Sunday (April 15) Restaurant 62 offered a tasting of three Osake brand wines from Granville Island’s Artisan Sake Maker Masa Shiroki. This wine, a handmade product, is not to be confused with the harsh and hot stuff that comprises the only sake experience the majority of North Americans know. The artisanal article is so much more. Continue reading
I suppose the downpour which drowned it all in 2011 didn’t do much to spark enthusiasm among the planners. The “annual” Cherry Blossom Festival at Thunderbird Square in Abbotsford didn’t materialize this year.
Not daunted by the absence of fellow revelers—quite the opposite, in fact—I headed out on Tuesday afternoon. Knowing how soggy it would be after Wednesday’s forecast rain, I threw my jacket on the ground, leaned against a tree and let the world stop for a moment. Continue reading
The Prisoner of Snowflake Falls (Orca Books)
will launch at Vancouver Kids’ Books on
Wednesday, April 25, 2012 at 7:00 PM.
The Prisoner of Snowflake Falls is a book rich with simple complexities and deadpan one-liners that brilliant comics will wish they had written.
John Lekich, author of King of the Lost and Found and The Losers’ Club brings us another in what might now be qualified as a streak of young adult fiction featuring exceptional adolescents. Though each has much to offer the world, none quite fits in. That’s exactly what motivates them and the essence of their charm. Continue reading
Aki and I approached Kamakura’s Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gu shrine through the Ni no Torii (second gate). Gravel crunching loudly under our feet, we walked the dankazura (a raised avenue) between the already leafless cherry trees as people have for centuries.
Torii (gate) and dankazua (raised pathway flanked in cherry trees)
To our surprise a marriage ceremony is under way in the Maiden, or open pavilion in front of the shrine where performances of various kinds and weddings are held. Continue reading
Perhaps it was the atmosphere of the APEC summit in Yokohama with its sealed garbage cans in all public places even as far away as Nikko (just under 120 km or 75 miles from Tokyo). Helicopters whacked overhead all day, and Barak Obama’s nostalgic recollections of a boyhood visit to Kamakura Daibutsu played endlessly on Japanese TV. Perhaps that intensified the pitch of my expectations. As well, anyone I knew who’d visited the Great Buddha of Kamakura had come away awestruck. Continue reading
Monday, March 18, The Globe and Mail ran my review of Jodi Picoult’s latest novel Lone Wolf. In spite of my reservations about the book, like others before it Lone Wolf is selling well. I suspect it strikes a chord with Picoult’s readers because the franchise delivers what they have come to love and expect. Read the review. Continue reading
We cry out for what we have lost, and we remember you again. ~ Leonard Cohen
The entrance, Nezu Museum, Tokyo
I like Kengo Kuma’s story: a man at the helm of his own firm. Steering to his own vision rather than enduring the bureaucracy of a Japanese architectural firm. Westerners gobble up that sort of thing and it piques my curiosity. (Architect Triumphs in Defeat in The Japan Times. October, 3 2010.)
In addition, Mitsumasa Fujitsuka’s photo of the grand entrance to the Nezu Museum which accompanies the article pulls me to the spot. As this design won Kengo Kuma the 2010 Mainichi Art Award, I am determined to see it.
At first—and even after some experience—deciphering Tokyo’s transit map can be much like navigating a Jackson Pollock painting.
Tokyo Transit Map
Sunday, March 11, 2012 The Wild Weathers a gathering of love poems book launch happens at Renaissance Books (43-6th Street, New Westminster, BC) between 1-3 PM. I will be reading “Final Round,” my contribution to the anthology. Continue reading
