About 2 years ago my friend JC put me in touch with a publishing company called Things Asian Press who were looking for contributors for a new guide book to Japan. I went ahead and contacted them, offering some of my haikyo adventures from my website. Soon after I received word from the editor that they were interested in publishing one of the stories- my overnight stay at Sports World– plus they were interested in the story of my cycle trip up Mt. Mitake.
Well, I was very pleased, and said sure, go right ahead. Now, 2 years later, the book has gone to press and will be released to sale in the next few weeks. I received my 6 contributors copies today, and would like to offer one of them as a prize in a competition!
I was moderately surprised by just how gorgeous this book is- the production value is excellent, with gorgeous photos, crisp text, easily read panels, and a seriously high level of craftsmanship. I’m proud to have two articles in the ‘Into the Wild’ section.
The ‘To Somewhere With Love’ guide book range bill themselves as ‘travel guides for the connoisseur’. They are somewhat similar to the range lonely planet does filled with anecdotes and short stories of travel adventures, though they also feature fact panels with info about how and when to go, costs, telephone numbers, etc. To Japan With Love covers a broad swathe of cultural peccadilloes and geographic range, from crawling through Buddha’s nose at Todai-ji Temple to finding peace in Hiroshima, trespassing in Shizuoka, exploring anime in Tokyo, and riding horses in Hokkaido. It’s all here, from seasoned travelers and ex-pats who know Japan like the back of their hand.
That’s the pitch. You can buy the book (pre-order at the moment) here, OR….
You can win one of my copies. I’ll open it up and sign it if you like, or just leave it packaged in plastic and send it to you pristine.
TO WIN A COPY
To win a copy here’s what you’ll have to do: STUMBLE ME. If you know what stumbling is, awesome, skip ahead to next paragraph. If you don’t here it is: Stumble Upon is a social networking service that sends web-surfers (stumblers) semi-randomly to sites they might be interested in when they click a Stumble button in their web browser. You too can get this button, and surf in this way. Stumblers can also discover fresh content and submit it to the site’s algorithm, which will send other stumblers to check it out. If they like it too, they stumble it, and the content gets more visitors and more chances to receive ratings. It’s one way for content to go viral. On my site, there’s an SU Stumble Upon button at the top right of each article. Click it, jump through a few hoops to join Stumble Upon, then start Stumbling and Discovering content!
OK, so, what to Stumble. Basically, your choice. If you’ve found some content on this site you’ve liked, go back and discover it on Stumble Upon, leaving a brief comment/review. It’s a few clicks max, and you’ll be supporting this site, plus sharing content you liked with other people. If you want to Stumble more than one page you can, and that will count as multiple entries to the competition, increasing your chance to win.
The final step- comment below telling me which page you Stumbled so I can confirm you did. All entries will go into a hat (remember you can multiple enter by multiple Stumbling pages) and a winner will be drawn at random after about a week or so.
OK. Hope people take the time to do this- the book is a great reward for a fairly small effort.
