Last Sunday we celebrated my haircut and found relief from the heat with a halo-halo DVD night. Xbox players should note: This is not Halo 2, the FPS, but halo-halo (“mix-mix”), a Filipino dessert of sweetened beans, fruit and coconut jelly served with milk and shaved ice.
If you aren’t familiar with halo-halo, you might think the photo of me kneeling and pounding something with a big piece of wood must be very traditional and indigenously Filipino. It may be, but the fact is, we couldn’t find a good way to shave or crush ice. So I bought a bag of chunky ice from nearby Liquor Mountain, put some in a plastic bag in a sturdy flat pan, and started hitting it with the end of a cutting board. Ahh. The bludgeoning motion did touch something ancient in me, but not necessarily Filipino. Rice pounding or male aggression? Anyway, after all the violence, instead of big chunks of ice, I had small chunks of ice.
Next: open jar of halo-halo mix (found at Sanjo-Kawaramachi), divide between two bowls, carefully blend two brands of soy milk, add the ice. Mari added her apple kanten (agar-agar) dessert. Cold, milky, crunchy, soft, sweet.
The DVD was The Karate Kid. I’d only seen it once, the year it came out in 1984, and I expected it to be pretty cheesy. It was, but it was also surprisingly good and well-acted. Mr. Miyagi’s (Pat Morita’s) character must play differently in Japan, where there isn’t the threat of non-Asians taunting Asians with “wax-on, wax-off.” It’s easier to watch Miyagi’s character here without worrying about what aspects of him are stereotyped and whether he’s going to faithfully “represent” Asian Americans. Not that I worried about any of those things when I saw the movie in junior high, but I learned to notice them in high school and college, and the “Karate Kid” became suspect. Seeing it now, Pat Morita’s scenes were the most touching parts of the movie.
The preview for Karate Kid 2, though, looked pretty silly. The evil-looking local boy, the sweet Japanese love interest. Mari was laughing, “Oh no! It doesn’t look like Okinawa! Looks like a set!” And when the people started playing the little drums, we were just, “Eeehhh? What are they doing?” I’ve seen the movie but don’t remember it. Mari wants to rent it for a laugh.