The Eastern Edge

A massive earthquake, thousands of aftershocks, nuclear meltdown, radiation fallout, food, water and power shortages, and finally a heat wave just to make everything perfect.
In an odd twist, however, the big typhoon that rolled through here a couple days ago was a good thing because it gave us some relief from the heat.

Yes, living in eastern Japan on the eastern edge of Tokyo hasn't been fun for the last 4 months or so.

On the bright side, shortly after the big earthquake when I put this blog on hiatus, I began the first of a handful of cool comic book and game related projects. Unfortunately, I am at liberty to blog about none of them. So, while I was actually doing a lot that relates to the things I usually write about here, I wasn't able to.

There were a few things I could have worked on to blog, like some of the translations I was working on before the quake. However, every time I tried to resume one of them I ended up realizing that for some reason I no longer cared about them.

Even another Takehiko Inoue/Vagabond related translation - which I still do care about - I just did't feel like doing. I probably won't until Inoue gets around to working on the comic again. Unfortunately that may be a while off. I have a feeling that Vagabond was a contributing factor to his illness last year and I don't think he is anywhere near ready to ramp it up again. I think it was a mistake for him to talk publicly about ending Vagabond before even he knew how to do it. He said himself that Vagabond is an extremely emotionally draining thing to create that takes a lot out of him, so he should never have put pressure on himself to end it before he was ready - or at least not talk about it so he could back away from the idea without anyone being the wiser.
Since he's been able to keep busy with a number of other successful projects lately, it seems quite apparent that Vagabond is the one thing he just isn't ready to even try and throw back into the mix yet. I think it'll be a while before he's recharged and in a situation to have the inspiration he needs to end it like it deserves to be ended.

Anyway, all of these things were keeping this blog on post-quake hiatus.

I'm no longer interested in ranting about the woes of the industry, adding my two cents to things other people are talking about, or trying to fabricate food for thought in hopes that I'll be able to scavenge a full meal of an article out of what would essentially be table scrap ideas just for the sake of pumping out regular content.

Luckily, I found this today!

I'll be back with English translation of select articles soon!