The Asia-Europe Foundation’s Lingua Comica is a project that gathers emerging international comic artist in pairs for 2 months of online artistic collaboration, followed by a residency week of group workshops, panels and exhibitions.

This year it’s a joint project with the Kyoto International Manga Museum (MM), which is helping organise the residency week in Kyoto, and will be exhibiting the resulting artworks.

They have a weblog for the artists where we can watch their progression, …and read their messages to each other incidentally, which seems a bit voyeuristic, but oh well.

The MM’s resident participating artist is Ogawa Tsuyoshi.

Ito-sensei has asked me to do some as yet undefined language related volunteering. So hopefully i’ll get to meet all the other artists too. Sounds like fun! And from the stuff on their blog already, it looks like it’s going to be a great exhibition.

In my continuing quest to A.) deal with my lack of stove hotplate, and B.) get as much use as possible out of the couple of appliances I do actually own, I made pumpkin soup in my rice cooker today. So i’ve used it for rice, porridge, pasta and soup now.

I cheated by using tinned pumpkin. Because real pumpkin is hard to find and beyond my budget in this country. Besides I don’t own a blender or food processor anyway, which seems to be needed otherwise …but then I wouldn’t really know for sure because I’ve never made it the non-cheat way. This was my first ever attempt at making pumpkin soup. Normally in Oz, I buy it or hassle a certain family member into making it for me (I only did that after my jaw surgery though). *walks away whistling innocently*

I was out of bread, so I made damper while I was keeping an eye on the soup, by squishing the dough into a flat disk and cooking it on my mini-grill. I should’ve made more though cause it was so nice I dipped and ate most of it before taking a photo even occurred to me. hehe.

Left: Rice cooker soup, Hokkaido milk and empty tin.
Right: Soup served with sour-cream, damper and lemon tea.
Anyway, in case anyone out there on the internet is actually interested in how to make cheat-style pumpkin soup using canned pumpkin in a rice cooker, here’s how I did it (btw, I only had margarine, but obviously real butter could be used instead):

1/4 cup margarine
2 teaspoons sugar
1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 can pumpkin
1 can milk

Melt margarine and dissolve in sugar.
Add water, salt and pepper. Stir in canned pumpkin, and milk.
Cook with the rice cooker lid open, stirring occasionally, until desired consistency is reached.
Serve. ^_^

I now have two meals worth in the fridge and another two in the freezer, plus the bowl that I ate. Even though, I think I normally eat less than other people, each container I stacked away would easily fill a good sized mug or smallish bowl.

mmm… soup.

Recently the 9th International Comic Artist Conference took place in Kyoto, which gathers together comic artists from around the world for forums and lectures. The actual conference is closed to the public, but this year in celebration of the conference they had events at the Manga Museum and the event hall of the conference centre and called the public open section the Manga Summit Festa. The event hall was mainly corporate booths, but there were a bunch of manga artists who cut the ceremonial ribbon (above), and sketched their characters on some walls while the crowd watched on and applauded ^_^

I managed to get a photo of Monkey Punch drawing, but it was too crowded to get a clear shot of anyone else with my camera phone (curses for forgetting my real camera), I got a good shot of Chiba Tetsuya’s sketch afterwards though, and he’s on the very left of the top right photo above where they’ve cut the ribbon.

…
Monkey Punch drawing LupinIII(left), LupinIII sketch (centre), and Ashita no Joe sketch by Chiba Tetsuya.

It was good fun, and even the corporate booths were interesting (which isn’t always the case at these kind of things). The wacom tablet booth is always fun for everyone to play around in, and as well as the stand tablets to be used with an otherwise normal pc setup, they also had the super tablet screen versions available for people to mess around with.

Wacom Tablet Booth.

They also had a mobile phone manga booth with phones setup so people could read manga on them, and one giant not-so-mobile-phone which worked for the same purpose.

Detective Conan on the mobile-net, and a mega-phone (cue bad-joke-drums&cymbalsound).

The peeps at SpicySoft also had a booth setup where people could draw manga that would then be scanned and uploaded to the net for everyone to view using their mobile phones, and for people who were feeling technologically capable, they were showcasing a software that was almost just like photoshop, but specifically for creating manga …In that it seemed a little more restrictive than the normal photoshop, but had a lot of panel templates, and a function for splitting up the panels into viewing order for upload.

Stevie, one of the newly arrived research students this semester, came along with me, and he drew a short manga with the program which they uploaded but then we realised neither of us can access it, because he didn’t have a phone (he might by now though) and mine is prepaid and doesn’t have internet access. Websites designed for mobile phone access are generally not accessible at all using normal pc browsers.

Then today, I remembered about the Opera Mini Simulator which simulates a mobile phone with the Opera Mini browser on it, so you can check to see what a mobile phone page will look like without needing the actual hardware. …Unfortunately, the museum computers don’t seem to have Java2 installed, and I shy away from updating things that doesn’t belong to me, so I can’t check it out there, but i’ll check it out from home and see if I can find the direct link to Stevie’s comic.

So, as Dad can attest, I don’t have very much stuff in my room, and one of the things I still haven’t gotten around to buying but plan to one day is a little table to put my laptop on.

In the meantime I got the box my microwave came in and some tools of the cardboard manipulation trade:

And did this to it:

And now I have a table. yay!
I originally made it just for the fun of it, but it really does support the weight of my laptop. I was surprised.

And look, there’s even just enough room for the mouse pad:

hehehe.

I went to the dentist today because I thought I was getting a hole in one of my teeth, although it didn’t hurt I was sure the tooth was getting darker, and was scared.

As it turns out I was being completely paranoid, and I have no cavities. wow! That’s the first time in my life i’ve ever had that news from a dentist (although I generally try to avoid them, so that could be the problem. If I went more often, i’d probably hear that more often. ^_^heh)

They cleaned my teeth super-dentist-style to make the visit worth while, gave me a free inter-dental tooth brush, said I don’t have to come back and sent me off like a good little girl.

The survey at the start was funny. It started off with normal stuff, like questions about allergies, health conditions and eating/drinking/smoking habits. Then asked about how often I clean my teeth and if I floss etc.
After that, they had a sliding scale where they asked me to pick how scared of dental treatment I am. From terribly scared to not scared at all.
I picked smack bang in the middle, but I really wonder what they do if you pick terribly scared.

On the weekend I got a one off day of work at a beach wedding.
It paid 12,000yen all up and was a lot of fun.

The groom, Justin, was in charge of everything and every time I saw him he’d risen to a slightly higher level of panic. I really don’t know why people would want to organise something like that themselves, but he was still a really cool guy to work for despite the panic.

Actually the first thing that happened when we got there was that he told us to chill out and go swimming for a couple of hours, then fed us with Japanese bento (packed lunches).

It was a stone beach rather than sand. Just a million tiny little pebbles, on the side of Lake Biwa, the largest freshwater lake in Japan. It was sooo nice to go swimming in. Like a massive freshwater swimming pool, except it could have been an ocean because you can’t see the other side.

Then we cut up vegetables for 3 or 4 hours. I was put in charge of making the salad. Mmm… salad.
I spent most of the actual reception collecting empties and rubbish, then joined Raja on the bar later in the night, supplying already ridiculously drunk people with more free wine and champagne.

We ate the same food that the guests did for dinner, got to have some of the 60,000yen cake (like wtf? I mean it was nice cake, but there’s no way it was worth 60,000yen!), and from around 10pm Justin started coming round to make sure we were all drinking and taking it easy.
We kept serving drinks though, and Raja and I started drinking with the guests, it was really nice (and no doubt hideously expensive) wine, and Raja had stashed the last bottle of champagne away for the staff which we opened about then too.

Most of the English speaking staff were from the Philippines, and they decided to sleep on the beach rather than take the train home. We suggested the pebbles might not be so comfy (although one random person had already passed out there) and in the end they agreed and slept/hungout in one of the pagodas, surfing the internet on their laptop all night, thanks to somebody’s unprotected wireless. They’re all software programmers working for the same agency. Albin is a Java programmer and all the others work in C++. They said they came mainly for the fun and adventure rather than the money though, so hopefully they’re not too underpaid. eep.

Another of the specially hired staff, Kevin, tried to pick up the lady in charge of the bar, a Japanese woman who later turned out to be 10 years older than him.

Kevin, Raja, Albin and I started hanging out with the remaining conscious guests, who all had amazingly drunk and entertaining stories to tell us, and although Albin went to sleep at some point, I’m not even sure if Kevin or Raja crashed in the morning.

I slept roughly an hour to pass the time, back in the house, then caught the train home with Joe, the Korean guy who’d had to deal with the guests thinking he was Japanese all night, as soon as we found out who to get our pay off (we hadn’t forgotten the previous night, but just didn’t get around to organising it until the morning).

Then I went directly to the manga museum, although I realised I was still ever so slightly drunk. I was clean, following the right dress code and didn’t smell, so it didn’t create problems, but it was funny (in fact, they had no idea so no worries.)

Dad came to visit me in Japan.
It was heaps of fun and really really really awesome to see him again.
I showed him around Kyoto, and we took a daytrip to Uji and Nara.
Yes that’s right, we were daytrippers. ^_^;har-di-har etc.

I’ve uploaded photos. 60 of them!!!
Please look, and leave comments here if so desired (or there if you are crazy like me and own a facebook profile)
hehee… fun.

He must have gotten sick of temples though, cause Kyoto is really just all temples.
But we saw a lot of monkeys and deer and checked out two vegetarian restaurants which were awesome, so I think we did good.
Actually we ate out a lot because it’s pretty cheap to do here.
I think my favourite restaurants were Felafel Garden, the vegetarian restaurant we found on my train line, and the traditional Japanese restaurant on the last night (not entirely traditional though, cause they had tables and chairs, hehe) …that one was way cheaper than I thought it would be cause it seemed a little swish and spacious for Japan, and we’d even gotten a nearly-magically-never-ending little bottle of sake to share between us, but it only came to about 3,000yen (approx $35 AUD).

I am totally going back to Felafel Garden whenever I get the chance, and they had a guidbook to vegetarian restaurants in Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo, so I have a lot more to check out now.
Also they had posters up for a vegetarian festival coming up in Kyoto on the 5th of next month. I am so there. ^_^

I finally bought a rice cooker today.
I got it for 155yen! (about $1.60 — insert Evil Laugh™ here) because I used the points on my loyalty card at the place I got my fridge and microwave from. A first I was a little disconcerted to know I’d spent so much money I could nearly get an appliance for free, but they really do seem to award a lot of points per purchase compared to most stores. Also, it was the cheapest little rice cooker they had.

It was also the smallest, which i’m especially happy about, cause I have next to no bench space, and I usually only have to feed me. In fact this rice cooker could easily feed 4-6 people, so who knows how many people all the other ones are feeding - eep - they clearly make a shite tonne of rice.

They strapped wrapping paper onto the box so they knew i’d paid for it on my way out, and added a plastic handle to be nice, even though the box had it’s own plastic handle …they covered theirs in bubble wrap ^_^

It even came with a free measuring cup, rice spoon/scoop and manual (which I actually flicked through, wow) …I supplied the rice.
mmm… rice.

Jen says the rice-porridge setting on these things can also be used to make regular porridge. Thus my next food related quest is to buy oats next time I pass by the foreign food store.

Food rocks.

I thought I should probably put this in a separate post cause the other one is kind of long now. Sorry, this one will be shorter, don’t worry.

If you read the Enoshima post first, you’ll have seen that I mentioned that they dressed me.
…Well this is what I meant —>

Because as a wise woman once said “Yukata makes everything ridiculously fun”, well, actually it was a girl named Lisa, but I’m not discarding the wise comment.

Unfortunately it also makes walking hard, and Eriko’s mum totally shamed her by saying that I was better at walking elegantly in a Yukata. The, later on her boyfriend, Hisakazu-san made a similar comment without even knowing about it. …It was mildly awkward. But we all got over it and got on with the FIREWORKS watching!!! yay!

They had fireworks shaped like stars, lovehearts and planets. I managed to get a planet on film, which I thought was the coolest one, but predictably the love hearts got the best crowd reaction (Bah, humbug! The sentimental fools!).

It was especially pretty over the ocean reflecting on the water, and we had a great view. Close enough to see it really well, but not go deaf or get a sore neck from having to look up. Hisakazu had apparently staked out the spot we were in hours earlier, possible because he is just that hardcore about fireworks,… although he did mention it was a spot he always hangs out in, and he did have an Esky of beer to keep him company (he didn’t really pass out though, he’s just faking it in the photo). lol.

It’s summer holidays now and they sell discount train tickets that let you go anywhere in a day so long as you only take local trains. …That means it takes me 9 hours to get to Tokyo, but I can do it for only about $23oz (as opposed to $140 on the bullet train).
So I’ve been traveling for the last couple of weeks.

I met up with Eriko, my Monash Uni language exchange partner from 2006, as well as Siggy, a friend from the manga library, and James (who is finally in Japan now! yay!!!).

While I was staying with Eriko I got to meet her parents and boyfriend, Hisakazu, who were the people I let her use my computer to video chat with back when we first met. They were all really nice, and they and Eriko feel in some sort of strange debt to me for looking after her (which really just amounted to being a good friend), so they fed me, clothed me and took me out.

Eriko took me to an island called Enoshima, famous for looking beautiful, having a really long winding path with many staircases all the way up, and a garden and lighthouse up the top. For people that can’t or don’t want to handle the stairs, there’s a set of escalators you can take instead. To ride on the escalators it costs about $7. …We did that because my ankle was still bad at the time (I don’t know how it’d fair now, but it’s feeling a lot better this week and i’m not limping anymore).

There’s a shrine about halfway up (Japanese mountains without a shrine, are just not cool and totally get beaten up at school), and they had a plaque that was apparently a mold of famous Kabuki actor hand prints. Considering all Kabuki actors are men, either Eriko and I both have really big hands, or the actors hands were a little dainty, cause there wasn’t much difference.

The garden at the top had a Chinese-style pavilion in it, and Eriko made me stand in front of it and have my photo taken… …actually, she’d been doing that all day in front of things, and that wasn’t the last time either, but this is the only one i’m going to torture you with. I tried retaliating by making her do the same thing, but she liked it, so it didn’t really work out like I was hoping. ^_^;jk.

At the lighthouse they had free live music, consisting mainly of drums and shamisen and totally kickin’ arse. It was awesome. And I have provided short videos below in a separate post for those interested, but in the meantime here’s some photos.

The guy in pink is the piano keyboard player. He was also cool.

Also for good measure, I thought I should include some photos of the view from the lighthouse, including the rocks of death below, cause who doesn’t love that sort of thing?

After that, instead of going back down the same way, we went down the other side of the mountain, which turned out to be all cobblestone lane, souvenir stalls and seaside restaurants, we stopped at one of those for lunch, ate something even Eriko wasn’t sure what it was (which tasted wonderful) and politely declined the beach volleyball invitation from the guys on the next table. I’m not against volleyball (although Eriko thought it was a weird invitation) but we had a schedule to keep.

When we got back down the mountain we took a little boat back to the shore we’d originally crossed the bridge from.

The man running the boat road the whole way perched on top of he front. Maybe that’s not as impressive as it seems to me, because no doubt he does it all the time, but I’m sure most people would have fallen off.

Eriko was super excited as you can see, but that’s not even as excited as she can get, it’s only about halfway there. Totally appropriate though, because the boat was really fun.