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Diana Pappas's avatar

Alon, thanks for sharing!! And I am glad you enjoyed this interview format. Now that I think about it, I think it works easily for us because we wrote to each other for a year before we met in person, so we are quite familiar with the back and forth of a conversation that is longer form. I'm sure we'll do it again.

I love that you weighed in here having actually cleaned toilets in the army - a totally different vibe than fancy Tokyo toilets but the work is the same. To my eye I think he is cleaning toilets as a way to escape/avoid/reject whatever his father inflicted on him. His sister brings him his favorite chocolate and it is clearly high end stuff - I think he comes from a rich, intellectual background, similar to Mama San's ex-husband that we meet at the end of the film. But he's chosen this different path deliberately... is he happy? I'm not sure. Content at times, yes. But not always.

We haven't seen The American Friend, should we add it to the list?

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