japanamerica

[Double-click below for full-size readability.] Imagine this: You’re flying into Canada, bastion of peace and tolerance, and you’re traveling light—a carry-on bag, a few magazines, a gift for your Canadian hosts; and your iPad, iPhone and laptop. Upon arrival, Canadian border officials suddenly seize and search the last of these. What they discover is not an explosive device or a cache of Al Qaeda contacts, but rather an item they deem incendiary nonetheless: a stash of digital manga images, some featuring doujinshi (fan-made) illustrations, others that might be labeled lolicon (lolita complex) manga, showing eroticized renderings of what might be underage characters. Whatever the designation, they are all digital images saved on your personal laptop, and they are all imaginary. An American computer programmer in his mid-20s went through this humiliation last year while visiting a friend in Canada. He has since been charged with possession and importation of c...

All's well, but it certainly didn't feel well. I've felt far worse in Tokyo, but something about being in NYC, where no one knew what was going on (everyone scattering into the street below, shouting into their cell phones--by far the worst thing you can do during a quake), and there are no established alert or emergency systems, and so many of the buildings, down here, especially, are already old and crumbling and made of stiff brick that will collapse instead of 'sway'...no, it didn't feel well at all. When I first realized it wasn't another 18-wheeler grinding cobblestones in Soho, that the movement was both harder and more sustained, my little mind ticker registered 'earthquake,' and I was actually annoyed. I think I spoke to myself, muttering like a geezer, saying something like, "What? Oh, come on! Here?" By the time I had risen from my desk, glanced at the table vase to confirm that, yes, the liquid was indeed sloshing from side ...

Thanks to Colectivo Bunka . Full vid link here .

The first 100% legitimate publisher- and industry-backed English-language portal for digital manga is now up and open ( JManga.com ), developed in collaboration with the folks at Crunchyroll.com --the former fansite that went legal in 2008. I wrote about such industry-fandom tie-ups in one of my recent columns for the Yomiuri.

Special thanks to Ken Rodgers, founder of Kyoto Journal , who picked Japanamerica as one of the top 5 English-language books introducing Japan for Samurai.JP . (Click pics below twice for higher resolution readability.)

Feature in the latest issue of Norwegian literary magazine, Vagant , focused on Tokyo . (Thanks to Bar Stenvik.) Japananorway? (Click pics twice for higher resolution and readability--especially if you read Nynorsk .)