Tampopo/Juno

On Friday night I went out with friends from Sanctus1. We started off in the new Tampopo at the Triangle in Manchester. It's Asian fusion food - I had Mee Goreng Chicken, getting in practice for my trip to Indonesia in the summer, followed by chocolate icecream. I really liked the style - long benches, so you could end up sitting next to a random stranger - good for a night out with friends but possibly not for a romantic dinner... The staff were very friendly and helpful and the food was delicious, though reasonably spicy - so not ideal if you don't like spicy food at all. The only small problem we had was that one person's main course was burnt so she sent it back and it was replaced with something undercooked, followed by the wrong pudding - although again this was speedily replaced. Definitely worth another visit.

After this we saw Juno - a fantastic film about a pregnant teenager. It was unmoralistic - no goodies or baddies, just flawed people dealing with problems as they arise - unsentimental and very funny – it reminded me of Napoleon Dynamite in its style. The acting was fantastic – so much shown without any words. I was concerned about the portrayal of the potential adoptive couple - a neurotic woman desperate for a baby with a husband who just wasn't sure: a bit of a cliched gender stereotype - but because of the strengths of the characters each person was an individual rather than representative of a group. Equally, there's been some debate about whether Juno is pro-life but I think the decision is portrayed as an individual one, set in the context of being 16 and pregnant, rather than a comment on all abortions everywhere, ever. One thing I loved was Juno's immaturity -she was funny and clever but the state of pregnancy didn't make her suddenly wiser, more virtuous or more mature - there was no suggestion that being pregnant makes you an adult, or a woman, or that pregnancy is the ultimate state for all women. And it managed all this with hardly any showing of sex or babies...