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Kiwi Pocky

Mike Grist February 17, 2009Food / Drink, Japan 3 Comments

Pocky have been coming in a wild and weird range of souped-up flavors for decades- I myself have witnessed creme brulee, deep-sea tuna, cauliflower-mango, and flugelberry (oddly enough- a flavor pioneered by the Beatles!). But this new flavor- kiwi, that just takes the cake. Even better- this is tsubu tsubu kiwi- which translates roughly to- kiwi pocky like your mother made it.

Wow, those crazy Wonka-ites, what will they think of next? Tugging on our heart strings for that old-style religion, while simultaneously playing our tongue string like a hillbilly banjo.

Kiwi Pocky posing on my balcony, despite high wind.

Edo-Tokyo Museum, Ryogoku

Mike Grist February 16, 2009Architecture 13 Comments

The Edo-Tokyo Museum in Ryogoku is one of the ugliest and most pointless buildings I’ve yet seen in Tokyo. A giant clunky trapezoid on 4 legs in grey concrete, fissured with juts and wedges and all manner of go-faster stripes, layered with a shrine-like blocky hat, faced with a child-like mosaic paddling pool, dashed round with white umbrella-like gazebos, it adds up to precisely nothing. It’s just ugly, and pointless- in no way calling back the Edo period, or for that matter the Jomon period, or the Meiji period, or any period from any history in the world. It’s just a geometric shape festooned with other decorative shapes- totally blah.

Edo-Tokyo Museum- on stilts.

Weekly Links

Mike Grist February 14, 2009Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Every Saturday I’ll be posting a list of links I’ve enjoyed in the previous week (if I’ve found any, if I can be bothered):

Something Wicked Zine – Buy a copy now!

Colbert Report – Enjoy the satiric news comedy of Stephen Colbert via streaming.

TOHO Cinemas Roppongi – Great resource for finding out movie times and booking tickets.

Andrew Jones Art – Amazing artist- go look.

Thing Asian Press – Travel guide book publisher who will be putting out a guide to Japan called- ‘To Japan with Love’ featuring a haikyo article and a cycling article from yours truly, summer of this year.

Asahi Shimbun – Actual news from actual reporters!

Barry Eisler’s Site – Site of the author Barry Eisler, writer of the John Rain books.

Mike’s Video of Hotel Nagano Haikyo – The same haikyo I’ll be posting in a few weeks time, we went together- this with a great video that Mike made the music for himself. Impressive.

Jason’s Doctor’s Office Haikyo in Black and White – Great photos of a haikyo I’ll be posting about in a few weeks, creepy.

Japan Times Festival Listing – Great listing of festivals around Tokyo.

Nichitsu 2. Elementary school in a Ghost Town

Mike Grist February 13, 2009Ghost Towns, Haikyo, Saitama, Schools 16 Comments

At the dead-end of a blast-hewn road snaking up through the mountains north of Tokyo, imprisoned by sheer moss-rocked walls looming overhead like rotting Gothic colonnades, the Nichitsu mine ghost town lies in wait, wreathed in a low mist and perennially dusk-lit by the overhanging crags. It hums with a crippling weight of nostalgia, of enfolded memories playing out again and again in its boarded up buildings, of invisible ghosts standing guard at the mine entrance, looking out of cracked windows, walking their habitual paths to and from and back again.

Freemantle Mons the Leviathan Smile @ Something Wicked

Mike Grist February 12, 2009Books, Jabbler's Mons, Stories, Story Art 4 Comments

Freemantle Mons the Leviathan Smile is my first story ever to find publication in a print medium, and I couldn’t have asked for a better debut. The cover-art on the right is a specially commissioned artist’s impression of a scene from the story: the Grammaton looming up from a city in flames.

I had no idea Freemantle was going to take the cover like this- so when I saw it I was effusive in my thanks to both editor (Joe Vaz) and artist (Hendricke Gericke). What an honor- thanks again.

You can go buy a copy of this magazine, or calendars featuring the varied artwork- from the Something Wicked site. I have my own copies of the calendar already- they’re pretty great. I won’t benefit from any of the sales as I’m getting paid in magazine copies, but it looks like a very professional enterprise, with thorough editing I can personally attest to, at a very reasonable price.

Freemantle is set in the world of Jabbler’s Mons, the same world several other of my web-published stories have been set in:

Killin Jack the Malakite

Celibate Jayne the Hammerhand

Stereo Ward the Simpleton

Here’s an excerpt:

It was 4:59 and a minute from dawn when Freemantle Mons the Leviathan Smile felt the Grammaton clockworkings die.? He was up in the great clock-tower’s belfry alone that night, calibrating old cogwork and balancing up the penny weight piles, a gas revelatory tuned soft and hissing by his side.

It was a gradual death.? It spread up from the coils as the unravel slowed, and the 3 story pendulum’s swing faded out.? It shifted along from the swing-banks and stores, and crept the tick-tocking cogs that filled out the walls, and leapt up the belfries from ceiling to floor.

It died past Freemantle, it died beyond Freemantle, and Freemantle stood, and followed it go.

It passed up 3 floors of balance contraptions, of old scales and measures weighing out hours and seconds. It passed through them all, leaving all of them silent, and up to the Hub where the four clock faces hung…

The Something Wicked link again.

You can see my other stories on the Dark Weird Fiction Page.

Beer Drops

Mike Grist February 11, 2009Food / Drink, Japan 7 Comments

As we all know- sometimes liquid beer just doesn’t cut it. Sometimes you have a thirst so deep and true that only a solid will really cut to the chase, really drop the A-bomb, really nuclearize that aching need inside. Up until now, the best solid beer we had was jelly beer, beer-tots, and beer-steak.

Ha. Now- the real thing; pellet-sized beer-crystal rocks of deep beery satisfaction, ready for you whenever you think you’re ready for them.

Akihabara Maids

Mike Grist February 10, 2009Japan, Manga / Anime / Cosplay 19 Comments

In Akihabara electric town, a district a bit north of Tokyo and jam-packed with a riot of tech-shops selling all manner of computer gear and accessories, the Akihabara maids roam. Decked out in frilly French maid outfits, wide-eyed and gushingly friendly to perps, they prey on the nerdy ‘otaku’ that inhabit Akiba’s warren of back-streets like level 3 kobolds in a beginner dungeon.

Pretty in pink.

Waseda Clocktower, Waseda

Mike Grist February 10, 2009Architecture 6 Comments

Waseda University, also affectionately known as ‘So-dai’, is one of the top private universities in Japan. Built in 1882, it has since serviced up such cultural and historical giants as the writer Haruki Murakami and the ex-Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda (he was PM for not quite a year 07-08 before wimping out). It was founded by samurai scholar and ex-PM Okuma Shigenobu, upon whose death the Okuma auditorium, AKA Waseda clocktower, was built.

Waseda Clock-tower.

Japan’s ropeway that died

Mike Grist February 7, 2009Haikyo, Ropeways, Saitama 9 Comments

Scrunched up behind thickets of winter-boned brush off the banks of a man-made lake, the last remaining carriage of the Okutama Ropeway hangs slack in its berthing perch. Once a completely false folly, a gaudy ride of a few minutes across a narrow artificial lake, taking in the view of TNT-blasted canyon walls, unnecessary ringing roads, the bridge beside it enforcing its redundancy, it is now consigned to be the most natural thing there, with clotted brown leaves as its only passengers, vines clinging to the station walls the only attendants.

The Blue Chipset and the Thing

Mike Grist February 6, 2009Science Fiction, Stories 2 Comments

I’m standing at the Way-station Hub. Everybody around me is dead. I’m holding the blue chipset in my hand and I’m willing it to work.

Over my head the sky is swirling. It’s a purple vortex.

I’m waiting for it all to end.

Outside the Way-station the desert winds blow hard. There are scraggle-lined black creatures dancing in the sand-storms. They flit from shimmer to shade and I can never quite see them clearly.

The Thing stomped here. The desert was leveled. Everybody died. The Way-station survived. And I, because I have the chipset, because I am what I am, have survived.

I turn it over in my hands. It is a blue chunk of flat plastic. I know its power, and that even now it is sending out a signal that is at once raising and battling the thing, purpling the skies, and driving everyone mad.

Except me.

I’m thinking about a girl I once loved. Where does love go? She may still exist out there, somewhere. It’s hard to say. How far has the thing reached? Has it stomped itself everywhere?

Did it wipe out Tokyo? Did it take out the seed banks on Svalbard?

I hold the blue plastic chipset up before me, wink the tears from my sand-whipped eyes, and start shouting command-lines into the roaring winds and the purple rift.

Image from Andrew Jones.

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