Sons of Loki

It’s the 2010s! The teens! I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen!

Last night I went with Rob, Miles, Katy and her friend Nola to see in a Japanese new year at the local temple. (When I say local, I mean it took me a 50 minute bike ride to Musashi-Sakai because my local Seibu Tamagawa line wasn’t running past midnight and then ten minutes to Kichijoji on the Chuo-sen (which was actually running all night in stark contrast to the other 364 days of the year), but that’s local for Tokyo.)

After meeting Rob on the train entirely by coincidence (he happened to walk in exactly the same door on exactly the same carriage on exactly the same train as Miles and I at a completely different station, but I swear these kinds of coincidences happen in Tokyo every day) we reached the ‘Joji at 9ish and found a shrine. I chucked 11 yen in the bucket and woke the o-kami with a clap.

With some hours to kill until the actual new year, we met up with Kaz at the station and then went to a combini to buy food to eat in the lovely Inokashira park. Being a classy bastard, I bought a jar of sake (which Kaz took the piss out of for being “old man” booze).


I messed about with light drawing, and Katy, Rob and Miles did a impromptu Soul Run performance. The very last of 2009!

To the temple, where it is tradition to ring a big old bell 108 times for some reason (probably luck, I don’t know). There was fire and a sizeable queue to ring the bell, which we joined.

There was a cheer from part of the queue as 2010 dawned, which spread like a meme through the crowd over the course of a few seconds. 2010 was here. For us gaijin, the first new year we’d rung in in Japan.



We rang that bell and ate our free orange and decided to go for 2am soba, which is apparently a tradition for some reason (probably luck). As we walked through the Kichijoji shopping arcade, young J-ruffians passed us on bikes, yelling “Happy new year!” in English and grinning broadly. We yelled it back, lost in the happy ecstasy of youth.

Ah, 2010. Two thousand and ten. Twenty ten. I don’t bother making resolutions, but if I could continue this weight loss down to about 75 kg, I’d be happy. I also want to submit my short story for the Writers and Artists’ 2010 competition in a month or so. And, if I’m honest, I want to win, but that’s entirely up to them.

Past that, I guess passing Japanese would be great. And maybe if I get my act together, this time next year I might be looking at an agent for my novel. Or still stuck on 56K! Or down and out in Tokyo and London!

My novel has a title. It is called “The Remnants”, which sounds like some early-90s California art-punk-rock band (I think I’m confusing The Replacements and The Rembrandts). And, thanks to judicious use of WriteOrDie, I’m continuing on like the damn Duracell bunny to 33,827 words, just an hour or two away from passing last year’s 35,608. I was very pleased when I managed to Title Drop the title a few days after picking it:

Humanity finally had harmony, but at what price? In a sense, the Hostiles had already won, for they – the remnants of humanity – were living in a world that very closely matched the Hostiles’ ideal of a well-regulated, orderly, soulless society.

That passage sounded so good when I was writing it. In the light of reflection, less so. But this is Nanowrimo, and I will soldier on.

TV continues to fascinate me. I watch the late-night anime. Back when I was really into anime – it must have been 2000-2002, bookended by Tenchi Muyo! appearing on Cartoon Network in September 2000 and Saiko Exciting! coming to a premature end in 2002 – the sum total of anime available was dubbed, edited, and at least four or five years old (Tenchi Muyo was eight years old in Japan when it debuted in the UK!).
Now, of course, you can download fansubbed versions of the hottest new anime in about ten seconds off the net, but there’s still a spark of excitement in being able to watch brand new episodes of some anime debuting on Japanese TV, even if most of it’s crap and I don’t understand any of it. (An episode of Miracle Train has just concluded on TV Tokyo, which is about anthropomorphic personifications of Tokyo subway stations, or something.)