calicovia

 It's spooky season, and so I'm contractually obligated to talk about something creepy today - and, since I live in Japan now, why not talk about something that's creepy AND Japanese? Today I want to talk about a surreal, obscure masterpiece from 1999, created by Sakuba Tomomi in a studio in Tokyo. It's not so much a video game as an experience in my mind, a bizarre plunge into a very frightening and alien landscape, one that's so strange you'd swear you've only seen such imagery in your dreams. The game is Garage: Bad Dream Adventure.  Garage to me encapsulates an atmosphere of horror unique to Japan tha t I've struggled for a long time to put into words. It evokes images of run-down industry and seedy alleyways; of a place so densely packed and therefore unbelievably suffused with objects and junk both old and new. Garage is an innovator of the esoteric and unique character of Japanese surreal horror. In many ways it's Garage's all-encompassing...

Being from a very rural area in Cumbria and living the past ~15 months at home, surrounded by fields, farmland, and rolling fells, moving to central Osaka has been a very unusual experience. My interactions with nature since arriving here over a month ago have been very limited, to say the least. On a long weekend to Kyoto in mid-September I did climb a good halfway up Mt. Inari and hiked through the Arashiyama bamboo forest, emerging into the valley of the Katsura river with its flanking forest banks. However, this singular day marks the only time in 46 days that I felt dirt beneath my feet in place of concrete and asphalt, that tree-tops rather than highrises blocked out the sun; where the choir of Cicadas supplanted the orchestra of rumbling traffic. For somebody whose comfort has always come from rain-soaked trails through sheep fields and small white cottages dotted amongst the pastures, accustoming to such a sprawling concrete jungle has taken some time.  Japan, I feel, is un...