Film Festival

Last week, there was an international film festival held in Roppongi. Since I don't work on Sundays-Tuesdays, I tried to take as much advantage in having the opportunities in watching international movies.

The 1st movie I watched was, "Hitler Cantata". I thought this German movie would be as good as, "Downfall", but I was wrong. I feel asleep most of the time and the movie was just boring.

There was this other movie I watched, which was a Korean movie. "Rules of Dating", don't let the title surprise you, because it really had nothing to do with dating. It is a love story, with a real unique plot. It was a real interesting movie which had much to do with sexual harassment rather than dating. The movie was about a high school teacher who was hitting on his assistant. The teacher already had a fiance and the assistant as well. The teacher was really aggressive towards his assistant. At times he did sexually harassed her and technically raped her. The assistant already had a bad background because in her past she slept with her former professor who was already married and she stalked him when he decided to break it off. She eventually fell in love with her high school teacher and she was afraid of suffering the same fate so when she began being in a topic of high school gossip between her and the high school teacher, he decided to cover up by saying that he was only consulting his assistant. When the police asked if this was true, she later reported to the police how the high school teacher raped her and molested her. As you know, he was no longer allowed to teach at any high school. His career was in ruins. The odd twist to this story is they did eventually reunite and got together, even though she got him fired. He wanted to kill her for what she has done to him and his career, but eventually forgiven her after he slept with her. They wound up being together, because after she reported to the police, his fiance also dumped him. She dumped her fiance and they wind up together.

Yeah the story was a bit stranger, if that had happened to me I would have killed her too. Then again, I am glad that I am not a high school teacher or a college professor.

In my honest opinion, I always believe that dating someone from work is a real bad idea. If it works out, then that's great, but most of the time, it becomes a big disaster.

I mentioned to you about my friend Gregg, he is a good friend, but he was known to be extremely careless regarding who he was dating. When I 1st met the guy, he was dated his Japanese language teacher back at his university. She was 29 at the time and Gregg was barely 21. Like most 29 year old Japanese ladies, she wanted to get married. Gregg in the other hand, was not thinking about marriage, because after all, he's only 21 and was in no mood to settle down. As you know, this relationship was a disaster. After he broke up with his Japanese language teacher, he became a part-time English teacher while exchanging at a Japanese university. He got together with his student. It would have been all right if she wasn't married. Gregg thought she was a sex friend. I mentioned to him that there is no way she was looking at him as a sex friend. I asked Gregg if he plans to marry her. He said, "No!" I hated to spoil this for him, but I had to tell him that she is looking at you as a replacement. I reminded him that she is going to want him to replace her husband. Gregg thought he was ok, but when she actually made the official divorce with her husband, Gregg did not know what to do. So I congradulated him in destroying someone's marriage. I still have a friend in Japan who is Gregg's student. She is a wife of a film writer, and we did meet through Gregg. Even though this happened almost 10 years ago, we still talk about Gregg and his flirting with disaster, because she was also friends with the married woman who messed around with Gregg. We still laugh about this. We were talking about making Gregg's disasterous story into a movie or TV show. Unfortunately her husband only interested in writing action movies like Godzilla or Lupin the 3rd.

We both knew that this was not 100% Gregg's fault. This was just as much as Hiromi's (the married woman who Gregg messed with) fault as it was for Gregg.

As I mentioned earlier, it's not a good idea to mess around with someone from work. I did learn a valuable lesson from Gregg. That is why it's easy for me not to give in when a married woman molested me at my former company. I always think about Gregg. I don't care how good looking she is, it's alway a good idea to walk away. The last thing you want is having a married woman stalking you. That's why I tell people nothing is free in this world.

In Japan, I believe the easiest way to met a soul mate is to teach English. Just make sure your student is not married.