Lost Edition

12 July 2026

As I will mention later, I think I left my phone on the bus. At the moment, I cling to the remote possibility that it will be returned to the lost and found. Speaking of losses, perhaps your favourite team lost at the World Cup. I won’t even start on the more profound kinds of loss. On the plus side, at least you have found this newsletter.

Monday

That first drawing looks kind of weird. It’s supposed to be my dog laying on the floor, her eye peeking open as I get up. Peak raspberry season now. The yield has been perhaps a little lower than past years. I wonder if it is because the neighbour who kept bees moved away. The dog seems to have developed a taste for berries that have fallen.

Tuesday

My Japanese name is “Kiyoshi,” which means “pure spirit.” I use it mostly with some relatives and close family friends. I think I read an Ursula LeGuin novel, perhaps The Wizard of Earthsea in which the true name of things have magical power. My name is not quite like that, but seeing it on the spine of this book in a bookstore seemed to compel me to buy it without really looking at it too closely. In Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi by Shoichi Usui, the titular character is a super powerful teen exorcist, who struggles with social anxiety. Draw whatever comparisons you like.

Wednesday

I had heard of Thomas Pynchon, but never read any of his work. I listened to Shadow Ticket as an audiobook I borrowed from the library. It is set in the 1930s and sounded like one of those Humphrey Bogart movies but was written recently. It mentions the rise of Nazis in the United States, which has obvious connections to current times, but also has some supernatural elements like in Indian Jones.

Thursday

I have enjoyed making costumes for things in the past. But lately, we have not even been participating in Halloween, so such objects remain unrealized potential destined for simple recycling. The last time I made a costume with boxes was for a party of dead things and I made a parrot from the Monty Python sketch.

Friday

When I noticed the man in gym gear walking backward down the street, I took a double take. I think I mentioned the Yann Martel novel before, in which a character walks backward for sort of philosophical reasons. I was thinking of entropy because sometimes people associate it with the arrow of time and how you can often tell things are going backward because they go from less ordered to more ordered, though if you look carefully, I think you can tell the difference between walking forward and backward.

Saturday

This might not be clear, but I had my phone in a red case, in my jacket pocket. I guess it fell out and I somehow did not notice until much later. So if I had been staring at it the whole time I would not have lost it. Also because I don’t go out very often, maybe I didn’t have a more reliable means of carrying it around. So if you have every been stupid, then I commiserate with you. And if you have never made a mistake, then feel superior if you like.

Sunday

This episode from Not Made In Japan, my graphic memoir in progress, deals with the bureaucracy surrounding foreigners in Japan. I have not been following things lately, but back then, people of Korean descent, even if they had been born in Japan, still had to register as aliens. This is why I was reminded of the registration cards which people of Japanese descent had to get back before Pearl Harbor. They had agreed as a show of good faith, but after Pearl Harbor, good faith meant nothing. Registration and other forms of bureaucracy can be on the slippery slope to more ominous circumstances. I should point out, however, that the office worker, Mr. Ikeda, turned out to be a remarkably kind person, about whom I will mention more later.

That was my week. I have been quite enjoying the comics course I started, although I have not yet made any significant changes to how I cartoon. I hope you had a good one, with a better one to come.