Sara Backer's Blog, page 22

Happy Bird Family Restaurant

Skylark is a popular family restaurant chain in Japan. I didn't go there for the best cooking, but, like Gaby, I could count on finding a clean Western style toilet inside.

from American Fuji, p. 123: "A waitress seated them at a booth looking out at the street. She placed laminated menus on the table and handed them wet finger towels packaged in plastic. Alex dropped his, scalded by its heat. He pointed to a picture of fried fish and cole slaw. After Gaby ordered, they gulped what litt...

Wet Trash Day

Here is garbage set on the street on "wet trash" day. This is a small green tea farm in Shizuoka--you don't usually see houses with that much land. The mirrors are necessary to navigate the narrow streets. The skull and crossbones with a fedora somehow looks insouciant rather than deadly.
When I developed this batch of photos, the shop owner wanted to throw this one away and give me a discount. He had a hard time believing I wanted to keep a photo of Japanese garbage.

Friday the 13th: Birth of a Novel

One Friday the 13th, as a college student with a summer job for a real estate agency, I got my boss's Cadillac in a parking lot fender bender. Except for that, it's been a lucky day for me. On Friday the 13th in September of 1991, I read an article in The Japan Times. The headline was "Funeral Industry Foresees Boom" and the story was about a starry-eyed entrepreneur who competed with expensive Buddhist funeral ceremonies by providing services with a touch of Hollywood--laser light shows a...

Last Book Talk of the Year

Please join me at the Hollis Social Library on Thursday, November 12, at 7:00 p.m. to hear about some of the experiences you've read about in this blog, and see some items mentioned in the novel you can only see in person (such as McKenzie's Japanese textbook and Gaby's sandalwood fan). Free, open to the public, open to Q&A. I hope to see you there!

BURN & LEARN

In honor of International Time Travel Day (November 5) and its founder, I roll the clock back 17 years to Okinawa in 1992 and a rare glimpse of Eric Paul Shaffer, author of the just-released Burn & Learn in the middle of making sandwiches for a beach outing. Literature Sandwiches, a chapter in his brilliant and lively episodic novel, claims: "A sandwich in literature usually appears only as a structural device and hardly ever as an edible item on a menu of fiction, following the tradition o...

On Sara's Dove Bar Habit

My name--and method of eating mini-Dove Bar ice cream treats--has been immortalized on the cover of The American Mathematical Monthly (Nov 09). It turns out my little system was an interesting probability problem which my boyfriend and two of his math cohorts solved and published. You see, the dark chocolate covered ones only come in a box with half chocolate, half vanilla ice cream. I prefer vanilla, so if I draw a chocolate one from the box, I give it to Dave to eat and draw another for ...

Unlucky Ticket

And here's my losing ticket. I bet a hundred yen on racers 2 and 5 in the 5th race. The date is written year/month/day. The year is not the Western calendar year but the Japanese calendar year. Year 1 starts with each new emperor, so this was year 5 of the current emperor Akihito's reign, also known as 1993. It was July 10th, a typical muggy summer day in Shizuoka. If you have excellent vision, you might see a watermark pattern of yellow Mt. Fujis under the printing.

At the Track in Shizuoka

Here I am at Shizuoka's race track with a good friend, displaying my bet before the race. The race featured bicycles, not motorcycles as in American Fuji, but my description in Chapters 21 and 22 is much as it was: a large tunnel of concrete to enter and exit, hot metal benches, cigarette smoke, and that "abandoned plastic cup of beer" that Alex tripped over (p. 243). The atmosphere was friendly, and another (unseen) friend taking the photo won 2,000 yen which she spent on coffee and treats...

Interview with Motherlogue

Click on the title to read my latest interview, with Liz Sheffield on her blog Motherlogue. Liz moved to Japan in 1993, the year I left, and lived in Sapporo until 1995; in 1997 she went back for another year on the island of Shikoku. She grew up in Portland, Oregon (Gaby's home town) and now lives in Seattle (Alex's home town) so she has personally experienced all the geography of American Fuji! We talked about preparing to live in Japan, meeting yakuza, the process of writing the novel, ...

U Mass Lowell Reading Oct. 28

70 people came to my and David Daniel's reading on a wet and rainy afternoon in Lowell. The audience was mostly students, but also some professors and published local authors. Mega-doumo to all who came, and to the Literary Society and English Department for sponsorship and support.