Anachronistic Edition

26 April 2026

I had a short piece on a book called Samurai With Telephones published with Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. They sometimes send out calls to review books related to Asian culture and so I responded to this book by an American academic in Japanese literature about the intentional use of anachronisms in Japanese culture. They don’t pay, but anyhow, yay for me.

Monday

Harold Halibut is the name of the game and the main character. It’s not really very game-like, but I enjoyed it because of how they used hand-made characters and sets with stop-motion animation to tell a story, which, like the title, is a little bit odd, kind of like a Wes Anderson movie, if you’re into him. And given that the name of the company that made it is Slow Bros., it is not surprising that it follows a rather meandering pace. I found it relaxing and thoughtful.

Tuesday

Now that Instagram and other platforms all favour videos, it seems particularly easy to watch one thing after another, or should I say, particularly hard to stop. I am trying to add some friction to my process by mostly using my ipad for scrolling, and only when I am sitting at a table with a notebook and pen to take notes on videos with interesting ideas. I think this improves my feed and maybe slows me down so I get more out of it.

Wednesday

I should have made more of a stink at the time, but I was hungry. Now that they have my money, it’s hard to get it back. At the time, I just I had made an error with the web site, which I have done before, so I didn’t think it had registered at all. I do try to assume incompetence rather than malice.

Thursday

Yes, I know I should probably pay more attention to the news, but somehow it just irritates me. I did work on an interesting computer interactive project a few years ago that involved the marine ecology of the Gulf of Arabia, which I discovered is what people in the UAE call the Persian Gulf. I was also surprised that they had so many dugongs there. Also, because of that narrow Strait of Hormuz, the ocean water does not get flushed out that well during tidal exchanges and so it is the warmest water in the world, so the coral seem to be extra tough. But still, spilled oil and bombs could not be good.

Friday

This cashier is friendly and often chats when I check out. This was perhaps the first time she mentioned my respirator. She was trying to keep it light and I wasn’t going to give her a lecture. I suppose some people wear seat belts because they are afraid of getting a ticket. I do it because it seems safer.

Saturday

We don’t really use the printer that often and I think that maybe the last time we had a scheduled power outage it must have messed up the connection. I felt quite lucky that following the instructions actually helped with someone in the household getting panicky.

Sunday

Here is a bit from my graphic memoir in progress Not Made in Japan about my experiences in Japan during the 1980s when I was in my twenties studying marine ecology in southern Japan. I have not been in touch with Nishihama-san since I left Japan, but I hope he would not be too annoyed with this comic, although he did have a generally curmudgeonly tendency. In case you’re wondering why I have carpentry in the last panel, it refers to the Japanese expression, “The nail that sticks up, gets hammered down,” which, when applied to people, makes you appreciate the consequences of being too different.

That was my week. I hope you had a good one, with a better one to come.