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Monumentalism is a theme of my current book project, hence my visit to this monumental Buddha. And if you’ve read my first book, you’ll know that I like to play with being a size queen.

PS See the three vertical slits in the chest of the Buddha? They are actually windows. This daibutsu has 4 sets of windows facing north, south, east, and west. You can go inside and look out through each set. There are five floors inside this daibutsu (accessible via an elevator).

The statue was erected in a park in the Nagata Ward (not far from Shin-Nagata train station), apparently to encourage people affected by the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995. Mitsuteru Yokoyama, the creator of the original Tetsujin 28-Go manga series, was also from Kobe.

What I love most is the triumphant pose, complete with double fist pump. May Tetsujin 28-Go spread victory throughout Japan – now and in the times ahead.

As I looked at this statue, I thought of a million things, including the occurrence of suffering, the idea of closure, my artistic interest in scale and how I could have rendered gigantism better in my previous book, hyper-exaggeration, and even a certain painting by Eugene Delacroix. In time, these thoughts will hopefully inform some new fiction.

PS How many photos can one take of such a statue? QUITE A FEW, BELIEVE ME.

A trumpet-playing robot with wide eyes and a jaunty little feather can endear itself to a crowd. As this robot played “Moon River” and a few other tunes, I noticed how much the children in the audience especially enjoyed the performance.

Meanwhile, a floor below, the less glamorous industrial robots were demonstrating how car chassis are welded and painted. For the record, I found the industrial robots just as exciting:

I’ve always loved animation. I’ve hardly ever been a morning person but, as a kid, what got me out of bed extra early was watching morning cartoons. My own line drawings were static scenes on a page, but Superman, Aquaman, The Wonder Twins, The Masters of the Universe, The Jetsons and other cartoons changed my sense of what a line can do. The sheer kinetic energy of cartoons magically brings line drawings to life. Robots, too, have always given me a sense of vivification, of breathing life into materials that might otherwise be inanimate. It’s an impulse that never gets old and of course it extends well beyond drawing and robotics: take a seemingly lifeless world and enchant it.

My residency motto is “Ganbarimasho!” (“Let’s do it!”)

What I plan to do tonight is to learn some katakana. Ganbarimasho: it’s time to get my katakana on.

So, tonight, I’ll turn my attention to writing and you can turn your attention to a picture. I took this photo outside a patisserie. It’s my first robot sighting and it truly warmed my heart.

I really enjoy writing about robots. However, surely I’m not the only writer to fantasise about getting a robot to do my writing for me?