Clueless in Tokyo: An Explorer’s Sketchbook of Weird and Wonderful Things in Japan is the second book in the series that I read after Squeamish about Sushi by the same author.

Once again, the illustration was always a joy to look at and the little things were fascinating to learn.

For example, the instruction on how to drink Japanese tea:

1. admire bowl
2. turn bowl clockwise 180 degree so the sacred spot faces away from you
3. slurp your tea to show appreciation
4. clean the rim with a cloth
5. turn bowl back counterclockwise 180 deg
6. admire bowl again

A few random facts that I took note of:

• Sumo grand champion’s ceremonial rope weighs 15 kilos
• You can rent a protest truck, get  behind a microphone and blast your views around Tokyo
• Taxi’s doors open and close automatically
• Whole squads of gas station attendants hoot and hollar to welcome you like in restaurants
• When you order food for delivery, you leave the dirty dishes out of your front door after eating. It will be picked up by the restaurant in the morning.

And a few items of interest (or shock!) in Japan:

• Batteries vending machine
• Porn vending machine that’s hidden behind metallic curtain at daytime and exposed at night
• Condom vending machine that categorizes the condoms by blood type
• Schoolgirls’ used panties vending machine (eewww.. WHERE did they get those?!)

When I reviewed Squeamish About Sushi I didn’t get a chance to take pictures (or was just assuming that I could steal some pictures from the net, but apparently I couldn’t find any), but this time I did! So here I present you a few pages from the book: (taken in a train on the way to work with my iPhone, so pardon me for somewhat mediocre quality photos..)

The famous complicated Japanese toilet buttons

Japanese chick attire

Japanese masks

Are pictures really worth a thousand words?

1997, 48 pp

I’m halfway through The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. The Classics Circuit is going to enter the third week of Wilkie Collins tour. I’ve been enjoying the first and second week of the tour. Go check them out if you haven’t! My stop of the tour would be on the 9th of December. I have spared pretty much all November for this tome of a book, so I’m strolling along just nicely without any unnecessary added pressure.

The next tour in January/February would be Edith Wharton. I love the compilation of author information and their works by Rebecca and friends. They’re so thorough and informative! I voted for John Steinbeck at the poll (there were 4 authors, including Mark Twain and Willa Cather) and Wharton won. I’m interested to read The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck and The Age of Innocence by Wharton, but I think I’ll pass this time around just so I have more room to read for my other challenges and projects.

I haven’t read Children books since… forever, but I read TWO this week! I prepared them for Dewey’s read-a-thon but didn’t get around to read them then. Well I should’ve because they only took about 5-10 minutes each (mostly looking at pictures too).

They are Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and The Great Escape from City Zoo by Tohby Riddle.

Where the Wild Things Are was made into a movie and though it’s not out here in Australia yet, I’d like to be prepared since it looks great! Some people in my company worked on some of its special effects too, so the more reason for me to watch it. The book is super simple. Boy goes to some strange land with strange creatures (love the fuzzy creatures, they’re so cute!) then goes back home. That would give the movie so much freedom to write their own script!

The Great Escape from City Zoo is about 4 animals who escaped from the zoo. Sounds familiar? (I haven’t watched Madagascar but some birds said that Tohby talked to people from Hollywood about his book, the deal didn’t go, but Madagascar the movie soon came after that.) Looks like the four animals there are giraffe, zebra, lion, and hippo. In The Great Escape the animals are elephant, flamingo, turtle, and anteater. I met Tohby Riddle at Sydney Writers’ Festival earlier this year and have wanted to read one of his books since then. I love his illustration. In this book the illustration is all in sepia shade watercolour, which looks quite subtle for normally vibrant colored children books.

A sudden turn from children books, I watched Fight Club this week. I never read Chuck Palahniuk‘s books before and I don’t know if I want to after watching Fight Club. Do you have any to recommend?

For some weird reason, I mixed Palahniuk and Orhan Pamuk on Fight Club so I quietly wondered during the movie: why does a Turkish novelist write about a depressed white collar American who started underground fighting club? To my enlightenment, Palahniuk is indeed an American, and he’s no way related to Pamuk who is indeed a Turkish.

While we’re on the topic of Orhan Pamuk, would you highly recommend any of his books? He intimidates me a bit, but that’s probably because I thought he wrote Fight Club, or of the fact that he’s a Turkish professor and from what I read his books are quite difficult to read.

Fight Club (1999)

Going back to the movie. To summarize, it’s dark psychological thriller. I love the beginning: Edward Norton as a desperate everyday American who suffers insomnia and finds solace in visiting various support groups. (I have loved Edward Norton since the Illusionist and the Painted Veil. Hubby knew him from the Incredible Hulk. *roll eyes*) But then he meets Brad Pitt. While I love some Brad Pitt’s movies, I always see him acting his character, not becoming his character. So I always see Brad Pitt, not whichever character he’s supposed to be. If that makes any sense.

There’s definitely some graphic violence in the movie, sort of expected with a title like that. I was dissatisfied and confused with the ending so that didn’t make it a very good movie for me. But it’s not bad overall.

Rating: 7/10

Each item is named by its Japanese name in romanji (alphabet) and hiragana/katakana, which is great whether you’ve learned Japanese characters or not. So it acts like a visual dictionary, if you will. Most items are food, including various types of sushi, bento (rice box), yakitori (grilled food on a stick), shabu-shabu (cook your own soup), and more. I literally drooled inside my mouth when looking at the illustrations. I love Japanese food!

More interesting bits include guide to going to toilet in restaurant (change your restaurant slipper–which is given when you enter the restaurant– to toilet slipper before going into the bathroom), guide to using the complex buttons on the toilet bowl (recommended not to use if you’re not sure how), and guide to taking a bath at ofuro (the public bath).

I am quite familiar with Japanese food and culture, so most of the things weren’t really new to me, but I still learned a few things here and there (perhaps about 30% was new to me). I have also just visited South Korea in October last year, and found that it has many similarities with Japan. One in particular is the onsen which is very similar with the one in Japan. I absolutely loved it! Okay so some people found it uncomfortable to walk around in the locker room naked and to take shower/bath in communal place, but I somehow liked that they’re totally comfortable with it. After about 15 minutes it kinda felt natural to me too. The experience was one of the most memorable of any of my foreign trips. I even went to the onsen twice when I was there, because once was just not enough! (I plan to write about the whole onsen experience, but I’ll keep it for later so I don’t sidetrack too much.)

Too bad I’ve already returned the book to the library, so I can’t show you more pictures (couldn’t find more on the internet). But I’ve borrowed another book by Betty Reynolds titled Clueless in Tokyo, which has the same format. So I hope to show you more from that book soon.


2000, 72 pp

Tales from Outer Suburbia is a collection of short stories. Some very short (a page or two), some a bit longer. And how fantastic they are! I love love love these stories! Or should I say the illustrations. I’m not sure which I like more: the artwork or the stories. They’re both amazing. I often feel that the stories illustrate the pictures than the usual other way around. I can imagine Shaun Tan first drew the illustrations first, then wrote a short story about them. Just a thought :) (and actually, I just read on his website that it was indeed what he did for Tales from Outer Suburbia)

Taken from shauntan.net:

Tales from Outer Suburbia is an anthology of fifteen very short illustrated stories. Each one is about a strange situation or event that occurs in an otherwise familiar suburban world; a visit from a nut-sized foreign exchange student, a sea creature on someone’s front lawn, a new room discovered in a family home, a sinister machine installed in a park, a wise buffalo that lives in a vacant lot. The real subject of each story is how ordinary people react to these incidents, and how their significance is discovered, ignored or simply misunderstood.

Read his very detail thoughts on each story. It’s amazing how some images are so distinct from each other, as if they were drawn by different artists.

I read this book very slowly, savoring just one story or two each night, and found that it’s probably the best way for me to read short stories, particularly this book. Just don’t rush through them. I don’t think my words can even begin to explain to you how amazing Tan’s work is, so please! Get the book from anywhere you possibly can and have a taste yourself!

One of my favorite is called Distant Rain. “Have you ever wondered what happens to all the poems people write?” is the first sentence. The story is brought in dozens of pieces of paper, scattered across a few pages as if they are carried by the wind and rain, forgotten, neglected, yet powerful.

Grandpa’s Story is another of my favorite. The story is told alternatively between words and illustrations, but not like one page at a time like normal people do. It starts with 2 pages of words, then 8 continuous pages of illustrations, then some pages alternate between words and pictures. I have never ever read anything like this before. As if at one point, he just thought that pictures could explain it better than words, so he just started to draw. Pages and pages, until he started going with words again. He doesn’t care about format. That’s my thought anyway.

There are many more amazing pieces. There are 15 in total. Too bad I was reading a library book. When I get a chance, I think I will buy it for my collection. It’s just that good. I want to show it to my kids and grand-kids and grand-grand-kids. You get the idea.

More pictures below to convince you to get it. See, even the table of content is so out of this world (that’s the picture below).

Another of my favorite is alert but not alarmed. About how everybody has missile on their backyards. First as mean of defense, they started to make use of the missiles in anything other than its initial intention.

eric is another one of my favorite. (How many favorites have I pointed out by now?) Everyone, meet Eric. Eric is a foreign student. (I think he looks like fire)

And gosh, the water buffalo! I love The Water Buffalo! There’s just something about that image of water buffalo pointing. My childhood home used to be located just next to two empty fields where some local water buffaloes bath and feed. Perhaps that’s why I got so attached to this particular piece.

I fall in love. I do.

I should also let you know that he’s an Australian :)

2008, 98 pp

Awards
2009 Australian Book Industry Awards Illustrated Book of the Year

Also reviewed by

Stainless Steel Droppings (more pictures here!) | A High and Hidden Place | Stuff As Dreams Are Made On | She Reads Books | Bending Bookshelf | Reading Rants! | Peeking Between the Pages | Monniblog | Read Write Believe | The Funky Rooster

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a delightful tiny book! To tell you the truth, I had low expectation when I picked up the book (which was accidentally just sitting on the library shelf when I passed by), because there’s nothing could be near as good as Harry Potter coming from J.K. Rowling, am I right? Well, even though I am right – it’s nothing Potter – I enjoyed it immensely.

First, if you have not read Harry Potter series, don’t pick up this book. Somehow I got the impression before that this was a stand-alone book. It is in a way, but it had major spoiler for the Potter series. So only pick it up if you have read up until Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at least (that’s number 6). I read this book in parallel with Deathly Hallows coincidentally, so I was fine. And it was somehow interesting that when I got to the point where Hermione received The Tales of Beedle the Bard, I was actually reading the Tales at the same time. It just made it more precious in a funny way. Like you KNOW the content of the book when they didn’t (because it hasn’t been translated at that point).

The Tales of Beedle the Bard consists of 5 short fairy tales (sort of, with no fairies): The Wizard and the Hopping Pot, The Fountain of Fair Fortune, The Warlock’s Hairy Heart, Babbitty Rabbitty and Her Cackling Stump, and The Tale of The Three Brothers (which appears in the last HP). Each followed by Dumbledore’s commentary. The tales themselves are short and nothing deep, like most fairy tales, but they’re about wizards and witches.

“Beedle’s stories resemble our fairy tales in many respects; for instance, virtue is usually rewarded and wickedness punished. However there is one very obvious difference. In Muggle fairy tales, magic tends to lie at the root of the hero or heroine’s troubles – the wicked witch has poisoned the apple, or put the princess into a hundred years’ sleep, or turned the prince into a hideous beast. In The Tales of Beedle the Bard, on the other hand, we meet heroes and heroines who can perform magic themselves, and yet find it just as hard to solve their problems as we do. Beedle’s stories have helped generations of wizarding parents to explain this painful fact of life to their young children: that magic causes as much trouble as it cures.

Another notable difference between these fables and their Muggle counterparts is that Beedle’s witches are much more active in seeking their fortunes than our fairy-tale heroines. Asha, Althelda, Amata and Babbitty Rabbitty are all witches who take their fate into their own hands, rather than taking a prolonged nap or waiting for someone to return a lost shoe. The exception to this rule – the unnamed maiden of ‘The Warlock’s Hairy Heart’ – acts more like our idea of a storybook princess, but there is no ‘happily ever after’ at the end of her tale.” ~ Introduction by J.K. Rowling

Now what I enjoyed most, was probably Dumbledore’s commentaries. They don’t add much to the story and sometimes he just rambles on. But they build this world that JKR has created. You get to know more details about wands, dark magic, animagus, transfiguration, and all the little details that build this fantasy world which you have spent time on for the past 6-7 books. I also like JKR footnotes explaining the commentaries. The whole format just makes you feel that you’re actually reading a book translated from the real thing.

At this point you might think that I’m such a Potter fan, that’s why I’d think highly of any books that are Potter related. But I don’t think that’s why I like the book. I just love it when a fantasy world gets created in such details that you get to believe that it might be true. That it might exist in some parallel universe out there.

Pages: 105
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Publication year: 2008

Award
Shortlisted for 2009 WHSmith Children’s Book of the Year (lost to Breaking Dawn)

First line
The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a collection of stories written for young wizards and witches.

Last line
Even I, Albus Dumbledore, would find it easiest to refuse the Invisibility Cloak; which only goes to show that, clever as I am, I remain just as big a fool as anyone else.

Also reviewed by

Today I read (full review!) | The Symposium | Serendipity | A Reader’s Respite | Out of the Blue | Bryan’s Book Blog | The Book Lady’s Blog | Wrighty’s Reads | things mean a lot | 5-Squared | Melody’s Reading Corner | Dolce Bellezza | Stella Matutina | Musings of a Bookish Kitty | Fyrefly’s Book Blog | temporaryworlds | Pipe Dreams and Professions | Hello, my name is Alice | Age 30+ … A Lifetime of Books | Everyday Reads | where troubles melt like lemon drops | The Bluestocking Guide (negative review) | OF Blog of the Fallen (sort of negative too) | In Spring it is the Dawn (on Collector’s edition) | Falling Stacks | ChainReading | Once upon a bookshelf | Maw Books Blog

A weird story about three sisters (that are not incestuous). The youngest one falls in love with a man, while the oldest is wickedly jealous. The middle one has her own problems in her little world (which I didn’t really get) and she can communicate with the baby in her sister’s womb. It continues further to man with half-baked wings. Weird.

The Three Incestuous Sisters is a coffee book table type, heavy, big, with whole page illustration for every page with a little text on the other side of the page.

Niffenegger called the book visual novel, to separate it with graphic novel, which I fail to see the difference. I found it at the fiction side of the library though, not comics or graphic novels (they are put together). She used Aquatints to create the images, which process I also fail to understand. I just know it’s hard and needs a lot of work (doh).

It’s interesting that a 14 years of work can be savored in under 14 minutes. The fans of the art style may want to keep the book for keepsake, to be enjoyed again occasionally, to decorate your coffee table. For myself, I’m happy enough to just read it in the library.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

First, the book is oh-so-pretty. Hardcover, with pretty illustrations inside.
Yes, pretty, even The Boy with Nails in His Eyes…
Okay, I don’t like that one much. But really, I think the art style is great.

The book contains 23 poems slash short stories about sympathetic creatures (children?), trying to fit in or struggling to find something (love? meaning of life?). No, I don’t think this is for kids. Especially the one with Oyster Boy. Imagine some parents who eat his child just because it could solve his problems in bed (you know, the child being an oyster that’s aphrodisiac).

Twisted.

Anyway, I particularly love this one called Voodoo Girl.

Her skin is white cloth,
and she’s all sewn apart
and she has many colored pins
sticking out of her heart.

She has a beautiful set
of hypno-disk eyes,
the ones that she uses
to hypnotize guys.

She has many different zombies
who are deeply in her trance.
She even has a zombie
who was originally from France.

But she knows she has a curse on her,
a curse she cannot win.
For if someone gets
too close to her,

the pins stick farther in.

and of course, the very first one:

Stick Boy and Match Girl in Love

Stick Boy liked Match girl,
he liked her a lot.
He liked her cute figure,
he thought she was hot.

But could a flame ever burn
for a match and a stick?
It did quite literally;
he burned up pretty quick.

Pages: 113
Rating: 4 out of 5

I wish I could show you the illustrations. They’re awesome :)