clockwise around the caspian sea
- Iran (Wikipedia)
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), also known by its Western-given name Persia, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Iraq to the west and Turkey to the northwest, Azerbaijan, Armenia, the Caspian Sea and Turkmenistan to the north, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south.
- Central Asia (Wikipedia)
Central Asia is a subregion of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the southwest and Eastern Europe in the northwest to Western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the “-stans” as all have names ending with the Persian suffix “-stan” (meaning “land of”) in both respective native languages and most other languages.
- Asia (Wikipedia)
Asia (/ˈeɪʒə/ AY-zhə, UK also /ˈeɪʃə/ AY-shə) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometers, about 30% of Earth’s total land area and 8% of Earth’s total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the human population, was the site of many of the first civilizations. Its 4.7 billion people constitute roughly 60% of the world’s population.
- Turkmenistan is a country in Central Asia bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, east and northeast, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the south and southwest and the Caspian Sea to the west. Ashgabat is the capital and largest city. It is one of the six independent Turkic states. With a population of 6.5 million, Turkmenistan is the 35th most-populous country in Asia and has the lowest population of the Central Asian republics while being one of the most sparsely populated nations on the Asian continent.
- The Hidden Fortress (allthetropes.org)
Kakushi Toride No San Akunin (which translates approximately to “Three Bad Men of the Hidden Fortress”) is Akira Kurosawa’s first widescreen film. The film is a Jidai Geki with an interesting twist: rather than concentrating on The Hero, the film instead focuses on a pair of bickering peasants, with none of the other major characters putting in an appearance until twenty minutes or so in. Once the audience’s sympathies have been firmly attached to the peasants, the Hero, the Rebellious Princess, and the rest of the film’s major characters begin to show up. From then on, it’s a series of hairbreadth escapes as the protagonists have to travel through enemy territory to reach safety.
