This is the second time Killin’ Jack has been published, such that any of my longer-term readers have probably already read it. Its publication came as quite a surprise in the latest Aoiffe’s Kiss- I sent it in to them about 18 months ago, in January 2008. In February 2008 it sold to the online zine AtomJack for $10, and I was pleased. I did the proper thing and sent a follow-up email to samsdotpublishing (who print Aoiffe’s Kiss) to withdraw it from consideration. I heard nothing back, but then that wasn’t unusual. And now, in the past several months, … Read More
Haikyo Roundup
There’s been a lot of haikyoing action happening round the Kanto plain recently, with some new faces (to me) and new info on old locations- here’s the round-up: Tokyo Times– Lee’s been busy since I last updated here, going to the Underground Vault I found at Yamanakako lake and solving its mystery with the revelation that it was a Sanyo Securities hide-away. He managed to identify one of the vault symbols in the banner of a Sanyo magazine left lying around- keen eyes! Though I think he told me it wasn’t actually him that spotted it. Very honest! After that, … Read More
Terrifying tales of the Yui love hotel
The Yui Grand Love Hotel is an abandonment with a more sordid past than usual, if urban legend is to be believed. According to the story, a gang of bosozoku riders (noisy yakuza-ish motorcyclists) kidnapped a schoolgirl into one of its rooms, where they abused and killed her. I’ve no idea if that is true, but stories of her haunting of the place are apparently so rife that people actually queue up outside at night to go into the room where she died, to hear her ghostly wails. All in very poor taste, and again I’ve no idea if there’s … Read More
Mandragora’s Laws
It was a bright spring morning when Mandragora came upon the sweet little cottage with the two dead bodies hanging from its eaves. “What’s all this then?” he asked his skulls, rattling out behind him on their 100 leather tethers. “Looks like a violation,” they called, bobbing and jostling to see. “A clear violation. Bodies from the eaves, what else could that be?” Mandragora walked over and studied the bodies. One was a man and he had his skin intact, though one of his legs was gone, and the other was a woman but it wasn’t easy to tell because … Read More
Looking for the Lost
Looking for the Lost is one man’s swansong for the ancient vestiges of rural Japan, a multi-threaded tramp through history and culture in search of something perhaps impossible to find. Our narrator Alan Booth rambles on foot through some of the remotest hills and valleys in the country, legend-tripping the paths taken by various historical figures. He is invariably exhausted, blistered, and sodden with rain, mocked by school-children and construction workers, set upon by alternatingly fierce and friendly mama-sans, in whose company he is witty, gently drunk, erudite, and hailed as a bit of a celebrity in the karaoke booth. … Read More
The Raw Shark Texts
The Raw Shark Texts is an experimental idea of a story in book form. The raw ingredients encompass just about every sizzling modern experiment of a story that preceded it: a pinch of Fight Club, two sprigs of the Matrix finely chopped, three cupfuls of House of Leaves, a smattering of Cryptonomicon, a generous dose (at least 6oz) of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind infused with essence of Memento, all whirl-chopped in a blender, salted with textual decoration, baked in a easter-egg kiln and served up à la mode. What am I talking about? Well, I’m talking about a … Read More
Long-gone memories of the BE lab
The BE labs haikyo in Shizuoka is mis-representing itself somewhat by posing as a lab; at best it was a spa-resort for people who worked at a lab, somewhere far off and long ago. It sits in the crook of some distinctly un-Japanese rolling hills, looking rather like a bunker with its zig-zag concrete front-eave and fence-wires on the flat-slab roof.
Bathsheba
(Advisory- this is a graphic story, X-rated really.) Mad Noah can’t give me what I want. No. Mad Noah stands in his tent and shouts at me in the doorway- “Incubus of Satan! If you had SEEN the holy holy holy as I have, if you had SEEN!” And I leave. Mad Noah comes to me at night and between his whisperings of a world gone mad he slips his fingers between my thighs, and while he tells the story of the one eyed fox that learnt to fly above the second flood, he strokes me, and I do what? … Read More
Kabuki-za, Kyobashi
The Kabuki-za is a fancy-pants theater in Ginza for the screening of Kabuki- a highly stylized and traditional (read ‘boring to most people’) form of storied stage performance. The Kabuki-za is famous as the principal theater for this kind of show in Tokyo- with a long and varied history dating all the way back to 1924.
Infiltrating the Rojin home
The Rojin (old folks) Home we stumbled across in Shizuoka was a happy accident, one of those random call-outs from the back seat of the car that normally go unheeded. We were searching for an abandoned hospital and having little luck- so the mere sight of anything remotely fenced-off fired up our blood and got us out there investigating.
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