki Amami, George Tokoro, Yuria Nara, Hiroki Doi, Rumi Hiiragi, Akiko Yano, Kazuko Yoshiyuki and Tomoko Naraoka. The plot centers on a goldfish named Ponyo who befriends a five-year-old human boy, Sosuke, and wants to become a human girl.

Deep under the surface of the ocean, a sea-wizard named Fujimoto (Joji Tokoro) stands at the bow of his submersible, surrounded by an air bubble and an assortment of sea creatures. They swim circles around him as he pours magic potions into the water. Out of a side porthole, a red goldfish peeks out, making sure not to be seen, before waving goodbye to her smaller siblings and swimming off to join a school of jellyfish. She rests on top of one, domed by another, as they float towards the surface and far from her home.

When she wakes up, she find herself in the harbor of a seaside town Tomonoura. When a large bottom trawler comes towards her, the goldfish swims away from the jellyfish in an attempt to escape but is quickly pulled into the mess of garbage and debris that the trawler picks up in its net. She becomes trapped withing a glass jar but manages to escape the net and make it towards shallow water. Meanwhile, a young boy named Sosuke (Hiroki Doi) runs down the hillside path from his home to the water's edge to play with his toy boat. There, he notices the goldfish stuck in the jar and breaks her out of it, though cutting his thumb in the process. As he holds the seemingly lifeless fish in his hands, she licks his wound clean. Happy that she's alive, the boy takes her back up the hills as a series of strange waves comes in and reach for him. The waves return to deeper water where Fujimoto is waiting. He is horrified to hear from them that the goldfish, his daughter, has been taken by a human.

Sosuke puts the goldfish, which he names Ponyo (Yuria Nara), in a bucket full of water and brings her with him to the car where his mother, Lisa (Tomoko Yamaguchi), is waiting to take him to school. Just before she gets in, she notices Fujimoto crossing her yard with a portable pump on his back. She scolds him for spraying what she thinks is fertilizer, though he attests it's merely pure ocean water to keep him from drying out on land, before driving off. Lisa drops Sosuke off at school before going to work at the nursing home next door. Sosuke hides Ponyo's bucket in the bushes but his secrecy doesn't go unnoticed. Kumiko (Eimi Hiraoka), a classmate, asks to see what he's hiding but snubs her nose when shown Ponyo, calling her a boring fish. Ponyo squirts water into Kumiko's face and she begins to cry. 

Startled, Sosuke goes through the side fence and meets with a few senior citizens sitting outside. While some, like Yoshie (Tomoko Naraoka) and Noriko (Tokie Hidari), adore Ponyo, bitter Toki (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) is suspicious of Ponyo's odd appearance and gets squirted in the face as well. The commotion attracts Lisa, and Sosuke rushes to the water's edge to escape punishment. However, Fujimoto's waves surround him and take Ponyo back to sea. Sosuke calls after Ponyo but is collected from water by Lisa who does her best to console him. Arriving home, Lisa is disappointed to hear that Sosuke's sailor father, Koichi (Kazushige Nagashima), is unable to come home that night. As his ship passes their hill, Sosuke sends his father a message via Morse code using his signal light. Still peeved, Lisa sends her own unfriendly message, but Sosuke manages to cheer her up.

Back underwater, Ponyo and Fujimoto have an argument, during which Ponyo refuses to let her father call her by her birth-name, "Brunhilde". She declares her name to be Ponyo and vices her desire to become human, because she has started to fall in love with Sosuke. Suddenly, using her magic, she forces herself to grow leg and arm-like appendages and start manifesting into a human, a power granted to her by the human blood she ingested when she licked Sosuke's finger.

Her alarmed father forces her to turn her back with some difficulty and goes to summon Ponyo's mother, Granmamare. Meanwhile, Ponyo, with the help of her sisters, breaks away form her father and in the chaos inadvertently uses his magic to make herself fully human. 

The huge amount of magic that she also inadvertently releases into the ocean causes an imbalance in the world, resulting in a huge tsunami. Running pell-mell over wavea of the storm, Ponyo goes back to catch up with Sosuke, who is amazed and overjoyed to see her.

Lisa is equally amazed, but takes Ponyo's transformation in stride, believing the world truly mysterious. Lisa, Sosuke, and Ponyo wait out the storm at Sosuke's house, where Ponyo learns some of the things in the human world, much enchanted by these new experiences.

Worried about the residents of the nursing home where she works, Lisa leaves to check up on them, promising Sosuke thet she will return as soon as possible. Granmamare (Yuki Amami) arrives at Fujimoto's submarine. On her way there, Sosuke's father sees and recognizes her as the Goddess of Mercy. Fujimoto notices the moon appears to be falling out of its orbit and satellites are falling like shooting stars, syptoms of the dangerous imbalance of nature that now exists. Granmamare declares that if Sosuke can pass a test, Ponyo can live as a human and the world order will be restored. A still-worried Fujimoto reminds her that if Sosuke fails the test, Ponyo will turn into sea foam.

Sosuke and Ponyo wake up to find that most of the land around the house has been covered by the ocean. Since it is impossible for Lisa to come home, the two children decide to find her. With the help of Ponyo's magic, they make Sosuke's toy pop pop boat life-size and set out across the ocean. 

Over the course of their journey, they see prehistoric fish swimming beneath them, and encounter several other evacuees in boats. After landing and finding Lisa's empty car, Ponyo and Sosuke head into a tunnel. There Ponyo loses her human form and reverts into a fish from using too much of her magical power to help Sosuke and others along the way. Meanwhile, Lisa and the residents of the nursing home are below the surface, but have been temporarily given the power to breathe underwater. 

Sosuke and Ponyo encounter Fujimoto, but Sosuke doessn't trust him due to Toki's claims and attempts to flee. However, Fujimoto captures them and takes them down to the protected nursing home.

Sosuke is reunited with Lisa and meets Granmamare, with whom Lisa has just had a long private conversation. Granmamare asks Sosuke if he can love Ponyo whether she is a fish or human. Sosuke replies that he "loves all the Ponyos." Granmamare then tells her daughter that if she chooses to become human once and for all, she will have to give up her magical powers. Ponyo agrees to this, so Granmamare encases her in a bubble and give her to Sosuke, and tells him that kissing the bubble will complete Ponyo's transformation. The balance of nature is then restored, and the previously stranded ships head back to port, including Sosuke's father's. Ponyo jumps high in the air and kisses Sosuke, transforming back into a human. 

My Neighbor Totoro

My Neighbor Totoro is 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. The film - which stars the voice actors Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto, and Hitoshi Takagi - tells the story of two young daughters (Satsuki and Mei) of a professor and their interactions with friendly wood spirits in postwar rural Japan. The film won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize and the Mainichi Film Award and Kinema Junpo Award for the Best Film in 1988. It also received the Special Award at the Blue Ribbon Awards in the same year.

On a warm, sunny day, 10-year-old Satsuki (Noriko Hidaka) and 4-year-old Mei (Chika Sakamoto) Kusakabe drive with their father, Tatsuo (Shigesato Itoi), along a rural road towards their new home. The girls are excited about the move since it will bring them closer to their mother, Yasuko (Sumi Shimamoto), who is ill in hospital (it is implied that she has tuberculosis). 

Their house is old and falling apart in places, but the girls find it charming and set out immediately to explore. They open all the windows and doors before daring to venture up the stairs into the attic. Faint rustling is heard in the darkness above before an acorn falls down steps. Intrigued, the girls go up and yell at the darkness. When nothing responds, Satsuki runs to the opposite end of the attic to open the window as Mei notices dark, fuzzy things in the wall, staring at them intently. Satsuki goes back downstairs but Mei's curiosity is piqued. She reaches a tentative finger into crack in the wall and startles a mess of black sootballs, one of which she is able to capture between her hands.

Back downstairs, she runs into Granny (Tanie Kitabayashi), an elderly next-door neighbor who's been watching over the house. Granny notices Mei's and Satsuki's hands and feet covered in soot and exclaims that they must have stumbled upon susuwatari, or soot sprites, which will most likely leave soon now that people are in the house. Her grandson, Kanta (Toshiyuki Amagasa), emerges outside and shouts that the house is haunted. Granny scolds him and he runs off.

That night, the family enjoys a bath together while the house moans and creaks from the wind. The girls become anxious, but their father encourages them to laugh, saying that their laughter will encourage any spirits in the house to disperse. Sure enough, as they laugh together, the clan of susuwatari leaves the house through the roof and drifts away on the wind.

The next morning, Satsuki cooks and assembles lunch for her family. She places Mei's lunch in a bento box and says farewell as she heads off for school. Tatsuo, a professor at a local university, works from home while Mei plays outside. As she plays, she notices two white, rabbit-like ears poking out of the grass. She watches as the figure, a small, semi-transparent creature, walks past her towards the house. She follows it until it runs off and hides under the porch. It emerges with a larger, blue companion on carrying a bag full of acorns, and they attempt to sneak past Mei. However, she quickly notices them and chases them to the edge of the woods. She follows them up a path through the shrubbery, losing her hat in the process, to a large camphor tree where they disappear into a hole beneath the roots. 

Mei falls into it and lands in a mossy hollow where she meets a large, slumbering version of the creatures she followed. It identifies itself with a series of roars that Mei interprets as Totoro (a mispronunciation on her part of tororu, the Japanese word for troll). Mei falls asleep on Totoro's furry belly.

Satsuki arrives home from school to find Mei missing. She and her father search for her until Satsuki finds Mei's hat near the edge of the woods. Following the same path Mei took, Satsuki and her father find her sleeping in the clearing withing the bushes. Confused, Mei tries to retrace her steps back to the tree where she found Totoro. When she becomes upset that she can't find it again, Tatsuo explains that she must have come into contact with a sprit of the forest who probably doesn't want to be found right now. They walk together around the property to the large camphor tree that Mei fell into and offer their respects to the spirits for watching over Mei.

That afternoon, the family takes a bike ride into town to see the girl's mother. They pass Granny and Kanta working in rice paddies, and Kanta and Satsuki exchange raspberries. Arriving at the hospital, the girls tell their mother how wonderfull the new house is, and Mei brags that when Yasuko is well enough to come home, she will sleep with her in her bed. The family enjoys their time togrther and Yasuko brushes Satsuki's hair.

One day while at school, Satsuki is surprised to see Mei and Granny waiting for her outside. Although Mei was given into Granny's care that day while Tatsuo went to university, she wants to be with no one but Satsuki. Satsuki agrees to let Mei stay in school with her, with the teacher's permission. As they walk home that afternoon, a rainstorm comes upon them unexpectedly. Satsuki and Mei take shelter under the roof of a small shrine until Kenta approaches them and silently offers his umbrella to them, though he does so with a little abrasiveness to hide his kindness. Later n, Satsuki ans Mei return the umbrella to Kanta's mother (who had not known about Kanta's kind act, though he was pleased with himself) before walking to the bus station to wait for theif father.

While waiting in their rain gear, with an extra umbrella, Mei grows tired and Satsuki places her on her back to sleep. As she waits, Satsuki suddenly sees two clawed feet stand next to her. She looks up to see none other than Totoro waiting beside her.

While she sees that he has nothing to shelter him from the rain besides a large leaf, she offers him the extra umbrella. Pleased with the shelter and the noise the raindrops make on the umbrella, Totoro roars with joy as headlights starts to bounce. A bus does appear, but one that is mainly a large cat. Catbus grins widely at them as Totoro hands Satsuki a leaf-wrapped package before getting on and departing. 

Tatsuo arrives on the regular bus, apologizing that he ran late. The girls walk home with him and open their package to find that it is filled with accorns. They go outside to the garden and plant them.

That night, Satsuki and Mei are awakened by sounds outside and discover Totoro (who has Tatsuo's umbrella) and his company of smaller totoros walking around the garden in a procession. They join them outside and mimic their dancing to encourage the acorns to grow. Sapling spring and quickly grow larger before merging into one giant tree.

As the girls cheer, Totoro pulls out a large, spinning top and stands on it. The girls cling to the fur on his belly and he flies into the air (still carrying the umbrella), up the trunk of the tree. They sit on the high brances together, making music with hollow gourds.

The next morning, the girls wake up to find the tree gone. However, they notice that the seeds they planted have already started to sprout. 

During one afternoon, the girls enjoy a picnic with Granny, who has prepared a fresh meal of vegetables grown from her garden. She tells them that fresh vegetables will help their mother get better. A telegram arrives for Tatsuo from the hospital. Worried for her mother, Satsuki rushes to Kanta's house to phone her father. He calls her back after contacting the hospital to tell them that their mother is fine, but won't be able to come home that weekend due to a set-back in her treatment. Despite his assurance, Satsuki takes the news hard and yells at Mei when she fails to understand why their mother can't come home. Granny explains to Satsuki that their mother should be fine but Satsuki begins to cry and fears that her mother will die. Mei sees this and decides to go to the hospital to give her mother an ear of corn so that she will feel better. No one sees her go.

By the time Satsuki notices that Mei is missing, she is long gone. The entire neighborhood pitches in to search for her while Satsuki runs everywhere, remorseful for having yelled at her. One tense moment yields to relief when Satsuki identifies a shoe found in a nearby pond as not belonging to Mei. Still desperate to find Mei, Satsuki runs home and asks permission to enter Totoro's realm. She finds the hole in the roots where Mei fell in and stumbles upon Totoro. She tearfully begs him to help her find Mei. Happy to be of assistance, Totoro takes Satsuki to the top of his tree and summons Catbus, who takes her straight to Mei, sitting alone by the side of the road. After hearing Mei got lost on the way to the hospital, Catbus offers to take them there.

Perched in a tree outside their mother's window, the girls see their father visiting. They leave Mei's corn on the windowsill and write a get-well message on the husk. Catbus takes them home.

The end credits show Mei's and Satsuki's mother finally coming home, with scenes of the children playing with friends while Totoro and the other spirits watch them, unseen.

Spirited Away

Spirited Away, "Sen and Chihiro's Spiriting Away" is a 2001 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. The film stars Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki, Takeshi Naito, Yasuko Sawaguchi, Tsunehiko Kamijo, Takehiko Ono and Bunta Sugawara, and tells the story of Chihiro Ogino, a sullen ten-year-old girl who, while moving to a new neighborhood, enters the spirit world.

Ten-year-old Chohiro Ogino and her parents are traveling to their new home when her father takes a wrong turn. The movie opens with Chihiro moving to a new place. She's not happy, not looking forward to the new home and she doesn't feel appreciated or loved. She's also extremely timid, shy, and just want to hide away from the world.

All of that is about to change. Her parents are trying to find a new place to live, which sits atop a hill. After her father misses the turn to their house on top of the hill, he tries to take a shortcut and ends up at the entrance to an abandoned theme park where things go horribly wrong. Chihiro's parents end up at a restaurant and indulge themselves in a buffet which they have not been given permission to eat, against Chihiro's warning. They gorge themselves on this otherworldly food, saying they'll use their credit cards and cash to cover it. The're not worried about the price, they'll pay for it later, so they say, and they end up paying for it in the end. Their indulgent and self-pleasing behavior turns them into pigs (literally). Meanwhile, Chihiro is learning the lay of the land. While exploring, she runs into Haku, a servant to the cruel and heavy handed Yubaba. Chihiro tries to escape, shocked, horrified, and confused after she found that her parents turned into pigs. 

In a flight of panic, she finds that it's impossible for her to escape because the return parh has been flooded and replaced with an endless ocean. Not only that, unless she eats something from that world, she will disappear.

This other world that Chihiro is trapped in, is one of bourgeois decadence. It's a place where the spirits come to clean themselves and to feel rejuvenated. The only thing she can do to survive is to make herself a part of it. If she didn't partake of the world, she would have simply vanished, presumably dying.

Haku works his magic and makes it do that she won't disappear, but then tells her that the only way she can stay, is to get a job in Yubaba's bathhouse. To this ends, Chihiro is sent to the lowest floor of the bathhouse, the boiler room, to see a man and demand to see Yubaba for a job. She doesn't just stroll down the very long, very steep, and very dangerous path, she ends up involuntarily running and screaming down the stairs and descending into the lowest and harshest place of all after faltering on a briken step. Her fall into forced subservience is swift, fast, and terrifying. 

Kamaji, the man who works the boiler, put in a good word for her and helps her find assistance to visit Yubaba.

Yubaba is the kindly looking old lady who runs the bathhouse. A part of the condition that she runs the bathhouse is that she gives a jobto anyone who ask. Naturally, Yubaba's office and living space is at the highest point of the bathhouse. Her economic and social power is literally over and above everyone. The first thing that happens after Chihiro signs a contract to work is she will lose her name and her identity to Yubaba's magic.

Chihiro's new life as a servant in the bathhouse is tough. She learns how to apply herself to do well at the bathhouse that she's rewarded with a gift (some kind of medicine) from one of the spirits she cleaned. She managed to do all of that while being separated from her parents. 

One day, while working, Chihiro unknowingly invites a silent masked creature, No-Face, to the bathhouse, believing him to be a customer. A very dirty and stink spirit subsequently arrives, and Chihiro is quickly assigned to tend to the guest by her nauseated superiors. She discovers, he is actually the powerful guardian spirit of a polluted river. In gratitude for cleaning him, he gives Chihiro a magic dumpling. Chihiro is congratulated by her gleeful coworkers, who had shunned her as an outsider. Later, while most of the staff sleep, No-Face tempts a worker with gold. The greedy employee takes the bait, only to be swallowed. No-Face begins demanding food, producing gold to tempt the naive staff. As the workers swarm him, hoping to be tipped, he devours two of them and grows bigger. 

Chihiro discovers a shikigami's attacking a dragon and recognize the dragon as Haku's transformation. When a grievously-injured Haku crashes into Yubaba's penthouse, Chihiro follows him upstairs. When she reaches Haku, a shikigami that stowed away on her back transforms into Zeniba, Yubaba's twin sister. She transforms Yubaba's baby, Boh, into a mouse, creates a decoy baby, and turns Yubaba's bird creature into tiny bird. Zeniba tells Chihiro that it carries a deadly curse. After Haku dives to the boiler room with Chihiro and Boh on his back, she feeds him part of the dumpling, causing him to vomit both the seal and a black slug, which Chihiro crushed with her foot.

With Haku unconscious, Chihiro resolves to return the seal and apologize for Haku. Before she leaves the bathhouse, Chihiro confronts the now-massive No-Face and feeds him the rest of the dumpling. No-Face chases Chihiro out of the bathhouse, steadily vomiting out those he has eaten and thus gradually returning to his former self. Chihiro, No-Face, and Boh, travel to see Zeniba. Enraged at the damage caused by No-Face, Yubaba blames Chihiro for inviting him in and orders that her parents to be slaughtered. After Haku reveals that Boh is mising, he promises to retrieve Boh in exchange for Yubaba freing Chihiro and her parents.

Chihiro, No-Face, and Boh, arrive at Zeniba's house, where Zeniba, now the benevolent "Granny", reveals that Chihiro's love for Haku broke her curse and that Yubaba had used the black slug to control him. Haku appears in his dragon form and flies both Chihiro and Boh back to the bathhouse. No-face unexpectedly shows itself as a very good spinner for Zeniba and accepts her proposal to stay as a helper.

On the way back, Chihiro recalls a memory from her youth in which she had fallen into Kohaku River while trying ti retrieve her fallen shoe but was swept safely ashore. After correctly guessing that Haku is the spirit of Kohaku River (and thus revealing his real name), Haku is completely freed from Yubaba's control. When the arrive at the bathhouse, Yubaba tells Chihiro, to break the curse on her parents, she must identify them form among a group of pigs. Chihiro correctly states that none of the pigs are her parents, releasing her parents from the curse and herself from her contract with Yubaba. Haku takes her to the entrance of the spirit world and promises to see her again in the future.

Chihiro reunites with her restored parents, who don't remember what happened. They walk back to their car, which covered in fallen leaves and dust due to many days passing in their absence, and drive away.