salt and pepper drawings and mail

I went to Kekkojin Milk Hall on the weekend to see Satou Rei’s exhibition, “かわいい！ sugar, sugar, petit paix…” (top picture) I suppose you can’t really see it in this particular picture, but most of the drawings still had the fresh-out-of-the-notebook/frayed edges look that’s influenced by Daniel Johnston’s torn notebook style. Rei’s drawings are always nice to see, as they are a mixture of cute, funny, and strange. I still smile to myself whenever I think of her image of a hand coming out of cloud with the words “god hand” underneath. I suppose that’s the real meaning of life, isn’t it? Mother Nature/God/Buddha/Force/whatever is floating in the universe and then one day decides to stick his or her hands through the atmosphere & clouds, touching Earth. As for the cafe where the exhibition was held, the cheesecake and coffee there was so delicious, and the atmosphere is very cute and lovely, too — full of old magazines, zines, and so on. Heartily recommended.

Since Rei made of portrait of me (with Rilakkuma, my favorite bear), I tried to make a portrait of Rei. (second picture) I hope I didn’t embarrass her too much. I didn’t like what I came up with at Kekkojin, so I re-did it when I went back home.

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In other news, I have been getting lots of wonderful things in the mail recently. Today’s lovely treat came from a place near Pampa Safari, where the capybaras roam. DVDs, magazines, books, a scarf/belt, a red beret, and alfajor!! Glutton that I am, of course I smashed the alfajor in my mouth immediately upon discovering them, eating all three in quick succession, and of course I didn’t feel guilty at all but felt rather pleased and smitten with deliciousness. The beret is an Argentinian beret, though I feel a bit like Madeline wearing it. I guess Madeline never wore a red beret, though, did she?

Another lovely package I got in the mail came from comic wunderkind José-Luis Olivares. I may have mentioned him here on this blog before. He and I made a little book together when we were both in Japan last year – No Inaka. Now he’s at the Center for Cartoon Studies, and he so kindly sent me a recent comic he made – End of Eros. It’s really, truly good, and reminds me a bit of Takashi Nemoto’s work.

You can read and/or buy the comic at José-Luis’s website & blog.

Hat Collection / Paperwork

Click here to view the entire book. Can you tell I adore hats?

In boring life news, I finally have turned in graduate school applications. It always seems, however, that whenever I get a chance to breathe a sigh of relief, the list of errands and to-be-filled-out forms expands. Future tax forms loom especially in my horizon. I suppose no one enjoys these things, though. I wish humans could hibernate and not think about anything for half a year. Wouldn’t that be delightful? Maybe then my eyes wouldn’t twitch so much…

But – and this is my not-boring life news – I have tickets to go away for a bit and ignore/worry about paperwork from afar. That means that I can look forward to almost-hibernating from the doldrums of life for a couple of weeks. Bangkok, Kunming, Hong Kong I go!!!

Books of 2008

(In order that I read them)
1. Snow Country Yasunari Kawabata
2. Austerlitz W.G. Sebald
3. Kokoro Natsume Soseki
4. Lizard Banana Yoshimoto
5. 猫目小僧 (Cat-Eyed Boy) 楳図かずお (Kazuo Umezu) *
6. Some Prefer Nettles Junichiro Tanizaki
7. Confessions of a Mask Yukio Mishima
8. ブッダ 第１巻:カピラヴァストウ (Buddha Volume 1: Kapilavastu) 手塚治 (Osamu Tezuka)*
9. Thousand Cranes Yasunari Kawabata
10. Modern Japanese Literature ed. by Donald Keene
11. The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy
12. Nausea Jean-Paul Sartre
13. Modern Japanese Stories ed. by Ivan Morris
14. Patriotism Yukio Mishima
15. 双子のオヤジ (The Twin Middle-Aged Men) しりあがり寿 (Shiriagari Kotobuki)*
16. 子供の遊び (Child’s Play) 西岡兄妹 (Nishioka Kyoudai)*
*read in Japanese

An unremarkable year in reading. One of my goals in 2009 is to read a little more, and my aim is to read one manga in Japanese and one book in English every month.

I don’t really know why I really like reading in the first place, but whenever I do stumble upon a good book, I think its ability to make me believe (however fleetingly) that books are capable of influencing insight and the imagination is usually enough for me. Sometimes, certain books (anthologies I read in 2008) are hard to get through, though, and the only goal I have then is to just finish since I don’t want to see such heavy, boring books hanging around, anymore. Out of the books I read, though, I can recommend some interesting, non-boring ones: Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask (This is the only book I like by him that I’ve read so far), Sartre’s Nausea, and the manga I read this year was pretty all right, too.

I’m now halfway through Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, having picked it out from the dust of my bookshelves after many months. It’s not light reading, and I won’t get through it by the new year. It’s quite good, but my brain is rotting…

And lastly, HAPPY NEW YEAR, everyone! I hope you all have a merry time. I will be eating mochi cream all day, and I hope you will also have many delicious, delicious treats!

The Finished Comic and a Bread Loaf

The Sinister Winter and the Inflatable Suit (my comic) is up on my website!

The JLPT went okay. I am not sure how did. I read the reading portions too carefully and ran out of time at the end. I know I am supposed to skim, but I gave in to my natural tendencies towards reading and re-reading.

Anyway, let’s move on to more interesting things. After making some bread yesterday evening, I noticed that the bread loaf beared a strong resemblance to カピバラさん. It’s too bad I gave into my natural tendency towards overeating because the bread loaf/カピバラさん completely vanished in only a span of three hours.

The Comic — Finished!

After many false starts and abandonments, I have finally finished my comic. I am going to scan it in tomorrow, and after so much time, cups of tea, bowls of miso and oshiruko, and slices of wheat bread (I have recently started using the “oven” option on my microwave, as I don’t have a real oven), I am very happy. Of course, I can’t sigh a long, shuddering sigh just yet. Tomorrow, there’s the JLPT (Level 2) for 2.5 hours. I don’t feel ready, but I suppose with these kinds of things, I never do.