Getting the Ball Rolling

Before I talk about any of my actual class time, I thought it would be good to explain how everything works at my particular school.

Basically, the school is divided into different departments: Manga, Anime, Voice Actors, Illustrations, etc. Then, the different departments are divided into classes. I happen to be in class B, and since I am a first year, 1-B. We have class every day, and each day is a specific kind of class that lasts for the whole day. Here is what my schedule looks like:

Mondays - Character Drawing
Tuesday - Perspective and Backgrounds
Wednesday - Story
Thursday - Drawing (like a classic Drawing class you would take at a university)
Friday - Character Development

Mondays through Wednesdays are taught by the mumbler with the weird hat. Thursdays and Fridays have a different teacher each.

You might be wondering why there are two Character classes in my schedule. Are characters that important, you ask? Well, to put it bluntly. Yes!

Especially according to the teacher of my Character Development class.

He starts class by rolling off the all-important question. What's the most important part of a successful Manga? I, of course, hid my face in terror at the prospect of further public speaking, but some of the other nerds braved that unknown frontier.

We got answers like: The story.

Well that's important, but not most important.

Okay, the drawings, then.

Those are also important, but you can have successful manga that has pretty piss-poor art.

Give up? Okay, I'll tell you.

It's the characters. That's right. The characters. From the characters flow the story. From their personalities and interactions and dialogue that's what makes a manga grab a reader. This fact was pounded into our heads relentlessly.

According to the teacher, when an aspiring Manga-ka brings his Manga to an editor, what they're really looking for - more than original story, more than clever dialog, more than beautiful artwork - is a memorable character that easily resounds in the hearts and minds of the audience.

Okay. I'll remember that. But I soon found myself stumbling into a huge obstacle that has continued to pursue me through my term at school.

/How can I make exciting memorable characters that seem real, alive, fun and interesting with only my moderate command of the Japanese language?/

Thinking about this problem has made me realize just how much goes into bringing any character you write about to life. For example, how does the character usually speak? Does he use idioms? Does he have an accent? Does he invent his own way of speaking? Does he use lingo? Slang? Do his mannerisms bring out his personality? Basically, it has made me realize that as I try to write every line a character speaks, I must also think - What does this line reveal about this character's personality? Does it match up to his past experiences? Does it show his beliefs, his thinking? Does it reveal something new or interesting about this character? In other words, does it contribute to the image I am trying to create for my readers, and does it bring the character to life?

In English, this is not easy, but doable. A skill attained, just like any other with practice and experience. However, in Japanese? Impossible. Without being a native speaker there are just too many nuances I miss, not to mention the sheer amount of words I don't know yet.

So, what to do?

In my situation, I happen to be lucky, and married to a wonderful woman who helps me translate. However! Even with all of her hard work, it is still incredibly difficult. There are many sayings or feelings that I want to convey, that are perfectly reasonable and easily recognizable in English, but once translated are clunky and confusing.

An example: In one of the short Mangas I wrote, A young man is hitting on a young woman. The young woman is supposed to be a "princess" who is spoiled by Daddy, but at the same time she doesn't like him because he is always busy with work. A pretty classic situation. The young man is poor, has lost his parents, and was raised on the streets. He has the tough, cool, dangerous kind of personality that makes you unsure if he's a good guy or a bad guy, but either way he's attractive. Also fairly classic. Now, throw them into a bar, and he's trying to convince her to stick around with him. She smiles coyly and throws out a line like: "My Daddy told me not to talk to strangers." He responds with, "Do you always do what your Daddy tells you?"

Simple. Nothing too complex or far out. I feel like any native English speaker who read that situation would know what's up. They would know that she is being coy when she speaks. However, when translated, many of the Japanese readers interpreted it very literally. I couldn't really convey the inherent sarcasm present in the situation.

Having continually gone through this makes me really appreciate all the people that translate Manga professionally. There are so many nuances that are easily missed in both the language and culture behind Manga that make it difficult to translate in either direction. Especially in a way that would be culturally and socially relevant to the readers.

So, while this ended up being slightly off topic:

Lesson of the day: Appreciate your translators!

After-School Special

After school, riding the train home and chatting with a few other Japanese students was everything I'd been hoping for. To tell the truth, I didn't really know how to break the ice. We talked about the usual things when you first meet someone.

Where are you from? How long have you lived here. etc. Then we moved on to more relevant topics: What is your favorite manga? Whose art do you like best? Things like that. It was a good conversation and real confidence booster that I could communicate relatively trouble free in Japanese.

As it turns out, they were planning on stopping off in Akihabara and wandering around. I had no other plans for the rest of the day so I tagged along with them. I was hoping they would show me some of the sweet back alley stores that I'm sure I missed during my own touristy explorations of the district.

Before I get in to where we went, Akihabara - or Akiba as we call it for short - is exactly what everyone says it is. There's a kind of running joke that the Otaku here call it "Seichi" which literally means "Sacred Land." Everything from games and electronics to manga, anime, figures and cosplay to maid cafes and more (which I have a few funny stories about, but will save for another time) is jam packed into this brightly lit and always busy district. It really has everything your everyday otaku would need.

But I was interested in the hardcore otaku's needs. I was curious, I'll admit, maybe too curios. And definitely not entirely prepared for what came next.

Things started off mainstream. We hit up this great store called "Animate" which, despite its title, is heavily packed with the full gamut of otaku goods. They even have a cosplay floor and a little corner with manga supplies. We all browsed around, talking about what we've read and we'd recommend to those who hadn't. One of my classmates happens to be pretty into the "bishoujo" (which translates to beautiful young girl) genre - the cute girls with huge eyes - and recommended I pick up a few titles. I glanced through them, but to be honest its not really my style.

Still it was interesting to see what everyone recommended, and to hear what they liked about the different styles. It was soon time to move onto our next destination. We start cornering into some of the back alleys and I'm getting excited. Sweet, time for some of the secret shops!

Next on our agenda was a small used-manga shop that specialized in a lot of the old manga that is out of print, along with carrying the new stuff, of course. It was a blast! I got to look through some of the old Shounen Jump releases from 25-30 years ago. Some going back farther. This was some cool stuff and I was really pleased that I got to see it. After picking up a few titles that caught my eye, and again comparing notes with my newly forming friends, it was time to hit up what would be our final destination. This was a place not for the faint of heart.

I was lead down a few more back-streets and into a Doujinshi shop. Doujinshi in America has become somewhat synonymous with pornographic manga, but in fact in Japan this is not always the case. There are many stores that sell Doujinshi that are just basically fanfics of popular manga.

This wasn't one of those. As I walked through the doors, naked figurines of popular anime heroins - posters, rare and/or popular doujinshi decorated the walls. If I had seen my own face as I walked into that store I probably would have laughed pretty damned hard. I must not have caught the bit in the conversation where we decided to check out the porn shop next.

But I gathered myself quickly, after all, they are in the end only drawings. So I kind of follow my classmates' lead. Browsing the isles they browse. My face was probably bright red, and I was trying not to look too closely at anything for the first 5 minutes or so.

Eyes on the ceiling. Eyes on the floor. Eyes on the wall- No. OK. Eyes in fron- No. Okay- well, you get the point. I eventually gave up and just decided to not feel self conscious and remember that nobody was staring at me. Well, there were people staring at me, but that's the usual reaction to a foreigner.

As I finally relaxed and tried to join in the conversation, I'd found my classmates comparing which of the dating sims or "Ero-ge" (Erotic Games, read like eroh-gay) they had enjoyed the most. Two of them were totally into it, and to my relief one of them seemed less interested in the whole phenomenon.

I kind of drifted towards him.

But, I still did have a peek at some of the work. I admit I was curious. They had Doujin for so many different famous manga! I was shocked. And tempted to read, to be honest. Ahem, purely for the sake of sating my curiosity, of course. But I resisted.

Still, in the end I suppose I got what I wanted. I saw some of the back-streets of Akiba. Got out of the tourist area and hung with the real otaku culture. Just one of the perks of going to Manga school, I guess!

First Day

(Disclaimer- This post is looooong and I was too lazy to edit it and split it up)

So I'm heading to my first day of classes! I've got the usual butterflies, going over all of my supplies to make sure I've brought everything:

Pencil and eraser. Check.

Pen and Ink. Check.

Ruler. Check.

Paper. Check.

USB Recording Device. Check.

Yes, that's right. I was so nervous about not understanding what anybody said in class, that I bought a recorder and planned to record and re-listen to the teacher's lectures, etc. as the need arose. On paper, this was a good plan. I was confident it would work. There was no way, my super A+ Recording Plan could fail!

As I entered the classroom and took a random seat, there were pockets of nervous conversation, but mostly silence. I read some One Piece while waiting for the teacher to show up. Once he did, we soon learned that we would have assigned seats for the first half of the year. To make it easier for him to remember our faces and names. Not that I think he would have much trouble picking me out of the crowd. (^_-)

Okay. Since forever, I have been a back-of-the-classroom kind of guy. I just don't like sitting under the teacher's nose. I like having the freedom to space out every once in a while without anyone noticing. Yes, it's not the best habit in the world. But it's how I am, and I can't really help it. Luckily enough, as my name comes towards the latter end of the Japanese alphabet (they arranged me by my first name, since Japanese names are reversed) I got my wish.

So far so good. I've understood the relatively simple Japanese used up to this point (mostly just calling of names and pointing to seats) and was confident and ready for the lesson to begin.

Recorder on.

Aaaand, the teacher starts talking.

Aaaaaaaaand I have no idea what he is saying.

As luck, or irony, would have it, my new teacher was a mumbler. He mumbled all his words into a mush-jargon pile of Japanese that I could barely make any kind of heads or tails of.

Crap. Crap. Crap. Wait. Calm down. I have the recorder. I will probably be able to make out what he's saying later. Things will be okay. I'll be fine.

So I listen and try to understand what he's saying. Its no use! Argh! What to do?!

And then I am saved! Behind me, one student asks another.

"Do you understand what he is saying?"

"Nope."

"Me either."

Yesss! Okay, its not just me. I have a life-line! I wait for the teacher to stop speaking. There's the usual class mumblings and clamor of speech as they are no longer expected to be silent. And as my luck would have it, the two who had no idea what he was saying, called the teacher over and asked him to explain what to do again.

I never listened so hard in my life. This time I would get it for sure. Okay, I understand about half. I got the gist. We are supposed to draw a character, give him some kind of personality and then do a few head shots of him with different expressions. Everybody is busy drawing so I waste no time and set my pencil to the paper.

I decided to draw some lazy teenager sprawled out on a couch who thinks work is annoying and would rather sit around at home doing nothing. The class is given about an hour for this task and when the hour is up, the teacher tells that we are now going to come to the front of the class, show our drawings to everyone and do a brief introduction about ourselves.

Oh great. First day and I'm already doing public speaking. At least I'm near the end of the list. So I have some time to prepare what I'm going to say.

I'm not going to describe everyone that went up there, but let's just say there were some talented people and many - what's a nice way to say this - we'll say "hopeful learners." Not to toot my own horn, I know better than anyone else I still have work to do and room to improve, but some of these students were drawing at a level a lot lower than I originally expected. And, of course, the opposite was true - some of them were amazing.

As my turn came up, I made my way to the front. Put my drawing up on the projector. And started talking.

Translation:

"Hi. I'm David. Um. I'm from New York. Um. (Mind racing furiously) I've been in Japan for two years now. (Crap say one more thing. One more thing and you're golden) I'm um... colorblind."

Silence.

Well better than laughter I suppose. I go take my drawing back, and the teacher speaks to me. "Wow, David you sure are good at Japanese! And you've only been here for two years? I can't speak English at all! Are you a genius?"

Wait. Pause. Yes, he asked me if I was a genius. I guess I should have been flattered. But I was mostly shocked. How do you respond to that, especially to a teacher, and doubly so when 9 times out of 10 you actually have no idea what he is saying? I stuck with the Japanese way of accepting compliments by not accepting them.

"No, no. I'm just a regular guy. Ha ha."

Damn, I hope he doesn't start using really hard words when he talks to me. The rest of the day wound down as all the students took their turn at the front. With great relief I turned off my recorder and packed up my things.

"Hi"

I look up, one of the students had started talking to me. Sweet.

"Hi," I sad back.

And then he started speaking in sentences. Oh man. My luck was just not strong today. This student happened to be from Shikkouku. An Island in the south of Japan. And just like in America or England or anywhere really, different regions of the country have very different dialects and pronunciation. I was struggling to understand even the simple things he said to me. But he was nice, and asked a few questions about me, and I tried to return the favor as best I could. I was grateful just for the fact that he even spoke to me. Many Japanese people are too shy to initiate conversation with a foreigner.

Somehow I managed to get through it. We said our pleasantries and headed our separate ways and I ended the class on a high note thinking I'd taken the first steps towards making a friend. Time to head home.

Leaving class everyone made their way to one of the train stations nearby, or to their bicycle, and as things usually go they start to form groups. I'm waiting on the train platform and soon to come was a small group of students from my class also riding the same train home. I really did not expect them to stop and talk to me. And I can honestly say, I was pleasantly surprised when they did.

Orientation! (Part 2)

Most of the Orientation was actually pretty straightforward and rather boring. If anyone has ever listened to a second language for a long time, perhaps they know what it's like, but I find it difficult to keep my concentration for too long. When someone is talking at me in Japanese for hours, it eventually just starts to drone into something like background noise. Maybe I need more coffee or something.

So admittedly, I spaced in and out. But I had my handouts and pamphlets with everything they were saying in written form so I don't think it was such a big deal. Eventually they brought out the teachers for the manga department - about 5 of them.

How can I describe them except to say, they were not really what I expected. Two of them were overweight middle aged men in suits who looked more like salarymen than manga-ka. They seemed to be the ones in charge of the department. One was a skinny guy wearing a vest and one of those NYC cab driver hats. You know the ones I mean? They kind of look like a beret, but they have a brim, and the hat part kinda falls over the brim. Anyway, he looked pretty goofy. The other two were kind of regular Japanese men in their late 40s or 50s wearing more casual clothing.

Except for Mr. Beret, who looked like a goofball, I didn't really know what to think of them.

After their introductions, which were just simple, "I'm so-and-so and I've been working here X years..." blah blah blah, they started to divide us into classes. The way it worked was a teacher would come up and call a list of students and all those would be in his class.

So, first up, Mr. Beret. He starts listing. After about 15 names are called, he stumbles for a moment. And then sort of, pauses another second.

Yep, you guessed it. He calls my name. (Though why it took him so long I sort of wonder. It's written in Japanese after all).

He calls a bunch of others and then we all head out to what will be our classroom for the year (except on Thursdays). As fate would have it, the chinpira is in in my class! Sweet, I thought, maybe this year will not only be packed full of study, but also have some fun and a chance to make friends with cool Japanese people!

We get into the classroom and Mr. Beret introduces himself again and dives right into another information session complete with handouts. At this point, I'm really exhausted. I just can not wrap my brain around Japanese anymore, and I really space out pretty hard- when the last thing I could possibly want is thrust in front of me.

A school survey. All in Japanese. Four pages long. Questions like, "Why did you choose this school?" "What manga do you like and why?" "Who is your favorite manga-ka and why?" "Did you visit the school before coming here?" "Do you have any medical conditions?" "Do you have requests for the school" etc. etc.

Man, I was struggling. Everybody was busy writing away and I'm struggling to just read through all the questions, let alone begin answering them. After about 10 minutes, I just gave up. I waited until the teacher started collecting them and then I went up to him - as low key as possible - and asked if I could take it home to work on since I was having trouble with the kanji.

"まー、それはしょうがないね。”

Basically, "I guess that can't be helped." Phew. At least he was a forgiving goofball.

But, after this huge mass of Japanese and the trouble I had getting through just a school survey, I went home wondering - am I going to be Okay?

Well, classes won't start until the next week, so I suppose I have some time to prepare myself. Nothing to do, but try my best. I'm a man with a dream, and I'll see it through to the end!

Is what I told myself, but to be honest, I was plenty nervous!

Orientation!

In my experience, (which is a vast and all-encompassing 24 years) orientations have always fallen into two categories. The business orientation and the summer camp orientation.

In the business orientation, everyone is professional, organized and appropriately nervous. There is either a long table which everyone sits around, or rows of chairs facing the front of the room. 9 times out of 10 you can count on some sort of projector or video set up. The orientations are usually long and boring affairs, and you are expected to take careful notes (which I rarely do) so as to remember all the vital information imparted in however many hours you are expected to listen.

The summer camp orientation, on the other hand, is a light-hearted affair, often held outdoors, or at the very least, somewhere the outdoors is easily viewable. People are split into smaller groups and encouraged to play teamwork building games, and activities focused on familiarizing ourselves with each other in a relaxed atmosphere.

I was wondering for a few weeks which type the Tokyo Animator Institute would have. On the one hand, it's a manga school, and like the college I went to, might have tended towards the summer camp orientation. On the other hand, I thought to myself, this is Japan. And Japan is serious business. Which would it be?

Either way, heading towards that first orientation, besides my idle musings over the type of orientation to be held, I had two big thoughts in my mind:

1) Exactly how OTAKU would everybody be?

2) How many other foreigners would there be?

I soon found out the answers. Very and None.

As I sat down in the lecture room, pointed towards the closest vacant seat to the front, (I had arrived a little early) I quickly scouted out my soon to be classmates - or at least - schoolmates. Which ones are in the Manga school? One student caught my eye. He had bright red hair, wore reasonably fashionable clothes and seemed slightly /chinpira/-esque.

For those who don't know, /chinpira/ [CHEEN-peerah] is that Japanese word for a young gangster, or any of those tough thug kids that are always the strongest most bad-ass ones in the high-school. Nowadays they are easily picked out by their long flowing mullets. Do a google search and I'm sure you'll come across some amusing photos.

I also saw my share of who you would figure to be the regular Otaku- some overweight, some skinny, most extremely shy. Very few people in the growing crowd were speaking to one another, and I definitely got the sense that this wasn't going to be an A+ social scene. Still, I myself was too shy to start up conversations with anyone, and not having complete confidence in my Japanese, I figured the longer I kept my mouth shut, the longer everybody might assume I spoke and understood Japanese perfectly.

After a lot of shuffling, people coming, and extended silences, things finally seemed to be getting under way. Papers were passed out. And a teacher took the floor. The long, boring, but definitely essential never-ending slue of speeches was about to begin.

Character Page #1

Well here is the first character design page. I'm not going to reveal anything about him, but he will be one of the main characters in the story. Some of the pencil parts might be a little light, but you get the general idea. Also the gradation didn't come out as well when I reduce the file size for the web in photoshop. I'll have to work on that in the future.

Quick Sketch and Tablet Practice

So I'm getting back into the swing of using a tablet. I thought I would just kind of doodle out a random girl and try to remember how to use all the functions on Manga Studio, so here is how it came out.

I think it's not terrible personally.

I'm an English Teach- No wait, I'm not

Despite what you may have read or heard about heading over seas to live in Japan, not EVERYONE who does it is an English teacher. OK, given, most of us are. And yes, when I first came I was too. What can I say, it's the easiest way to get into this country.

But I decided, somewhere between the "kancho's" and the gross junior high lunches that maybe teaching wasn't where its at. I've decided to embark upon a different path, a path that some have boldly claimed (and half ridiculed) to be the "Weeaboo Dream."

For those of you who don't know what a Weeaboo is, it's someone who likes Japanese culture; is into all the crazy, colorful and outrageous things this small island exports to the rest of the world. Me? I live near Akihabara and in April of last year I started attending a specialist school for Manga. So I guess, yeah, I probably qualify as a Weeaboo. As they say in Japanese, let's get along well.

The path to achieving the Weeaboo Dream wasn't easy. There were months of intense Japanese study, visiting schools, speaking with teachers (or at least attempting to) and trying my darnedest to figure out which school would be right for me, and which school would actually accept me! Yes, it's true that I received emails from a few schools after I visited saying (albeit politely) that they were not accepting foreigners at this time (or ever?). Most schools were willing to accept me, given I passed the JLPT 2, a super high level Japanese Language exam essentially proclaiming me fluent. That's where the grueling hours of study came in. If anybody ever tells you Japanese is easy, they are either a genius, or have no idea what they are talking about. Or maybe they are Korean.

Of course, when test time came around, I was nervous. I had studied my heart out, but was it enough? Prior to the 6 months of intense study before the JLPT in December of '08, I had almost no classroom Japanese. Maybe half a years worth. And this is the kind of test that native Japanese speakers don't breeze through. The odds were against me. And you know what? I failed! I failed by about 5%. Oh so close! My dreams dashed! My hopes crushed! Would I have to be an English Teacher forever? Should I go home? What to do!?

Tokyo Animator Institute, a famous school located near Tokyo Dome was willing to take me without having passed the test. I had sent them an application (which consisted of only drawing and no essay to my great relief) and I was accepted. And thus began my journey through the grand unknown, the mysterious and strange place called, Manga School!

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Quick note: When I'm not blogging about what it's like to be a foreigner in a Japanese Manga school, I'll be posting up some character sketches and concept work I'm doing for the upcoming web-comic. Of course, once I've settled everything and start drawing the actual pages I will be posting those.