International Manga Award trip, part uno
Okay, since people have been wondering what I have gotten up to over the past two weeks, I'm going to post a few recaps. This first one deals with just my first two days in Japan - but hey, a lot happened. Cue lj cut!
I arrived after a two our flight from Hobart to Sydney, a nine hour stopover in Sydney and a nine and a half hour flight from Sydney to Tokyo; I think needless to say the word 'slaughtered' didn't really do my condition justice. I turned up at Narita airport to discover it was in fact a good hour and a half's travel from my hotel, so instead of weeping bitterly (I needed a shower reeeaally badly) I set off on my merry way after the travel agent they had sent to pick me up.
Four station changovers and countless stairs I had to drag my luggage up later, we finally got there - a bit late since the agent lost her way and we walked around the block twice before finding the entrance to the hotel. I met the folks from the Japan foundation, all of whom were extremely nice, and I got checked in. The Japan Foundation people gave me part of my meal allowance for the next two days, and showed me around the local 7-11 where I discovered you can actually communicate pretty well with store clerks just by waving your hands, smiling, and pointing a lot. I returned with some cheap sushi to my room. Then fell asleep for about five hours...so...hmmm...I guess you could say my first day was a leetle slow...Introduced myself to some madcap Japanese tv game shows, and some kind of power-rangers type kid's show with heavily-gesticulating people in ninja outfits...
In the afternoon I met Ben, the Malaysian runner-up for the International Manga Award. Shortly after, I got to meet Kai, another runner up, and Li, the grand prize winner. They were all extremely nice, although they all spoke cantonese as their common language, so this formed a pattern for the rest of the trip - the three of them talking in Chinese, and me following them around deliriously going 'huhh??' a lot.
At night, Ben and I decided to check out the sights of Roppongi. Hoo boy. Roppongi is a big hangout for westerners and ne'er do wells, but somehow Ben survived some big black british guy trying to drag him into a strip club. There were lots of Pachinko halls around here, too.
Coming from li'l ol' Tassie, I was amazed at how everything was still perfectly open, even 10pm at night. Bookstores, cafes, dominatrix sushi lounges (yeah, it had one of those). The local magazine store was still doing a huge trade even at this time of night, and the sheer volume of crazy publications you could get from there was pretty astonishing to a first-time Japan traveller.
While Ben and I were walking around, snapping the nightlife, something unpleasant happened - a guy tried to lift my wallet. He would have done it too, if I'd actually had my wallet ON me. Which I didn't. As I was concentrating with my camera to snap something, this sandy-haired western guy popped out of the crowd, put his hand right into my jeans pocket, and kept moving quickly when he didn't find anything. Like the total super-sleuth that I am I turned and snapped this awesome photo of the cad escaping, should I need police evidence. Unfortunately he was a practiced westerner-ninja, and had mastered the art of shadowy disappearance.
Anyway, once that minor trauma was over with, we retired to our hotel rooms and prepared for the next day, which we knew would be...the award ceremony. Dun dun DUNN!!!
I really have to thank uraniagc at this point for lending me some formal-looking shoes. Even though our foot sizes are slightly different, and they chewed the crap outta my feet, I would have looked like a grade-A moron turning up to the awards function in sneakers.
At lunchtime, we went with some members of the Japan Foundation, including the vice-president, to a restaurant to eat some shabu-shabu. Anyone familiar with this knows it is delicious slices of raw beef that you cook yourself by immersing in a soup. Anyone familiar with tasty food in general also knows that when something tastes good, you sometimes tend not to stop eating when you should. And so anyone familiar with indigestion will know what was happening to me by the time we left the restaurant to visit our first publisher, Kodansha.
This, for me, sparked what is possibly the worst memory of the trip. We were visiting Kodansha - who have published Akira, Air Gear, Negima and a whole lot more of my favourites - and a combination of the food and the extreme heat and humidity was just hitting me so badly...within ten short minutes of meeting the editors, I realised I would have to leave, or risk the embarrassment of being sick on Kodansha's nicely polished floor. I don't think I can describe the agony here of being given a once in a lifetime opportunity to talk to the bosses of one of your favourite publishing houses - and having to excuse yourself after you've barely gotten past introductions. The foundation thought it was for the best that I return to the hotel because they didn't want me being ill at the ceremony that night. So I left, feeling pretty unbelievably disappointed with myself, and hoping Kodansha didn't think I was an almighty idiot (after all...I'd like someone in Japan to license Hollow Fields one day...).
I was feeling a lot better by the time the ceremony came around, although I had to put up with the extremely worried behaviour of the foundation members, who were now acting around me as though they were convinced my head would explode at any second. We got to the hall that the ceremony was being held at, and for the first time realised just how big this award was...there were hundreds of people around, loads of press and journalists (including Shane McLeod from ABC National, who grabbed me for a quick interview) and the manga artists who had judged the award were all there in person. It is at this point another irritating thing happened, although I'm sure Kai and Li were feeling the same as me...we had all these great manga artists in one room...and none of us had brought a sketchpad for a quick sketch and an autograph. None except the ever resourceful Ben. Boy was I steamed when I saw him get a signed sketch from Doraemon's creator!!
The ceremony itself wasn't long, but was scary due to a) the presence of a hell of a lot of cameras, b) the presence of Mr. Taro Aso, the Foreign Minister who had created the award, and c) the fact that the award itself was 5kg, and very easy to drop. Luckily that didn't happen to us. We each got to go up to the podium, recieve the award from Mr. Aso, and make a speech. I was very nervous, so I think my speech may have been delivered two octaves higher than usual, but the crowd seemed to like it. After that was done with, there were loads of photo opportunities with Mr. Aso, as well as a press conference (in which the press just delivered all their questions to first place winner Li anyway, letting the rest of us off the hook).
With the hard stuff over, we went to the next room to have drinks and hobnob with various local figures. Before coming to Japan we had been asked to fill in a survey of where we had wanted to go most of all, and I had said 'The Ghibli Museum' as my answer. So I was pretty suprised when, during drinks, the Mayor of Mitaka City herself approached me for a chat (Ghibli Museum is in Mitaka). She had brought along a special Ghibli badge for me to wear. I was extremely flattered, and needless to say I will be sending the mayor's office a free copy of Hollow Fields vol.1 (when I can get my hands on one - more on the printing debacle in a future entry).
I also met a couple of other extremely interesting people from Japan's publishing industry, and it was a great experience just being able to chat with likeminded people (those who knew English, anyway). At the end of it I was supremely exhausted, and my feet were pretty much bleeding torrents, but I felt extremely happy. I can't really describe how good it has felt, winning an award for Hollow Fields vol.1. It's like you look back on your life, remember all the folks who doubted you and thought you'd never get anywhere with this line of work, and everything discouraging they said is just snuffed out of existence. Best of all though, it makes you want to do so much better. My work was, artistically, easily the simplest and least finished out of the four, so next time I go to Japan I was to be a far more accomplished artist. Can't really set a better goal than that right now.
After the awards ceremony, all I remember is how much my feet hurt under the high-pressure water in the hotel shower. I'm sure folks in neighbouring rooms probably thought I was killing a chicken in the bathroom, with the sound I was making.
More updates to come!
I arrived after a two our flight from Hobart to Sydney, a nine hour stopover in Sydney and a nine and a half hour flight from Sydney to Tokyo; I think needless to say the word 'slaughtered' didn't really do my condition justice. I turned up at Narita airport to discover it was in fact a good hour and a half's travel from my hotel, so instead of weeping bitterly (I needed a shower reeeaally badly) I set off on my merry way after the travel agent they had sent to pick me up.
Four station changovers and countless stairs I had to drag my luggage up later, we finally got there - a bit late since the agent lost her way and we walked around the block twice before finding the entrance to the hotel. I met the folks from the Japan foundation, all of whom were extremely nice, and I got checked in. The Japan Foundation people gave me part of my meal allowance for the next two days, and showed me around the local 7-11 where I discovered you can actually communicate pretty well with store clerks just by waving your hands, smiling, and pointing a lot. I returned with some cheap sushi to my room. Then fell asleep for about five hours...so...hmmm...I guess you could say my first day was a leetle slow...Introduced myself to some madcap Japanese tv game shows, and some kind of power-rangers type kid's show with heavily-gesticulating people in ninja outfits...
In the afternoon I met Ben, the Malaysian runner-up for the International Manga Award. Shortly after, I got to meet Kai, another runner up, and Li, the grand prize winner. They were all extremely nice, although they all spoke cantonese as their common language, so this formed a pattern for the rest of the trip - the three of them talking in Chinese, and me following them around deliriously going 'huhh??' a lot.
At night, Ben and I decided to check out the sights of Roppongi. Hoo boy. Roppongi is a big hangout for westerners and ne'er do wells, but somehow Ben survived some big black british guy trying to drag him into a strip club. There were lots of Pachinko halls around here, too.
Coming from li'l ol' Tassie, I was amazed at how everything was still perfectly open, even 10pm at night. Bookstores, cafes, dominatrix sushi lounges (yeah, it had one of those). The local magazine store was still doing a huge trade even at this time of night, and the sheer volume of crazy publications you could get from there was pretty astonishing to a first-time Japan traveller.
While Ben and I were walking around, snapping the nightlife, something unpleasant happened - a guy tried to lift my wallet. He would have done it too, if I'd actually had my wallet ON me. Which I didn't. As I was concentrating with my camera to snap something, this sandy-haired western guy popped out of the crowd, put his hand right into my jeans pocket, and kept moving quickly when he didn't find anything. Like the total super-sleuth that I am I turned and snapped this awesome photo of the cad escaping, should I need police evidence. Unfortunately he was a practiced westerner-ninja, and had mastered the art of shadowy disappearance.
Anyway, once that minor trauma was over with, we retired to our hotel rooms and prepared for the next day, which we knew would be...the award ceremony. Dun dun DUNN!!!
I really have to thank uraniagc at this point for lending me some formal-looking shoes. Even though our foot sizes are slightly different, and they chewed the crap outta my feet, I would have looked like a grade-A moron turning up to the awards function in sneakers.
At lunchtime, we went with some members of the Japan Foundation, including the vice-president, to a restaurant to eat some shabu-shabu. Anyone familiar with this knows it is delicious slices of raw beef that you cook yourself by immersing in a soup. Anyone familiar with tasty food in general also knows that when something tastes good, you sometimes tend not to stop eating when you should. And so anyone familiar with indigestion will know what was happening to me by the time we left the restaurant to visit our first publisher, Kodansha.
This, for me, sparked what is possibly the worst memory of the trip. We were visiting Kodansha - who have published Akira, Air Gear, Negima and a whole lot more of my favourites - and a combination of the food and the extreme heat and humidity was just hitting me so badly...within ten short minutes of meeting the editors, I realised I would have to leave, or risk the embarrassment of being sick on Kodansha's nicely polished floor. I don't think I can describe the agony here of being given a once in a lifetime opportunity to talk to the bosses of one of your favourite publishing houses - and having to excuse yourself after you've barely gotten past introductions. The foundation thought it was for the best that I return to the hotel because they didn't want me being ill at the ceremony that night. So I left, feeling pretty unbelievably disappointed with myself, and hoping Kodansha didn't think I was an almighty idiot (after all...I'd like someone in Japan to license Hollow Fields one day...).
I was feeling a lot better by the time the ceremony came around, although I had to put up with the extremely worried behaviour of the foundation members, who were now acting around me as though they were convinced my head would explode at any second. We got to the hall that the ceremony was being held at, and for the first time realised just how big this award was...there were hundreds of people around, loads of press and journalists (including Shane McLeod from ABC National, who grabbed me for a quick interview) and the manga artists who had judged the award were all there in person. It is at this point another irritating thing happened, although I'm sure Kai and Li were feeling the same as me...we had all these great manga artists in one room...and none of us had brought a sketchpad for a quick sketch and an autograph. None except the ever resourceful Ben. Boy was I steamed when I saw him get a signed sketch from Doraemon's creator!!
The ceremony itself wasn't long, but was scary due to a) the presence of a hell of a lot of cameras, b) the presence of Mr. Taro Aso, the Foreign Minister who had created the award, and c) the fact that the award itself was 5kg, and very easy to drop. Luckily that didn't happen to us. We each got to go up to the podium, recieve the award from Mr. Aso, and make a speech. I was very nervous, so I think my speech may have been delivered two octaves higher than usual, but the crowd seemed to like it. After that was done with, there were loads of photo opportunities with Mr. Aso, as well as a press conference (in which the press just delivered all their questions to first place winner Li anyway, letting the rest of us off the hook).
With the hard stuff over, we went to the next room to have drinks and hobnob with various local figures. Before coming to Japan we had been asked to fill in a survey of where we had wanted to go most of all, and I had said 'The Ghibli Museum' as my answer. So I was pretty suprised when, during drinks, the Mayor of Mitaka City herself approached me for a chat (Ghibli Museum is in Mitaka). She had brought along a special Ghibli badge for me to wear. I was extremely flattered, and needless to say I will be sending the mayor's office a free copy of Hollow Fields vol.1 (when I can get my hands on one - more on the printing debacle in a future entry).
I also met a couple of other extremely interesting people from Japan's publishing industry, and it was a great experience just being able to chat with likeminded people (those who knew English, anyway). At the end of it I was supremely exhausted, and my feet were pretty much bleeding torrents, but I felt extremely happy. I can't really describe how good it has felt, winning an award for Hollow Fields vol.1. It's like you look back on your life, remember all the folks who doubted you and thought you'd never get anywhere with this line of work, and everything discouraging they said is just snuffed out of existence. Best of all though, it makes you want to do so much better. My work was, artistically, easily the simplest and least finished out of the four, so next time I go to Japan I was to be a far more accomplished artist. Can't really set a better goal than that right now.
After the awards ceremony, all I remember is how much my feet hurt under the high-pressure water in the hotel shower. I'm sure folks in neighbouring rooms probably thought I was killing a chicken in the bathroom, with the sound I was making.
More updates to come!