Tom Cho 曹勵善 on X (formerly Twitter): “After spending my whole residency struggling with this fiction piece, it’s coming together with a week to go. The drama! The relief! #blog / X” After spending my whole residency struggling with this fiction piece, it’s coming together with a week to go. The drama! The relief!...
Read MoreMonumental.
I’ll do another blog post from Japan soon but, in the interim, here: have some photos of a giant robot Buddha. This is from the Ushiku Daibutsu in the Ibaraki prefecture. It’s the biggest statue of Buddha in the world (120 metres from top to bottom, including the base) and it’s three times the size of the Statue of Liberty. Monumentalism...
Read MoreThe Sound of “The Sound of Music”
The title “The Sound of Music” might refer to various texts. For me, it refers to a stage musical, a film musical, a sing-a-long screening of the film musical (which I’ve been to twice, ahem), a tour in Saltzberg that I have always wanted to go on, a well-worn video cassette of the film musical that I used to watch on regular visits to my...
Read MoreTetsujin 28-Go in Kobe
In 2009, some Kobe locals raised money for, like, the best project ever: to create a full-scale statue of Tetsujin 28-Go (known to westerners as Gigantor). 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...
Read MoreRaised by video games
My partner once remarked that I was raised by video games. That’s an exaggeration but, well, not by too much. I was the child of divorced parents. As a kid, I – along with my brothers – saw my dad every fortnight. At the time, my dad lived in the city. On those weekends of visiting dad, he used to take me and my brothers to video game...
Read MoreJoyful condoms
Coming to life
Let’s start this blog post with one of Toyota’s Partner Robots. This robot staged a neat trumpet-playing performance at the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology, which is in Nagoya. 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...
Read MoreHello Robo
Gambarimasho!
Yesterday, I arrived in Nagoya, Japan and my Asialink residency began. 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...
Read MoreRaise money for Queensland flood relief and you just might become a god.
I’ve joined various writers from around the world in raising money for Queensland flood relief. This is via the Writers on Rafts project. The project is a really good idea. Here’s the deal: Writers on Rafts is an initiative of Queensland Writers Centre and author Rebecca Sparrow to raise money for the Queensland Premier’s Flood Relief Appeal....
Read MorePublication in The Lifted Brow + more
The first story that I have written for my new book is being published in the Australian magazine The Lifted Brow. This piece is called “What are the attributes of God?” I’ve never been published in The Lifted Brow before and I’m really looking forward to it. This is also my first publication of new work in a literary magazine for a...
Read MoreVipassana
Coming up in early February, I’m going interstate to do something completely different to anything I’ve ever done – a 10 day meditation course in Vipassana meditation. I’m fearful, but also excited about doing it. During this time, I will have no contact outside of the course and in fact will be observing “Noble Silence from...
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