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Japan 2009: Airport Tsutaya

If you scroll back through my Japan Travelogues, I think you might remember me saying my favourite store to buy manga, and mostly new/in-print manga in Japan, is the Tsutaya across from the Hachiko crossing in Shibuya. Unfortunately that changed with my trip there in 2010. They’d moved their manga floor from a very spacious basement to a smaller top-floor. It’s still a solid setup, but it’s less big, less hand-curated… Just lesser, unfortunately. Things change, even in the manga industry, even in Japan.

That said, I do still really dig what Tsutaya did with their manga selection, and upon leaving the country during my 2009 trip, I was shocked to come across the best-stocked airport bookstore Of All Time. Seriously, it was amazing, with a great selection of books and magazines, but also a surprisingly big and diverse selection of manga tankoubon, manga periodical magazines, and even a few artbooks too.

This selection of light novels and volumes of the REBORN! manga (waaaaay more popular in Japan than it is here) was just the tip of the iceberg, and it was heartening to know that even if I had (somehow) completely missed manga on my entire trip to Japan, all I needed to do was hit the airport an hour early and I could do a pretty decent shopping trip at the Narita Airport Tsutaya….!

As I mentioned, their wall of manga was nothing to sneeze at, and while it catered heavily to the very popular series it did evidence some of the curation of other Tsutaya manga sections I’d been in. And of course it still had people reading at the racks, looking to kill some time.

Opposite angle.

Bleach, One Piece, Takehiko Inoue, Naoki Urasawa, and more. Plus the then just-release oversized final volume of PLUTO.

Shown dead centre here are some of the English-instruction and English-language manga, including bilingual editions of Nodame Cantabile, Tale of Genji, Division Chief Kosaku Shima, and English volumes of Bleach, Death Note, Naruto, and The Davinci Code (novel of course, not a comic). Incidentally, if you’re in Japan and looking for a great gift to bring back, the bilingual manga editions including Doraemon (bottom left) are great souvenirs, as that manga isn’t available in English!

A close-up on the Doraemon bilingual editions and a few other titles.

Feature display for the Neon Genesis Evangelion manga.

And a great selection of manga magazines (top) and kids books, mooks, and activity books (bottom).

So yeah, if you can spare it, the shopping area at Narita airport is surprisingly amazing, and a great place to pick up last minute gifts for others… and just a few more manga for yourself too. Build the extra time into your trip back, if you can…!

Now this, finally, is my last blog post from my Fall 2009 trip to the great nation of Japan.

I’m gonna be honest, there’s a whole lot of photos from this trip that I couldn’t quite work into a blogpost, but one of the things I wanted to do was get all those photos up online in some form. I think I’ve decided on Twitter, after all, so look forward to that on my Flickr page imminently–maybe even as soon as this blog post goes up! 🙂 Thanks for reading, and sorry it took a year and a half (and I jumped ahead and did some 2010 travelogues in the interim).

Best,

– Chris

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Japan 2010: A Tokyu Hands Christmas

Just as a little follow-up to yesterday’s post, here’s a look at the Christmas Joy to be found inside the doors at the Takeshimaya Times Square TOKYU HANDS store. I actually got told by a kindly old security guard that I had to stop taking photos (in English!) no less, so this post is a little short. Gomen Nasai.

Takeshimaya Times Square is just behind the FrancFranc store, and being in the Christmas/shopping spirit, we thought we’d go check it out.

It’s a massive department store complex… Massive. Hard to explain without seeing it.

Have a Giftful Christmas, courtesy of Tokyu Hands! Possibly the most out-and-out consumerist, capitalist sentiment I have ever heard expressed about the holiday.

I did love the designs of these banners though, red and blue. Gorgeous.

Scenes of snow and ice, christmas around the world, affixed to the walls.

Edit: Whoops! I forgot I had one photo left, of little Santas! Here it is:

Unfortunately that’s all the Giftful Christmas I have for you this year, but hopefully it got you a little Merry.

Travelogues resume in the new year!

– Chris

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Japan 2010: A Very FrancFranc Christmas

It’s no secret that I go shopping in Japan, almost all of my travelogues have been retail oriented. But one of my favourite stores is a little boutique home goods/decor place called FrancFranc, located just outside the Shinjuku JR New South Entrance, the same pedestrian walkway and shopping promenade that housed Tokyo’s first, busiest Krispy Kreme Donuts. Its upscale, a mix of Euro and Japanese sensibilities, a chain of great shops found across Japan and throughout Asia, and I would basically decorate my entire home with this stuff if I lived in Japan.

…and they love Christmas. Seriously, we walked by this place on (I think) the first of November, and it was already splashed out with every manner of Christmas goods. For a Christmasophile like myself, it was like heaven. I wanted to buy everything, but sadly my luggage was reserved almost entirely for otaku-related-goods.

So I took pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. With that lovely Olympus PEN EL-1 Digital Camera. Incidentally I tried to get this up online before Christmas, but computer troubles tripped me up. Enjoy this late breaking Christmas spirit. 🙂

Can you believe that these are CHRISTMAS CARDS? They come flat in the envelope, and then you pop them out and decorate them and they’re amazing. I did pick up a couple of these actually, since they packed flat. If anyone knows if/where to get these in Toronto, I’m all over them.

Nicest. Disposable. Silverware. Ever.

Mini Abstract Christmas Trees, Mini Decorations, and everything sparkles.

Click the “Keep Reading” for all the rest of the sparkle….

Continue reading “Japan 2010: A Very FrancFranc Christmas”

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Colour Bone One Volume Edition in 2011

I can’t recall if this was a secret-secret, or a known-secret, but Jeff Smith and Cartoon Books just announced that they’ll be doing a One Volume edition of the popular Bone series, now in full colour (provided by the lovely Steve Hamaker, for the Scholastic editions). For format and details, head over to Boneville.com.

– Chris

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TCAF Stuff

This weekend we finally got through the 300+ applications for next year’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and picked our 2011 exhibitors.

This evening, I started sending out acceptance letters, welcoming cartoonists who were chosen to exhibit to the festival.

About a third of the way through sending out those letters, I realized that I would be sending out rejection letters tomorrow morning, 4 days before Christmas. Honestly, the date and timing did not occur to me until about 10 minutes ago, as like all things TCAF, we just work as fast as we can to get it all done, and we’re already a little late on sending out the notes.

But honestly? No one wants to get a rejection letter at Christmas. Whether you celebrate the holiday or not, this can be a really difficult time of year and having that compounded by finding out that you won’t be getting to exhibit at an event that meant a lot to you? Awful. I don’t want to be the guy that does that to anyone. And so we’re going to delay sending out the rest of the responses until Monday, December 27th.

The worst part is, we’ve sent out about a third the acceptance letters, so lots of people already know that they’ve gotten in. Lots of people _don’t_ though, and I’m aware that I’ve succeeded in making the next 7 days more stressful for them. I am truly sorry about that, we don’t have very many major missteps with the Festival, but this is one of them and its squarely on my shoulders. And as stressful as I’ve made it for some folks, I didn’t make it _shitty_ for anyone, and that is a small comfort.

If you’re one of the folks who applied and is waiting to hear from us, again, I’m very sorry. Please know that we took the utmost care with your application, reading every biography, visiting every link, and experiencing as much of your work as possible. We will get back to you in as expedient and professional a manner as possible on the morning of the 27th, and we hope you’ll understand that waiting these extra days may have ensured a much happier holiday for many of your peers.

Sincerely,

Christopher Butcher, TCAF

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Your artwork is not as good as you think it is.

UDON is not hiring. Not just because the portfolios sent to us aren’t very good, though the majority are very weak, but also because we’re at a point where we have more than enough artists on hand to take care of the work that comes in. I have some artists who I’d love to give more work to that I can’t keep employed full time because there aren’t enough projects coming in and out to keep them busy that whole time. These are people who have stellar quality, great work ethic and deliver on time.

We keep our core crew as busy as possible and then, beyond that, we have another tier of artists who I send freelance work to when the main gang is overwhelmed. That’s it. There’s no point in us bringing on even more people if we can’t keep them employed. No matter what else I say about your work, the reality of that situation doesn’t look like it’s going to change any time soon.

Your artwork is not as good as you think it is.

– Jim Zubkavich. Click http://zubkavich.livejournal.com/317813.html for the whole piece.

My friend Jim Zubkavich does all sorts of things with his time. Currently he’s writing a very well-received series for Image called SKULLKICKERS, and the trade paperback collection of his Street Fighter: Ibuki mini-series comes out today. But he’s also a professor of animation AND the talent director for UDON studios, a creative studio working in comics, film, and television.

And so when a snarky up-and-comer thrusts his portfolio at Jim, Jim has every tool available to critique that work as honestly and thoroughly as the portfolio owner requests. The results are often not what they’re looking for (in that they’re honest and thorough), and the linked post is an accurate, no-punches-pulled assessment of not only the work of this creator, but the state of creative work in the comics industry. It’s very good.

More importantly, I think it’s a nice corollary to the Alex Toth/Steve Rude criticism that’s been going around the internet for a few years and was posted to “Letters of Note” today. You can be honest, even brutally honest, without being ajerk or using the situation to stroke your own ego. Good critics can do that.

– Christopher

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Threadless $9 24 Hour Sale

The folks at Threadless, the indy-American-Idol style T-Shirt company are blowing out their entire stock at $9 a shirt, for one day only. That is an amazing deal, on some great T’s. See the selection at http://threadless.com.

I do hope that this sudden, intense sale isn’t indicative of any financial problems or soft holiday sales at the retailer, as they’re one of my favourites.

– Christopher