 Red Room Writer Profile
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Wendy Nelson Tokunaga's Blog
October 17, 2009
- Reading Your Writing Out Loud Today I’m preparing for my reading tonight at LitQuake’s LitCrawl. I’ll be reading from my forthcoming novel, Love in Translation, and I’m excited to be a part of this great literary tradition in San Francisco. We only have 5-6 minutes to read and this makes total sense; it’s hard for an audience to concentrate on a passage much longer than this, ...
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September 4, 2009
- New People J-Pop Mall in San Francisco's Japantown I visited the new New People mall in San Francisco’s Japantown a few days after its grand opening the weekend of August 16. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a sucker for Japantown’s, Little Tokyo’s, Japanese malls, stores, urants, etc. located anywhere outside of Japan. I’ve found them in Paris (in the Opera district) and ...
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July 29, 2009
- Chirashi Roundup You can give me twenty lashes with a wet udon noodle if you wish, but I sure find it difficult to keep up with writing a blog with any amount of consistency. So I’m trying kind of a different format, which may allow me to post with a little more frequency.I ran across this article in my hometown newspaper, The San Francisco Chronicle, which has some good tips for traveling ...
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June 3, 2009
- Oh! A Mystery of Mono no Aware - by Todd Shimoda Todd Shimoda’s latest novel, Oh!: A Mystery of Mono no Aware, published by Chin Music Press, is a fascinating and compelling book that weaves themes of both traditional and modern Japanese culture. You’ll be drawn in by Shimoda’s spare but elegant prose, which reminds me of the writing style of Haruki Murakami.The protagonist of Oh!, Zack ...
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May 7, 2009
- Crazy for Kanji When I first started studying Japanese years ago, I became immersed in learning the written language, from hiragana and katakana (the phonetic language systems) to the actual characters—the kanji. And Celeste Duncan, the protagonist in my forthcoming novel, Love in Translation, also discovers an inexplicable connection to kanji once she finds herself in Tokyo.No one, though, ...
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April 25, 2009
- Saltwater Buddha - by Jaimal Yogis You don’t have to be a surfer or a Buddhist to enjoy Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea. This coming-of-age memoir by San Francisco-based journalist Jaimal Yogis, with its crisp, clean prose and delightful self-deprecating tone, will pull in any reader who has ever yearned to learn something new as well as garner some spiritual ...
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April 24, 2009
- SMAP Star Arrested for Public Indecency The Japan Times reports that Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, member of the long-time J-pop group SMAP, was arrested by police after being found naked and drunk in Hinokicho Park around 3:00 am. The park is close by the 34-year-old’s Roppongi apartment in the la-dee-dah Tokyo Midtown complex. Beforehand he’d been drinking with two friends in Akasaka. He ...
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April 21, 2009
- Japan's Biggest Export It’s official. Japan is no longer the dominant exporter of electronics and cars, but of its popular culture. Despite the economic downturn, conventions promoting Japanese pop culture are making more money than ever. Ronald Kelts, author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S., reports in the Daily Yomiuri that Seattle’s Sakura-con boasted ...
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April 18, 2009
- The cover art for LOVE IN TRANSLATION is here and I couldn't be more pleased. The book comes out on November 24, 2009. Yay!
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April 16, 2009
- According to the Global Post, cat cafes are all the rage in Tokyo. Japanese love their nekos (cats) and cafes with names like Nekorobi, Cat Cafe Rien, Calico, and Cateriam are springing up all over. They’re perfect if you work long hours, have to be away a lot on business or live in an apartment that forbids pets, but need some feline companionship to keep you happy. It’s not free to ...
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March 24, 2009
- I recently joined an online group of published women writers. They share tips, offer support and also get together for in-person group writing dates. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to join in. Writing groups can certainly be helpful and I’ve participated in many, but after having spent the past two years in an MFA program I’ve been feeling thoroughly workshopped out. It’s been kind of nice to ...
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March 13, 2009
- One of my pleasures is watching American Idol. Notice I didn’t say guilty pleasures— I refuse to suffer guilt over any of my pleasures. At any rate, I’ve been watching the show since the very first season, and have rarely missed an episode. I don’t consider AI a reality show; it’s simply a singing contest, right out of Star Search or even the Ted Mack Amateur Hour. And one of the ...
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February 19, 2009
- It looked like a wet dishrag in the driveway, but it was, in reality, my newspaper. The rain had been steady since early morning and even though my San Francisco Chronicle had been carefully bundled in plastic, it had turned into an unreadable, heavy mess. I could have called and had it redelivered, though even regular delivery is not always reliable where I live. But I didn’t want to bother. ...
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February 5, 2009
- The National Chauvinistic Husbands Association, founded in 1999 by Japanese writer and editor Shuichi Amano out of Fukuoka, Japan, has garnered much publicity in the West in recent years with articles in the Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle, and coverage by CNN, among others. The group’s membership is up to 5,000 and has been instrumental in preventing a number of Japanese marriages ...
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January 27, 2009
- Women workers have long been considered Japan’s neglected resource as the country continues to grapple with both hard economic times and the dwindling pool of potential employees to take over for retiring baby boomers in many fields. Japan has always been very slow to change and despite some progress in opportunities for women workers, the country still is entrenched in a male-dominated ...
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