Tokyo Drift

I recently saw "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift," which was one of the worst films I have ever seen. That said, it was highly amusing, though the comedy was unintentional. Having heard that it was set in a Japanese high school, I thought it might give a window into modern Japanese life without being too "foreign" for the kids." Subtitles can turn them off, and it's always a challenge to get them to see that history isn't just about "old dead guys who lived far away."

Instead, this movie included about 1 minute total in the high school, which was some sort of strange magnet for foreigners in the middle of Tokyo. Oddly, it was also some sort of Yakuza hot spot, in spite of the fact that the Yakuza have ore of a Kansai region business and don't really pay much attention for foreigners in real life, much less have big feuds with them. One of the premises of the movie seemed to be that you can never go anywhere in Tokyo without crossing the famously crowded Shinjuku intersection. (Not true in real life.) While the movie is unusable for the most part, it would potentially be possible to show a tiny clip of a scene that moved through the intersection to show this very famous corner of Tokyo. There are also a few moments of scenes showing crowded subways and other snippets of modern Tokyo.

In general, however, I'd pass on using any of this film and would find a different one. I'm thinking of using scenes from "GTO," which is a Japanese film set in a high school. I'm hesitant, however, since the manga it is based on features a lot of creepy sexually-charged interaction between the main (adult) character and the high school girls he teaches. It's not in the movie, but I wouldn't want my students to see parts of the film and then seek out the manga.