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I wonder if it is possible to be allergic to tea. I hear about people dying from peanuts all the time, so I wonder what other things I love can possible kill a man.
Summer is here with all it's heat and humidity. We live on the fourth floor of our building so most of the time we get a nice breeze and can escape the mugginess, but once we venture outside it is pretty sticky. Tomorrow I am going up to visit a publisher and I am worried about arriving dripping my own juices. Can't be the sort of sight editors want to see, can it? But in the meantime I still have my favorite milk tea to keep me hydrated and cool. All hail milk tea!!!

I got out for part of the day last week and made it up to Jiyugaoka with my wife where, after making the obligatory stop at the book off there we slowly made our way over the check out the other side of the station and "re"discovered the donut plant, after which we made our way home with what had to be at least 5,000 gooey calories of donuty-awesomeness. I love the donut plant and can't really stand Mr. Donuts. That place really sucks with a capital crap. I don't understand it either. When I talk to other foreigners they almost always to a man talk about how much they can't wait to get to try Mr. Donuts. If only they knew...
But with them all heading over to Mr. Donuts that just means there are more edibles for me at the Donut Plant or Krispy Kreme. Which has been spreading here like wildfire. Awesome. They best part about the Krispy Kremes here in Japan is while you are waiting in line employees will pass out free donuts for you to snack on. Ah, just thinking about it makes me feel my American waist line returning...

By the way, thank you to all the nice people who took the time to pick up a copy of Yen Plus last month and read my short story, the Clinic of the Damned. I got some really nice reviews and feedback on that and I look forward to doing more of the same. I am thinking the next one will have to be about a Gothic Lolita Detective Agency. Yeah, is definitely something I will have to do.

On the way to the supermarket the other day I saw a 3 year old in a stroller being pushed by his mother wearing a "Suicidal Tendencies" baseball cap. What was weird was the hat was toddler sized.

I got over to Book Off to sell some old books this week. For those of you who don't know, Book Off is a chain of Used book stores in Japan with a very good stock of books, CDs, DVDs, and games for sale. They are so popular a lot of people don't bother buying books new anymore but wait a few weeks so they can get what they are looking for 100 or 200 yen off the cover price. They are also one of the big reasons publishing is in trouble here. While I was there waiting on the clerk to review what I brought for sale I browsed the Bunkobon and Lightnovel sections where I found some of the YoumaYagyou and Lodoss wars series. In fact about half of the Lodoss wars series. Either way, both series are based on American role playing games, the old school kind. You know, Graph-paper and dice. "All you need is some paper and your imagination". I remember watching the Lodoss wars in Highschool and always wanted to read the books so ultimately it was my lucky day. Here is how the math worked out. I took in something like 27 manga volumes, got 160 yen in trade in value (ouch!) and spent 700 yen on the volumes of Lodoss wars I picked up. So, minus 540 yen for the deal, but I managed to reconnect with one of the few things that made high school fun. And kept me from really studying. But who needs book learning? I learned all I need to know fighting orcs and slaying dragons. And wrecking the occasional campaign on purpose!

I just finished a giant project and to celebrate I cleaned my office. It had been needing it for a while now and there was crap piling up in all the corners, including the ever growing pile of books to take to Book Off and my giant pile of UFO catcher goodies. More on that later, but expect to start seeing some of it end up on Ebay.
So cleaning the office isn't the most exciting cure for boredom so I popped in my Transformers 2 Dvd to watch/listen to while I worked. Most people would jump on my back right about now for liking that movie but I must counter with, "what's not to like?" Endless alien robots beating the crap out of each other for 2 1/2 hours? That's pretty much my recipe for awesome!!! They totally make up for the plot holes. Of course now the movie and the cleaning is done so it is back to doodling for a living. Dammit...

Well, back to blogging. It has been an amazing couple of months and I am doing my best to try and keep up with all the work/projects that keep piling up. The weather here in the Tokyo-ish area is fine and fine. Warm, but not too humid. In the last two months there have been two different people here from Udon, I have had lots of meetings, been to mangaka related gatherings and finally met the legendary Felipe Smith as well as agreed to do some books for Comiket/Comitia/ whichever comes first. On the fun front I am enjoying reading Gundam Unicorn. Very fresh and for once the hero is not a technical genius. Just kind of average so far. I love it. And the fact that it expands the Gundam universe beyond Char's counterattack. And of course an exciting announcement; I have a short story (or as short as 45 pages can be...) in the May issue of Yen Plus! magazine called "The Clinic of the Damned". Check it out if you get the chance. Beyond that it is mostly Zenescope covers and work for other as to be announced projects. Hopefully I can keep posting regularly starting... now!

I discovered recently a new drink; Espresso Milk Tea by Kirin, the nice people who bring the world Afternoon Tea (the actual Japanese product line name is 午後の紅茶). I love milk tea, and it is probably the single reason I am still at my large "American" size. If you are in Japan anytime soon please check it out. Unless you don't like strong drinks. It is pretty much what the name suggests; very concentrated tea.

I have been doing mostly covers and character design work when I am not laying out books lately. Laying stories out is a fun task, but it is time consuming, and coming up for air after starting a story usually has me realizing the better part of a week has gone by and I am facing a giant jumble of backlogged work. That was fine when we were in the grips of winter. But recently it has been warming up here and I just want to get outside and walk. It's probably one of those situations where one thing will have to give so I can do the other, and knowing how these things work it will probably be the outside activities...

So I have big news. A short story I did for Yen Press is done and in and will be in the may issue of Yen Press. Please check it out. It was fun to work on from concept up through getting the pages inked and toned and I can 't wait to get my hands on a copy of it. If you like it please let the nice people at Yen know what you thought.

I saw a baby with something approaching an afro today. Yes, that's how I start my first post of the year (and in the last three months if you are counting). Anyway, the baby was a new born and it had a giant baby-fro. It was awesome.
What's been going on lately... well, lots of meetings, lots of me drawing covers, illos, short stories. And it has been cold. Lots more to draw and ink and tone... in case anyone is interested you can see a lot of my recent doodles up on Deviant Art: http://stekichikun.deviantart.com/

Upcoming, I have a short story and as soon as I can I will post the details. I also have done some covers for Zenescope, starting with Neverland 3 and Grimm Fairy Tales 49. Details to come, once I am able to post more on the other books I have done covers for.

More posts to come. Stay tuned.

I haven't bothered to post in a while. Lately there have been more disappointments than victories. Even the big wins feel watered down the way the losses have been piling up. But tonight we went to dinner, Megumi, her father, and me. The place was a local Japanese run Italian restaurant and the food was good, the service was fine, and from where I sat I could see the kitchen and the flames from the stoves. They were burning bright green and for some reason that put me in a good mood.

I just finished reading 20th Century Boys. It was awesome. By far and away one of the best stories I've ever read. I love the way the story is presented softly rather than with hard hammer blows like a lot of the other stuff around these days. And of course the fact that after I finished the book I was trying to think back over 24 volumes one by one just to digest how it ended and see if I could work out who was who and when really added to how good the book was for me. I'm not going to say anything more that might ruin it for anybody out there who hasn't read it, but hte fun of that book is trying to figure who was where doing what when.
I'm also reading the Evangelion Manga and trading off by rereading the Knights of the Dinner Table from the beginning. Fun fun fun.
Here are some pictures I drew for a friend at Dragon Con earlier this year. He was kind enough to send me scans of them and here they are for you.


The fun thing about drawing these was instead of being commissioned to draw some fan art of some character from some book or anime I care little about he asked me to draw some of the characters he role plays. Kind of like a living, breathing character.

I'm wondering where all the editors went. I was in the middle of several interesting conversations and then,... nothing... they are all gone. Mostly we were talking about nerdy Gundam stuff and recent movie releases, and then the conversations stopped in mid-stream. I'm seriously worried about alien abductions at this point. Has anyone seen a UFO hovering above any publishers recently?

The other day my wife and I headed over to 7-11 to pay some bills and discovered they were having a gundam fair. There was one section of the store devoted to 7-11 themed Gundam products for sale, Green colored Gundam models and toys with the 7-11 logo and in another section there was a Gundam lottery with unique Gundam prizes you could buy into. In fact the default prize was your choice of ball point pens shaped like Gundam weapons so I bought a lottery ticket expecting my luck would be just normal enough to get me one of those pens(I had my eyes set on a ball point pen shaped just like a Zakk heat hawk, pretty bad ass!) .
Unfortunately my luck failed me and I actually won something, a Gundam vinyl figurine. I guess this means I have gotten a start on my Christmas shopping...

I was sitting at my desk drawing pages when it suddenly hit me that I haven't set foot outside for days. So I work up the courage to head outside and holy crap, it's cold here!!! Just a few days ago it was hot and humid and I was in shorts and now all of the sudden I'm wondering where my winter clothes are. For what it's worth, I'm complaining less about the cold, since I love winter, and more about the fact that I was oblivious to the world around me. Downside of drawing comics for a living.

Anyway, I'm at the end of drawing my Yen short story and about to move on to other bigger projects that will last through July next year. Can't wait. Here are some sample pics. One is a inked doodle related to my Yen project and the other is a character design. Click the links to see them full size. Enjoy!!!

My CSI manga is finally out!!! Written by Sekou Hamilton and lovingly illustrated by myself and Megumi it is available in all the better bookstores and online outlets around. Even if you find the tv show a bit goofy you are guaranteed to enjoy this book if only because it is by your truely!

All joking aside, please take the time to check the book out. It deals with what happens when a group of new interns to the CSI Las Vegas finds the body of a school mate on their very first day on the job. All of the show's main characters who are still alive make appearances. And of course having to draw characters and make them look like the actual actors is one of the biggest pains in the ass I have ever had to put up with. I don't recommend the activity to anyone. But please check out the book!!!

In order to blow off a little steam from Drawing all day long I headed out to the nearby Book Off, a mile and half stroll. On the way there I stopped in to an OK supermarket where I found something I'm almost tempted to go back and pickup just for the novelty aspect of it; Tuna flavored candy. MMMmmmm.
Here are some pictures from Japan I've been meaning to post for a while now. Tony Salvaggio rockin' the town down!


Koei headquarters seen from the road I walk down to get home from the station. The eyes glow and pulse at night. Pretty freaky.


Tokyo Tower seen from the street level as I approach the Tokuma Shoten publishing headquarters for a meeting.