Went out shoppin' today. I needed to pick up some supplies like drafting pens and some ink for my nibs. If you know what Tokyu Hands is, I went there since they have pretty much anything you'd ever want in terms of stationary. Had a quick bowl of ramen afterwards, played some Tekken 6 and got my ass royally whooped (I need to play as someone other than Law for a change...) and, finally, made a trip to a bookstore for kicks. I ended up dropping about 70 bucks on impulse buys. Anyway, 4 books in total plus some posters:

First is William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. I wanted to get his newest release Spook Country but the oversized softcover was around 40 bucks so I decided to get this instead since it was about a quarter the price. I have no idea what it's about but the cover looked cool so...

The blueish book is Asano Inio's 2nd and final book to Oyasumi Pun Pun. I got the special edition version so it came with 2 keychains. I dunno. I'm a sucker. My love for Asano Inio knows no bounds and any book by him will make me drop yen in a second. The first book was thoroughly amazing and I expect this second half to blow my mind in equal parts.

Third is Hiroyuki Samura's Blood Hurley's Carriage. He's another creator I have no qualms about giving money to. It's a one-off book about an orphan girl who is sold into sexual slavery... or something to that effect. I haven't read it yet but, uh, it's kinda messed up. I'm gonna use this as a segway for something else below. One second...

And lastly, is a ref book on factories, pipes and all things industrial. This was the best find of the day for me. I can stop scouring the net for shitty low-rez images now. Yay.

Anyway, the segway.

I was touring Ginza galleries with my friend Aleks a few months ago and happened to walk into a small gallery that caters to erotic and bondage art. It's called Vanilla and, at the time, it was showing paintings, prints and illustrations from local and international talent. Very cool stuff. They had flyers for future shows lying around so I sifted through them nonchalantly when I found one for a Samura show. Like, WHAT. It starts this week and you can see info and artwork examples from it here. What they'll be showing are originals from his artbook Hitodenashi no Koi (The Love of the Brute) which I never ended up buying despite my penchant for throwing money at the man. This show? SO there. I'll tell you how bad you missed out. HA!

Also, been feeling earthquakes all weekend. Japan rocks.

TAK