TsukuBlog

First of all, I would like to thank all of the people who came to the Coffee Hour yesterday. I was really nervous before I started the speech, but as things got underway, I calmed down and was able to get into a rhythm. It seemed like a successful event from my point of view. I hope that the audience felt the same way.

One of the members of the audience mentioned to me afterwards that she had trouble finding the schedule for the movie theatre. The schedule is available here. Whenever English movies are playing, the English title will appear under the Japanese title.

One thing you have to be careful about, though, is to check whether the movie is being offered with subtitles (which is the normal way in Japan) or with a dubbed soundtrack. Most movies aimed at an adult audience are subtitled, but many children’s movies are only offered in their dubbed versions (presumably because kids can’t read the subtitles that quickly).

For example, “Charlotte’s Web” is currently playing at the theatre, but only in its dubbed version. Too bad for all the non-Japanese speaking kids out there…

Movies that are dubbed are indicated by putting the Japanese word for dubbed (日本語吹替版) after the Japanese title. See, the listing for Charlotte’s Web for example.

シャーロットのおくりもの(日本語吹替版)
Charlotte no okurimono (ni hon go fuki kae ban)

Movies that are subtitled are usually not given any special qualification, but occasionally the theatre will show the dubbed version and the subtitled version at different times. Or, sometimes they just want patrons to be clear that they are showing the subtitled version (字幕版), as in the case of Eragon, another movie that is currently showing.

エラゴン　遺志を継ぐ者(字幕版)
Eragon: Ishi wo tsugu mono (ji maku ban)

(”Ishi wo tsugu mono” means something like “Inheritance”, which is the name of the trilogy. The first book in the trilogy is called Eragon, the second is Eldest, and the third has not been published yet, but it might be called “Empire” according to Wikipedia.)