Category Archives: Aside

Book Release: Japanese Dystopian Fiction (“Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath” by Juza Unno)

(Update: I have since republished these stories in a larger compilation that you can find here, which is available in both paper and ebook format. I have changed the links in the article below to the original short e-book to point to this newer book.) (Quick link to the book on Amazon) Early this year, I published… Read More »

Novel review: “Invitation to a Beheading” by Vladimir Nabokov

The novel Lolita, written in 1955 by Russian American novelist Vladimir Nabokov, is a classic piece of literature that I think many people are at least vaguely familiar with (heck, even Sting has apparently read it back in the 80s). While I admit I haven’t read it, recently at the library I stumbled upon another… Read More »

en Taiko: Japanese drumming at its finest

I’ve been exposed to Japanese taiko (太鼓) drumming from a young age, having seen several performances at the Morakami Japanese Museum & Gardens in South Florida. While I do enjoy watching taiko performances, to be honest I started getting a bit bored of them; not only because they seemed to change little from year-to-year, but… Read More »

Difficulties with publishing a translation of a public domain work on Draft2Digital (and a solution)

Recently in the process of trying to publish my first book across multiple internet bookstores via Draft2Digital I ran into some trouble, and as a result ended up publishing directly via Amazon’s KDP (see here for more details). Things did get resolved with D2D so I wanted to provide an update for anyone who might… Read More »

The making of an E-book: Science: Hopes & Fears (Juza Unno short story compilation)

In this article, I’d like to talk about the making of my recently published book Science: Hopes & Fears (Volume 1), which is a compilation of Juza Unno’s science fiction stories translated into English. (You can find it here on Amazon) Although I had been considering it for some time, this was my first attempt… Read More »

Juza Unno: Classic Japanese SF author published in English for the first time (reprise)

(Update: I have since republished these stories in a larger compilation that you can find here.) In late October, I announced I was working on a new translation project–after around two years of listing translations on my blog, for the first time I was aiming to publish a translation in a more formal media than… Read More »

Taking translation to the next level: Getting Published

For nearly two years I’ve been involved in a series of hobby translation projects, which I’d estimate to be at least 50 chapters and several hundreds of pages. My purpose for these was to improve my Japanese translation abilities on a variety of authors and genres, and I have been very satisfied with what I’ve… Read More »

Karesansui (枯山水): The art of Japanese rock gardens (in your own backyard?)

When we chose our latest place to live, we decided to give priority to inside the house and less concern for the backyard. Not only is our backyard small, but a large patio covers up a big portion of the grass, leaving an awkwardly-sized space that isn’t good for much of anything. I guess we… Read More »