Dawn in the Gravery

Mike GristDawn Rising, Featured Story, Jabbler's Mons, Story Art, Writing

Dawn is the central character of DAWN RISING, my epic fantasy novel. He is an orphan boy living in the last Abbey to the Heart, insulated from the caste-driven chaos in the city outside, his life regulated by the Sisters who have been his only family since his mother died.

It’s a lonely life, and Dawn spends his days lost in imagination, dreaming of adventure and ancient heroes from the Book of Saint Jabbler, wondering when his turn will come.

Here Dawn clutches the Book to his chest while looking up at his heroes in the stars:

This is the second artwork I’ve commissioned from the world of DAWN RISING. You can see the first here. I wanted a strong image of my lead character, Dawn, standing in the Gravery of the Abbey where he lives. The first image didn’t provide that, so I researched and contacted another artist- Bryan Fowler.

We started with a number of study images- aspects I hoped he could incorporate into the finished painting. First was Dawn’s clothes- I wanted him in a kind of jinbe (traditional Japanese dress for men) as the clothes in his abbey.

Then Dawn’s skin itself is covered in scars, remnants of an ancient sigil, written in organized patterns across his skin, somewhat like Celtic tattoos:

The scars were a fairly recent addition to the character, actually. As I write, mould, and reshape the first book, I find a lot is changing, generally a lot more detail gets added, a lot more ideas get layered one atop the other. It’s interesting to see the world develop this way, once the story is firmly fixed.

Since Dawn has scars everywhere, that includes his face. To try and get an idea of what that might look like I sampled a Maori face tattoo:

In the end Bryan didn’t go with this style, sticking more to the celtic spikes, which do look a lot cooler.

I asked for this character to be standing in a graveyard, holding on to a big old book somewhat like the Bible, which will be the Book of Saint Jabbler- the book Dawn gets all his favorite stories of ancient heroes from. Here’s the first pencil sketch Bryan produced:

There was a lot right with this image. Maybe his chin is a bit big, and I didn’t like the monk-like cord around his waist, nor his beads and the way he’s holding the book, but it’s a very solid beginning. The graves are great, and the skies are full of potential. I asked Bryan to switch the skies to starry night skies though- in which Dawn can read the constellations of his heroes.

The second draft:

This was an amazing leap forward. I loved it. The jinbe works, I love how he’s clutching the book, I love the graves, love the rich starry sky behind him. I think I only suggested one change at this stage, which was that the grave at the fore-front read SOPHIA, after his dead mother. Next was the full color completed version.

I love it. I love how his scars look, I love that his hair is black (though I originally asked for blonde, black just works better), the stars, the graves, everything.

In the meantime, I’ve finished the rewrite of the first book in the series- DAWN RISING. Now I’m looking at a final polish to bring the pace, arc, and sense of urgency in the novel right to the forefront. I owe a lot to all my trial readers who have given huge amounts of helpful feedback. I’ll save their names for the Acknowledgements section of the book, if/when it gets published, but a quick thanks here for all their help. They’ve been invaluable in drawing out all the story themes and conflict that were latent in my head, but deficient on the page. The book is really getting to be the best I can possibly make it.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

Dawn tilted his head up and watched the stars. They hung overhead like glowing Shellaby bugs pasted to the black arc of sky. He tried to see in them the constellations of his heroes; Saint Jabbler clambering up over the lightening horizon, Lord Quill stampeding the Drazi plague, but none of them seemed to fit. All he saw instead were the fierce grey eyes of the woman from his dreams.

I’ll send to agents soon. Fingers crossed.

Bryan will be rendering more of the characters from DAWN RISING over the coming weeks and months- starting with MARE, the deadhead thief. I’m looking forward to it.

Read more about DAWN RISING, and see more art from the world of JABBLER’S MONS, here.

Read back over all my published short stories in the bibliography.

GUEST HAIKYO – Okinawa’s grandest ruin

Mike GristFeatured Story, Guest Haikyo, Haikyo, Hotels / Resorts, Okinawa

This is the third part of Paul’s Okinawa explorations, see part one (abandoned cactus theme parks) here, and part two (the Rekio hotel) here.

Day Three

Along with Sports World the Nakagusuku Kogen Hotel is one of only a handful of ruins in Japan on the scale of a small village. Such is its grand positioning on the hillside the hotel can be seen from literally miles away … my first response upon seeing the ruin, something along the lines of: “Woah!” Originally scheduled for opening to coincide with the World Fair Expo ’75, construction of the hotel was never actually fully completed. The conglomeration of construction companies in charge went bankrupt shortly before the Expo, and despite numerous talks to organise its demolition, it survives to this day. The ruin is well known throughout Okinawa, and has been used in tv shows and music videos, such as Miyuki Nakajima’s single Taka Ga Ai (See it here)

At the entrance there’s no security or even a fence to keep intruders out. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but there was a white sign in Japanese. My wife translated it later, saying it was a message from the owners of the land detailing the difficulties the hotel project faced. And it even went so far as to name the officials one by one who were to blame for the state it had fallen into. The ruin had obviously attracted a fair few foreign visitors in its time. Numerous quotes and ramblings had been scrawled in English throughout the grounds such as “One Step Toward The Gods …”.

Time was again limited for my exploration. All in all I think I saw less than half of the hotel in the hour I spent there. You could easily dedicate a whole book to this ruin … I would recommend my fellow explorers to schedule at least a few hours to see this place properly. And try a find a map.

To get to its grounds you have to go through the ruins of the 15th century Nakagusuku castle. It’s an odd juxtaposition, one ruin next to another.

As is customary there was plenty of weird / schizophrenic graffiti inside. Rom, who had left his huge tag on the Rekio Hotel (on the other side of Okinawa) had a tag here too. More weird graffiti:

The Fat Lady.

The Angry Man.

The Consumer.

Some areas required a bit of climbing to enter, but basically all areas were accessible, one way or another.

This was the first room where I was expecting to find some shady characters lurking around. Luckily there was no-one around (that I noticed) the whole time. There were several pitch-black rooms here I didn’t have the nerve to stick around too long in.

Stacked like a Mayan pyramid (Mike’s comment)

There were several machine rooms to peruse, if that’s your type of thing.

You could attempt to approach the ruin through its surrounding forest, but I wouldn’t recommend it. The trees have overgrown to a point where even the highest part of the ruin is completely blocked from sight most of the time. I found this out the hard way, getting thoroughly lost in the maze-like forest looking for the main building.

Climbing out on the roofs the buildings on each level offered great views of the surrounding area. Strong winds however, offered to push me off the edge – no thanks.

The uppermost building had been stripped bare of everything but its most basic structure. There were a lot of steps of climb to reach the top. Each level had it’s own message to try and freak you out: ‘DON’T GO’, ‘YOU’RE NOT ALONE’.

Sleep all day, play all night.

It felt almost appropriate for somebody or some nasty surprise to be waiting for me at the top. Not a soul. Not even a Vampire.

I took a different route out of the complex, dashing and shooting some of the other buildings I didn’t have time to see the first time. If I can I’d like to come back here some day. There’s plenty more to see and discover at the Nakagusuku Hotel.

Credit for the ruin: Nippon no Haiko author Ryuji Sakai and the Japanese Haikyo community.

See alternative takes from Japanese explorers on the ruin here and here.

To find out more about Paul’s haikyo adventures go to his Misuterareta site, or see all the photos from this explore in his article here. Thanks Paul!

See more Japanese ruins (haikyo) in the galleries:

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You can also see a curation of world ruins in the ruins gallery.

GUEST HAIKYO – Okinawa’s Rekio hotel

Mike GristGuest Haikyo, Haikyo, Okinawa

This is the second part of Paul’s Okinawa explorations, see part one here.

Day Two

The Rekio Hotel was built around the time of the Okinawa Ocean Expo. In that decade there was a boom in hotel construction, hoping to cater for the influx of tourists. Many people did come, but not enough to sustain the hotel’s business long-term. Demolition costs for the hotel are said to be too expensive, and the current owners / shareholders can’t sell it … leaving it in limbo.

My map work was for finding the Rekio Hotel was incorrect, but its prominent position in the skyline made it easy to track down. The road leading up to the ruin was deserted but not closed off. A nice little opening in the fence to crawl through, and I was in. The hotel was now ‘open-plan’ in most areas … meaning no walls, no windows. And with a strong wind a-blowin’ this place was the very definition of a deathtrap. As Rekio now offers guests numerous opportunities to plunge to their doom, I have to say – be careful if you’re visiting this ruin.

There’s no one guarding the hotel full-time. But there is a patrol car which routinely goes by and checks to see no-one is inside. The speedy patrol car caught me by surprise the first time, spotting me on the second floor. Sure enough the car u-turned at the end of the road and returned a minute later, pulling up outside the entrance.

I really wasn’t in the mood for a game of cat and mouse. Hidden behind a pillar, I was out of sight while the guards scanned the area. They gave up their search in a few minutes. I was safe, but really didn’t feel like I could take my time anymore. As you can see the inside of the hotel was pretty much destroyed. I explored each level quickly, finding only rubble, broken kotatsu and childish graffiti.

The swimming pool didn’t look too inviting.

I made my way up to the roof catching as many of the rooms as I could. It’s always very satisfying getting to the very top of a ruin. I was pretty well exposed to people in the surrounding areas, time to get out of there.

To find out more about Paul’s haikyo adventures go to his Misuterareta site, or see all the photos from this explore in his article here. Thanks Paul!

See more Japanese ruins (haikyo) in the galleries:

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You can also see a curation of world ruins in the ruins gallery.

Japan’s Apocalypse Roads

Mike GristBridges / Roads, Featured Story, Haikyo

It’s fairly well known that Japan’s construction industry is running rampant. There are lots of statistics about how many more roads, airports, and dams Japan has than other developed nations. The system seems to function in the stead of social safety nets in other countries; if you can’t get a job, well, the government will put you to work building more roads.
It results in a countryside covered in concrete, and thousands of rural projects that fall into dis-use, since they were never needed anyway. This is the fate awaiting them.

Apocalypse Road

I don’t know much about this road in particular. It’s pretty famous on the Japanese haikyo sites, but no one there seems to agree on who built it or what it was for. One site says construction started in the 1960’s and finished in 1973, another says it was abandoned as recently as 1997. I read elsewhere that it was a private project designed to bring traffic up to a projected onsen area in the mountains, but it seems difficult to believe any onsen company could afford the huge expense of this road, so I’m assuming it was built by the government.

I came with SY- we had to climb some fences and scrabble around in the overgrowth to get in. The road from below is strikingly huge, and so bizarre to find in the midst of a jungle. I stood on top of the road and thought of all the post-apocalypse movies I’ve seen, with their beautiful vistas of crumbling concrete and steel. There’s an excellent scene in Book of Eli where Denzel is walking beside a fallen elevated highway, and of course I thought of that.

In the shadow of the road.

It tapers overhead to landfall with the ground.

Standing within the loop.

An empty concrete hut for the troll to live in.

As a haikyoist I sometimes get asked why I think these ruins are left the way they are. The usual answer has to do with the Bubble, and ruins as toxic assets that can neither be sold or renovated. I got a good share of my information for this belief from the book Dogs and Demons by Alex Kerr, where he talks about the hey days of 80’s investment and booming real estate prices, then the crash that left the system reeling.

The Bubble answer covers all the dilapidated theme parks, hotels, and resorts we see lost in the countryside. Abandoned mines and factory towns can be explained by dwindling natural resources and a shift in population centers to the big cities. Ruins of military bases we can attribute to Imperial ambition and a strong but fading post war occupation by American forces.

That leaves us with all the country’s unnecessary infrastructure.

The fallen road section once led to a cliff, that would have had further road built atop it. Construction didn’t get that far though, whatever moorings were used were surely temporary, and the section came down.

According to the Japan Times, Japan’s obsession with road-building was seeded by the Americans over 60 years ago. After the war, they ordered up a 5-year plan designed to bolster Japan’s infrastructure and get some stimulus money circulating around the economy. It sounds a lot like Keynesian economics, similar to what several countries are doing today. As anti-stimulus forces are saying now though, the experiment seems mostly a failure. The country got hooked on infrastructure spending, and 5-year road plans became a staple of government expenditure, expanding exponentially as time went by, unhindered by any ideas of efficiency or necessity. The roads were needed to fund all the people whose livelihoods depended on building the roads.

It seems like this kind of infrastructure spending has come to take the place social welfare systems take in other countries. Without it, a large percentage of Japanese would be unemployed (up to 10% of populations in some places). All the small rural towns eking out an existence thanks to federal infrastructure spending would dry up and disappear.

Its created a voracious system that cannot stop building, a concrete addict, with no way to turn off the supply without facing some unimaginably difficult cold turkey. But that end date, let’s call it Japan’s financial apocalypse, is surely looming ever closer.

Cut off.

The fallen section is much steeper than it looks. I tried to climb up but up close it seemed almost sheer.

Beautiful fall foliage.

The piping looks a skeletal crucifixion.

Beside the bridge.

Under the bridge. Climbing over all the twisted metal rebars and dense rushes I lost my lens cap. Sad.

While it’s been building all its roads (four to five times the number of other group of 7 countries), dams (some 400 currently under construction, making it the world’s fourth largest dam-builder despite a country smaller than California), and concrete-lined rivers (with only handful of all waterways not concrete-lined), the government has been cannibalizing its own people.

According to the New York Times, Japan’s debt is $10 trillion, some 200% of GDP, and sucks up 25% of GDP for interest servicing. Compare that to America’s public debt of $13.5 trillion, at 94% of GDP. Neither country is in great condition, but Japan is obviously teetering on the edge of becoming the next Greece or Iceland. In the event that it does happen, and the world’s 3rd largest economy comes crashing to its knees, it’s the Japanese themselves who’ll be left trying to receiver money out of the hollow pit where their savings used to be. 90% of Japan’s debt is financed out of the savings of the Japanese people.

For over 60 years the government has been hovering up those savings and spewing them out as concrete. It’s an endless stimulus program of ouroborosian proportions that will surely, some day, finally swallow itself whole.

Fence preventing entry to the fallen section.

Looking out over the sea of trees.

Looking back along the path.

Over the railing and back to the loop start.

SY worships Rah.

On a grand scale.

I sit on the jagged-tooth edge and look into the abyss.

I once went somewhere.

Bright red in the nothing.

Teetering pipe railing.

I thought about all that some while I was standing on the apocalypse road. I’ve read Jared Diamond’s Collapse and watched the movies about Peak Oil. I follow the goings-on of my country’s swingeing public spending cuts, and the increases of public spending in the USA. I’m not a doom-sayer either, nor morbidly fascinated with ruins enough to want everything to be a ruin so I can dart around like a ghoul taking pictures of squalor and loss. I’m just interested in ruins, and what they tell us about ourselves.

And for fun, the two of us.

Further Reading

Alex Kerr: Dogs and Demons

Japan Times: Japan’s Road to Ruin

New York Times: Japan rethinks a dam

Forex Blog: Japanese Yen and the irony of debt

See more Japanese ruins (haikyo) in the galleries:

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You can also see a curation of world ruins in the ruins gallery.

GUEST HAIKYO – Okinawa’s derelict Cactus Theme Park

Mike GristFeatured Story, Guest Haikyo, Haikyo, Okinawa, Theme Parks

The impetus for starting a series of Guest Haikyo posts came from a fellow haikyoist’s web-hosting disaster. Paul’s site Misuterareta (abandoned) was recently lost in toto when his blogging platform ‘Vox’ went under. It seemed a real shame, and I suggested putting excerpts of some of his content up on my site. Happily he ran with the idea, while at the same time starting the long process of getting his old posts back up in full on his new Misuterareta site.

I haikyo-ed with Paul once, where we hit up Namegawa Island and the Yui Love Hotel, and he exhibited an uncanny ability to walk down sodden muddy hill-sides completely upright without slipping once, while I scrabbled on all fours in the muck. Stunning.

We’ll start with Paul’s first Okinawan explore (of 3), an abandoned cactus theme park. You can find Paul’s full post here– I’ve excerpted about half of it below. With that, I’ll let Paul take over.

Giant head at entrance.

From a ruins perspective Okinawa is not a goldmine of locations. The excess and extravagance of the construction from the bubble era looks like it never extended to Japan’s southern most prefecture. Small shops and houses aside I’d say there are around ten unique ruins to find scattered around the island, and no more. I found four, including the largest ruin I think I’ll ever explore (more on that in the next post). Due to its heavy rainfall, strong winds and natural disasters the state of the buildings in Okinawa is generally dirty, run-down, and faded. In short, large areas of the island looked like they were in a state of a ruin. Driving around the island, trying to spot ruins from a distance … was impossible. My usual alertness for finding ruins was completely useless here, I had to rely on the locations I’d found from my research.

I’m still not sure of the exact connection between Okinawa and cacti is, apart from the fact that the climate there is suitable for cacti growth and sustainability. Cacti theme park ruins are as random as they come, here’s what I found.

Day One My wife and I had three days in Okinawa in total. One day of miserable rain, one of beautiful weather and one with a absolute deluge of rainfall. This was the miserable rainy day. I had ample time that day to explore the first Cactus park, the only problem was … there wasn’t much to see. Like the Namegawa Island location I explored with MJG there was a large open space, with a myriad of paths. Which all led to nowhere.

Central courtyard.

There were various mysterious statues scattered around the theme park, some too well covered by undergrowth, some I could get up close to. It was though with some disappointment that I had such a large location to explore, but almost nothing to see. The park was of course filled with slowly decaying cacti and some small buildings which had been neatly cleared out for the most part.

There was an office, kitchen, and dining rooms here – all accessible but not worth documenting. I did find access to a tower of sorts, which gave me a great aerial view of the surroundings. I had the location for another cactus theme park from my research, but other than knowing it was closed I had no idea if there were any remains of it. It could’ve been a parking lot by now for all I knew.

Day Three So having had plenty of time to explore the first (quite ordinary) cactus park the elements were conspiring against us on our final day. Having fitted in some natural heritage sites and ancient ruins in light rain the heavens truly opened in the afternoon. With only an hour and a half left before we had to drop back our rental car I decided to take the gamble on the second theme park. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Giant cactuses at entrance.

The sign had fallen off but there she was, still standing. I wasn’t looking forward to stepping out of the car into the torrential rain that afternoon … and indeed this proved to be the most punishing of all the ruins I’d visited. Even with a full rain coat on I’d wrecked the set of clothes I was wearing very quickly. The actual park had a long, entrance road to get down which was already partially flooded.

Rainy entrance.

When I finally made it to the second entrance I could see it … a proper ruin, with all sorts of areas to explore. A random group of crazies had used an abandonded vehicle to repeatedly crash into the front of a building, very cinematic. I was very glad of the shelter that the first large building gave me. Inside was extremely dark but filled with goodies. The smashed remains of a gift shop, snack bar, information centre. Somebody had gone to town with a baseball bat on this place more than once … but sometimes that just adds to the atmosphere of a ruin.

Headless body.

I hope you can see how terrible the weather was from these photos. It was a miracle I could shoot anything in those conditions, I couldn’t chose my angles or take my time … just 40 minutes to cover this place and that was it. There was a cyclical trail similar to the first park to traverse this time as well. The difference was, this park was on a slope, with water rising up and flooding each path rather quickly.

I made it to a hut in the centre called Kachinas Parlor, inside was again smashed to pieces with occasional leftover remnants. Going deeper into the park was just getting myself deeper in trouble. Paths were becoming more overgrown and I couldn’t bear having to wade through the water, weeds and protect myself from the rain. There was plenty more to see, but I was almost out of time.

On my way out.

It was extremely frustrating to find an undocumented, unexplored ruin and not have the time to see even half of it. I exited through the ticket booth area and found even more rooms adjacent to the car park. No time to stop, and no time to regret not coming here sooner … we had to catch our flight.

Park Buggy.

Credit for discovering the first location goes to travel blogger: Yuki Mitsu. Credit for the second ruin: me (Paul Heaton).

To find out more about Paul’s haikyo adventures go to his Misuterareta site, or see all the photos from this explore in his article here. Thanks Paul!

See more Japanese ruins (haikyo) in the galleries:

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You can also see a curation of world ruins in the ruins gallery.

GUEST HAIKYO – Sun Park Hotel

Mike GristFeatured Story, Guest Haikyo, Haikyo, Yamanashi

Recently I was chatting to a few other haikyoists about re-featuring some of their explores on this site. The first to agree with it was Brian McDuckston, of Japan Bash and Ramen Adventures. On Japan Bash Brian explores Japan on his motorcycle, and occasionally discovers haikyo first-hand. I owe my coverage of the Hotel Royal to Brian (here’s his post, here’s my post), who spied it in passing from his bike. His site Ramen Adventures has been featured on Japanese TV and in the New York Times!

We’ll start with Brian’s discovery of the Sun Park Hotel in Yamanashi. You can find Brian’s full post on the Sun Park Hotel here– I’ve excerpted about half of it below. With that, I’ll let Brian take over.

I was riding in the mountains of Yamanashi, a couple hours from Tokyo, when I came across another rad random hotel haikyo. These are the ruins of the Sun Park Hotel. Let’s check it out!

If you’re feeling adventurous, go ahead and climb the fire escape ladder to the 2nd floor.

Or just walk in the back. Your choice. I chose the door.

Main hall.

There’s a nice bar in back.

The rule is, when you see a lone shoe, whatever thought was on your mind will come true. Am I the only one who grew up thinking that superstition?

Even though access was extremely easy, this place didn’t feel safe. The floor had a strange, spongy texture to it that seems like it could cave in at any moment. And this was on the 4th floor. There was peeling wallpaper everywhere.

There were toothbrushes EVERYWHERE.

The cafe terrace must have seemed like a nice idea at the time. It probably got hit with one winter and then rotted away.

Restaurant view of the woods.

To find out more about Brian McDuckston’s haikyo adventures go to his Japan Bash site, or read up on ramen on his Ramen Adventures site. Thanks Brian!

See more of MJG’s Japanese ruins (haikyo) in the galleries:

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You can also see a curation of world ruins in the ruins gallery.

Dawn and the Fetchling

Mike GristDawn Rising, Featured Story, Jabbler's Mons, Stories, Story Art, Writing

I commissioned this sketch of Dawn from an artist I found online. Dawn is the lead character in the book I’m working on now- Dawn Rising, set in my Jabbler’s Mons fantasy universe.

The artist took a few passes at rendering Dawn and his scars, but in the end unfortunately gave up before finishing, so the image at right is what I’m left with. His scars look a little too much like war paint, but otherwise I think this is close to what Dawn (he is a boy, yes) looks like.

I’m talking to a few other artists now about rendering some of the other characters from Dawn Rising. One chap is going to produce a big epic battle scene- drawn from the various heroic stories that Dawn is reading at the beginning of the book. Another will hopefully complete a digital painting of Dawn, and of his 5 friends, and maybe other characters too.

It’s exciting for me to see my characters rendered like this. It makes them real, and easily accessible, even though the book itself is not fully finished.

So these are tasters only, ones I hope will draw people in to learn more about the world and the story. The scene depicted above is Dawn’s opening scene.

Jabbler’s Mons is the name of the city Dawn grows up in. I’ve had several short stories set in that wider fantasy world published in fiction magazines- you can read more about them on my stories page. You can learn more about Dawn Rising there too.

Japanese Bread Vending Machine

Mike GristFood / Drink, Japan

You can buy a lot of things out of vending machines in Japan. Vast ranges of tiny plastic toys, Calorie Mate snacks, hot drinks, cold drinks, hot soup, cooked food (chicken and chips at motorway services), oxygen canisters (at the top of Mt. Fuji), manga (in train stations), beer, cigarettes. Infamously some machines sell panties. Many are outfitted with cameras to scan ID cards (for beer and tobacco), scanners to read Pasmo and Suica cards for digital payment, and security cameras enabled with direct lines to the police in the event they witness some kind of crime.

They also sell bread.

It seems strange to see bread in a vending machine. But is it so strange? In the UK vending machines selling crisps, chocolate bars and the like are commonplace. You don’t see those much in Japan. But, bread? It’s a far more perishable good than any of those other items. It goes off within days. Could any vending machine possibly turn over enough bread to make it worthwhile?

Wouldn’t every piece of bread in there be stale in a matter of days? Wouldn’t it be foul?

Well, that’s what I’m here for, to find out.

Here I target my victim, a 100yen Chocolate Roll. You are mine, chocolate roll. Mwahahah.

Here is the proof that I bought the victim, and am man-handling it in front of its home. I don’t feel bad about it. I just bought it.

Here is another shot of the victim, from my balcony.

I settled down to watch the latest episode of the Office with this chocolate roll and the pumpkin custard pudding drink. I was quite cautious about eating both.

So, was the bread stale? Well, maybe. It’s hard to tell. It was not too hard and dry, it was almost completely flavorless, but a lot of convenience store bread tastes like that anyway. Even the chocolate tastes papery. Believe it or not, this 100 yen roll also had cream inside it, but apart from a slightly different texture, it all tasted the same.

And it wasn’t even warm! How hard is it to heat up my choco roll, vending machine? Shocking.

Not worth it, except for the empty calories. But fun.

The Butcher’s Milk Carton Stationery

Mike GristFeatured Story, Japan, People / Culture

Nogata is a little town in the west of Tokyo famous for two things:

1- The train station Gundam statue is near it in Kami-Igusa.

2- The father of the butcher down the street by the police box across from the station makes wicked stationary items out of milk cartons, and gives them away if you buy more than 600yen worth of meat.

I teach a group of lovely retirees in Nogata, and one of them brought this excellent, sturdy, and very pretty desk-organizer to class to show off show and tell.

She had heard about it from a TV show featuring Nogata’s main shopping drag. In it a few C-list J-talents wandered the streets investigating all the oddities of the town; the butcher’s milk cartons were one of the more interesting bits. One of her friends in far-flung Ibaraki requested she get one for her, so she picked one up alongside a 900 yen cut of chicken breast.

I handled the piece, and it really was very nice- very sturdy, beautiful Japanese paper over it, with a working drawer. Apparently demand has gone through the roof after the TV show, and the butcher’s father is struggling to keep up. Locals have dropped by and left him their used milk cartons so he has enough raw materials.

Lovely.

After the class I dropped by the butchers and had a brief chat with the butcher himself. He didn’t have any of the organizers on display, but when I asked if he had any he could show, he was very happy to oblige:

A most maximum red example with the smiling butcher behind it. I think he might have been pretty chuffed a non-Japanese had heard about his dad’s works.

See more of my Strange Japan content here.