Guess Who?

http://shishido0.tripod.com/ishihara.html

It's okay, I didn't know who this was at first, either. But somehow, my trip to the dry cleaners last week ended up with me walking out the door carrying this picture.

This is Yujiro Ishihara. This picture was leaning against one the tables in the room at the dry cleaners across the street from my apartment. I asked my old man friend who works there to explain to me who was in the photo and why it was in the dry cleaners.



Hitachi Cleaners

Like usual, the old man started speaking to me in Japanese really quickly, probably explaining how he got the picture and who the man was. It was pretty difficult to understand him because his Japanese is a little different from what I'm used to and he uses 'Ibaraki-ben,' one of the less known dialects of Japan. But I managed to catch that he got the picture from a neighbors house after the big earthquake. After that, I caught the words for 'movie' and 'production,' I think. And he said something about how all Japanese people know who this guy is. I felt pretty special having learned about a Japanese figure that apparently most people here know about.

After our conversation, my friend handed me the picture. I explained to him that I really didn't need it. I had only asked about it out of curiousity, but he kept insisting that I take the picture. So finally I did.

I decided to do a little research on the guy after getting home. It turns out that he was a pretty big hit in the Japanese movie world in the 1950's and early 1960's. I read somewhere that he has been referred to as the Japanese version of Elvis Presley, although when I mentioned that to my supervisor at school today, she seemed to disagree. I also found out that Yujiro's older brother is the current governor of Tokyo.

But the best part of the whole thing was when I was walking up the stairs to my apartment after receiving the picture. The lady who lives below me had her door open and was talking to a friend right outside. They saw me walk by and I heard one of the ladies whisper to the other one, 'Oh! Ishihara Yujiro!'