Tampopo is my absolute favorite Japanese movie ever!

All of Itami Juzo's movies are great (director of Tampopo). If you loved tampopo you'll love all the rest. I can't wait till I get done reading Oe Kenzaburo's "Shizuka na Seikatu" (I've been working on it for about five years now) and I'll allow myself to see Itami Juzo's film adaptation. Every time I'm at the video store I'm so close to renting it... gotta finish that book.

I should have mentioned, you might want to make "Supa- no Onna" your next movie choice. Just as funny and witty as Tampopo.

Thanks for those tips. I assume you're reading that book in Japanese. I want to start reading something in Japanese, but it needs to be a pretty easy read or I'll, um, be spending the next 5 years on it. :)

My wife, Korean-born, came one day back from a Japanese store in Helsinki and said she'd bought 'mochi'. Didn't know what it is, and wondered why she did't call it 'tt?k' (ddeok), as we usually talk in Korean, and it definitely looked like the Korean rice pastry. Turned out that they at least in her homeplace distinguish the Japanese mochi from the Korean ddeok - hope the distinguished keeper of this blog won't mind that I couldn't help finding the Korean variety better... But perhaps my mochi sample is too small and my nostalgia for Korean ddeok too big to make a proper judgement. ;)