Across the Pond

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Hot For the Orient, part 2

I thought this would be the latest in a long series of columns about Japan, Asia and things comicky, as well as the title of Skyhooks’ worst album. Since I’m now out of Japan for good it may well be the last such column, as I re-ajust to life in Australia.

One thing I’m re-ajusting to is the increased availability of comics, with my beloved Phantom comics in every newsagents in the country and other things scattered hither and thither. I have even stepped out of my regular habits and started buying ‘Batman’, which I chose because the name seemed the simplest of the umpteen Batman
related titles on offer, and because the cover, showing Batman fighting a guy in a red helmet, seemed nice and nostalgic.

Mentally, I’m still half in Japan of course. I can’t stop bowing to people, I keep expecting earthquakes and I miss manga kissa. This last
is not a sexuall perversion, but an idea which may well take off in English speaking countries and wind up being as big as Pokemon.

A ‘kissaten’ is a cafe and manga, as almost everyone knows are comics (confusingly, some manga are called “comics” by the Japanese; it indicates classy manga and those designed for women). A manga kissa is a comics cafe and I want one in my suburb right now. I’ll regret this bitterly when some entrepreneur gets them off the ground and becomes rich beyond the dreams of the guy who makes the figurines in comics shops, but here is is for one and all; a good idea. Imagine that you are in a comics shop and that you are not Bill Gates. If you are me you’d like to buy Tom Strong 2 and any other Tom Strong stuff that’s around. You’re pretty sure you’d enjoy some Alan Grant Batman books, having read an interview with Grant in which he sounded interesting. There’s a Love and Rockets collection which you are positive would be fun to read, since you always enjoyed LnR back in the eighties. Oh and you’ve always wondered if Tank Girl was worth all the fuss if got at the time or if it was just over designed trendyjunk. Wouldn’t it be fun to find out? Right now I can afford exactlynone of the above. If my comics shop is in Japan, I can get away with reading most of Tom Strong book 2 (Japanese bookshops are astonishingly tolerant of standing-up-and-reading-without-buying, aka ‘tachikomi’), but beyond that my legs would get tired.

I could however, afford ten bucks. In a comics cafe this would buy me four hours of reading any of thousands of comic hardbacks, free tea, coffee or soft drinks and coffee table books featuring MEGUMI or any of the other swimsuit models who are so popular with adolescentboys and middle-aged English language teachers. There’s also a book of pictures of Beckham in various states of undress at the internet library I liked to use in Takadanobaba, so there’s something for almost everyone. Oh and there’s an internet connection too, usually with a little private booth.

There are many reasons why these places wouldn’t work in English speaking countries; people would pinch the comics, not so many people read comics anyway, most people don’t place as much of a premium on space as the Japanese do (a lot of students use the manga kissa as a quiet place to study in, away from noisy siblings) and the start-up costs would be huge. I dunno, I reckon it would work. As I’ve said here before; more people read comics than know that they do; if you included Doonesbury, Claire Bretecher and the Sylvia books you’d get my comics-detesting sisters in there, and everyone one has magazines they’d like to read but can’t afford. It could work, Oh yes.

Until some visionary opens this up, we’ll just have to rely on friends to make up for our lack of unlimited income and time, so a big ‘hi’ to the 2000 AD message board and their collective knowledge.