Regina Glei's Blog, page 32

Loud & Metal Attack 2014 – Gig Report

It was Finnish heavy metal time again in Japan. Finland Fest sponsors the “Loud & Metal Attack” mini-festival with Finnish metal bands for a couple of years already. Here is last year’s report.

The menu this year was: Jupiter (there is always one Japanese opening act, this year it was this band), The Blanko, Arion, Stam1na, Von Hertzen Brothers, and my favorite band amorphis.

The opening act of Jupiter was so-so in my humble opinion. They sounded like they were stuck in the 90ties when it was the peak time of visual rock with iconic bands like X Japan, Luna Sea and so forth, when their style was fresh and new. Credit shall be given to Jupiter for their elaborate costumes in which they must have been sweating like hell, but sound-wise it was all “heard it before” and better in the 90ties.

Then an unexpected highlight. The opening act of the Finnish bands, a power-trio called The Blanko was pretty cool. It’s one of the bands that’s centered around one member, the vocalist and guitarist Pauli, who is one hell of a beast. In his early twenties I suppose, stylish (American Indian kinda), ribbed aps, playing his guitar with his teeth at times, good voice, smashing riffs and a hell of a presence on stage. I was sitting in the back but walked up to the front after their first song, which is a good sign I bought the only CD of theirs that was available at the festival (in fact they released only two so far) and shall listen into it during the coming week. Very promising band in my opinion with lots of potential.

The next band was not my cup of tea, a formation called Arion with the opposite of a singer compared to Pauli from The Blanko. The dude looked like a Backstreet Boy trying to play metal, had no idea what to do with himself on stage and sound wise it sounded to me like heard it all before and nothing special. Sorry to the fans of that band, but after two, three songs I took a break, had an early dinner at the only food booth available and prepped for Stam1na.

Now Stam1na is worth watching! The singer, Hyrde, said they are around for 18 years now and they love their metal. I’ve never seen such vicious and fast three-man-sync circle headbanging in my life! They are clearly a “live” band, fun, know how to fire up the audience and caused the only mosh-pit of the little festival. Would have liked to have some more songs from them.

This is one thing about the Loud & Metal Attack, the individual acts are awfully short. Just half an hour. Since it was over at 20:45 or something, they could easily give each band 45 minutes, hm…

Anyway, if you get the chance to see Stam1na live, watch them – great fun and a mix of trash, speed and death metal with mostly Finnish vocals by the way.

Next up was Von Hertzen Brothers who delivered a solid performance and who were very touched by the enthusiasm of the Japanese fans. The vocalist was thanking those fans who “have been writing to us every month for the past 6 and a half years to come back to Japan” (they’ve been here apparently once 7 years ago). Well, yes, that’s dedication! At the end of the gig the singer, Mikko, was coming down from the stage and handed out flowers to the first row and someone got his sweaty t-shirt as well!

Main act of the day was “my” amorphis. I’ve seen them now a couple of times in Europe and also in Japan and man, do they like Japan The service of the organizers is Japanese = excellent and they just love the dedication and enthusiasm and positiveness of the Japanese crowd, which results in them having real fun with the gig as well, which then results in awesome performances. In one word amorphis was divine and that was the best and craziest and most awesome performance of the more than 20 year old song Vulgar Necrolatry that I’ve seen so far, wow! Awesome show with a very happy and genki amorphis.

Hope to see you again in Japan soon!

Horrific Flights

I’ve been in Germany on business trip last week and have some horrific flights behind me that deserve a report.

The first two awful flights were from Tokyo Narita to Istanbul and on from Istanbul to Stuttgart. I had a little cold before I left and then developed a monster cold some four or five hours into the flight from Tokyo. It is NO fun at all to be sitting on a plane with some 39 Celsius fever, ice cold feet and hands, the shivers and the overwhelming desire to have water sprayed into the way too dry air of the plane at 10,000 meters.

It didn’t exactly help then that two corpulent ladies were sitting next to me on the three hour flight from Istanbul to Stuttgart, squeezing past me several times and bumping into me all the time. I hope they got some of my bacteria and paid for not leaving me alone.

Anyway, the discomfort of these flights were caused by me feeling like shit and not by the plane or weather or pilot.

Not so on the short flight from Stuttgart to Duesseldorf for the weekend with my father and sister. It was an Air Berlin Bombardier propeller airplane and when we were about to approach Duesseldorf the pilot announced: Oh, by the way, there is a thunder storm over Duesseldorf and we cannot land. We have half an hour of fuel left. We’ll cruise a bit around the thunderstorm and in the worst case we will land in Cologne. Um, what? I especially did not like the comment about having half an hour of fuel left… I don’t really care to know such kind of things!

So we hovered there in some five or six thousand meter height, frequently getting into the outskirts of the thunderstorm clouds, being rattled through and I for my part was dearly hoping that we could land in Duesseldorf, since my sister was waiting for me with her car at the airport…

After cruising above Cologne for three rounds, the pilot announced he’d try to land in Duesseldorf and things got pretty bumpy.

A lady behind be was getting the jitters and holding on to the stranger next to her, who was trying to soothe her with empty words like “we’re gonna be all right”

Another row or two behind someone was getting violently sick and was barfing into the paperback reserved for such purposes. Not nice to hear.

I don’t like landing too much myself (it’s always bumpier than taking off, isn’t it?) but this landing was quite special. The plane was frequently pushed around by gushes of wind and the whole show was extremely bumpy and jerky. Though I didn’t see any lightning and heard no thunder either, the rain was very strong and did its part in jolting the plane around.

We somehow managed to land though and I was happy to be back on the ground.

An ambulance passed the bus that brought us to the terminal, I suppose for the guy who had become sick…

Finally in the terminal, Air Berlin failed to get its bag delivery sorted. I was waiting for a bloody half hour for my suitcase to be appearing on some band and met my sister with a total delay of one hour.

She had some more horrific stories to tell, all of a sudden the flight from Stuttgart disappeared from the arrival board and several Air Berlin flights got cancelled. Someone from an information counter assured her though that we had landed and luckily she waited for me to appear from the depths of luggage waiting.

I had not expected such “dramas” to happen on a 50 minute inner-German flight! It kept on raining badly during our car ride home and man, I was really happy to be back on the ground!

The flight back to Japan was luckily relatively uneventful, not counting in running through Istanbul airport since the stupid flight from Duesseldorf had been delayed for half an hour and the flight to Tokyo was on “last call” when I jogged through the terminal.

I have to repeat the trip via Istanbul end of June for yet another business trip to Germany… adventure awaits…

The Other China – Taiwan Report – Part 3

On my third (and last) day in Taiwan, I met up with a Taiwanese colleague of mine from the Taiwan branch of the company I work for. She took me to a posh cafe in a new shopping mall for breakfast and then sent me off to the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen memorial, who was the founding father of Taiwan before Chiang Kai-Shek. From his memorial hall you have an excellent view of Taipei 101

I then ventured to the Taipei zoo station with the intention to ride a gondola up a mountain to get a view of the city from above including the 101, but alas… The gondola is closed every Monday. Sniff. Since I was at the zoo anyway, I decided to go see it for a bit, since it promised giant pandas. And they don’t just have pandas, they have a baby panda super star! She is now ten months old and what a sweetheart. On weekends and holidays they must have mile long queues for the great panda house, but at least one advantage of it being Monday was that you were let into the building without queuing in your allotted time slot (you get an extra ticket at the entrance which allows you to enter, in my case, the panda house between 13:50 and 13:59, whew).

The bears were having bamboo time when I was there and I got excellent pics of mom and dad, but baby panda showed us only her back

I rode back to my hotel and unloaded luggage (the crocodile stuffed animal I had bought at the zoo) then headed on to another two temples, the Baoan temple and the Confucius temple not too far of my final target, the Shilin night market.

I was again a bit disappointed, since also the Confucius temple was closed on Mondays. The Baoan temple was open though and of the same style as the Longshan temple, if not that old, however it sported another attraction. Puppet theater was going on. Not that I would have understood anything.

Then off to the Shilin night market which is a general market = clothes, junk and food, short: everything. I wandered through the many side streets and made another temple discovery, the loudest and most neon style of them all with shiny light bulb dragons… Awesome.



I sneaked into the back of that temple and found this wall sculpture made of lava it seemed that even had a church model inside it and a very sneaky picture of the shrine next to the refrigerator and the portable shrine in the crappy backyard.







To me moments like that are better than all the food specialties I could ever find on this market.

This temple belongs to the night market, or maybe the night market belongs to the temple. They are parts of a bigger whole, which is the life of the people around it and I am glad to have been able to take a look.

The rest of the pics are on flickr.

If you come to Asia, don’t forget Taiwan, it’s worth the trip and I’m glad I finally made it to go there. The trip was short but intense and I loved it.

The Other China – Taiwan Report – Part 2

I am not sure if I will ever come back to Taiwan (since I “must” go to at least one new country per year and am not in the habit of going anywhere twice unless I have a reason (business trip, knowing people there)) I wanted to make the most out of my short trip and see something more than only Taipei and thus ventured to the southern end of the island to the city of Kaohsiung … One of those million people cities no one has ever heard of (2.7 million!) … My main target in Kaohsiung was the Lotus Pond that has several temples and pagodas to offer (according to the internet).



I got up relatively early and headed to Taipei’s main station to catch a bullet train there.

The fastest version of them goes to Kaohsiung or rather Zuoying in 90 min. That’s how big the country is, it’s 300 km long and that’s it.

In Japan you pay roughly 10,000 yen one way from Tokyo to Nagoya, which is 300 km, in Taiwan you pay that for the round trip = it’s much cheaper than in Japan.

The Taiwanese bullet train is a Japanese export and a more or less exact copy of the thing. It’s so similar I was confused by the announcements in Mandarin

The weather was oppressively hot and dark and humid with heavy clouds when I left Taipei but became clearer if not less hot and oppressive the closer I came to Zuoying. Now, I don’t know what the story is with Zuoying and Kaohsiung but I could see no difference between the two cities, let’s say the bullet train brings you to Zuoying and you can take the metro then to Kaohsiung. Arrived there, I tried to find the lotus pond on the simple metro map, there are just two lines, red and orange, but was disappointed.

I had noticed a tourist info though and went there and the one lady who spoke English told me to take a bus and even wrote it down on a piece of paper. I am not too fond of riding buses in countries I don’t know and whose language I don’t speak and soon I knew again why.

Nobody waited at the bus stop in the heat and when my bus came with the number the lady had told me I was the only customer and of course the bus driver spoke no English. The bus drove then this way and that and hither and tither through partially not so attractive looking neighborhoods for 40 minutes before finally arriving at the bloody pond. On a map it had looked much closer than that. Okay, the bus cost only 12 dollars and in between some people boarded it and left again, but nevertheless I was not enthused and a little scared and uncomfortable.

Arrived at the Lotus pond I was in for another surprise. I had excepted old temples and stuff but… What awaited me was a plastic and papier-mâché wonderland. That sounds so negative though and I shall reformulate it like this.

The temples looked relatively recently built and I am not so sure about their religious significance, but they were all temples in action.

At the edge of the pond lay the “real” temples, and on the pond was the let me call it “amusement park” aspect of it.



Temple 1 – functioning, incense burning, people praying – opposite the dragon and tiger pagodas.



Huge temple number 2, with neon sign (even the Longshan temple in Taipei had that) and across from it the super dragon with the pagoda on the lake beyond it.



There were only two English signs at huge temple 2, “please come into the 3rd and 4th floor” and the sign for the rest rooms.

So, that’s what I did and ventured into the 3rd and 4th floor of huge temple 2. Laden with gold and red and dragons after dragons, I sneaked in my few pictures, not knowing whether I was allowed to take them or not.

I am well trained in temple watching and have seen more than I can count in Japan and also a few in China. But Taiwanese temples are exotic even to me. I do not know what kind of let me call it “loud” Buddhism this is, but I was quite touched by the seriousness I saw in the people who went praying in these temples.

Even inside this monstrous statue of temple number 3 was a priest and they sold incense and had books with sutras around.



I don’t know how that goes along with a fortune telling machine like we know them from a European fun fair next to it, but so be it.

A few meters on was another temple and I presume a new car blessing was going on. A car left the temple with fire crackers attached to it (in Japan you can have your new car blessed by a Shinto priest (so that you don’t have an accident), here the temple and the fire crackers served that purpose).

I walked around the entire pond in monstrous heat to find out that I had missed the most important “Confucian” temple when I was halfway at the starting point again and gave up going back to it, since it was too hot.

I had obtained a map meanwhile in the pond’s information center and the Zouying station from which I had started looked so damn close. I decided to try a taxi, held the map under the drivers nose and he drove me back to the station in a bloody five minutes for only a 100 dollars (that’s about 4 USD) instead of 40 minutes for 12 dollars. Well, you always know better once you’ve tried it out.

I still had some hours left until my train back to Taipei would leave and decided to seek some tranquility at the ocean, or so I thought.

I rode the subway to the last stop and wandered towards the water only to find myself in an insanely busy harbor with the impressive skyline of Kaohsiung and a Starbucks at the tip of a “park” (five trees, no cars for ten meters). Around the corner then the Taiwan Straight, which is busy like Tokyo bay with one giant ship lining up to the next out at the horizon and bus loads of tourists around me.





Well, but I have seen the Taiwan Straight now from the southern tip of Taiwan. I walked back to the subway station, and rode the long way back to Taipei and my hotel.

From the bullet train window, Taiwan looks much like Japan, by the way, or rather like it’s little southern brother. It’s after all 3000 km closer to the equator and respectively much hotter and even juicier and greener. I don’t know whether one can see Taiwan’s impressive mountains from the train in clear weather (the highest is 3900 meters high!) or whether one has to venture further inland for that but all in all it does remind me of Japan more than of China landscape-wise.

Here is the link to the full set of photos and I’ll upload part three of the report tomorrow.

The Other China – Taiwan Report – Part 1

I’ve been living in Japan for a total fifteen years now, counting in my student year in Fukuoka and fourteen years in Tokyo. I’ve been planning to go to neighboring Taiwan a couple of times but never made it somehow. Until now. And I’m very glad I finally managed.

Arrived at Taipei’s Taoyuan airport, the first difference to mainland China struck me in from of better cars. While cars in Shanghai are crappy, old, rattling VW Santanas without even seat belts, the yellow taxis of Taiwan are all big new looking Toyota Camry, Crown, Prius or Honda Civics.

My taxi driver spoke three words of English and reassured me he knew my hotel (whose name I had printed out in Chinese again just to be sure). Driving was fast and adventurous much like in Shanghai if a bit more civilized down massive eight lane freeways and intertwining bridges. My hotel turned out to be a pleasant surprise. While it doesn’t look like much from the outside, the rooms are excellent, with all you need and fairly new (renovated I suppose): The FX Taipei Nanjing East Road branch. I highly recommend it.



On the first night I just ventured out on foot for a bit to test the waters and Taipei felt about as safe and normal as Tokyo, people were walking about everywhere – good!

My first stop the following morning was the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial and for that purpose I explored the MRT – the metro system of Taipei, which turned out to be very easy to understand and to use, much less complicated as Tokyo’s extensive network, well, after all Taipei is much smaller than Tokyo. (Special municipality only 2.6 million, but greater urban area some 8 million and some 6 million within the subway system area).

At the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial I got my first special experience of the trip. In front of the memorial are the national theater and the national music hall and on the wide place between them was a bunch of yellow and blue clad people, at least a thousand if not more, who were grouping themselves in an elaborate pattern under instructions from a lady with a loudspeaker. The people in blue all had yellow t-shirts under their jackets and on their backs you could read Falun Dafa is good. I so far only knew them under the name Falun Gong but Falun Dafa seems to be their preferred designation.



Several freaked out tourists and myself sneaked past them to get to the memorial.

They have a nice museum about Chiang Kai-Shek’s life under the memorial and I hung out there to wait for the changing of the guards in the memorial hall that happens every full hour.



One word about the weather: hot! Close to 30 Celsius with the classic Asian high humidity.

My new smart watch that I could not resist buying on the plane (Cathay Pacific, one of my favorite airlines) said constantly over 80% humidity, sometimes more.

The changing of the guards was highly complicated and elaborate and man, these guys have practiced that for hours and days and months…

My way back to the subway station led me through a beautiful garden including pond next to the national theater that had a little outdoor cafe to offer. So I sat there and listened to the Falun Dafa people praying. They had meanwhile all taken their supposed positions and were sitting on the ground. I think they sat in form of a Chinese character though I could not make out which one. They must have been sweating their guts out in the heat without any shelter and in those blue jackets…

Interesting. They were just about finished when I had eaten my lunch and I quickly left to avoid congested subways.

I rode to my next target: the Longshan temple, (which means dragon mountain) and it’s the oldest still standing and operational temple in Taipei.

I am by now highly fascinated by the Taiwanese branch of Buddhism and more about that throughout the rest of the trip as well.

First of all I was a bit astonished to see the temple as a functioning religious site rather than a historical site. I felt kinda bad and intruding on people but managed to take a few (well actually quite many all in all) snap shots. I am especially touched by the snapshot of this old lady here who looked like she is spending a considerable amount of time in this temple.



I am actually not sure whether pictures were allowed or not. I could not find a no photos sign anywhere. I have no intention of disrespect, which is all the more true for the pictures I took in Kaohsiung on the next day and again in Taipei on day three. They were all taken in innocent wonder and fascination.

Back to Longshan temple, not only at this temple, but also all others I have seen: dragons everywhere, awesome. Longshan temple combines the dragons with age. This particular temple is from the eighteenth century. I am not sure if the buildings are still original, but they indeed looked older than anything I have seen in Kaohsiung for example. Since, in contrast to quite a number of westerners, I can read some Chinese characters including dragon mountain temple I bought a nice talisman from Longshan and shall honor it at home.

I wandered around the block before leaving the area again, backwater Taipei.



There are not too many westerners in Tokyo either but in Taipei there are even fewer. Well, it’s not a major tourist destination for Europe or the US. Too bad actually, since it’s wonderful!

My next stop was Ximending “the hipster shopping district” also called Taipei’s Harajuku.

As for that, nah, Harajuku is cooler, especially the fashion. I did find some underground scene though, a street with open tattoo parlors and managed one sneaky shot of them.

Now eating does represent a bit of a problem. I am not too adventurous in that department and while the food stuff in the stalls of Ximending did look interesting I have no clue what much of the stuff is and don’t know how to order it either and ended up at a Japanese restaurant since I at least know the menu…

Last stop for the day was another highlight: the Taipei 101, still one of the highest buildings in the world. I have to go up things like that and bought a ticket for the observatory at floor 89. The queue is always long and once you have a ticket you can come back an hour later. I used that hour to walk a bit away from the thing to be able to take decent pictures of it.



Then back to the extensive luxury shopping mall next to the beast and killing time until I was allowed to queue.

Massive clouds were coming in and blocked the view but parts of them looked really cool and I didn’t mind. Then the world disappeared and we were in the middle of a rain cloud.

After some evening shots of the beast I headed back to the hotel, dead tired but having become a fan of Taipei.

Here is the link to the full set of photos and I’ll upload part two of the report tomorrow.

The Other China – Taiwan report – part 1

I’ve been living in Japan for a total fifteen years now, counting in my student year in Fukuoka and fourteen years in Tokyo. I’ve been planning to go to neighboring Taiwan a couple of times but never made it somehow. Until now. And I’m very glad I finally managed.

Arrived at Taipei’s Taoyuan airport, the first difference to mainland China struck me in from of better cars. While cars in Shanghai are crappy, old, rattling VW Santanas without even seat belts, the yellow taxis of Taiwan are all big new looking Toyota Camry, Crown, Prius or Honda Civics.

My taxi driver spoke three words of English and reassured me he knew my hotel (whose name I had printed out in Chinese again just to be sure). Driving was fast and adventurous much like in Shanghai if a bit more civilized down massive eight lane freeways and intertwining bridges. My hotel turned out to be a pleasant surprise. While it doesn’t look like much from the outside, the rooms are excellent, with all you need and fairly new (renovated I suppose): The FX Taipei Nanjing East Road branch. I highly recommend it.



On the first night I just ventured out on foot for a bit to test the waters and Taipei felt about as safe and normal as Tokyo, people were walking about everywhere – good!

My first stop the following morning was the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial and for that purpose I explored the MRT – the metro system of Taipei, which turned out to be very easy to understand and to use, much less complicated as Tokyo’s extensive network, well, after all Taipei is much smaller than Tokyo. (Special municipality only 2.6 million, but greater urban area some 8 million and some 6 million within the subway system area).

At the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial I got my first special experience of the trip. In front of the memorial are the national theater and the national music hall and on the wide place between them was a bunch of yellow and blue clad people, at least a thousand if not more, who were grouping themselves in an elaborate pattern under instructions from a lady with a loudspeaker. The people in blue all had yellow t-shirts under their jackets and on their backs you could read Falun Dafa is good. I so far only knew them under the name Falun Gong but Falun Dafa seems to be their preferred designation.



Several freaked out tourists and myself sneaked past them to get to the memorial.

They have a nice museum about Chiang Kai-Shek’s life under the memorial and I hung out there to wait for the changing of the guards in the memorial hall that happens every full hour.



One word about the weather: hot! Close to 30 Celsius with the classic Asian high humidity.

My new smart watch that I could not resist buying on the plane (Cathay Pacific, one of my favorite airlines) said constantly over 80% humidity, sometimes more.

The changing of the guards was highly complicated and elaborate and man, these guys have practiced that for hours and days and months…

My way back to the subway station led me through a beautiful garden including pond next to the national theater that had a little outdoor cafe to offer. So I sat there and listened to the Falun Dafa people praying. They had meanwhile all taken their supposed positions and were sitting on the ground. I think they sat in form of a Chinese character though I could not make out which one. They must have been sweating their guts out in the heat without any shelter and in those blue jackets…

Interesting. They were just about finished when I had eaten my lunch and I quickly left to avoid congested subways.

I rode to my next target: the Longshan temple, (which means dragon mountain) and it’s the oldest still standing and operational temple in Taipei.

I am by now highly fascinated by the Taiwanese branch of Buddhism and more about that throughout the rest of the trip as well.

First of all I was a bit astonished to see the temple as a functioning religious site rather than a historical site. I felt kinda bad and intruding on people but managed to take a few (well actually quite many all in all) snap shots. I am especially touched by the snapshot of this old lady here who looked like she is spending a considerable amount of time in this temple.



I am actually not sure whether pictures were allowed or not. I could not find a no photos sign anywhere. I have no intention of disrespect, which is all the more true for the pictures I took in Kaohsiung on the next day and again in Taipei on day three. They were all taken in innocent wonder and fascination.

Back to Longshan temple, not only at this temple, but also all others I have seen: dragons everywhere, awesome. Longshan temple combines the dragons with age. This particular temple is from the eighteenth century. I am not sure if the buildings are still original, but they indeed looked older than anything I have seen in Kaohsiung for example. Since, in contrast to quite a number of westerners, I can read some Chinese characters including dragon mountain temple I bought a nice talisman from Longshan and shall honor it at home.

I wandered around the block before leaving the area again, backwater Taipei.



There are not too many westerners in Tokyo either but in Taipei there are even fewer. Well, it’s not a major tourist destination for Europe or the US. Too bad actually, since it’s wonderful!

My next stop was Ximending “the hipster shopping district” also called Taipei’s Harajuku.

As for that, nah, Harajuku is cooler, especially the fashion. I did find some underground scene though, a street with open tattoo parlors and managed one sneaky shot of them.

Now eating does represent a bit of a problem. I am not too adventurous in that department and while the food stuff in the stalls of Ximending did look interesting I have no clue what much of the stuff is and don’t know how to order it either and ended up at a Japanese restaurant since I at least know the menu…

Last stop for the day was another highlight: the Taipei 101, still one of the highest buildings in the world. I have to go up things like that and bought a ticket for the observatory at floor 89. The queue is always long and once you have a ticket you can come back an hour later. I used that hour to walk a bit away from the thing to be able to take decent pictures of it.



Then back to the extensive luxury shopping mall next to the beast and killing time until I was allowed to queue.

Massive clouds were coming in and blocked the view but parts of them looked really cool and I didn’t mind. Then the world disappeared and we were in the middle of a rain cloud.

After some evening shots of the beast I headed back to the hotel, dead tired but having become a fan of Taipei.

Here is the link to the full set of photos and I’ll upload part two of the report tomorrow.

Greetings from Taiwan

I’m in Taiwan this weekend for the first time in my life and so far I like it very much.

A real travel report wit the usual Flickr photos will follow soon

Tomorrow the plan is to go to Kaohsiung with Taiwan’s version of the Shinkansen.

Let’s see what happens!

Hal-Con 2014 Report

Hal-Con has gone into its fifth year and is still going strong

Our non-Japanese writer GoHs so far were in chronological order: Charles Stross, Robert Sawyer, Alastair Reynolds, Joe Haldeman and this year it was Peter Watts.

Hal-Con is two days long and always in April. Hal-Con means two things to us here, of course it is inspired by Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey but the Japanese pronunciation of “Hal” is somewhat like “haru” which is a word in Japanese and means spring.

So far we changed venues every year and this year’s event was held in the Sanpia Kawasaki a municipal gathering venue. A bit old and moldy but not without Showa-era charm.

Thanks to writing a lot I have currently six books of mine on offer and that starts to be a bit heavy for carrying it in suitcases via public transport, but, oh miracle, I’m more or less driving a car since X-mas, if driving is still a big challenge for me. But, I made it and arrived safely with my two suitcases full of books on Saturday morning. I am not a morning person at all and was thrilled to see whether traffic would be light at 9 a.m. on a Saturday. It is not, which I find very reassuring, no need to get out of bed for driving practice!

I placed my books into the dealer’s room right away, them being: “Dome Child”, “She Should Have Called Him Siegfried”, “To Mix and To Stir”, “Lord of Water”, the anthology “Clones, Fairies & Monsters in the Closet”, and the revised edition of what was formerly “Dark Matters”, now freshly enhanced and re-published under the title “The Glow of the Dark”.

The rest of the day was spent with translating for our formidable GoH Watts san and also with translating a bit at the “Build the World” program. This year we invented a wandering planet that has an alien intelligent core which is off-center and causes weird spinning and highly disturbs the indigenous species of the planet

The day ended with the GoH party and for me with driving home again 20 km including traffic jam thanks to an accident with police and fire-brigade on my route

The next morning meant a slightly more relaxed driving for me thanks to now knowing the route to the convention venue, but at the gate happened what I had feared. The Sanpia guard man said I have to remove the car from their grounds after the convention is over and need to park somewhere else for the “dead dog” party (the party at the end of a con for the staff , usually with GoH participation). The “dead dog” party was supposed to be held at a restaurant close to the hotel where the GoH stayed, right behind Kawasaki station with no suitable parking far and wide.

Anyway, it was also the day of my two seminars and between lots of translating I held my “indie vs. traditional publishing” program. It was already the third round for this program and I discussed the good and bad points of self-publishing vs. small presses and elusive big presses with the audience.

Next up was my reading. Unfortunately the iBook program on my iPad with the galley proof of my not yet released second Dark Quest Books novella “That One Minute” kept on crashing and I gave up on recording this reading

The reading for “To Mix and To Stir” went better, since the book is on Kindle and I’ll be uploading it to YouTube soon (if it’s any good, that is. I haven’t checked the recording yet).

Due to my own two seminars I unfortunately missed Peter’s talk on consciousness together with Japanese biologist and author Hideaki Sena. It’s about time that humans can be in at least two places at the same time

I feel honored that Peter had the guts to board my car after the con was over! He folded into my smallish Suzuki Swift and I drove him to his hotel. He survived! I let him out in front of the hotel and then ventured into a small side street in search for the hotel’s parking that I had been promised existed. I found it in a side street swarming with pedestrians and it turned out to be a parking elevator. There are a few of those in Germany I’ve heard, but I am not sure whether they exist for example in the US, so let me explain. You must drive your car onto a platform (you must aim well) and leave your vehicle and the platform lifts your car to lofty heights where it stores it out of sight and mind.

I told the operator of the thing, well, um, never did this before. He said he’s not allowed to park it for me due to insurance reasons and just drive slowly. What helped was a mirror, which allows you to check whether your tires are aiming for the rails they must go onto and I managed to park Alfie successfully on the thing in creep speed .

That done, I waited in the hotel lobby until someone else came from the con to pick up Peter and me and to guide us to the restaurant. Now that restaurant was a highlight: A wonderfully nerdy place with Star Trek, Thunderbrids, and whatever other SciFi movie memorabilia and of course also a screen where they played old SciFi movies. Astonishingly few Star Wars stuff in the restaurant, but loads of Enterprise models and also an awesome model of the 2001 Space Odyssey ship and and and. During our three hours in the restaurant there was Forbidden Planet on the screen, Star Trek – the Movie (man they were all still so young there) and an “alien invasion” movie from the sixties perhaps, whose title I don’t know. What an awesome atmosphere to finish off a SciFi con. The restaurant is called “Pepper Land” and is right behind Kawasaki station. I’ll surely go there again and am adding some photos of the restaurant below.

The con was over much too quickly and due to opposite scheduling I actually didn’t get into any of Peter’s seminars, which is a bit of a shame.

Next year’s Hal-Con’s GoH and place are not yet decided but I’ll be there again as always, unless heaven falls onto our heads

Greetings from Hal-Con

Once a year, there is Hal-Con – our “local/international” little SciFi convention in Japan. It’s a 100 people con with a non-Japanese writer as the GoH (Guest of Honor).

This year it’s Peter Watts from Canada.

Day one is already over and I shall report about the Con in blog entries hereafter.

For now – too tired and one more day to go and tomorrow I’ll have my two programs, so see you later.

The Glow of the Dark

My first book is back out again: “The Glow of the Dark”, formerly published in 2009 as “Dark Matters” by Absolute XPress, an imprint of Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy.

The book’s history is much older than 2009. I wrote the story first in screenplay format in 2001 and I remember clearly that it took me a week to write its first draft – 120 pages in screenplay format.

After the usual rounds of revisions, I submitted it to the Slamdance screenwriting contest, where, oh miracle, it made 2nd place in 2002.



I flew to Park City for the festival in January 2003, but I was still too young, too inexperienced, green and geeky/insecure to make the most out of such a festival visit. I got a famous 1 dollar option offer from a small production company but declined, thinking other, better offers lay around the corner. I have no clue of course whether any good would have come out of this, but if there is one decision I regret, then it is not having taken that offer.

Other offers didn’t lie around the corner and I wrote to some 100 companies before getting a second. I don’t remember why I did not get back to the guy with the initial offer. Maybe I should have. Anyway, I finally had a second one dollar option and worked together with the producer on some rewrites and things looked good and I was hopeful until I stopped hearing from the guy.

After some digging, I found out that he had been fired, as happens frequently in Hollywood… His successor who took over my project was far less enthusiastic. The thing was not his baby and he didn’t appear to be doing anything with the story.

This whole exercise mounted up to me quitting my job in Japan and flying to Hollywood for three months over x-mas and new year 2004/2005 in a desperate attempt to mend things.

I met with the new producer dude, a complete jerk, arrogant as an asshole-only version of Iron Man, and I bet he was not a stranger to cocaine. He told me he wanted monsters in the story…

I actually wrote a monster version with cthulhuesque creatures in the ocean of the alien planet and one of my friends actually read it, but it was messy and neither I nor the producer dude liked it.

I had dinner with the original guy who had been fired and remember him as a frustrated, desperate, jobless and burned-out guy who was too nice for this business.

It all ended with the one dollar option for Dark Matters dissolved, the rights returned to me, and me leaving Hollywood thoroughly disillusioned but knowing much more about myself and how far I am willing to go and where my limits are. I will maybe write a sort of memoir one day, my three months in Hollywood – a story of shattered hopefuls, but in essence – the place presented itself to me as the harshest, nastiest, coldest and most competitive on earth.

I went on to New Zealand and Australia for a month each before I arrived at the end of my money and returned back to Japan, which, compared to Hollywood, felt like a balmy paradise of humanity.

I returned to Japan also with the decision to make novels or novellas out of my work. Funnily the first thing that I “sold” was Dark Matters. The first edition from 2009 makes me cringe today. I believe in continuous improvement and that every book should be better than the last. I learned a lot since 2009.

I recently read an article in the BBC about a sushi chef in Tokyo’s Ginza. He is a sushi chef for 50 years now and he also believes or strives for every sushi he makes every day to be better than the one the day before. He hosts prime ministers and movie stars by the way. And it’s like that. Writing is constant learning and it will never end.

After three years, Dark Matters sat stuck. I met the publisher at the 2012 world science fiction convention in Chicago again, after initially meeting him in Montreal in 2009 when the book came out, and we made a “deal”: I’d produce a revised version (my desire) and he’d publish it in digital form only, with a new title under a new imprint.

I happily went about rewriting the “horrible” beginner version of Dark Matters. I did so in autumn 2012 and here is a blog entry about that. I delivered to the publisher as promised before x-mas 2012 and was kept in the dark ever since, pun intended.

Nothing bloody happened and a year went by when I finally got an answer out of the publisher. Things are delayed with his new imprint and blah… It will be 2014 or so and blah… Frustrated and pissed off, I asked him to return the rights to me, which he did and sayonara.

It’s been nothing but an endless chain of waiting with this publisher with years going by like farts in the wind and my patience had come to an end.

So, The Glow of the Dark is now “mine” again, and revised and enriched. It has gone up from 33,000 words to 45,000 and I am, as of now, spring 2014, content with the result.

Never say never again, but for the moment I am done with this story and don’t want to touch it again it has been with me on and off for 13 years and shall be put aside and make way for other books. I salute the Captain of the Luminous and the crew of the Gao and wish them a good journey.

The paper version is now out and the kindle version will follow in a couple of weeks.