I have since started on a new novel, so I may have passed that unusual phase. But really, I have all the intention to get to them in near future. My libraries don’t stock any of this books, which is one requirement I imposed on myself for book buying. The books above:

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
Eva’s Assembling My Atheneum series on Oliver Sacks intrigued me enough to convince me to get a copy. It’s a collection of essays about fascinating neurological case studies, which I promise would seem a lot more interesting if you can see the table of content.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
First heard of Bonk from Jackie, but later on read more about Mary Roach and her other books from other bloggers. Funny non-fiction? I’m on it! I got it second in good condition from Better World Books.

Little Princes by Conor Grennan
Subtitled One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal, I was offered this book by Harper Collins (US) and could not resist. Nepal is a country and culture I’d love to know more about and a couple of reviews confirmed that I’m in for a good read ahead. Also, what an stunning cover, don’t you think? It’s in hardcover too! (see below)

Starting Point 1979-1996 by Hayao Miyazaki
Another hardcover but I have no one to blame for this one. Starting Point came to my notice when I read Sydney Japanese Foundation new catalogue. It is a collection of essays, interviews, memoirs that go back to Miyazaki’s childhood roots, animation theories, and the founding of Studio Ghibli, covering the first half of Miyazaki’s legendary career. Squee! It seems to be the quintessential book for Ghibli and animated film fans. I cannot wait to dig into this. Currently waiting for a good time in which I can dedicate my whole self to the book. There said to be the sequel Turning Point 1997-2008 yet to be translated to English and I’m already looking forward to that.

This last book is not on my physical pile as it just came to my attention last week, thanks to my good friend (who happened to fly to Tokyo for holiday only hours after the tsunami happened. What a bad timing to visit Japan. It’s very sad to see the massive disaster that happened. Hope things will get better and they will be able to rebuild soon.)

Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein is written by the first gaijin to work for a Japanese newspaper as Japanese crime reporter. He spent 12 years covering vice and organized crimes. Tokyo Vice is about his years in Japan and Japan underworld. Sounds fantastic!

Have you read any of these books? Read any great non-fiction lately?

In this volume of Oishinbo the topic of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizer is very prevalent throughout. Organic grown vegetables is the way to go. Which is all nice and everything, but I’m not sure if it’d change my grocery shopping habit. I find it hard to justify the double or triple price of organic food for daily consumption. Occasionally, maybe. Or if I cook only for myself, not for a bunch of family members who eat a whole lot more than me and may not appreciate the whole organic thing price-wise.

Perhaps I should read more on this topic?

2009, 268pp

This month’s task for Hello Japan is about Japanese cooking. Contrary to the lack of cooking post in Bookie Mee, I actually love to cook (who doesn’t if you love to eat?!). And Japanese is my favorite type of cooking, at home or outside. Will try to post something else before the end of the month, but if not, I have this post for submission :).

Bacon wrapped asparagus yakitori. My favorite! Yum! (photo source)

My next Oishinbo is Izakaya: Pub Food which I’m currently reading. I’ve committed to reading the whole series and only have a few more to go!

More in the series (links to my reviews):
Oishinbo a la Carte 1: Japanese Cuisine
Oishinbo a la Carte 2: Sake
Oishinbo a la Carte 3: Ramen & Gyoza
Oishinbo a la Carte 4: Fish, Sushi & Sashimi
Oishinbo a la Carte 5: Vegetables (this post)
Oishinbo a la Carte 6: The Joy of Rice
Oishinbo a la Carte 7: Izakaya: Pub Food

Oishinbo (美味しんぼ, lit. “The Gourmet”) is a long-running cooking manga published between 1983 and 2008, but only in 2009 it is published in English in thematic compilation volumes (7 volumes so far), which means they contain “best of the best” and do not follow the original manga chronological order. There are a few minor storylines that jump forward and back. But I guess in the big picture of things, it does not matter that much, because the food is really the central of excitement!

The big question throughout this volume is What constitute real Japanese cuisine? What menu is essentially Japanese? In Oishinbo: Japanese Cuisine we learn more about sashimi, rice, and green tea. (I love sashimi. I can keep eating sashimi if it’s not so expensive!) There are different cuts of sashimi, different fish (obviously), and even different way of “cooking” it, one of them with a complex method of using a special type of rice paper and pouring boiled water over the rice paper and the skin side of the fish so that only the skin is cooked, not the flesh. Definitely not something you can do at home! Then there’s one chapter about cooking rice competition. It’s later revealed that the winner hand-picks the rice so they are all the same size and cooked evenly at the same time. Talking about serious cooking!

So yes they can go a bit over the top, although are seemingly realistic at the same time. As a foodie, I just found it a joy to read a book that treats food with so much respect. The green tea ceremony at the end of this volume was a nice closure that reflects how respectful the Japanese are.

delightful sashimi (source)

2009, 272 pp

The volumes in this series (links to my review):
Oishinbo a la Carte 1: Japanese Cuisine (current post)
Oishinbo a la Carte 2: Sake
Oishinbo a la Carte 3: Ramen & Gyoza
Oishinbo a la Carte 4: Fish, Sushi & Sashimi
Oishinbo a la Carte 5: Vegetables
Oishinbo a la Carte 6: The Joy of Rice
Oishinbo a la Carte 7: Izakaya: Pub Food

A rather late shout for Bellezza’s Japanese Literature Challenge IV which runs until the end of January 2011. I’m not sure if I get a chance to read a Japanese novel before the end of January (so far I’ve read only manga), but I’ll try!

Hello Japan! November mini-challenge: a Japan meme

(Talking about last minute!)

My favourite Japanese food is sashimi because raw fish can be surprisingly YUMMY.

The best Japanese book I’ve bought this year is Breaking into Japanese Literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Text by Giles Murray. (I haven’t read it but I flipped through it and it looks awesome! It has 7 short stories both in Japanese and its English translation, complete with dictionary. We need more bilingual books!)

What Japanese author(s) or book(s) have you enjoyed that you would highly recommend to others?
Haruki Murakami, of course, who wouldn’t? Then Natsuo Kirino and Junichiro Tanizaki.

What is something Japanese that you’d like to try but haven’t yet had the chance?
Practicing Kendo.

You’re planning to visit Japan next year. Money is not a concern. What is on the top of your list of things you most want to do?
Ghibli Museum. You have to buy the ticket months in advance I heard.

Source

What was your favourite Hello Japan! mini-challenge topic?
I loved the one comparing two things Japanese where I wrote about the two directors of Ghibli: Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao. The one about manga and J-music brought lots of memories too, they were fun.

What topic(s) would you like to see as a Hello Japan! mini-challenge in 2011?
Share your Japanese or Japanese-inspired recipe!

Thanks for hosting Tanabata, as always!

Before Megumi I never knew about the existence of “Documentary Manga” so I took the book out of the Japanese Foundation Library shelf with high curiosity. As what the title says, the manga is a true account of the abductions of Japanese people by the North Korea.

Revolves around Megumi Yokota (横田めぐみ) who is one of at least thirteen Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the story is told from Megumi’s parents perspectives: Shigeru and Sakie Yokota, who supervised the creation of the book (illustrated by Soichi Moto).

It is a very heartfelt manga as you learn about the poor fate of Megumi. One day happy with her family of parents and two younger brothers, and the next abducted to a foreign country, never to be heard again until twenty years later, during which Megumi’s family thought she could be dead. Until one day a North Korean agent spoke up about the whereabouts of Megumi.

What came after was horrible mind games done by the North Koreans. One day they would say Megumi was alive and the next send human bones claimed to be Megumi’s (a DNA test that followed proved that they weren’t). They said Megumi got married and had a daughter. While the daughter was allowed to send letters to the Yokotas, they do not allow any contact with Megumi. There are a lot of other little things that make me wonder what their real intentions are to play with people’s life and feelings. Megumi and the Yokotas were just ordinary people who were at the wrong time and the wrong place, sucked into psychological political war between the South and the North Korea (apparently the North Koreans abducted some Japanese to learn to disguise themselves as Japanese with the purpose to penetrate the South).

A lot of the scenes really got to me. I couldn’t help imagining if I were the 13 year old girl abducted and my parents lost me one day, not knowing whether I were alive or dead. For if there’s even a glimpse of hope that I’m still alive, I know my parents would go as far as Sakie and Shigeru Yokota do. Their perseverance and faith is so commendable, and truly touching.

I went to South Korea in 2008. Even to these days there’s huge tension between the two countries. There is a part in the book where Megumi’s parents went to visit the South and North Korean border, a place that I have visited as well. So I recognized many of the places and the experiences: the dynamites and electrified border along the highway, the armies, the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone): 4 km wide buffer zone between the South and the North–the most heavily militerized border in the world, the North Korean’s tallest flagpole (160m) with its biggest flag (270kg) in the world (which you can only see from afar with a binocular, on the South Korean side). It was such an eerie experience, to say the least.

Megumi is published with the aim to enhance the understanding of the international community concerning the abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korea. It is distributed through Japanese diplomatic offices, including embassies and consulates. But it is not available for purchase, which explains why I had never seen the book anywhere. It doesn’t even have a record on popular book website like goodreads.

Megumi is a very informative manga (as documentary should), packed with emotions as it is told from the parents of the abductee. I love how the Japanese use medium such as manga to convey an important message. It’s a bit of a weird read, since there’s no proper solution to the “story”. Even though I knew the real-life Megumi is still held by the North Korean and there’s no way the book ended up happily, there was a part of me that was still hoping for it. Alas, it’s real life and the struggle continues.

2005

You can read the excerpt of the manga here. Apart from the manga, there’s anime made available for download (25 minutes full version), and also 85-minute documentary film titled Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story that has won many awards, produced by Jane Campion. Both of which I look forward to watching sometime.

More info about Abductions of Japanese Citizens by North Korea.

Mori Ōgai (1862-1922) produced a wide range of works, from diaries, medical essays, aesthetics and literary criticism, to biographies, plays, Japanese and Chinese poetry, short stories, and novellas. He’s also a translator of contemporary European literature. In his final period of creative writing began in 1912, he turned to write almost exclusively in the genre of “historical literature”, which I guess what we often call now as historical fiction.

There are 10 short stories in the volume and after reading the short introduction for each story, I picked a piece called Gyogenki, a historical literature based on the Chinese Taoist nun and poetess Yü Hsüan-chi (I’m following the spelling in the book). Initially equally clueless about the great Chinese poetess as I was with Mori, I was intrigued by the brief summary of her life. She became a concubine of a wealthy man, got divorced, became a nun, had a lesbian relationship with another nun, then embraced a male lover, got insanely jealous over a maid, killed her, and was beheaded at the end. What a life!

Unfortunately the story felt pretty cut and dry, like reading a textbook. I can’t be sure if it’s the translation or not, but it didn’t make me want to continue reading the rest of the other stories in the book. Maybe I will eventually maybe I won’t, but I’m not rushing. I did enjoy reading the introduction about Mori at the beginning of the book and the short introductions for each of the short stories which honestly sound very interesting.

“Despite a lasting reputation in Japan, Mori Ōgai has yet to achieve any satisfactory reception in the West. Natsume Sōseki, the only writer of Ōgai’s generation to share his stature, has been widely translated and admired, but Ōgai remains a shadowy figure, austere, even obscure. It often happens, of course, that the work of certain writers cannot be sufficiently understood outside their own cultures. Some towering figures never earn anything like their rightful reputation through translation.” ~ The Historical Literature of Mori Ōgai: An Introduction

A bit sad. I guess there’s a reason why the book was withdrawn from Japanese Foundation Library. I know libraries usually withdraw books that have not been borrowed for a length of time. I’m glad I got to know a bit more about Mori-sensei and even tried his historical short fiction, even though I may not have “got it”. Who knows, maybe we’ll cross path again sometime in the future.

Check out the rest of the participants here. There are only a few of us this time!

What a lot of people seem to miss though, is another Director, whose works are rather different with Miyazaki’s, but in my opinion, definitely not any less. A long-term colleague of Miyazaki and a co-head of Ghibli, Isao Takahata is Ghibli’s second person. His films are possibly less known to audience outside of Japan, but a couple of them are my absolute favorites, like Grave of the Fireflies, which I have re-watched many time, Pompoko, and My Neighbors The Yamadas.

Grave of the Fireflies is a heartbreaking film about brother and sister struggling to survive in Japan during World War II; Pompoko about shape-shifter racoons (in Japan there’s old belief that racoon can shape-shift into human form) struggling to prevent their forest home being destroyed by human’s urban development; and I would describe My Neighbors The Yamadas as The Simpsons of Japan, only instead of a very American family, it features a very Japanese family. With gentle humour and interesting Japanese daily life bits, you’ll be surprised how much you can relate with them. The Yamadas are your “everyday family”, hence the title My Neighbors (they can be anyone’s).

While Miyazaki generally uses the Wow factor, Takahata painstakingly goes for realism (as seen in Only Yesterday and Grave of the Fireflies). I see Miyazaki as the highly imaginative popular kid, always surrounded by many other kids on the playground, while Takahata as the serious and more reserved kid, working hard at the craft that he believes in among the lesser crowds. The sweet thing is, they believe in each other’s talents.

As you probably know by now, I have a soft spot for Takahata’s works, I do. He’s not a Miyazaki so don’t expect him to be, but his movies are so full of heart I’m sure you’ll fall for them too. If you haven’t watched any of his movies, I encourage you to. Come back when you have and tell me all about it :)

Takahata-san on the left, Miyazaki-san on the right

I have been thinking to post about this for a while, when Tanabata’s Hello Japan August & September mini-challenge came up. I knew then I needed to participate. Thanks for hosting tanabata!

This must be the bleakest graphic novel/manga I have ever read. I was intrigued when I saw this copy at Sydney Japanese Foundation Library. The book is designed and edited by Adrian Tomine (whose Shortcomings I have yet to read), and includes Tomine’s introduction.

Yoshihiro Tatsumi is known as “the grandfather of Japanese alternative comics”. In 1957, he coined the term gekiga to differentiate the gritty, naturalistic style of cartooning he helped pioneer from that of the more commercial, youth-oriented manga. From the Introduction by Tomine:

“As plans for this translation project began to get off the ground, it soon became apparent that a comprehensive reprinting of Tatsumi’s work would be literally impossible. With a career spanning from the 1950s to the present day, and with a work ethic that yielded up to twelve pages in a week (and, with the help of assistants, fifty pages in one night!), Mr. Tatsumi has produced a mind-bogglingly immense body of work. So this will be a selective survey of his best work, beginning, at Mr. Tatsumi’s request, with the year of 1969. Our hope is to release one volume per year, each focusing on a single year in Mr. Tatsumi’s career.”

So Push Man and Other Stories is Tatsumi’s best-of collection from 1969. It contains slice-of-life portrait of grim life of Japanese working class (or what they literally call “salary-man”). The stories were originally published in a bi-weekly magazine called Gekiga-Young, a minor young men’s magazine with limited print runs. Tatsumi was only given 8 pages per issue because he had no reputation as a manga artist at the time. So most of the stories in this collection (16 altogether), except for a couple, are super short. Too short in fact that I found myself flying through the pages, hungry for more. I read this thick volume in almost one sitting, almost unheard of me.

Going back to my impression at the beginning of the post, the book is surprisingly grim, with numerous sexual elements and violence, “both refreshing and unsettling” according to Tomine, to which I have to agree. The illustration style is very simple. The main character is always a man, who almost looks the same in all the stories, and eerily, rarely talks, which makes the underlying silent resignation from and frustration of life strongly resonate throughout the book. The title story is about a pushman (you know how in Japan they have official pushers to push people into the overcrowded trains?). Many, if not all, of the stories revolve around hopelessness of everyday’s life and often end in death, murder, or suicide.

There’s an interview with the author at the end of the book and when asked about his influences in general that had a significant impact of his work, Tatsumi answered police reports and other human interest articles in papers, and that he hardly read any manga. Little wonder then that reading this book almost feels like reading crime newspaper, full with events and crimes that are hard to believe, but you know they must be happening somewhere in the society. The stories are highly unsettling, but really addictive. I likened it to watching a train-wreck. You know it’s horrible and probably haunts you for a while, but you can’t look away.

I think it needs a lot of courage to produce this kind of work and I commend Tatsumi for that. He himself doesn’t feel very secure however, noting at the end of the interview “I myself am a very normal person. Please do not interpret these stories as representative of the author’s personality.” I’d be worried too if I were him. I mean I don’t even dare to summarize you the stories. If you’re curious, Drawn Quarterly, the publisher, provides one complete story as a preview (click the pdf file on the side), so you can check that out.

The Push Man and Other Stories is quintessentially Japanese, the darker, perverse side of it that is. Recommended for the freshness, the boldness, and the absurdity of it all. But the sensitive and the faint of heart must stay away. Will I read more Tatsumi’s works? Uum.. YES. I’m dying to read A Drifting Life, his massive 800+ page autobiography (in comic form, of course).

1969 (Japanese), 2005 (English), 202 pp

Pushman and Other Stories is included in Time’s Top Ten List for Comics.
Star interview for 2009 Toronto Comic Arts Festival
About.com 3 pages interview (also at 2009 Toronto Comic Arts Festival)

Challenges
Graphic Novels 2010 (book #9)

Have you read the book or Tatsumi’s other books? Let me know!

Manga came to Indonesia sometime when I was in fifth grade, around early 90s. Since the first one was out, I was immediately hooked. I read all types of manga, from all the girly ones to the boys ones, about dancers, ballerinas, stage actress, pirates, robots, martial arts, billiards, monsters, Japanese dolls, monkey girl, historical fictions, myths, detectives, paid-killers, you name it, I’ve read them all. Not only read, I learned to draw and to illustrate, I daydreamed and doodled all the time in class. A couple of my best friends and I would spend all our spare hours in school and outside school, creating our own world and characters. I saved my pocket money everyday to buy manga every chance I get. Like I said, my whole world revolved around manga. It shaped me to become the person I am today. During those years I must have read thousands of manga. I bought them, borrowed them, I read them standing up in the bookstores for hours, and re-read all of them again and again.

When I left my birth country for good, my manga collection had to be left behind with my parents. In the next decade I moved around numerous times and only last year I was reunited with teenage-hood precious. Now the books mostly just stay on the shelves unread, but I don’t have the heart to move them into boxes and keep in the storage, so they still occupy my main shelves in the bedroom. It gives me comfort  to know that anytime I feel like going back to those magical worlds for a while, they are just a hand reach away.

What you see here is one layer. I double-shelf them and there’s another row underneath. These are my own collection.

Above are some collective collection of mine with my two brothers, located at another room.

Some people have asked me about manga to recommend, but I find it very difficult to, because I have no idea which ones get translated to English, which ones are not. In Indonesia we have myriads of manga translated, and they used to be quite cheap back in my time (about 30 cents each, around two portions of lunch money in school canteen). But let’s just say it’s a perfect world and if there is one manga I’d like everybody to read, it is Candy Candy by Mizuki Kyoko and Igarashi Yumiko. Candy Candy was the first manga that came into Indonesia (along with Doraemon), and I recognized it straight away because I watched the anime version back when I was even younger (maybe around first grade). My mom opened a video rental shop back then so the kids got to watch many Asian series and cartoons. (I was told by mom that I was able to walk, turn on the video I wanted, and sit tight to watch since I was two years old..) But I only got to watch the anime for about a dozen episodes, which apparently only covered less than one book in the series! (There are 9 books altogether, and I checked on the web that there are 100+ episodes of anime) So I was ecstatic when I saw the manga!

Candy is an orphan happy-go-lucky girl who was left in front of an orphanage called Pony’s House. After losing her best friend to adoption, she herself was adopted by a rich man who she never meets until much later. There’s so much in the book that I can’t even begin to summarize. It’s about friendship, love, trials, losses, and a great attitude for life. There are surprisingly a number of heartbreaking moments in the books, that I couldn’t re-read them too many times. Well, now you know, this is THE manga you need to read.

I need to slip in one more must-read series because it was so important for me too. It’s Glass Mask (Garasu no Kamen) by Miuchi Suzue, which is about a girl who dreams to become a stage actress. And lucky her, she has unbelievable raw talent, who was found by a fallen old ex-actress. One a poor ugly girl with no connection or reputation and one a scarred ex-actress who has been shunned away by the world, they push through against all odds. But of course life is never easy so there are always roadblocks on the way. This is the series where I learned about Hellen Keller, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and many Western stories from. Informative and super addictive, in high school I saved my pocket money for months and bought 33 books of the series at once! (it’s now up to volume 42 and sadly not yet finished)

I stumbled upon this list which compiled the all time best-selling shoujo manga, and both Candy Candy and Glass Mask are in it (little wonder). The others that caught my eyes were the first in the list Hana Yori Dango (the Taiwanese remake of which is titled Meteor Garden–I’ve watched the live-action series but not read the manga) and Genji Monogatari (would love to read that one!). One that I own and love is Berusaiyu no Bara (The Rose of Versailles) which is historical fiction based on Mary Antoinette.

Apart from mentioned above, my favorite author was Asagiri Yuu. I collected all her books that got published in Indonesia. They are always about growing up and reaching your dreams (just what I needed). Then Matsumoto Yoko, CLAMP (Magic Knight Rayearth), Hikawa Kyoko (apparently you can read Miriam online at One Manga), Toriyama Akira (Dragon Ball Z), Fujiko F. Fujio (Doraemon), Maekawa Takeshi (Tekken Chinmi), and more (I’m sure I missed a couple).

As you can see my knowledge of manga stays in the era of 80s to 90s and I’m no longer following the new ones. Tell me your favorite manga? (No matter which era they are from :)

I wrote this post to participate in tanabata’s Hello Japan! June mini-challenge on manga.

Back in my high school days, I was so into mountain hiking and camping it drove my parents crazy. It wasn’t so much about the activities, more about how unsafe it was for a bunch of teenagers to hike faraway mountains considering how wild these places are in Indonesia. There isn’t much organization or safety net at all. Combine that with youth sense of adventure and carelessness, it’d make any parents squirm.

Anyway gone are the days when I needed to slip out in the dawn and faced all the dramas before and after each adventure. I have grown many more years and Australia is as safe as snug. My parents can breathe easily.

I haven’t gone camping or mountain-hiking for a long while, only some bush-walking (To clarify, mountain-hiking is sort of like bush-walking with much higher elevation and takes longer time. For me back then it ranged from 12 hours to 2 days (we had to camp midway)), so I got excited when we bought a small tent on sale. I built them on our backyard, threw in some quilts and pillow, and spent the rest of Saturday afternoon yesterday inside the tent, reading. Funnily it was actually warmer inside the tent under the mild sun than inside the house (we’re entering winter) so I was happy to stay there for hours. It was bliss.

I read one short story from Haruki Murakami‘s short sollection The Elephant Vanishes titled Sleep. It’s about a housewife who finds that she can’t sleep one day and starts to read a lot during the night when everybody is asleep. It’s recommended to me by Rob, you can read his review here. I thought the story was a typical Murakami, with dreams and weird things happening. I wasn’t fond of the ending (also my problem with most Murakami’s works), but it was a fun story. How good is it to not have to sleep, ever? I would love that and spend it reading! Just like the woman character in the story. We spend 1/3 of our life sleeping. Without that, we’d practically have our life extended by a third. That’s a lot!

In the story there are references to Anna Karenina, which the character spends the most time reading. I’ve been wanting to read that for a long time but have not so I was worried of spoilers throughout the story, but it wasn’t too bad. Any interest to for Anna Karenina read-along? Next year maybe?

Have you read any Murakami’s short story? Which one is your favorite?