In addition to the Tokushima show I wrote about last week, I also participated in a show in Tokyo this week. That’s right, two shows in as many weeks, check me out! (Though literally hundreds of people were accepted for the Tokyo one, so don’t be too impressed.)

Rather than upload my photos of the event here, I’ll just direct interested parties to the Facebook album I made for it:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=155259&id=594318912&l=2be133fc5b

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”…

(Note: this blog entry is in lieu of the entry I usually put up on Friday. So the next blog entry will go up on March 5th.)

Sometimes I run across things that most people understand instantly & intuitively that I just can’t keep straight.

You know those faucets that just have one big handle in the middle? The left half is red to indicate hot, and the right half is blue to indicate cold. I’m guessing most people intuitively “get” which way to turn the handle to get the desired temperature. But not me. I always just turn it at random, and if I get the wrong temperature, turn it the other way.

If I took a second I could figure it out without resorting to trial and error. I get the design theory behind single handle faucets. Since the left side is red/hot, turning towards the left side means you’ll get hot water.

I think the reason it doesn’t click for me on an intuitive level is because by turning the handle towards the left, you move the red side out of your line of vision, and the blue side in. So to get hot water, you need to position the faucet so all you see is blue. It just doesn’t feel right to me, dammit!

Another simple concept I can’t intuitively get relates to blogs. Most blogs show the newest 10-20 entries on the front page, and you can click a link to see older ones. When you get to the bottom of the second page, you can either continue on and read even older entries, or return to the front page.

Now: when the links say “newer entries” and “older entries” or something like that, I’m fine. But oftentimes, it just says “Next” and “Previous”, and I can never keep them straight. “Next” takes you to a new page (which has older entries), and the “Previous” takes you to the page you were on before (which has newer entries). So if you want to see previously written stuff, you don’t click “Previous”, you click “Next”. I always click the wrong one, and end up on the wrong page. I’m dumb.

Whenever we meet someone from, say, Thailand, we do our best to simulate the native pronunciation of their name. The Thai way of saying it is considered to be “correct”, and when our English-speaking tongues are unable to faithfully recreate the sounds, we sheepishly apologize for our substandard approximation.

I was surprised to learn recently that this idea, that people’s names have an absolute “correct” pronunciation, isn’t universal. I was talking to a Japanese grad student named Ms. Kawai, who had recently returned from a year abroad in China. During the course of our conversation, she mentioned that her Chinese friends and colleagues called her Chuan-He. When I asked why, she told me that Chuan-He is the way the characters that make up her name are pronounced in Chinese.

Apparently, “translating” Japanese names into the Chinese pronunciation is not at all uncommon. This speaks to underlying differences between English and Chinese.

The English written language is tied to sounds. The letter “M” doesn’t mean anything, it simply represents an “mmm” sound. Only by stringing letters together do we get words that have meaning.

The Chinese written language, on the other hand, is tied to meaning. Each Chinese character intrinsically represents a concept.

Pronunciation in Chinese can vary wildly depending on what dialect you’re speaking. Someone who grew up speaking Mandarin Chinese wouldn’t understand a word of Cantonese Chinese. In fact Mandarin and Cantonese are different enough that they would probably be called different languages (rather than just dialects of the same language) if it weren’t for the common writing system. Pronunciation isn’t absolute in written Chinese, meaning is. So rather than struggle with the Japanese pronunciation of a Japanese name, they just say it the Chinese way.

Isn’t that interesting?

Didn’t have time to write a proper blog entry this week, so instead I’ll just link to an article about irritating film clichés.

They’re all pretty good examples, but the last one particularly drives me nuts when I see it in movies. That being the cliché of “children being avatars for insight into the human condition”.

Years ago I saw the movie S1m0ne during its theatrical release (don’t ask). It’s a terrible movie, and probably one I would have completely forgotten except for one quote that bothered me so much that I still remember it to this day. The junior high school aged daughter of the main character is concerned about her father, and says to him “I want the old Viktor Taransky back.”

What kind of kid talks like that? Can you imagine when you were in junior high saying to your dad “I want the old [your father’s full name] back.”?? I know it’s totally nothing, but for whatever reason that quote still drives me nuts.

Via The Onion’s A.V. Club

Milk, vinegar and grapefruit? It’s like they read my mind!

Lawson, the Japanese convenience store chain, sells chicken nuggets in three flavors: “Regular”, “Spicy” and “Cheese”. Occasionally they’ll introduce a forth flavor which they offer for a limited time.

The other day I went into Lawson and noticed they had a new flavor called “Pizza Potato”. “What the hell does that mean?” I thought. Was it supposed to taste like pizza topped with potatoes or something? I was intrigued, so I bought some.

As it turned out, the flavor was modeled after a brand of popular pizza-flavored potato chips.

So basically, they were pizza-flavored potato chip-flavored chicken nuggets. I can imagine the critique session when they were trying to get the taste just right: “Well, this does taste like pizza, but it doesn’t taste like pizza-flavored potato chips. Keep at it!”

It reminded me of a time a few months ago, when I went to a different Japanese convenience store and bought some “European-style” curry. It occurred to me later that I, an American, was eating the Japanese version of the European version of an Indian food. That’s the world we live in, I guess.

Apparently, hoods have a very negative connotation in Japan.

It was just a few weeks ago that I became aware of this, while walking to the mall with a Japanese friend. My ears started to get cold, so I put my hood on. Based on my friend’s reaction, you’d've thought I’d just put on a leather gimp mask.

“What are you doing??” she chirped, “Take that off!”

“Huh? Why?” I said.

“It looks suspicious!”

“Who cares? I’m freezing!” I said, leaving my hood on.

She’s short, but that didn’t stop her. She leapt up like she was shooting a free throw, and physically removed my hood. When I tried to put it back on, I got more of the same. She refused to be so much as seen with a hood-wearer.

We argued for a bit. “Are hats okay?”, I asked. She said yes. “Well, a hood is just a hat that’s attached to your jacket!” My iron-clad argument failed to win her over. Noticing she had a hood on her own jacket, I asked her what is was for. “Decoration” was her reply.

I assumed she was crazy, so I asked other Japanese friends about it, looking for backup. Much to my surprise, everyone sided with her. Even in the freezing cold dead of winter, wearing a hood is a suspicious act. None of the friends I surveyed wore the hoods attached to their jackets, no matter how cold it got.

Okay, I guess every culture has its own illogical social norms, but I find the hood taboo particularly contradictory, because it’s perfectly socially acceptable in Japan to wear a surgical mask that covers up the entire lower half of your face; people often wear them to avoid catching/transmitting colds.

Figure 2

Can you imagine walking into a bank in the U.S. wearing one of these? You’d be tackled by a security guard before you made it ten steps…

Happy New Year!

Every year since I first started this blog in 2007, I’ve written a New Year’s entry reflecting on the year that was.

As I looked over last year’s entry in preparation to write this year’s installment, I realized that not much has changed. I’m still working on the second volume of my graphic novel Tonoharu, and still attending Shikoku University on an East Asian calligraphy research scholarship from the Japanese Government.

So this year, rather than write a recap of 2009, I’ve decided to write about the year to come, as it will bring dramatic change to my life. My two-year research scholarship is nearing its end. In about three months time I’ll be packing up my things and returning to the States.

I’ll write a comprehensive reflection on the experience when the time comes, but for this entry I’ll limit my remarks to what it will mean for me financially, as this has been weighing heavily on my mind recently.

When the scholarship ends, with it will go the monthly stipend that has been covering my living expenses since April 2008. The stipend was just barely enough to get by on, but it allowed me to devote myself to my research (and cartooning) without having to worry about shrinking savings accounts or part time jobs.

With the end of the scholarship imminent, financial concerns I have been blissfully ignoring for the past twenty-odd months have returned to the forefront of my mind. I need to decide what I’m going to do once the Japanese Government stops paying my bills. This decision effectively boils down to two alternatives: looking for a “real” job, or continuing my absurd little experiment of trying to profit from my comics.

I’ll admit I’m a dreamer (no reasonable person would even consider trying to make a living as a cartoonist) but I’d like to think I’m not completely out of touch with reality. If my efforts to earn a living as a cartoonist hadn’t produced any meaningful results by now, I’d like to think I’d see the writing on the wall. I’d relegate cartooning to the status of “hobby”, and seek my fortunes elsewhere.

It’s just that there have been so many encouraging signs. I got a $10,000 grant to self-publish Tonoharu: Part One. It was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal and Entertainment Weekly. The first printing sold out in a matter of months. I got the two-year research scholarship thanks in large part to the examples of Tonoharu that accompanied my application. My comics aren’t anywhere near earning me a living wage, but I have made some money off of them. I feel that for a first-time, self published author, I’ve done quite well.

And then there are other comics-related revenue streams that I’ve been meaning to explore, which I never got around to because I was preoccupied with my research. I’d like to try selling original art and foreign publication rights. I’d like to try giving presentations/lectures about my work/Japan/East Asian calligraphy/whatever (some authors say that it’s through presentations, not book sales, that they make most of their money). In the past couple months I’ve applied for a few other art/publication-related grants, so that may bring a few bucks my way.

Also, I never really gave Tonoharu: Part One the marketing push I should’ve given it, since I left for Japan to begin my research on the same month it came out. When Tonoharu: Part Two comes out later this year (in the third or forth quarter, if you’re curious), I hope to give it the sustained marketing push that I should’ve given Part One, and see if that translates into increased sales.

So for the short term at least, I’m going to continue my foolhardy pursuit of a cartooning career. This will mean I’ll have to dip into my savings, which have already been significantly reduced by the stock market crash and breaking my ankle without insurance, but hey. You gotta follow your dreams… er… right?

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Right off the bat I should mention that the above video won’t be of any interest to anyone who hasn’t played Super Mario 64, so you can just skip the video (and the rest of this blog entry) if you fall in that camp.

For those who are familiar with the game, an explanation of what the player is trying to do: after making the 1UP mushroom appear by climbing a tree, he tries to evade it while collecting all eight red coins, and then the star that subsequently appears. Another self-imposed rule is that he can’t enter the log cabin, as that makes the 1UP disappear (though he can use the bridge warp to get back to the top of the mountain, as the 1UP remains active in that event). If the 1UP catches him, he fails and has to start over again.

The first two minutes of the video are a little boring, but a highlight reel of his failed attempts that starts at 1:55 is pretty funny. His final, successful attempt begins at the six minute mark.

When I played Mario 64 I never really tried to run away from 1UP mushrooms, so it’s funny to see how tenacious they are in trying to catch Mario, even going through walls in their tireless pursuit. They remind me of terminators or something.

At the end of the video it says he tried for roughly nine hours before finally succeeding. Rock on, dude!

I hadn’t planned on posting two Koko the Clown cartoons back-to-back, but this week sort of slipped through my fingers, and I didn’t really have time to write a proper entry. Hopefully next week we’ll have something different.

Another thing I appreciate about Koko cartoons in addition to the line work is how unpredictable they are. This is true of much of the early work from the Fleischer Studios; you never really know what direction they’re going to take.

I guess you could argue that the “random for random’s sake” approach utilized in Fleischer cartoons is hardly the epitome of storytelling, but there’s something to be said for stories that actually offer genuine surprise. A friend of mine once told me that one of the reasons he liked the movie Eyes Wide Shut is because while he was watching it, he had no idea whatsoever how it was going to end. Most movies don’t have that sort of tension. When I see a typical romantic comedy I’m not really thrilled when the two leads get together in the end because there was never any doubt that they would. On the other hand, when I first saw the movie Show Me Love, *SPOILER* I was really happy when the two main characters got together in the end because it really seemed possible they might not. *END SPOILER*

So that’s why a little unexpectedness is nice to have every now and again oh my god an escaped bear just got in here and he’s eating me