Cheap Living on Tokyo Time (Video) (Minako Ohashi, Ken Nakagawa) (Steven Okazaki) Price

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Ken [Ken Nakagawa] is American-born, a slacker with no ambition beyond a dead-end job and rehearsing in a dead-end heavy-metal band, and no interest in his Japanese roots. When his friend Lane [Lane Nishikawa], the counterman at a cafe where Ken snarfs down doughnuts and fried eggs, offers him a bean-paste pastry (mon-ju?), he won't even try it. His girlfriend walks out on him one morning, but he shows only mild interest. He tends to speak in two or three word utterances, and never gets angry because he just doesn't care. The word "affectless" might have been invented for Ken.

Kyoko [Minako Ohashi] is a young Japanese woman, a blend of traditional and modern. She had been on the accepted track, studying hard in school, working hard at her job, and planning a family. But she has learned her fiance was unfaithful and broken off the engagement . Leaving her job, she comes to San Francisco for "an American experience" and to see Yosemite National Park. Much of the story is told in letters back to her family and a friend, spoken in a hesitant, charmingly accented, voice.

Kyoko finds a job washing dishes at a Japanese restaurant, and when she wants to stay on after her visa has expired, waitress Lana [Kate Connell, in a delightfully blowsy performance] suggests that she find a marriage of convenience. Lana is also a friend of Ken, and on hearing his girlfriend has split, makes the proposition to him, strictly business but hoping something further might also develop. With nothing better to do, Ken meets Kyoko and agrees. They marry and Kyoko moves into Ken's chaotic batchelor pad full of records, posters and dust bunnies.

Ken begins to come out of his shell: Lana comments on how much more verbal he has become (brief grunts have at least become connected sentences), and he actually tries one of those bean-paste buns. And he begins to fall in love with Kyoko.

Kyoko, meanwhile, is moving in the other direction, beginning to feel homesick, ready to return to Japan. Sensing Ken's growing feeling for her, she worries that it is a mistake.

Okazaki resists the Hollywood ending that the viewer may be hoping for. Unlike the Chinese bride in "Eat a Bowl of Tea," Kyoko does not miraculously become fluent in colloquial American. She and Ken achieve fondness, maybe even love of sorts, but never real communication. Ken does not become a rock'n'roll star. But the film resolves with a much more satisfying, poignant and uplifting ending than the easy fairy-tale one would have been.

Music is ubiquitous and important in "Tokyo Time", from the European, Japanese and American soundtrack to the coda on bare black screen: "'You can't escape gravity.'-- Captain Beefheart" There is of course Ken's band and poster-decked apartment, and the conversations with his friends laced with rock references. Kyoko [at least familiar with Lou Reed], when alone at home, puts on a tape from Japan to dance to. [Ohashi herself, according to a San Francisco Examiner film review that was posted to Usenet, was lead singer in a Tokyo girl rock band.]

The movie, set in a multi-ethnic, low-rent San Francisco, breathes reality. The actors, from the main characters to the bit parts, hardly seem to be acting. Mitzie Abe as Ken's sister Mimi and Keith Choy as a philosophizing friend at work, Lambert, are particularly notable.

Wonderful as it is, "Tokyo Time" is not without the problems typical of a low budget film without the funds to shoot a lot of extra footage for the cutting room floor, or to go back and add or remake scenes. There are editing and continuity problems, too much time is spent at the band rehearsals (it must have seemed like a good idea at the start, but these scenes don't advance the plot or themes), and the sound is sometimes unclear. But these are minor quibbles in a truly outstanding film.

"Tokyo Time" needs to be re-issued, preferably as a direct transfer from film to DVD. It would be wonderful if the director and/or actors could be persuaded to do a commentary, and possibly a career update.