Cul de Sac

Kagoshima is a big city, at least on par with St. Paul or Minneapolis. But it's built in with a number of large hills, and because of earthquakes, there's a law preventing buildings from being constructed above a certain height on the slopes of the hills (being at the top of the hill is ok). So, we get these little cul de sacs in the crooks of the hills that may only have one way in and out, with no tunnels to the other side. These photos were taken from the backside of the hilltop hotel parking lot, facing west.



The little parking lot down there looks like it belongs to a department store, company office, or maybe even for the hotel. If it is for the hotel, though, it's a nasty little walk up the hill every morning for employees. I think, rather, it's for one of the apartment buildings to the left of the photo.



Looking to the south, at the mouth of the cul de sac. You'd think that this would be a great, upscale place to live to get a little peace and quiet from the rest of the city. In fact, most of the buildings are rundown, and at least a couple look like they've been completely abandoned. It's the "trailer park of Kagoshima".

Review: Kurogane

Kurogane is a relatively common Japanese name, so doing a google search on it will bring up several different hits. The one I want to introduce this time is the manga by Kei Toume, creator of Acony. Kei (born April 13, 1970) is an established artist with a very particular style, with an emphasis on "seinen" (young adult male) stories. Manga Fox has 11 of her titles fan scanilated so far, while the Japanese wiki shows 14 completed series.

I like the artwork on Acony, so I wanted to try out some of Kei's earlier works, starting with Kurogane (AKA: Black Steel). Regrettably, the files on Manga Fox are from the Del Rey officially licensed books (which aren't available here in Kagoshima). I would like to hope that if you're interested in this title that you'd at least buy them used, if not new.

(Images from Manga Fox. All rights belong to their owners. Images used here for review purposes only.)

Kurogane, by Kei Toume, Grade: B
The basic story is fairly straight-forward, although a bit twisted. Jintetsu is a young teenage boy living in the Edo era (roughly 1700's) as an assassin-for-hire. Right at the beginning he dies and is found by an inventor that resurrects him in a semi-mechanical body. A second corpse, Haganemaru, a samurai, is repackaged as Jintestu's sword. Since Jintetsu's throat (ripped out by trained dogs) was never repaired, Haganemau acts as his voice. The story then consists of Jintetsu's adventures as he wanders between towns, either taking commissions or meeting new friends or adversaries. Of course, there's the occasional "misunderstanding" as the boy is mistaken for someone else and arrested or attacked. Although he is a killer for hire, Jintetsu does have a weakspot for people trying their hardest, and he will help them out even if they're sworn enemies.

The artwork is kind of erratic, and not at the same level as Acony, but there are similarities between the two that pop up consistently. The backgrounds are highly detailed, and the fight sequences are more than simple poses (not in the same class as Vagabond, though). Kei is good at showing Jintetstu's emotions even within her self-imposed limits (the boy's face is a steel mask, with just one eye showing). Most of the stories revolve around honor (or the lack thereof), greed and the basic human desire to survive against insurmountable odds. Probably, the main message is that once you choose your own path, remain consistent to it.



What I liked was in seeing Gennai Hiraga's static electricity generator in the bottom right panel of the scene set in the inventor's house. This is the same generator that you can build from Gakken. I'm betting that the inventor, Genkichi, was based on Gennai.

Summary: An Edo-era assassin is killed and brought back in a puppet-like body. Along with his talking sword, the boy wanders Japan and has various (mostly-) humorous adventures. Kind of a cross between Mushishi and Blade of the Immortal. Recommended for anyone that likes Kei Toume's other works.

Small Adventures #27

When I first came to Kagoshima, I thought that the big brown brick building at the top of Shiroyama was part of the Kagoshima University campus. Turns out, though, that it's the most upscale hotel in town. It's about 1 block long and maybe 10 stories tall. The north end lobby is on the 4th floor, and the south end lobby is on the 1st. A terrace on the east side overlooks the city and has a great view of the volcano. During the "end of the year" period last month, I had a small bonnenkai party in the French restaurant on the top floor, although the food was a French-Japanese fusion that didn't work all that well (bonnenkai = "forget the old year party"). At the end of the meal, I was exiting the south lobby when I noticed a small sign advertising free classical music performances twice a month, with the location alternating between the two lobbies.

Every so often, I'll climb the stairs behind Terukuni shrine, either for the exercise, or to take sunrise photos of the volcano from the observation point at the top of the hill. The walking trail passes right under the hotel terrace, and comes out at the bus parking lot in front of the souvenir shops closer to the observation point. It's a 2 minute backtrack to get to the hotel's north entrance. On Jan. 22nd, I climbed the hill (took a little under 20 minutes from the apartment to the observation point, 7 minutes from the bottom of the stairs to the top) to try to track down that poster again and find out when the next classical performance would be. Going through the hotel, I decided to go out on the terrace and take photos of the water fountain shooting spray into the air with the volcano in the background. The sky was perfectly clear and bright, deep blue, as was the water in the bay. I noticed some tables to the side, covered with dayglo 12" tall wax block candles, and took a couple of shots of that with the intent of coming back at night and getting matching pictures of the candles when they were lit. Then I continued to the south end, and saw the poster with the announcement that the next performance would be on the 23rd at 2:30 PM. From there, I went down the back side of Shiroyama and took additional pictures of stuff that caught my eye.

The next day, I returned up the staircase behind the shrine, and went into the hotel. The performance consisted of 4 members of a Japanese philharmonic orchestra, playing harp, flute, cello and clarinet for 45 minutes. The music included works by Hayden, and a Japanese composer. The lobby seating space was packed with about 50 people, and the entire thing was well received. I video recorded one of the songs with the digicam and took another 10 photos of the performance.

Back in the apartment, I started copying the files from the SD card to my laptop, and when the video file, which was taking the majority of the time, was through with the transfer, I pressed delete to clear off the SD card. A few seconds later, an error message popped up saying that Windows couldn't find the next file to copy. That's when I discovered that the transfer hadn't finished - it's just that Windows had closed the progress box on me prematurely. So now, only 25 of the 35 files had made it over, and the SD card doesn't have a recycle bin on it. Thinking that I might get lucky, I pressed CTRL-Z, the standard Windows "undo function". Rather than undoing the last delete, Windows undid the file copy, and in the process lost another 13 files. I copied the files again, and this time I only got 12 of the 35, plus the huge video file. I was left with the first half of the photos from the concert taken prior to the video, and a couple that were taken on the way back from the hotel that day. Among the lost files were the ones of the candles and the fountain with Sakurajima. (The video itself wasn't worth keeping because I could only shoot it from behind the crowd and the performers were blocked out of view half the time.)

The next day, I went back up again, and headed straight for the terrace, only to discover that the tables and all of the candles were gone. Apparently they had been put up just for a 1-night event. Further, the sky was all overcast, and Sakurajima looked dull and gray in the distance, ruining the shot with the fountain. Not only did I lose what probably were great, unreproducible photos, but I'd made that third trip up the stairs for nothing (discounting the exercise from it). Stupid Windows.

What I'm reading now

I grew up with newspaper comics. The ones I remember are Li'l Abner, Wizard of Id, B.C., Peanuts, Doonesbury, Pogo, Buz Sawyer, Marmaduke, et. al. Over time, most of the conventional strips got stupid (Family Circus, B.C., Wizard of Id), became too mainstream (Peanuts, Garfield) or disappeared (Pogo, Calvin and Hobbes, Far Side, Bloom County). But, I'd always turned to the comic section the second I opened the paper, and after that was done, I'd check the front page to make sure the world hadn't ended or something. After coming to Japan, I found that the majority of Japanese newspapers don't have manga, and the English papers have virtually no western strips (just Dilbert, Doonesbury and maybe Peanuts). So, I've spent more effort online looking for either digital comics syndicates, or webcomics. Which brings me back to the above issue that most newspaper strips aren't worth reading anymore. I find most webcomics to be a waste of energy as well. But, there are a few that I do like.

Webcomics:

Scary-Go-Round:
Light-hearted monster-hunt/adventure series set in England. Fun characters, silly monsters.

Order of the Stick:
Silly D&D-based adventure series with everyone drawn as stick figures. Lots of wordplay and crude jokes.

Doc Rat:
Pun-filled gag strip featuring a rat that is a medical doctor in an anthropomorphic universe. Sometimes, there are longer storylines and darker plot elements. The artist is a full-time Australian doctor that draws cartoons on the side.

Girl Genius:
Phil Foglio. 'nuf said.

Erf World:
Another D&D-style series, this one based on a unique rule set that is explained as the story unfolds. Marginal artwork and too many jumps in viewpoint, but sometimes funny. Unfortunately, the artist had a death in the family, and while she's recovering the writer has gotten lost in the ozone in a serialized text novel.

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja:
He's a doctor. And a ninja! He fights pirates, and giant lumberjacks. The story makes absolutely no sense, but stuff dies occasionally so it's all good.



Traditional Comics:

Back when newspapers were first trying to make the transition to the internet, there were something like three different websites that carried comics, run by the different syndicates. No one site had everything I liked, and at one point, one of them started requiring a membership to look at the strips. Over time, there were mergers and stuff, and now it looks like GoComics is the last one left standing. Most of what they carry is dreck, in the bad sense of the word. Almost 20% seems to be reruns and old archives (Calvin and Hobbes, Boondocks, The Norm, PreTeena, Bloom County). But, once every one to two years, I'll go through the full index of strips to see if there's something new that catches my eye. One of the reasons that I decided to write up this entry is because I've found some new stuff that I like.

Basic Instructions:
Now, this one is subversive! Scott Meyer gives underhanded advice on how to survive your friends, family, coworkers and boss, with a lot of knife twisting thrown in. One of my favorites, but only comes out 3 times a week.

Brewster Rockit:
Brewster is a spaceship captain whose brain was turned to mush after being probed by aliens one too many times. It's not laugh-out-loud funny, but there are some chuckles, and I find myself making a bunch of stupid jokes in the online comments section. Best if you're an SF fan, or if you just like science.

Calvin and Hobbes:
It's all reruns, but it's still funny.

Cul de Sac
Adventures of little 4-year-old Alice and her wiser, more finicky 7-year-old brother, Petey. The world is very twisted and unpredictable as seen through their eyes. Plus, Richard Thompson can draw good background setups.

Dilbert:
Because.

Doonesbury:
Gary Trudeau has always been good at making conservatives angry, and that's good enough for me. Besides, I like early Zonker and Bernie, and present-day Toggle.

Endtown
I've written about Endtown before. Heck, I'm the one that wrote up the entry on wikipedia. Anthropomorphic mutants try to survive in a harsh post-The End environment against monsters and genetically pure humans. Great art, great story, great characters.

Foxtrot:
I used to love the original strip, but Bill Amend went into semi-retirement, only running new strips on Sundays. It's still funny, but has lost any sense of character development or plot that it used to have. Now it's just three kids (a science nerd, a self-obsessed teenage girl, and a sports jock wannabe) that bug each other. Not quite at the "cute for cute's sake" stage yet.

Get Fuzzy:
Rob Wilco, his psycho cat Bucky, and his idiot pooch Satchel. Lately, the strip has been in reruns, so there's some concern that Darby Conley may be suffering from health problems or something. For the most part, Bucky is a parody of modern-day conservative extremists, and most of the gags revolve around his being obnoxious.

Monty:
Originally Robotman and Monty, this was a commissioned strip that the publishers created to sell a product. Eventually, the strip outlived the product and the Robotman character got dropped. The early strips were just insane, with a lot of surreal humor. Lately, it's more just a series of set gag pieces where either Monty reacts badly in public, his friend, Moondog, gets obsessive about food and beer, or it's a lampooning of the rich and elite. Most days are just "meh", but there's still an occasional zinger that makes it all worthwhile.

Non Sequitur
I like Wiley's off-the-wall sense of humor, and his political gags skewer the far-right extremists. But, he's also good at telling children's tales. Fun stuff.

Tank McNamara:
I used to love Tank for his clumsy way around women, and Dr. Tzap's mad scientist shtick, but the jokes have gotten fairly formulaic, and Tank and Tzap don't really have any character development anymore. It's still funny sometimes, but I may drop it in a few weeks.

The Norm
It's in repeats, but I do like Norm's slightly off-center look at dating and living in the workplace. And there are strips that I hadn't seen the first time around.



Brand New Strips:

Incidental Comics:
I just starting reading this one this week. It only comes out a couple days a week, but the artwork is pretty elaborate. The jokes are relatively intellectual, mainly about art and life, sometimes about math or arithmetic. Fairly surreal, in the vein of Far Side or Bizarro.

Lost Side of Suburbia:
A fairly dark collection of short stories with children being kidnapped by fairies, trolls and other baddies. Kind of like Gahan Wilson for kids. Nothing really disturbing yet, but good artwork and interesting ideas. I don't really like the preachy nature of some of the dialog, though.

TerraTopia
TerraTopia just started recently, and it's a kind of a serialized illustrated children's fantasy story. Every day there's one page of text with an accompanying picture. The art is really high-grade, but the writing is unpleasantly flowery at times. It's still too early to say what the story is about, but it features wizards, monsters, a boy from London, and a female shape-changer. I'm down to checking in on this strip about once a month to see if the story's progressed or not.



What I stopped reading:

Barney & Clyde:
This started out promising, about a homeless guy and the rich president of a big pharma company meeting and becoming friends. But, lately, it's gotten formulaic with silly puns and carping about modern life.

C'est la Vie:
Some French people take up living in California. Initially, I liked this one because of the weird jokes and strange scenarios, but again it got formulaic. Then again, the artwork looks like it's been ripped off from a Disney comic - very derivative.

Lio:
Even when Lio was first advertised as a "soon to be carried strip", I thought it was a weak rip-off of Charles Addams and Gahan Wilson. But, I made it one of my favorites on GoComics, and because of that I read it every day along with the other titles. Finally, I had to acknowledge the fact that it can never measure up to Gahan's work, and I mercifully pulled the plug on it.

Pibgorn:
I originally started reading Pibgorn because the idea of a fairy finding her way into the human world and having adventures was rather intriguing. But, Brooke McEldowney forgot how to tell a story and at the end all sense of continuity disappeared. Now, he's recycling the artwork and adding commentary, where mainly he just likes to use lots of big words and complain about his readers not getting his jokes.

PreTeena:
A precocious pre-teenager, named Tina, tries to make sense of her life between school, her friends, and her fashion-obsessed older sister. It was quite funny for a while, but Allison Barrows discontinued the strip and now it's just in reruns that I've seen before.

Rose is Rose:
I used to love Rose! Once, it was hip, off-the-wall and entirely original. Now, it's just like every other cartoon about a cartoon family - family-friendly and resorting to "cute for cute's sake". Bleh. Still has great artwork, though.

Yenny:
Yenny is a teenage Puerto Rican girl living with her single mother in a cottage by the sea. She's obsessed with fashion and wants to become a model, but her feet are too large for normal catwalk work (they're huge!) The character designs are very sexy, but Yenny reminds me too much of Bugs Bunny in drag but without the fur. Plus, David Alvarez has been slipping his schedule, with gaps up to a month between new strips.

My New Gakken Blog

I mentioned this before, but I want to increase my visibility more.

google has decided to discontinue its knol system, and replaced it with something called annotum. I don't like the new application at all, but in trying to move my knol files over, I had to create an account on the wordpress blogging system. I figure that because I have the account anyway, I might as well use it for hosting a Gakken-dedicated blog.

The new blog has been up for close to a month, and I've been rerunning a past review of the Otona no Kagaku kits per day. I also have the knol files converted and accessible from the menu at the top of the page, and I've added some supporting pages for a short history of Japanese science, and translations of the news announcements from both the Otona no Kagaku homepage and their Facebook page.

Right now, there's only about 15-20 page views a day (compared to the 50-75 for the old Otona no Kagaku kit list knol alone), and half of that seems to be either spambots or browser robots. I'm thinking the problem is that yahoo and google haven't registered the blog in their search lists yet.

I've got another 4 backlogged kit reviews to post from the numbered mook series, plus maybe 6 reviews of the unnumbered kits (the sound vibrator, the synth, the vacuum tube radio, etc.) This will take me right up to the release of the desktop vacuum robot (#33). The official release date is set for Jan. 30, but it usually takes 2-3 days for new products to reach Kyushu. Then, it may be another day or two before I can build the kit, take the photos and write up the review. So, if the timing works out right, the kit #33 review will be the last one published on a daily schedule and I'll drop down to maybe a post a month, depending on how often Gakken comes out with new press releases, or new kits.

P.S. : Gakken has run out of blank blocks for purchase for the Denshi mini kit. They have also teamed up with the rock band White Stripes to produce a WS-themed version of the theremin kit (available in the U.S. for $50). Finally, Gakken celebrated getting 2000 likes on their facebook page by writing a new sketch for the Japanino POV kit.



P.P.S : They've also just announced kit #33 as their latest kit on the Otono no Kagaku home page. And they've taken down the link for "Next Up", so there's no hint now about what #35 is going to be.

Commentary: Grand Jump

(All rights belong to their owners. Images used here for review purposes only.)
(Cover shows Bartender a Paris.)

Grand Jump is one of those magazines that aren't included in the wiki list. This may be either because it's too new, or too low-profile. It comes out every 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month, and is 330 yen for 430 pages.

GJ doesn't have much in the way of well-known titles. Probably the best-known artists are Hikaru Yuzuki and Takeshi Okano. Yuzuki's Amai Seikatsu: Second Season, is a silly little sex romp that had originally run in Business Jump. He also did the raunchy Cinderella Express, among about 15 other titles. Then there's Takeshi Okano, who with partner Shou Makura, had produced Hell Teacher Nubee, and are now doing Reibaishi Izuna Ascension (Spirit Medium Teacher Izuna) as kind of a spin-off with one of the Nubee characters.


(Amai Seikatsu)

GJ is aimed at adult males, but there's not that much overt sex, as opposed to what shows up in the Young title series. Probably the most explicit title in GJ is Mankitsu (manga cafe) by Haruki (who also has about 15 titles to his name). The artwork is a mix of very good and very bad. The stories range from mahjong and street fighting, to science and interoffice affairs.


(Reibashi Izuna Ascension)

Probably the best art is in Mankitsu, Amai Seikatsu (The Sweet Life), My Night is as Beautiful as Your Noon by BOHA by Ylab and the recently started Wazumashi Kazuha by Tsuzuku Yabuno (Lost+Brain). In terms of story, on the other hand, I can't really recommend anything based on just this one issue. Bartender a Paris might be promising in the future - the first chapter ran in this issue. It's a spinoff of Araki Joh's Bartender series, but with a different artist (Osamu Kajisa). The story starts out with a young Japanese bartender getting on a plane for France and starting up a conversation with a rich, cranky old man. He tries to talk to a woman in the seat next to him, but she ignores him (it's an in-joke reference to Arai's Sommelier). In Paris, the guy immediately loses his passport, cash and hotel reservation. In desperation, he tries to go to a bar to get a drink with his remaining change, but the owner of the place summarily beats him up and throws him on the street. Coincidentally, the cranky rich guy can't sleep and goes out for a drink at his favorite bar where he encounters the Japanese bartender. The boy is challenged to show his stuff, and he makes a high ball, going so far as to pack his hands in ice for several minutes to avoid heating up the glass when he handles it. Typical Araki over-the-top presentation, and the artwork isn't that great, but it may improve eventually.


(Imouto no Jinteze)

One title that has caught my eye, though, is the new Imouto no Jinteze (Little Sister's Synthesis) (now on chapter 3), by Hinako Konno, written by Fumihiro Juuzen. In this chapter, the young girl Chie Jinno and two classmates in school are introduced to the works of Gauss and several inventors by their female science teacher. The first half of the chapter is taken up with an explanation of Gauss's solution to "what is the total of all of the numbers from 1 to 100". It's a nice way to learn science in easy to digest bits.

(As for what the solution is: The point was that the assignment, "find the total by adding up all the numbers from 1 to 100", was supposedly intended to just keep students busy for an hour doing a manual calculation. But there's a shortcut. If you add 1 + 100, you get 101. 2 + 99 = 101, 3 + 98 = 101. It's an obvious pattern, up to 50 + 51 = 101. So, to find the answer fast, just multiply 101 * 50 to get 5050. You can use the same approach for adding up 1 to 1000.)


(Wazumashi Kazuha, doing the linking rings trick.)

Grand Jump doesn't have a lot of attraction for me, but I do want to try getting the first volume of "Little Sister's Synthesis" if/when it comes out.


(My Night is as Beautiful as Your Noon)


(Mankitsu)

---------------------

Dates for 1/23 to 1/30:

Birthdays (18):
David (mathematician) Hilbert, 1/23/1862
Brothers Hildebrandt, 1/23/1939
Ernie Kovacs, 1/23/1919
John Belushi, 1/24/1949
David Gerrold, 1/24/1944
E.T.A. ("The Nutcracker") Hoffmann, 1/24/1776
C.L. ("Doomsday Morning") Moore, 1/24/1911
Warren Zevon, 1/24/1947
Robert (Boyle's Law) Boyle, 1/25/1627
Shotaro Ishinomori, 1/25/1938
Philip Jose Farmer, 1/26/1918
Paul Newman, 1/26/1925
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1/27/1756
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, 1/27/1836
John Banner, 1/28/1910
W. C. Fields, 1/29/1880
Tommy Ramone, 1/29/1952
Dick (Rowan and Martin) Martin, 1/30/1922

Died (11):
Johnny Carson, 1/23/2005
Jack LaLanne, 1/23/2011
Kieth ("Retief") Laumer, 1/23/1993
David (comic) Frye, 1/24/2011
L. Ron Hubbard, 1/24/1986
Charlie Callas, 1/27/2011
Jack Parr, 1/27/2004
John Banner, 1/28/1973
Shotaro Ishinomori, 1/28/1998
Jimmy Durante, 1/29/1980
James (Professor Backwards) Edmondson Sr., 1/29/1976

Cloud

It's hard to make out, but every so often, Sakura-jima belches out some impressive ash.