September 21, 2007

three great grown-up manga

Koi no Mon - Jun Hanyunyuu

Bizarre story about a cosplay girl and freteer who makes manga out of rocks.

Osaka Hamlet - Hiromi Morishita

Teenage tearaways, cross-dressing, love, life, death and divorce. Everyday life in Osaka. Winner of this year's Tezuka Osamu Prize

Lyric Pieces for Whistle - Naoto Yamakawa

Understated and hauntingly beautiful stories with not much of a middle or an end. Real manga maniac territory here. Some of the pieces were rescued from self-published manga books.

Do I qualify as an otaku now?

Posted by tony at 05:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 28, 2007

Hachiko

I'm reading "Tokyo Rising", a lively history of the Showa-era city by Edward Seidensticker.

Here's a little nugget about the Hachiko statue at Shibuya station, erected to a faithful pet dog who waited there every evening for 10 years after his master died.

Seidensticker is a bit sceptical

"Such observers of [Hachiko's] behaviour as the novelist Ooka Shohei have held that he did not go to the station in the evening at all, but hung around it the whole day through, waiting to be fed."

Wikipedia says they discovered yakitori skewers in the dog's stomach after he died. In the end Hachiko was stuffed and put on display at the National Science Museum in Ueno.

Posted by tony at 11:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack