Category Archives: JAPAN

Catch me at JASM’s Shinnenkai (maybe)

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Every January, the Japan America Society of Minnesota has a Shinnenkai, or New Year’s Celebration. It’s the group’s big event of the year, with Japan-related demonstrations and performances and a bunch of other stuff. It’s a good time.

This year’s Shinnenkai takes place this Sunday, January 16th 2011.  I’ll be there with a booth, selling my comics… maybe. It takes place way out in Hopkins, and buses aren’t an option since I’d be lugging a bunch of books (and it’d take two hours one way). So if I can get a ride, I’ll be there. If not, not. :-)

But you, dear reader, should go anyway! It’s a lot of fun.

Event Details
What: JASM’s Shinnenkai
When: Sunday, January 16th from 4-8pm
Where: Eisenhower Community Center, 1001 Minnesota 7, Hopkins, MN 55305 [Google Maps]
Admission: $12 adult ($17 for non-members), $12 college student/senior, $7 for children (6-17 years), children 5 years & under free

More details can be found on JASM’s website

*UPDATE* Looks like I’ll be able to make it out there. See you there, folks!

The World’s Greatest Hair Removal Logo

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Back when I lived in Fukuoka, Japan, a girlfriend showed me a flier for a waxing place that used the  above logo. The concept and execution are so wonderfully bizarre; the ugliness of the monkey, the little red bow, its proud display of its freshly waxed, hairless armpits…

I saved the flier for a while, but somehow it got lost in the shuffle. Years later when I started this blog, I wanted to share the logo with my readership, but I couldn’t remember the name of the waxing place, and a google search of “Japanese monkey hair removal logo” unsurprisingly failed to bring up anything meaningful.

Just yesterday I randomly ran into it again as a part of this collection of Japanese trademarked characters. That entry also links to an extensive database of Japanese trademarks; it’s incredibly user-unfriendly, but still pretty interesting. It can be found here.

Via Pink Tentacle

Friendship Abroad

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(Very Mild) Spoiler Alert: This entry discusses the story of Tonoharu: Part Two in abstract terms. Unless you’re really spoiler-adverse you should be fine; I won’t be going over specific plot points or anything. But if you’d rather not know the overall direction the story is going in, this entry would best be skipped.

***

One of my main objectives in creating Tonoharu is to paint a portrait of what it’s like to live in a foreign country for an extended period of time.

Several friends who read Tonoharu: Part One told me they had no idea I had such a terrible time in Japan. Actually I had a wonderful experience, but I can understand why they’d assume otherwise. The first book focuses almost exclusively on the loneliness and isolation that are a part of any prolonged stay in a foreign country. But this isn’t the entirety of the experience; in Tonoharu: Part Two, I try to show other facets of life abroad, with a particular focus on the relationships that develop.

In your home country, your pool of potential friends is almost unlimited. You can pick and choose who you spend time with based on compatibility and shared interests.

But in a foreign country, the language barrier prevents meaningful interaction with the vast majority of the population. In the rural areas of countries where English education is poor (such as the Japanese countryside, the setting of Tonoharu), your pool of potential friends can be in the single digits. You either spend time with whoever is around, or you do without human companionship.

If you absolutely can’t stand the people who make up your minuscule friend pool, this can suck. But just as often it can be a blessing in disguise. It forces you into the company of people you’d probably otherwise never socialize with, which allows you to see the world through the eyes of people whose interests, beliefs and outlooks are very different from your own. In this way, even spending time with other foreigners can be a horizon-broadening aspect of life abroad.

Tonoharu: Part Two will be coming out this November. For more information, visit:
larsmartinson.com/tonoharu2

Reverse Culture Shock

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I recently returned from a two-year stay in Japan. It’s the longest I’ve ever been outside of the U.S., so I was expecting the reverse culture shock to be pretty severe. But as it turned out, it wasn’t that bad. I’ve lived abroad on four separate occasions now, so I guess I’ve gotten used to the novelty of returning home.

That said, there were a couple small things that surprised me:

1) The large drinks in the U.S. are HUGE. A Japanese “large” soda is about the size of a US small or medium, only with no free refills. Japanese people just don’t drink that much; I usually would’ve finished my drink by the time my Japanese friends had taken a sip. I always thought the Japanese drink portions were too small, but I got used to them over the past two years. So when I ordered my first large soda at O’Hare Airport, I couldn’t believe how big it was. I couldn’t even finish it.

2) The roads in the U.S. seem obscenely wide after two years in Japan. A typical American suburban street is as wide as a four-lane highway. And two of those four lanes are just for parking. Again, this isn’t downtown, this is in the suburbs, where there’s virtually no traffic and everyone has a driveway. I guess I’m not arguing for narrower roads or anything, I’m just saying it sort of surprised me…

Graduation

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By Wednesday evening of next week, my tenure as a Monbukagakusho research scholar will officially be over, and I’ll be back in the United States for the first time in two years.

It hasn’t even begun to sink in, but that’s par for the course for me. In addition to Japan I’ve previously lived Thailand and Norway for extended stays, and in every case the imminence of my return to the States doesn’t really hit me until I board the plane. Or until the first time I handle dimes, nickels and quarters again. Or until I step out into Minnesota air that’s thirty degrees colder than the air I had breathed half a day before.

I came to Japan to study East Asian calligraphy in the hopes that it would improve my comics, and it has, profoundly. But after two years I think the law of diminishing returns has started to kick in, so the timing to pack it in and move on is probably about right. Also, this had been the longest continuous stretch that I’ve ever been abroad, so I’m really excited to see family and friends again.

On the other hand, I’ve had such a great experience here that I’m sad that it’s come to an end. My Japanese has finally reached the point where I can actually communicate with people in a semi-normal manner, and as such I’ve made much closer Japanese friends than the last time I stayed here. So it’s harder to say goodbye to them than the last time I lived in Japan. Oh well, all good things must come to an end.

By no means am I done with traditional East Asian art. I plan to continue to study calligraphy on the side, and hope to study sumi-e ink painting as well. Regular readers may recall that I’m working on a comic book about East Asian calligraphy, and I intend to eventually finish that as well (don’t hold your breath, though).

Well, I’ve got a lot of packing and last minute preparations to do, so I’ll leave it at this. I’ve prepared a couple entries to go up the next two Fridays so I don’t have to worry about them while I’m settling back in to life in the States. After that I’ll write about what’s in store for me next. So stay tuned, dudes!

Come See My Work, Tokushimites!

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Starting today (Tuesday, February 23), some of my work will be on display here in Tokushima, Japan. It’s a very small, informal group show for Shikoku University’s Calligraphy Department research students (all three of us).

My contributions amount to two pieces of mediocre calligraphy, and about ninety pieces of original art from Tonoharu: Part Two. Here are the deets:

Dates: Tuesday, February 23, 2010—-Friday, February 26, 2010
Time: 9am to 5pm
Location: The second floor of Shikoku University Kouryuu Plaza, Tokushima, Japan

See you all there!

What’s that you say? You live on the wrong side of the planet and I haven’t given you enough notice to book a ticket to Japan? In that case, here’s a few images of what you’re “missing”… Continue reading Come See My Work, Tokushimites!→