It is a holiday trip in which you call the shots. You decide what time to get up and set off, how long to linger at each attraction or even whether to wander off the set path.

While Singaporeans are familiar with the pleasures of driving trips in countries such as New Zealand and the United States, the idea can seem rather daunting in a place where you do not understand the language.

But on recent trips to Okinawa and Chubu in Japan, Life! found the driving experience to be breezy and fuss-free.

The trip was organised by local tour agency Follow Me Japan, which has been organising fly-and-drive Japanese holidays since 2005.

All cars come equipped with a GPS navigation system, which means that getting from point A to point B is as simple as keying in a numerical map code and then following the English voice instructions. It also helps that the Japanese are patient and polite drivers and you never feel hassled on the roads.

You get a detailed booklet with a suggested itinerary, complete with maps, colour photographs and descriptive passages. Much care goes into putting all this together and there are also recommendations on popular local eateries and specialities one should not miss.

Also, since most cellphones in Singapore do not work in Japan because of the different technologies adopted, the agency issues its customers with a local mobile phone for ease of communication within the group.

Follow Me Japan started off with driving tours to Hokkaido and has since added other destinations such as the regions of Tohoku and Chubu, and recently, the southern-most prefecture of Okinawa.

The main island of Okinawa is blessed with a rugged coastline and clear, shallow waters teeming with an abundance of marine life and colourful corals. Divers can plunge right in and swim alongside more than 1,000 species of fish, marine mammals and sea turtles and more than 200 reef-building corals.

For non-divers, the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium (oki-churaumi.jp, tel: +81-980-48-3748) is a good place to start getting acquainted with beauteous and bountiful nature. After all, Churaumi means beautiful sea in the local dialect.

It recreates, in air-conditioned comfort, the experience of venturing from the shallow shores to the deep sea as you saunter from the fourth floor to the first, passing by garden eels, an array of darting fish and the carcass of a giant squid.

The world-class aquarium boasts a central tank which houses 70 species, including regal manta rays and circling whale sharks, the largest fish in the world which grow to an average length of 7.6m.

When you venture outdoors, it pays to be well prepared with sunscreen, headgear and shades as the summer heat is intense and the light piercingly bright.

The Busena Marine Park (www.busena-marinepark.com is in Japanese only or www.okinawastory.jp, tel: +81-980-52- 3379) offers rides in a glass-bottom boat and fabulous views at 3 to 4m deep from the underwater observatory tower. This is as close as you can get to the tropical fish and delicate corals without getting your feet wet.

There are clownfish clowning about among the poisonous tentacles of sea anemone, while the flamboyant Banana Wrasse steals the show every time its vivid rainbow colours come into view.

Since this is a free-and-easy driving trip, feel free to stop at any of the scenic lookout points and take in the dramatic coastline. At Cape Manzamo, an “elephant” carved out of the rock by the relentless waves looks like it is about to dip its trunk into the irresistible waters for a refreshing drink.

Climb the 30m-tall lighthouse at Cape Zanpa for panoramic views of sea and land as the wind rushes about.

For the most part, driving in Okinawa is easy as the traffic is fairly light except during rush hour in the evenings.

While it is not as scenic as, say, Hokkaido, you do get rewarded with flashes of brilliantly blue water every so often.

After all that activity and driving around, reward yourself by tucking into the delicious harvest served up by the sea.

Try the local speciality, umibudo (seagrapes), at the popular Ganso Umi Budo Honten restaurant (tel: +81-98-966- 2588). The seagrape-don has a generous helping of the seaweed along with ikura (salmon roe), uni (sea urchin) and yamakake (grated Japanese mountain yam). The reason for the name is apparent when you see it as it looks like little bunches of green grapes. The seaweed bursts in your mouth and tastes of the sea. Think of seagrapes as a firmer and less salty version of salmon roe.

The nearby Yakaji Island produces kuruma ebi (literally, car prawns) and you can have them tempura-style at Kuruma Ebi Shokudo (tel: +81-980-47-7888). The fresh and juicy prawns are coated in a light batter and then deep-fried to perfection. Wash them down with an ice- cold mug of the local Orion beer.

A good way to beat the heat is to tuck into zenzai. It is a Zen version of ice kacang with no bells and whistles or artificial colouring, yet it is amazing how satisfying the simple combination of shaved ice and red beans can be.

At Makishi Public Market in bustling Kokusai Street, pick up the catch of the day and have it served to you at the eateries conveniently located on the second floor of the market.

There is a lot more to explore when it comes to Okinawan cuisine. A distinguishing feature is the prominence of ingredients such as pork and goya (bitter gourd). Dig into the cooling stir-fry of goya champuru as well as the melt-in-your-mouth tenderness of rafute – a dish of braised pork belly that was fit for the royal family of the Ryukyu Kingdom, which is present-day Okinawa.

The splendours of the kingdom can be glimpsed from a visit to Shurijo Castle (www.oki-park.jp, tel: +81-98-886- 2020), which was first built between the 13th and 14th centuries. As befitting a major trading port which absorbed influences from abroad, the castle has elements of mainland Japanese, Chinese and Korean architecture.

If you are keen to learn more about Okinawa’s storied past, drop by sights such as the Zakimi Castle ruins (www.okinawastory.jp, tel: +81-98-958- 3141) and Shikinaen Royal Garden (www.okinawastory.jp, tel: +81-98-855- 5936), as well as the Okinawa Prefectural Museum (www.museums.pref.okinawa. jp, tel: +81-98-941-8200) with its detailed dioramas and extensive write- ups in English.

At some point though, do head for the beach. Feel the sun on your skin, get your feet wet and just lose yourself in a sea of dazzling blues.

(ST)

C’est La “V”

Van Ness Wu

Best known for being a quarter of Taiwanese boyband F4 (now renamed JVKV), Van Ness Wu has always been eclipsed by the uber-popularity of bandmates Jerry Yan and Vic Chou.

But with a new album, a hit idol drama Autumn’s Concerto in 2009 and another, Material Queen, currently airing, Wu’s solo star may be shining the brightest at the moment.

Material Queen’s theme song Is This All has been getting attention and airplay as it features Ryan Tedder from the American rock band OneRepublic.

Its lyrics – “What am I chasing after/So it’s all just air/So is this all I’ve been waiting for?” – seem to reflect his spiritual state after the one-time playboy famously embraced Christianity.

The K-pop-cloning Love, Faith, Live and the dance-pop of Do It keep things promising with their thumping grooves.

They may be a tad predictable, but there is no denying that things move along like well-oiled machinery.

The album starts to lose momentum with When You’re Near.

This is supposed to be the show-stopping, heartfelt ballad of the disc, but his so-so voice doesn’t quite tug at the heartstrings.

Instead, the track wanders off into filler territory.

Things end with another high-profile collaboration. The English track Knockin’, written and produced by American singer-songwriter Bruno Mars, is a catchy slice of rhythmic pop with lyrics about being overlooked.

Well, Wu need not worry about that, the way his career is going right now.

(ST)

Treasure Hunt

Wong Jing

The story: Peggy (Cecilia Cheung) decides to travel to a remote island to direct an advertisement with the perpetually sozzled star Mr Big (Ronald Cheng). Angered by this, her husband takes off with their son (Lucas Tse). On the island, Peggy and gang encounter an environmentalist, Star (Shao Bing), his son Starlet (Peng Gen) and a group of baddies who are after a long-lost treasure.

If you are watching this for the cute moppet Lucas Tse’s big-screen debut, don’t bother.

The elder son of estranged celebrity couple Cecilia Cheung and Nicholas Tse appears only at the beginning and end of the movie. It is as if the four-year-old is already a big-enough star to do a cameo even though this is his first role.

While no one is expecting him to pull off a Victoire Thivisol (who controversially won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival in 1996 at the age of five for playing a child dealing with grief in the drama Ponette), he really does not do much here.

We know that Lucas is capable of a more spirited showing given that he had previously upstaged Hong Kong actor-

director Stephen Chow at a press conference. He had said to the adoring media: “Hello, I love you. I love everyone. Don’t say my mummy is fat.”

It also irked to have him dubbed over in Mandarin. For all you know, some jaded six-year-old was passing himself off as four-year-old Lucas.

Even without him, though, this cheap and tacky looking film features an unusually large number of children. Mr Big has a daughter, his agent Wayne has a son and the environmentalist who comes from out of nowhere also has a son.

Bizarrely, the children tag along on the work trip to a remote island and Wayne’s son even joins the advertisement’s cast and crew when they head out for drinks. Was this Bring Your Child To Work day?

At least the child actors up the cute quotient and make the movie less excruciating to watch. In particular, Peng Gen steals the limelight in Lucas’ absence.

Otherwise, the film is mostly ludicrously irritating rather than entertainingly over the top, lazily tacking on a treasure hunt story on top of a family drama.

The baddies are from the cartoon school of villainy and the treasure map is a bad joke. There are Easter egg hunts more exciting than this treasure hunt.

(ST)

Romance

Olivia Ong

Feel About You

Bevlyn Khoo

Her work has been released in Japan, she has sung a theme song for the hit MediaCorp series, The Little Nyonya, and she is now releasing on home ground a new album of English and Mandarin numbers about love.

I am talking about Olivia Ong. And Bevlyn Khoo. In the Channel 8 drama, Ong crooned Like A Swallow and Khoo sang Keep Warm. Their approach here is similar in another key respect. Ong flexes her song-writing chops on an album of largely original material, while Khoo also composes several tracks on her record.

Compared to the ho-hum selection of cover material on Olivia (2010), Romance offers a dreamy and breezy range of material that is tailor-made for Ong’s sweetly charming vocals.

Let It Rain is, well, a sunny song that waltzes along prettily: “Let it rain, rain/It’s the perfect weather for contemplating/Let it rain, rain/For after such weather /Sunshine will come.”

When The Seas Run Dry And The Stones Go Soft, meanwhile, is gently epic in its ebb and swell: “With you in my heart, life is anchored/Even the wind won’t drift/Watch the seas run dry and stones go soft together, wait for the end of time/Love slowly, no need to rush.”

The constant switching between Mandarin and English takes a little getting used to but it certainly helps that the material is engaging. Ong even cuts loose on The Silly Song. The closing hymn, Amazing Grace, feels out of place though.

There are also cover tracks on Khoo’s offering: Saint Etienne’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart is heartfelt at a slowed-down tempo, but Duran Duran’s Ordinary World is merely pedestrian.

In her own songs, the sentiment is too bald at times. On the title track, she confesses: “Because I love you/Because I need you/Because I want you/And I absolutely hate to let you go.”

At least Call It A Day does something more interesting with the premise of a long-distance relationship: “I love you in the springtime/But you can’t warm my hands/I love to see your flowers/But not the delivery man.”

The three Mandarin tracks here are tacked on as a bonus but there is nothing throwaway about them. They include Keep Warm and Please Don’t Say, a bittersweet love song.

Bitter or sweet, love is in the air for both these songbirds.

(ST)

Incendies

Denis Villeneuve

The story: Acting on instructions in their mother Nawal’s will, siblings Jeanne and Simon Marwan (Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudette) try to deliver letters to a father they thought was dead and to an elder brother they did not know they had. They travel to the Middle East to retrace the journey Nawal (Lubna Azabal) took from the land of her birth to Canada and end up uncovering devastating family secrets.

Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies opens with a slap to the face and ends with a punch to the gut.

When siblings Simon and Jeanne find out the contents of their mother’s will, they react with anger and disbelief: Why were they never told about their brother? How can their father be alive? Who is this woman whom they called mother and yet know so little about?

These intensely personal questions anchor the moviegoer’s interest in the story even as a family mystery seems to shift into a political drama.

The tangled politics of Christians versus Muslims and powerful warlords is the incendiary, and sometimes confusing, back story that gradually unfolds. Zeroing in on Nawal’s journey, Villeneuve gives the film a sense of direction and focus.

It is all too easy to be numb to reports of internecine war and the senseless carnage it wreaks.

Here, the devastation is played out in one woman’s fate and in the eyes of the magnetic Azabal, perhaps best known for playing an anti-war activist in the Palestinian film about two friends-turned-suicide bombers in Paradise Now (2005).

She holds court as she ages from a young woman who pays a heavy price for falling in love over her family’s objections to a determined mother tracking down her child as war erupts around her and, finally, to a shell of a woman who is shocked into catatonic silence in her final days.

As the daughter searching for answers and the son who slowly comes to terms with his mother’s past, Desormeaux-Poulin and Gaudette are believable as well.

The ending might seem melodramatic to some but it is entirely plausible within the film and there is an implacable logic to it.

To reveal more would be to rob you of the intense experience of watching the film. Suffice to say the emotional wallop it packs at the end will leave you reeling.

(ST)

Overheard 2

Alan Mak, Felix Chong

The story: Manson (Lau Ching Wan) is the frontman broker for a group of Hong Kong tycoons known as the Landlord Club. Their less-than-legal manipulation of the stock market is being monitored by the tech-savvy Joe (Daniel Wu), who has a score to settle with the head of the club, Tony Wong (Kenneth Tsang). Inspector Jack Ho (Louis Koo) has to find out who the bad guys are even as he is forced to do Joe’s bidding.

Despite the title and the return of key cast and crew members, Overheard 2 has nothing to do with the original 2009 film: the stories are not at all linked and the characters are totally different.

What they have in common is a thriller plot where modern surveillance technology is used and abused.

Previously, Lau Ching Wan, Daniel Wu and Louis Koo were on the same team. The situation in the current film is more complicated: Lau, the flawed moral centre of the first film, is more enigmatic here and you are never quite sure where his loyalties lie.

Koo is fairly sympathetic as a cop whose sense of justice is so strong, he even turns in his own wife. Unfortunately, the character is not developed enough.

Overheard 2 can be said to be Wu’s show as Joe employs cool technology in order to exact vengeance for past wrongs.

We are clearly meant to be rooting for him as he is the filial son trying to fulfil his mother’s wish before she topples over into the oblivion of Alzheimer’s disease. Wu also gets to show his stuff as an action leading man as he is involved in the car and foot chase that opens the film.

Writer-directors Alan Mak and Felix Chong are in their element in the tight action scenes – keep an eye out for how Wu wields his motorcycle as a weapon in yet another high-speed pursuit.

There is definitely an attempt to ramp up the thrill level in this chapter but the film still sags in the middle. And for all the high-octane goings-on, Overheard 2 feels less tightly knit and engaging compared to its predecessor.

At least Mak and Chong manage to bring things to an exciting end as Joe tries to outwit Tony Wong (a smug and scowling Kenneth Tsang) and his cronies at their own stock-market game.

With a credible follow-up in the bag, the Overheard series probably is not over and done with just yet.

(ST)

The Ripples

Ellen Loo

Hong Kong’s Ellen Loo makes a splash with her debut solo album. Better known as one-half of indie folk-pop duo at17, the singer-songwriter-guitarist proves she has the chops to go it alone.

There is a raw edge to her earthy tones. Right off the bat, she makes clear with the spirited The Girl Who Doesn’t Play Dumb that this is not some slick anonymous pop product.

This is followed by Freckles and Wait, two tracks that are undoubted highlights. The use of strings gives Freckles an air of doomed melancholy: “Loving you so fiercely, burying that weak shout/The wind blows and the rain departs, leaving me inundated.”

And the rhythmic repetition of words on Wait imbues it with a gently pulsating sense of yearning: “Wait wait, wait wait wait, wait wait wait/Wait for your glance/Wait wait, wait wait wait, wait wait again/Wait for you to say us.”

The record also features two Cantonese numbers: Complete, a dreamy duet with indie stalwart Anthony Wong, and Summer Of Love, probably the most mainstream track here. It also comes with a DVD which includes the music videos for The Girl Who Doesn’t Play Dumb, Freckles, Wait and Summer Of Love. Go ahead, take the plunge into her music.

Love Addict

Prudence Liew

Singer-actress Prudence Liew made her debut in 1986 with her self-titled Cantopop album. She took a break in the late 1990s, released a Mandarin record in 2000, vanished from the scene again, before making a comeback in 2009 with The Queen Of Hardships.

It has been a journey full of ups and downs for the twice-divorced Liew. And now this: an album of Mandarin covers focusing on her need for love. Too bad that the songs picked here are not a particularly revealing bunch. And too much of their arrangement falls into dreaded jazz-lite, easy-listening territory.

While her timbre has some colour, it is by no means alluring. She does a rendition of David Huang’s You Get Me Drunk, which Singapore singer Kit Chan covered as well in her Re-interpreting Kit Chan album earlier this year. Comparing both versions, I would rather go for Chan’s take as I prefer the cleaner, less dated arrangement and her more emotive vocals.

The breezy version of Chyi Chin’s The Original Me and a reworked Jungle Drums from Wong Kar Wai’s Days Of Being Wild are, at least, welcome attempts at something different. They won’t be enough to get you hooked on the album, though.

(ST)

Fortune Buddies

Chung Shu Kai

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Hong Kong’s Hui brothers found success with a string of comedies which focused on working-class folks and their hare- brained get-rich-quick schemes.

Fortune Buddies employs that same formula, but without success. Actor-hosts Louis Yuen, Wong Cho Lam and Johnson Lee share an easy chemistry and have that will-do-anything-for-a-laugh spirit which sees them togged out in bad drag and getting beaten up in wrestling matches.

Despite this, Buddies is only intermittently amusing and engaging. The Mandarin dub of the original Cantonese dialogue probably did not help, either.

The film is less a cohesive work than a series of gags and skits, making it hard for the audience to root for the characters, and yet it is not madcap enough to keep one in stitches. One is better off revisiting the Hui brothers’ classic flicks instead.

(ST)

Graceful Porcupine

Waa Wei

Moonlight

Soft Lipa & Jabberloop

Matzka

Matzka

Newcomers Matzka’s Best Band win at the Golden Melody Awards in June could just help raise the profile for their unique brand of Taiwanese reggae.

Their self-titled album, Waa Wei’s Graceful Porcupine and Soft Lipa & Jabberloop’s Moonlight are some under-the-radar releases that deserve to be heard.

Singer-songwriter Wei is probably best known here as she was the vocalist for the Taiwanese indie band Natural Q and is also the elder sister of pop singer Queen Wei.

The artist, who once sang about menstruation, may have mellowed a little though the title suggests she is not about to get too cuddly.

Trapped In is a definite highlight on her album as her ethereal voice floats above a delicate sheen of electronica. The whole song shimmers like the sunlit sea, but one with a dark undertow: “You are trapped in memories of me, I am trapped in your suspicions, neither of us can breathe.”

Meanwhile, the Sandee Chan-penned I Am Not A Mathematician plumbs the unknowability of the outcome in a love triangle. Waa Wei complements the naive-sounding lyrics with a babyish coo: “Me plus you minus love/Does that equal to you thinking of him.”

Also giving collaboration a good name is Taiwanese rapper Soft Lipa. On his third album, he works with Japanese jazz quintet Jabberloop to concoct a heady musical fusion on Moonlight.

Opener We Got Jazz spells out what’s involved here: “We got sax, trumpet, keyboard, bass, drums/And we got luv, we got soul, we got skillz, and we got jazz.”

Classic! points to his ambition. On it, he samples Yao Su-rong’s evergreen Not Coming Home Today and asks: “What’s the meaning of super classic? Won’t be changed, won’t be forgotten, won’t be stopped, won’t stop singing.”

The album is richly layered and both the elegantly elegiac She Waltzes With Time and the unsentimental Process ruminate on life and living.

This is the most exciting example of musical cross-pollination in the Chinese pop scene since home-grown singer- songwriter Hanjin Tan and rapper MC Jin’s Buy 1 Get 1 Free (2010).

On the subject of cross-pollination, Matzka’s Taiwanese reggae is an unlikely sounding hybrid that actually bears fruit.

Leader singer Matzka is from the Paiwan aboriginal tribe and while the album appropriates foreign musical forms, the results are undeniably Taiwanese with their colourful language and use of the indigenous dialect.

There is a good-time vibe and leery side to the band. He sings on M.A.T.Z.K.A.: “Looking at your chest’s D-cups makes me want to commit a crime.”

But there is a more serious side to them as well. On the track No K, the band wave the flag of ethnic pride: “Taiwanese, foreigner, can’t tell them apart/Aboriginal, black, can’t tell them apart/Taiwanese people sing Taiwanese songs!”

Even when they obliquely tackle racism and discrimination in Taitung Handsome Chap, they make you want to get your groove on.

So rock on with Matzka, soak up the Moonlight or just chill out with Porcupine. Better yet, make time for all three.

(ST)