Showing posts with label of. Show all posts
Showing posts with label of. Show all posts

Monday, November 11, 2013

A Battle Royal バトル・ロワイアル

You've likely already heard the rumours — forget what you think you know about The Hunger Games franchise since it's pretty darned blatantly sourced from better film Battle Royale (2000).

Thing is, that's in turn based on Kōshun Takami's 1999 novel, and there's a manga series of Battle Royale that was published from 2000 to 2005, illustrated by Masayuki Taguchi.

But let's get back to the cinematic outing.

This violent, often wildly hilarious — and disturbing — gem is p'raps not quite so obscure now, thirteen years on, as when it was first released in Japan.

Battle Royale would've made a far more fitting obituary for its director Kinji Fukasaku rather than its lesser sequel three years later — which in fact his son Kenta polished off after the director's death at age 72.

You certainly couldn’t take style, content and inspiration any further a field from Fukasaku, Sr.'s earlier adventure schlock-romp Legend Of 8 Samurai.

So clear your frazzled Hunger Games brain.


It’s a not-too-distant future.

Japan is again a fascist state. An arbitrarily-chosen bus full of high school kids are knocked out with sleeping gas, kidnapped, then shipped on to an isolated island — where they’re informed by their embittered former teacher Kitano ('Beat' Takeshi Kitano) that the only way they will leave said island is by killing all their classmates — or by ending up in a body-bag themselves. 

In order to enforce this mandate, each student is shackled with an exploding collar, à la Wedlock, and Kitano punctuates the students’ plight with a well-aimed penknife to one of the girl’s foreheads, thereby launching a battle for self-preservation.


READ MORE @ FORCES OF GEEK.
 

Saturday, August 10, 2013

BREAKING CAMP: Running School Camps in Japan is Weird


Last week, after twelve years in this country, I did something for the first time that's apparently quite the lure for English teachers in Japan, mostly because of the bonus-extra cash — going on a school camp during summer vacation.

In this case it was a three-day affair, attempting to teach a bunch of junior high school girls I'd never before met, without any idea of their English language level and no access to a PC, whiteboards, textbooks or a photocopier.

The lessons were conducted on the tatami-matted floors of their shared rooms at an inn near Yamanaka Lake, and my particular group of nine included the rowdiest and more stubborn members of the entire camp. I had one kid constantly questioning everything we did—sadly in Japanese rather than the language we were supposed to be practicing—along with a grumpy scowler, a girl who thought she was a bird, rivalries, and mood swings galore.

There were tears almost as often as there was laughter.

To top things off, one of the Canadian teachers had a meltdown, locked herself in her room, and refused to teach—meaning the other four instructors inherited that class as well.

Joy.

Being stuck teaching 13-year-olds from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm every day had me climbing the walls—and fired up to do something creative. Like drink a lot of beer from the convenience store located a kilometre away down a road in the middle of a tiny village with no streetlights.

READ MORE @ FORCES OF GEEK

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Aussie-Made Madmen Dishing Out Japan

Just did an interview with the very cool people @ Madman Entertainment in my hometown Melbourne—with their opinions on all things Japanese including anime and Akira Kurosawa. It's up at Forces Of Geek

Here's a sample or two:

"Australia has had a long history with Japanese cinema, TV and anime even if we didn’t always realise it at the time.

"For many years TV has been a window on Japanese culture through shows like Monkey Magic, Shintaro, Star Blazers, G-Force and Astroboy; and also culturally adjacent shows like Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. I think this has made Australia more receptive to seeing media from Japan.

"Also, for cinema, the growth of the Japanese Film Festival over the years demonstrates the popularity of the cinema here."


...and...

"The most ubiquitous name is certainly that of [Akira] Kurosawa. His breakthrough film Rashomon [1950] was so well-regarded that the first Foreign Film Oscar was created just for it. He gave us samurai films and helped inspired countless spaghetti westerns.  

"The Hidden Fortress and Sanshiro Sugata even helped shape Star Wars."

Read the entire piece here.

Saturday, April 6, 2013

BIG ON JAPAN: A Fistful of International Artists Croon The Country's Cultural Praises

Recently, I've been doing my best to mimic a literary ostrich since I've had my head buried deep inside assembly of the next novel.

Trouble is I have trouble picturing a big bird with a hardback and a pair of spectacles, wrapped in Harris tweed.

And I say assembly, because this brute not only deconstructs 1930s detective noir/pulp and 1960s Marvel comic book lore, but renovates them together as a conjoined tome over 100,000 words in length — stitched together by 35 images from 28 artists. 

It's the way comic books, after all, work in the real world.

Bryan Hitch's perception of Captain America in 2009 was far different from Jim Steranko's in 1969. Then compare and contrast John Buscema's chunky-thug idea of Conan the Barbarian in 1980 with the lithe, laddish figure originally put out by Barry (Windsor) Smith a decade earlier in 1970.

But now I'm geeky nitpicking. If I haven't lost you already, I swear I'll try harder, there are some pretty pictures still to come, and a bunch of other people take the verbal reins.

For now, suffice to say, this train of thought (the wayward one about comic book art) inspired me to ask artists from Australia (Paul Mason), the UK (Harvey Finch and Andrew Chiu — see picture at right), Italy (Giovanni Ballati), Russia (Saint Yak), Spain (Javier 'JG' Miranda and Carlos Gomez), Canada (Fred Rambaud), Mexico (Rodolfo Reyes), Chile (Juan Andres Saavedra — see picture above), the Philippines (Hannah Buena) and Argentina (Maan House), amongst others in Japan and America, to get involved drawing characters and events from the book — and then let their hair down for a rambunctious tête-à-tête together here.

All in all?

Putting together the novel has been like taking Lego and Meccano and making the pieces function together as a futuristic-retro superhero romp that mixes and matches 1930s Art Deco architectural lines with the gung-ho Soviet formalist propaganda style, twisted into '60s pop art sentiment and the huge influence of Jack Kirby. 

Anyway, Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? will be published via Perfect Edge Books some time around September, but what I'd like to share with you over the next couple of months of this column are the insights and opinions of some of the fascinating, talented and truly cool visual artists I've had the opportunity to touch base with — while attempting to keep the bulk of these within Flash in Japan's obvious perimeters: focused on, well, the Japanese archipelago.


If interested, you can read Part 1 of this interview @ FORCES OF GEEK.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?

Other news — namely re: writing.

I just signed the contract with Perfect Edge Books for my anthology The Condimental Op, and it’s now in production.

This baby should be published in 4-5 months.

We're cobbling together noir, surrealism, comicbook asides and dystopian, hardboiled moments colliding with snapshots of contemporary culture. Think 1989 right through to 2013.

You will even find some of the articles about Japan that have appeared on this blog, in Geek and Impact magazines, or at Forces Of Geek.

Incidentally, on the subject of novels, I just got a great review for my last one One Hundred Years of Vicissitude, with big thanks to Dan Wright @ Pandragon Reviews.

And I’ve received some more fantastic artwork for Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? (my upcoming dual homage to 1930s-40s noir and 1960s comicbooks chiefly produced by Marvel) from Canadian artist Fred Rambaud (see above, with Southern Cross on the motorbike) while Mexican artist Rodolpho Reyes is putting together still more.

If you’re curious, you can stay abreast of things here.

You can also read about some of the early '60s comicbook influences at my other blog.

Friday, October 19, 2012

100 Years of Underpinnings

This week my new novel surfaced on Amazon USA, and will be out shortly via Amazon UK and Amazon Japan.

After the big earthquake and tsunami in the Tōhoku region north of Tokyo last year, I felt like I very much wanted to give something back to Japan, my home for the past 11 years – a place that’s equal parts inspiring and puzzling, a fascinating collusion of kitsch and cool, with a history ten times longer than that of my home town, Melbourne.



One Hundred Years of Vicissitude was originally an idea I toyed with in 2007, and then shelved while I finished off Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat.


Some of the original notes did make it through to the final version, but at least 98 percent was written between September 2011, and April 2012 – and the tone is completely different.

The novel was swayed as much by family (my late grandfather Les, my wife Yoko and my six-year-old daughter Cocoa figured significantly in its composition) as it is by my two ‘home’ towns of Tokyo and Melbourne.

Aside the essential story of identical twin geisha, war, death and saké, other things weighed in on the mix and I’ve decided to outline some of these here – as they deserve all the kudos they can get – so, if you’re curious at all, read on at the website of esteemed noir/crime/mystery reviewer/journalist Elizabeth A. White.

Monday, October 15, 2012

100 Years of Vicissitude (published)

Hey, mates,

Yep, it's now confirmed – my second novel One Hundred Years of Vicissitude has just been published and is available as a paperback through new imprint Perfect Edge Books.

The novel is available here via Amazon USA – only $12 @ the moment (a $6 discount) in case anyone is… er… vaguely curious.

The Kindle version isn’t yet available, and orders through Amazon UK and Amazon Japan take a little longer. Still, friends of mine in Scotland and San Francisco already have a copy – though I haven’t seen one yet.

What’s the synopsis?

Roughly-speaking, this is the story of identical twin centenarians born on the first day of the Great Depression, one of whom loathes the other; it’s a purgatorial tour through twentieth-century Japanese history, with a ghostly geisha who has seen it all as a guide and a corrupt millionaire as her reluctant companion. Thrown into the milieu are saké, B-29s, Lewis Carroll, Sir Thomas Malory, Melbourne, The Wizard of Oz, and a dirigible – along with the allusion that Red Riding Hood might just be involved…

Some of the action also takes place in Melbourne as this is 5% a sequel/prequel to Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, which is actually available as a free PDF/epub.

Anyway, if you're bored, take a look-see. And the pretentious-sounding title is tongue-in-cheek, fear not...

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Incredible Zorori


He's a fox, he wears a Zorro mask, has 'Zoro' as part of his name (we'll forgive the missing 'r'), the blighter gets up to mischief, he unleashes belches and farts, and even has his nose shot off by a laser...

How was I ever going to be able to resist Kaiketsu Zorori, aka Incredible Zorori, a character created by Japanese writer/illustrator Yukata Hara, a man who also apparently wrote a tome called The Famous Fried Chicken Primary School.

To be honest, I was all set to do something this month that segued into a surreal Japan, the twisted lives of geisha and/or a warped afterlife, to coincide with the publication on October 16th of my new novel One Hundred Years of Vicissitude.  

But my daughter Cocoa just got back from the public library with her latest batch of the adventures of her hero Zorori, and I of course sat down to read over her shoulder. Surreal it is - comic adventures through a world populated by madcap animals and oddball beasties.

Cocoa has a lot to get through, and you can read more about Zorori @ Forces Of Geek.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Hard Labour & Other So-Called Travails

Bloody brilliant news for me – since I’m an Aussie, albeit currently an expat stuck in Tokyo – is that the fellow Melburnians @ Crime Factory are publishing their first anthology (Hard Labour) of Australian writers involved with the crime, noir and hardboiled genres.

This book is coming out on Oct. 8th, with sublime pulp cover art by Erik Lundy.

The line-up here is pretty mad – think Leigh Redhead, Helen FitzGerald, David Whish-Wilson, Garry Disher, JJ DeCeglie, Deborah Sheldon and more, including the Crime Factory crew themselves. I also have a story in the anthology, an unpublished prequel yarn featuring Floyd Maquina and Laurel Canyon from Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat.

By the way, if you’re interested at all in Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, the paperback is still just $4.74 from the publishers Another Sky Press, and they also offer the epub/pdf versions for FREE.

Otherwise, I’m hanging out for the publication of my 2nd novel One Hundred Years of Vicissitude next month (Oct. 26th) through Perfect Edge Books. This is where the Japan references hit hard. We just received a wunderbar review by very cool writer Raymond Embrack.

Recently I’ve done a couple of wayward interviews with some very nice people. I chatted with Lloyd Paige first up @ Today’s Paige, mostly about life in Japan, how it’s affected my writing, and specifics about character development in the upcoming novel.

I also just had gas-bagged with author Jeff Shear at The Six-Degree Conspiracy about both writing and making muzak (mostly my side-project Little Nobody) – hence allowing me to waffle on ’bout both passions – and did an interview in the latest (September) issue of WQ Magazine @ the Queensland Writers Centre, thanks to Jason Nahrung.

At the moment I have my head pretty much entrenched in novel #3, which I’ve blabbed about before in this blog. It’s titled Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? and is now sitting round the 60,000 word mark. There’s a lot more editing and reappraisal to go – but I’m pretty damned happy with progress here. Fingers crossed.


Other stuff coming up include a short story I’m lucky enough to have included in the charity-oriented Off the Record 2 – At the Movies, edited by Luca Veste and Paul D. Brazill and out at the end of this month. This actually features an all-star-cast of currently active pen-pushers I really, really dig – check out the line-up here. For this one I went with a kind of old-school, fun, Biggles-style.

I have more noir/horror aligned stories in Weird Noir (edited by K.A. Laity) and Crime Factory’s horror collection in the suitably titled Horror Factory, put together by Liam José.

Okay, personal rant out. Back to Japan-related stuff next entry.

Monday, August 13, 2012

6:00 am in Tokyo


I’m spending most of my waking hours, and the ones during which time I should be sleeping, waylaid by Japan’s lovely August humidity – and also on novel #3 – Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? The current pitch is this:

Heropa: a vast, homogenized city patrolled by superheroes and populated by the adoring masses. A perfect place a lifetime away from the rain-drenched, dystopic metropolis of Melbourne. So, who is killing the great capes of Heropa?

Yep, as you can figure out, the Capes are superheroes. Kind of. It’s set in the future Melbourne dystopia of Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat (without being a sequel) where the only escapism is a computer game wherein people play out the role of superhero/villain. All fun and games until someone starts knocking off these superheroes… hence the mystery.

Thing is I’m just past the half-way mark of writing the thing, so I’m sure there’ll be more twists and turns to come that I have no idea about at this stage. I just today changed my mind regarding tone – I had a dramatic segment set for the finale, which worked (I thought) as author, but detracted from the over all tone of the project. The simple fun of the comic.

While it’s shaping up as a wink, aesthetically speaking, to the Golden Age of comics in the 1930s/40s (one of my favourite periods for the noir, pulp, movies and cars) this is definitely more of an homage to the classic 1960s work of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at Marvel – and still gets to poke fun at the auspices of the Comics Code Authority.

There's also a sequence of a murder that reminded me of the death of Marat (and in particular that famous painting by Jacques-Louis David, so my wife Yoko sketched up this image above.

I waffled on a bit more about the writing stuff here.

Anyway, enough rambling. I need to get stuck back into the manuscript, if I can only ignore the fiendish cicada outside the window that sounds like a malfunctioning dentist’s drill.


Thursday, June 7, 2012

Pulp Ink 2 & other stuff

OK, been a bit el slacko on the updates department here, prob'ly due to an array of factors:

(a) I just had a quick vacation and gig in Sydney, (b) other social media drains my time, (c) I'm working too much, and (d) I've been focused on polishing off the new novel One Hundred Years of Vicissitude - which should be out in late July or August - as well as a batch of short stories.

In fact the short stories have been a great romp for me, since I hadn't worked with this kind of thing since my early 20s.

Luckily, some of 'em are going to see the light of day away from my Mac.

One is being published in the Pulp Ink 2 anthology through Snubnose Press, which focuses on a playful horror/noir vibe - other contributors include Heath Lowrance, Julia Madeleine, Patti Abbott, Eric Beetner and Matthew C. Funk.

Another is the upcoming Crime Factory Hard Labour collection of Australian-made noir/crime yarns. I also have stories coming out via Shotgun Honey and Solarcide (more news about these later), and we're currently developing the post-apocalyptic noir anthology The Tobacco-Stained Sky.

But this blog is s'posed to focus on Japan, so let's get back to the novel.

One Hundred Years of Vicissitude focuses on Japan from 1929 on into the near future. A mix of surrealism, mystery, a smattering of dystopia/steampunk, a tad noir/hard-boiled, and there's sci-fi/fantasy in there as well.

Included in the mix are nods and references to classic movies by Akira Kurosawa, Kon Ichikawa, Seijun Suzuki, Masahiro Makino, Mikio Naruse, Satoshi Kon, Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu. Some manga-ka you might know also get the homage thing - including Osamu Tezuka - along with the only visit to Tokyo by the Graf Zeppelin, sake, sumo, The Tale of Genji, James Bond, and the 1945 fire-bombing of this city.


There's some background guff about the whole caboodle now online @ the Pandragon Dan site.



Wednesday, May 9, 2012

East Dragon, West Dragon

When I was a wee tacker growing up in Melbourne, my dad picked up this second hand tome called Myths and Legends, published by Paul Hamlyn way back in 1959.

The illustrators were the insanely cool Alice and Martin Provensen, and it turns out that Martin was also the originator of the first Tony the Tiger character for Kellogg’s - an iconographic '50s feline that decorates my fave coffee mug these days.

About five years ago, I started writing for an American magazine called Geek Monthly and, a few issues in, they showcased a relatively new artist/illustrator named Scott Campbell, alias Scott C.

To me, his images were akin to the Provensens, channelled via Blackadder writers Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, and then stretched to the point of surreal hilarity by Dr. Seuss.

I was busy hacking together a novel at the time (Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat) and my publishers at Another Sky Press asked if I'd decided yet who I'd like to get to do the cover artwork.

That was now a cinch - all I had to do was track down and ask Campbell if he'd be interested. After some crap detective work, I did so, and he agreed in an instant, very few questions asked, and turned out a way cool couple of goats.

I always wanted to interview Scott in order to find out the buried treasure beneath his easy-going artist facade - and I finally did so this last month, on the back of his fantastic new children's tome East Dragon, West Dragon, which my six-year-old daughter Cocoa loves as much as me, by the way.

So, you can read the interview over @ FORCES OF GEEK.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

The Rabbit Hole


Wunderbar early feedback to the upcoming novel, from the great, super-cool reviewer Elizabeth A. White (ta, mate!!):

"When Andrez Bergen burst onto the scene in 2011 with Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, one of the most wonderfully creative and unique books I’ve had the pleasure to read, I wondered how he could ever possibly top it. 

"Well hold on, ladies and gentlemen, because with One Hundred Years of Vicissitude Bergen is once again taking readers on a wildly enchanting journey down the rabbit hole to an ethereal world rich with Japanese and pop culture, one which seamlessly melds history and the hereafter. Prepare to have your mind opened… then blown."


Check out Elizabeth's site here - well worth bookmarking for her taste in literature (and I'm not talking up mine!):
http://www.elizabethawhite.com/tag/one-hundred-years-of-vicissitude/

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Eight Isn't Enough


Last weekend — after nearly driving myself to madness — I finished off my second novel (as I crowed about in undignified fashion below!) and on Tuesday, signed it to a new, rather cool publisher called Perfect Edge Books.

Yep, it goes without saying that I’m still over-the-moon at the present time, if somewhat exhausted, and to celebrate I quaffed a little saké.

Just a smidgeon, I promise.

Which brings me in a celebratory mood to this month’s Flash in Japan over @ Forces of Geek, and thereby to one of my favourite Japanese myths - which also revolves around saké, as all the good ones do.

I actually did the research on this subject a few years back, for an article on nihonshu (saké) in the pages of the late, lamented magazine Geek Monthly.

That was how I stumbled upon the tale of a monster with a taste for the hard stuff, especially rice wine.

In my new novel, One Hundred Years of Vicissitude, I decided to nick some bits of my old research and stick them into the story, albeit padded out with dialogue, and (hopefully) a bit more fun.

The monster myth was one of them.

So, let’s jump straight into the unedited, raw manuscript I just finished - there might be a typo or two at this stage.

Just click HERE to go to Forces Of Geek.

Monday, April 2, 2012

One Hundred Years of Vicissitude


OK, I'm relatively over the moon, and a few kilometres beyond that. Last Sunday morning, at 7:09am precisely (I'm going by the time-tag on the email I sent), I finished off my second novel.

It's titled One Hundred Years of Vicissitude, and this time the focus is... JAPAN.

Strange, that, since I've lived here eleven years.

Here's the current promo-teaser we're using:

Narrated by a man we suspect to be dead, One Hundred Years of Vicissitude tells the story of identical twin geisha born on the first day of the Great Depression - and one of whom harbours an Iago complex toward the other. Thrown into the resulting concoction are zeppelins, A-bombs, 1940s Tokyo, 1970s Melbourne, King Arthur, Red Riding Hood, saké, and comic books.


I'll mention more here as things unravel, but in the meantime I'm heavily smitten with Damian Stephens' mock-up artwork - see picture.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Upcoming Japanese cinema, 2012


Well, by the time you read these words, the silly season is well and truly over (two months is fair enough time to lay it to rest), and over here in Japan we started 2012 with a bang: on January 1st there was a fairly hefty earthquake that shook Tokyo, just to ring in the new year in an oh-so-special special way.

Fortunately – this time around – there were no fatalities, tsunami or major damage.

Anyway, without further ado, I decided to get off my buttocks and do a mini round-up of some of the recent Japanese movies winging over your way.

You can over-analyze (or ignore) the article @ Forces Of Geek.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Odd Bedfellows on a Plate – Part 2


As I mentioned in the first part of this article back in December, Japanese food isn’t just about the sushi.

Or the fugu.

There’s a whole lot more, starting with the biggest meal of all – that consumed by... the sumo.

Sumo is one of Japan’s more internationally famous sports, probably because the spectacle of two exceptionally plump men – in a nation of exceptionally skinny people – wrestling one another, clad only in loin-cloths is, well, fascinating.

Sumo wrestlers would be nothing without their diet, though we do dangle the word “diet” here in an ironic sense.

Chanko-nabe is the food of the sumo. It’s a huge, simmering hot-pot that is chock-full of meat, fish and vegetables, best mixed with soy sauce, but sometimes also blended with mirin, miso, sake, and dashi stock (shavings of dried skipjack tuna mixed with edible kelp).

Leftover broth is often then consumed with a hefty plate of noodles.

It’s as highly nutritious in protein as it is gut busting, and is the principle dish gorged by sumo wrestlers to extend their hefty waistlines and add to already-impressive girths.

Some wrestlers enjoy the concoction so much that they quit the ring and instead become the chanko-cho, or chief chanko chef, for their wrestling stables, and eventually open their own restaurants – often with sumo memorabilia from their workhorse days adorning the walls.



READ MORE @ FORCES OF GEEK, with commentary from Japanese DJ/producers DJ Wada, Jin Hiyama & Lili Hirakawa.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

The Flawed Mountain Goat


Just got a GREAT review from Marcus Baumgart @ The Flawed Mind. Here's a taste:

"Andrez offers us one imagined future for Melbourne, and it has to be said that things don’t look so good. The dystopian Melbourne of Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, pitched at some distance into the future, has the unique distinction of being the only city left in the world. Unfortunately, things are not going terribly well in terms of civil liberties, the political climate or the environment. In fact, things are comprehensively fucked up on all fronts, and the portrait painted is of an overcrowded, polluted metropolis groaning under the control of a government vested in corporate interests and busy herding non-conformists and misfits into extramural death camps styled as ‘hospitals’.

"Despite this undeniable grimness, the novel is also pretty amusing, and it mines the noir vein with gay abandon, to use an old-fashioned phrase. Andrez wears his pop-culture influences on his sleeve, and the result is a compote that mashes up a plethora of fictional frameworks into a believable, seamless whole. Readers who know Melbourne will enjoy seeing the geography of the city rezoned and remapped, polarised by the presence of a dome over the CBD that shelters the wealthy elite. And god help you if you find yourself in Richmond, which Bergen transforms into a demilitarised wasteland; Abbotsford and other inner suburbs don’t fare much better.

"I for one appreciate someone taking the time to imagine an Australia of the future, as it is a welcome change to the ubiquitous North American setting of much popular fiction, and science fiction. Nevertheless, that wouldn’t be enough to recommend it. Happily, TSMG is also a ripping yarn in the best dystopian, gumshoe tradition.

"Oh, and on a final note, you will thoroughly enjoy the company of the protagonist, Floyd Maquina – he is ruggedly handsome and generally ruined; witty, self destructive and self-effacing with his air of gracious defeat..."

You can check out more at Marcus' website.

We have a swag of other review and interviews up at the Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat website HERE.

Personally speaking, this is wunderbar encouragement since I'm currently in the middle of writing the next novel, which goes under the acting title of One Hundred Years of Vicissitude. More about that shortly, or you can check out the Facebook page (I got in early) here.

Friday, October 14, 2011

Genji: Modish Millennium Man?


As outlined here a couple of entries back, I recently slunk back to Tokyo after three of the most über-intensive days’ traveling in my life, down in the grand old capital city of Kyoto.

Despite a decade living in the newer capital (Tokyo) I'd never actually been to Kyoto before - as inexcusable as that sounds—and it was one of the best jaunts I’ve had in recent years.

At the same time I’d also started to attack a new novel, which has the current title of One Hundred Years of Vicissitude. This is, I stress, the interim title only and - yes - it is partially a cheeky reference to Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (shhh), though the main character in the novel is a centenarian and there’s a lot of change going on. If I get a letter from Señor Márquez or his lawyers I’ll probably consider also changing the name of the bugger.

Concurrently in my other job (teaching English) I’ve been yacking with a lot with students and friends about a famous 1,000-year-old Japanese tome called The Tale of Genji (源氏物語 Genji Monogatari), and have been itching to run something about it with my mates at Forces of Geek.

Anyway, as they conspire to do, these various things got together and chewed out my brain a bit, resulting in a novel that’s shaping up - in the early stages at least; I’m only up to page 67 - as partially an inane travelogue.

I’ll probably shaft some of the passages, ditch others, find a ghostwriter, and rewrite the remainder. By the way the ghostwriter reference is a pun since a dead man narrates the story. One Hundred Years of Vicissitude is possibly going to be a five percent sequel/prequel of my other novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat - and 95 percent something else entirely.


At the moment, in the existing manuscript, this is a section/riff that gets across the whole background of The Tale of Genji so I thought I’d snatch that and share it with you, instead of writing up a fresh article from a journalistic perspective.

To be honest I also hope you don’t mind plodding through to uncover the historical morsels. This is barely edited and unnaturally long-winded stuff at times, plus I’ll probably toss out some of the dialogue/asides if I end up using it in the novel - at all.

If curious and/or at all interested, you can read more @ FOG.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Tokyo Disneyland: Rodents Galore


You might know Disneyland. Then again, it's possible you may not.

The keys to this particular magic kingdom have been handed into the care of an organization of amalgamated Japanese companies best known under the alias of the Oriental Land Company (or just plain OLC), which originally contacted the Walt Disney Company in the 1960s with plans for an amusement park - but were knocked back.

The company reapplied a decade later, and this time succeeded in arranging a licensing contract.

Tokyo Disneyland opened to the general public on April 15th, 1983, and has developed into the most frequently-visited theme park in the world – with over 17 million visitors a year.

Now, with over 45 rides covering an area of 115 acres, Tokyo Disneyland continues to experience larger crowds by the day - aside from a few weeks after the March 11 earthquake, which damaged some of the carparking area - to the point that there’s barely room to breathe, let alone stroll, and queues of up to three hours are often the norm on weekends and public holidays. Right now they have the whole Hallowe'en thing happening there and it's an extremely popular time of year.

One time in October three years ago we were forced to queue for over two hours for one of the older school, more humdrum rides - Snow White's Adventures.


Tokyo Disneyland is pretty much modeled on L.A. Disneyland, except for one important omission – there’s no Matterhorn - while the Haunted Mansion here is located in Fantasyland and has the same facade as the one in Walt Disney World in Florida.

There are also attractions unique to Japan’s visitors: the Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour, which features Disney villains, and Pooh's Hunny Hunt - which is a surreal and hilarious spin-out of a ride that just begs to be experienced.

And where else will you experience swash-buckling Pirates of the Caribbean rabble-rousing and carousing... in gruff jidaigeki-style Japanese voices?

If all this isn’t enough, right next door is Tokyo Disneyland Resort's second mega-attraction: Tokyo DisneySea, opened in 2001, and boasting its own array of rides, shows, dining, and so on – including Journey To the Center of the Earth, Sinbad's Storybook Voyage in the faux Arabian Coast area, Storm Rider, Ariel's Kingdom, and the Indiana Jones Temple of the Crystal Skull ride.

And, dammit, as much as I despise Mickey and I don't want to dig the place, it's downright fun.