August Oktoberfest in Tokyo




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Manga, Anime & Cosplay: Japanamerica Night--Thank Yous--

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--to John Fuller, Shigeharu Ono and the absurdly patient and kind staff of Kinokuniya NYC , to Marco Pavia and Mandy Willingham of TokyoPop , to Clyde Adams III of NYC Anime , to Peter Tatara of New York Anime Festival and Comic Con , to Taeko Baba and Justin Keesey of New York-Tokyo , to Wired magazine , to Lee-Sean Huang and JETAANY , to the four extraordinary manga artists, whose backgrounds (US-Hispanic; US Caucasian; Korean; Japanese) served to exemplify the japanamerica phenomenon--and to you, that glorious mob of you who attended, ranging in age from the teens to the 80s, in race and ethnicity from African American to Asian to White to Hispanic, and in costumes elaborate to mundane--I am, and remain, grateful. What a night in New York. [photos courtesy of marlene marino and lee-sean huang.]
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Haruki Murakami tells me about American literature

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>an excerpt from my interview w/Haruki for A Public Space . Haruki Murakami’s translations include: Raymond Carver’s short stories, Truman Capote’s short stories; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Mikal Gilmore’s Shot in the Heart, John Irving’s Setting Free the Bears, Tim O’Brien’s The Nuclear Age, Grace Paley’s Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye; and Mark Strand’s Mr. and Mrs. Baby and Other Stories. ROLAND KELTS You and I once discussed how difficult it is to be an individual in Japan, how lonely. HARUKI MURAKAMI It’s still very difficult, but things have changed drastically in Japan over the last ten years. You know, when I was young, we were supposed to join a company, join the office or the academy. It was a very tight society. You had to belong to someplace. I didn’t want to do that, so I became independent as soon as I left college. And it was lonely. But not these days. People graduate and immediately become freelan...
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