Tedorigawa Bookmakers

Bookbinding We are often urged to recycle and reuse. I did just that recently on a quick trip to Hanoi that netted me some Vietnamese paper and three barf bags from the flight over. And back.  Here’s a small tip. Red-eye flights are good when you land in the evening, not so good when you land in the morning. I made one A6, 100-page, blank notebook with one barf bag with the creative title Bee Creative Now and the subtitle of notebook for inspiration. The front page as a small bee. The title page has a large Japanese kanji for bee: 蜂. It was coptic bound for ease of opening and using the entire page. And for me to practice making coptic-bound books; always a plus. The back cover has my boarding pass without my name over the barf bag. The front cover reuses only the barf bag (not used, fortunately).  Fiction Dmitry the Scavenger has stumbled into both a logistics problem and a name change. The novel starts in Chernobyl which I knew as in Ukraine and Dmitry drives his modified rusty camouflaged military truck full of contraband from Chernobyl to Moscow. Problem: crossing borders (Russia and Ukraine) in the middle of a war between those two countries in a MILITARY TRUCK! A Russian Military Truck! I need to find him another way out of Chernobyl or another abandoned village to ransack. I also abandoned the Japanese word for scavenger as it was too obscure for even people who can read Japanese. You may reuse it as you wish. Also in the works: A Marsh Mystery #3 The Madrid Marital Murder Case. Joe and Carmen investigate the murder of an abusive husband whose wife works for Carmen’s brother, Símon, a wealthy owner of a popular Madrid restaurant. Movies/Talkies/Videos TDGB 84 Scavenge & Morph is available for your visual pleasure. It is the making of the A6 blank notebook discussed in the Bookbinding section of this podcast episode. At 6:20 (minutes, not hours) it is not taxing or tiring; it’s Enjoyable! Books The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street is eager for your attention, being as it is lonely and on a quiet website (Apple Books is quiet?) A beta reader came back with the following comments: “Wonderful. Great.” and “I cried at the end.” Find out what Rin Okabe (former high school student, current electrical engineer) and Nagi Shimeki (retired high school teacher) are doing.  Available almost everywhere (Apple Books, Kobo) except Amazon.  

Bookbinding This week we’re looking at a 100-page, A6-size, coptic-bound notebook with lines on the recto (right) side and nothing on the verso (left) side. The main difference between this notebook and others is that this book has a collage cover. I spent several hours combing through a pile of fliers I get in my mailbox, otherwise known as throwaways or direct mail, to find designs, colors, shapes that I can use in the cover. I glued the resulting cutouts to the book board and added a fixative to keep everything in place. If you check out the Making of Ishikawa Coptic (TDGB 83) on my channel over on YouTube, you can see the page numbers in the middle of the fore-edge, the lines, the finished collage, and the red thread holding it all together.  By the way, on the cover with the black and white horse, in the lower right hand corner is a partial photo of the symbol of the Kanazawa train station; the Tsuzumi-mon Gate (drum gate). Fiction The novel formerly known as The Russian, has taken on a new title to disuse people from thinking it is pro-Russian or anti-Ukrainian. The main character, Dmitry, is neither pro nor anti anything except poverty and hunger; specifically his poverty and his hunger. He’s a scavenger. He finds scraps, bits and pieces, and discarded junk and sells them.  The novel’s new name is Dmitry, Our Kusuya-san. Or maybe without the Our. There are many words for scavenger in Japanese, few of them polite and most meaning something like ‘he’s garbage.’ Kusu is like crumbs or small things you don’t want; Kusuya is a derogatory word similar to ‘he’s garbage.’ But adding San (Mr or Ms) makes it more polite. Kusuya-san is a scavenger in a nice way. Dmitry scrounges around until he has enough to trade for a truck-load of vodka which he trades, along with the truck it came in, for a free trip to someplace. Talkies First, the video for the making of TDGB 83 The Making of Ishikawa Coptic is up and running on YouTube.  Second, the casing in of TDGB 77 The Battered Briefcase Case is also up for your view pleasure, as are many other bookbinding videos. Feel free to browse. Books The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street is available on Apple Books for your reading pleasure. A retired Japanese teacher and one of his former high school students meet in Shibuya, Kawasaki, on trains, in coffee shops, and in izakaya where they discuss life, toilets, saké, and the difference between Japanese society’s expectations of men and women.  It is told in 12 chapters each chapter related to a Japanese national holiday. Except June and December which don’t have any national holidays. Each chapter is divided into two parts: First, the thoughts and ideas of the former Japanese teacher until he runs into the former female high school student (now 36 years old). When that happens, the second part concentrates on the female’s thoughts and ideas; it is longer and covers the two main characters’ conversation. The Battered Briefcase Case: a Marsh Mystery is also available on Apple Books. A wealthy Seattlite has been arrested for his wife’s murder. He asks Joe Marsh to investigate, hoping to clear his name. Marsh’s investigation leads him to Xativa, Spain where he discovers both the killer and the love of his life (different people). All this in 45 action-packed, literary pages.   

Bookbinding I cased in The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street novella. It’s B6 (which is B5 folded in half), nine signatures, and 125 pages. In making this book I discovered a warning I must pass on to my listeners/readers. Warning: Keep your fingertips away from sharp objects like exacto knives. Exacto knives are frequently used in bookbinding and, from experience, I realize they cut not only paper, but also human flesh. Fortunately, I did not video-tape the incident. I made a rookie mistake, too. I measured the width of the book cover using the text block but forgot to reduce the width of the book cover by the space of the hinge. This results in the book fore-edge being TOO big.  I used washi probably made in Kanazawa for the book cover. It looks nice but is thin. I needed to be careful not to tear it when folding it or using a bone folder. Fiction I tallied up the number of unfinished novels I have padding around my house in their pajamas and tattered bathrobes. To be considered works-in-progress they had to have more than 80 pages; I have many ‘novels’ that have only one or two pages. The total: four. One is from ten years ago. Is it a work-in-progress or forgotten or abandoned? This is Caraculiambro, of course. The giant of a detective investigating a murder, a death (not related to the murder), and land fraud. The others include an historical fiction about a woman who lives about 200 years without aging past 40 (The Posthumous Autobiography of the Widow Agnes Grout); a dystopian future about a man who survives not only war but also the politics of peace and is part four of a trilogy (The Sound of Fear); a happy novel about a dancer who first shows up in Molly Bright but takes center stage with his own novel that takes place in Italy, the Dominican Republic, and Japan but might end in India (Merengue). Which one do you think I started re-working on in order to get it off my Work-in-Progress pile? That’s right! I started a new novel about a Russian scavenger who collects, gathers, ‘finds’ what he can, sells it for what he can get, and ends up in a strange land (Japan) by mistake. Tentative title: The Russian. Talkies I uploaded an eight-minute video of me casing in The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street for your viewing pleasure. Search for or click here: TDGB 82 Warning and Mistakes. Books The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street is available on Apple Books. Former Japanese teacher Shimeki Nagi and one of his former high school students, electrical engineer Okabe Rin bump into each other throughout the year on national holidays and random days. They meet, talk about romance, love and life. They learn about each other, and discover an izakaya owner who writes a manga called The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street. 

Bookbinding Aside from finishing a novella (see Fiction, right below), I printed it out to make a physical copy. It’s B6, 125 pages, and includes the Japanese holiday for each month (except June and December which have no holidays) plus other words (also in Japanese). I made a cover for the first page, sewed the text block together, and made a ten-minute tutorial (see Talkies, below). Fiction I finished writing The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street and put it online. It’s about 125 pages in B6 format. Each chapter has two parts. Part One is with Nagi, the old, retired, divorced Japanese teacher thinking about life, and stops when he runs into Rin, his former student. Part Two is Rin thinking about her life, and continues after she meets up with Nagi. There are 12 chapters, one for each month of the year. For more about the book, see Books, below. Talkies A video tutorial for sewing before casing in. At YouTube TDGB 81: Sewing. About ten minutes. Books My novella, The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street, is available on Apple Books and other online sites. A fifteen-page chapter is free for your reading pleasure. Rin Okabe, a 36-year-old single electrical engineer working for an architectural office, runs into her old (really, he's almost 80), divorced, Japanese high school teacher, Nagi Shimeki. They meet at random places that neither plan until finally they agree to meet. At first, they are cautious as to why they keep meeting, but gradually learn to enjoy each other’s company. Other characters include the flirtatious Harumi, the mangaka Tadao, the bar owner Junko, the supervisor Horiguchi, and the unnamed bucho. There’s a touch of magical realism, but mostly life in Kawasaki is grounded in loneliness and separation.  

Bookbinding Not truly amazing, but nothing this week. I got involved in a gardening project and tuckered myself out. Hopefully, more to come next week. Fiction I finished the first draft of The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street. But immediately found or thought of some changes that need to be made. Please remember that there are 12 chapters for each month of the year. • First change: A character is introduced in February but doesn’t show up again until November. I want to make him a little more memorable in February so readers will remember him in November. Also, he owns an izakaya and writes manga. His manga hasn’t been published yet, but the two main characters think it is really good. The name of his manga is The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street. Yes, it’s basically his izakaya. • Second change: Add a bit more loneliness to the two main characters. Tokyo can be very lonely. Also, the main female character wants to quit her job, which she doesn’t like, move back to her hometown in Fukushima, and open her own design shop. That is going to be a major rewrite. • Two more changes. ❶ Set up a disease one character gets. Right now it is just sprung on the reader. I’d like it to build gradually. ❷ Humanize a jerk; one character dates someone because he’s handsome and rich but discovers he’s a jerk. So far, in the first draft, the jerk is just a jerk. I plan to make him a little bit more human. Still a jerk, but more human.  I want to finish this novel soon; at least finish draft 2. And make a cover for it.  Talkies Please check out the videos already up on my YouTube channel for your viewing pleasure. While there is nothing new this week, you can still enjoy watching your videos.

Bookbinding A smaller version of the larger Benengeli’s Zuihitsu. The title combines two important books: Don Quixote (1605) and The Pillow Book (1002). Cervantes claimed the Benengeli wrote Don Quixote. Sei Shonagon wrote The Pillow Book which someone called a zuihitsu. The smaller version is A6 in size with 9 signatures of four folios each and 144 pages (versus the five signature of five folios each, 80-page larger version). Fiction After finishing Benengeli’s Zuihitsu and The Dry Watermill Case, I continued working on The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street. Perhaps the name will be changed to either The Lonely Izakaya or Kajigaya Sakaba. Why? Because the longer title sounds like a Japanese version of a young adult novel (called a light novel in Japan). My favorite light novel title is I Want to Eat Your Pancreas written by Yoru Sumino and made into a manga, anime, and live action flick as is often the case with popular light novels. The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street is in its eighth month. There are two parts to each month. Part One is the former student’s (Rin) thoughts and life. Part Two is the former teacher’s (Shimeki) thoughts and life. Part Two concludes when the interaction between the student and teacher starts in Part One.  There is also a bit of magical realism included. One of Rin’s co-workers can teleport through space; no one comments on it. Rin can move things with her mind, often to her unintended detriment.  There is also a running argument between Rin and her supervisor about the number of toilets in a female restroom vs the number of toilets and urinals in a male restroom.  Aside from The Lonely Izakaya (which sounds too much like a subsidiary of the travel books The Lonely Planet, doesn’t it?), I started another Marsh Mystery (short private detective stories) titled: The Madrid Murder Case. More on that in the future; if it pans out. Talkies For your audio and visual entertainment, we have Benengeli’s Zuihitsu The Smaller Version up on YouTube. Plus other videos you might enjoy. Please check them out, subscribe, and tell your friends.

Bookbinding Last episode I cased in Our Truckin’ Book but the book boards splayed out as if I had cut them perpendicular to the grain rather than with the grain. This episode, I tore off the cover and repaired it with the proper grain. But the same book cloth so it looks similar. This week I printed out two copies of Benengeli’s Zuihitsu. One is A5 and one is A6. This week, I cased in the A5 version. With one experiment that isn’t so experimental except for me. I sliced off the fore edge and I liked it. It made it easier to measure the text block which made it easier to accurately measure the covers. Very useful, although I like the deckle fore edge look as well. The book cover looks like Italian terracotta roof shingles, the endpapers are a light green, the thread is red, and there’s a colorful chiyogami accent on the front of the book to differentiate it from the back of the book. Clever, no? It has five signatures and 84 printed pages with five blank pages pulling up the end. Fiction Two books were completed this episode. First, Benengeli’s Zuihitsu. A zuihitsu is from the Japanese of the Heian Era (about 1,000 years ago) meaning Following the Brush. Writing whatever the writer wanted to write about. It was coined for Sei Shonagon who wrote The Pillow Book about her life in the Heian court. Benengeli’s Zuihitsu is similar; writing about anything that fits his fancy, including that Benengeli is mentioned in Don Quixote by Cervantes (written about 400 years ago). Second, The Dry Watermill Case, a Marsh Mystery. In this episode, Joe and Carmen solve a murder in Seville, Spain and anger some powerful people, so they have to escape to Madrid.  Talkies Episode 79 Zuihitsu Large is up and enjoying itself and hoping you can join it. Like zuihitsu in general, it talks about making the book, shopping, music, and new, to me, innovations in bookbinding.

Bookmaking I finished Our Truckin’ Book which is an art book I’m hoping artists will finish. It is 100 pages, A5 in size (half of A4), and blank, of course, for artists to fill up as they wish. Hopefully. For Our Truckin’ Book to be completed, I need at least one artist’s physical mail address so I can send them a physical ie real book. The artist will send the book to the next artist and hopefully someday Our Truckin’ Book will be completed. Looking forward to that day. Also in bookmaking, I finished Benengeli’s Zuihitsu and printed out two copies. One copy is A6 and 145 pages while the other copy is A5 and 80 pages. (A5 being bigger than A6, naturally). The A5 Zuihitsu will be available soon while the A6 will be electronically available just as soon, although it will also be a real book. Fiction I finished Benengeli’s Zuihitsu. It has many topics from a recipe for bread, to a murder mystery, to the beginnings of dementia for a cellist, to rants about politics not related to anything going on in the US, to one haiku. Such is the definition of zuihitsu. By the way, as you might know, Cide Hamete Benengeli is the fictional Arabic historian who, according to Cervantes, wrote Don Quixote. In other fiction, The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street is progressing smoothly with a major change or two. First, the male character is getting more screen time. His thoughts about life and death will enter into the narrative; previously, only the female character’s thoughts were being explored. Second, the name might be changed. The current title looks too much to me to be something called a "light" novel in Japan which British and American publishers call a "young adult" novel. I might change to Sakaba which means a bar mostly with saké. The Talkies TDGB 78 Our Truckin’ Book is up at YouTube for your audio and visual pleasure. Learn about contributing to Our Truckin’ Book and about what Kanazawa people (Kanazawans?) call Marubi.

Bookbinding I went to Tokyo for four days. Before that, I finished a client’s hardcopy of The Briefcase Case. I presented it to the client in Tokyo. Other than making that particular book, I didn’t make any other as I was busy going to and from Tokyo by shinkansen. Fiction I’ve got three bits of fiction floating around my computer and brain.  One: Zuihitsu. It has two plots that are coming to end soon and when they do finish, the book will be finished. Plot one – a revenge story. Plot two – a crumbling marriage story. The wife in the crumbling marriage was a teacher for one of the mean people in the revenge story. By the way, three characters in The Briefcase Case also appear in Zuihitsu. Two: The Dry Mill Case. A mystery short story involving the same two main characters of The Briefcase Case in a similar plot: a woman is murdered, they discover who the murderer is, they are threatened by the woman’s family. Also, a similar length; about 50 pages. Three: The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street. A 30-something woman meets her high school teacher and they get together over food, alcohol, and life. Not exactly the same as Strange Weather in Tokyo but the same plot but different outcome; written from the third-person rather than first-person. The Talkies You can see a video of The Briefcase Case being made at here. With narration about making books, the plot, about the difference between bunkobon and pocketbooks; and a bit about Kenrokuen, a famous garden in Japan that is in Kanazawa.

Bookbinding This week in bookbinding I made a quick collage-covered A6, 50-page book: The Battered Briefcase Case: A Marsh Mystery. It is a murder mystery. A man is accused of murder and hires a private investigator to find the real killer. The investigator discovers someone in Spain might have information about the real killer. In Spain the investigator meets his one true love. This is a short story I wrote a few weeks back. While it has a plot: Who’s the killer? It is more character-driven than plot-driven, meaning, the people are important. The book itself has a collage cover front and back. I took left over papers and used them on this book. I sewed the text block outside in the freezing cold in the outside of a coffee shop in Higashi-chaya, one of two famous geisha districts in Kanazawa. (See Talkies, below.) I folded it and put the signature holes in it in a park near a river that flows through Kanazawa city. It was cold but I enjoyed listening to the elementary school boys two tables over. They were speaking a combination English and Japanese as they played an English computer game.  I made the cover and cased the text block in in my studio where it is warmer and I have all the materials (leftover paper) and tools (scissors and glue) I need.  An ebook version of The Battered Briefcase Case is available on Apple Books. Or you can contact me to make you a personalized edition. Fiction In fiction I’ve worked on two things instead of three. Zuihitsu is rolling along nicely because each day I can add whatever I want; that’s what following thre brush means. However, Zuihitsu has two strong plots that keep it going. I wrote, edited, and finished The Battered Briefcase Case, of course. Unfortunately writing on those two means once again that Caraculiambro falls by the wayside; perhaps my renewed interest in mysteries will aid it along. While The Battered Briefcase Case is finished and up at Apple Books, Zuihitsu is closing in on its finish line. I have started another short work tentatively called The Lonely Izakaya Down the Quiet Street but will talk about it later, when it’s more developed; including a new name. Talkies TDGB 76 The Briefcase Case is up for your viewing pleasure. It includes scenes from Kanazawa especially the two rivers (Saigawa and Asanogawa), and one of the two geisha districts (Higashi-chaya), and a coffee/tea place where I sewed the text block. Outside. In the winter.  The book itself is on Apple Books.

Bookbinding   This is a120-page, A6-size blank notebook with a collage cover. The important part is the collage cover. As is most of my collage covers, this was an experiment in two ways: first, could I film the process? Second, did it look okay? Top right is the front cover. Top left is the back cover. Off by itself is the book opened up so you can see both the front and back at the same time. Fascinating, eh? To the first question: yes, I could film it. If you go to RhinoTattoo on YouTube, you can see and hear the video. It was necessarily a pretty static shot that didn’t show my hands as I worked. Primarily because I don’t have that kind of tripod many collage makers have. Fortunately, much of it is speeded up. To the second question: It’s up to you. I like it. I think it accomplished what I set out to do. My goal: film a cover collage. What I would do differently is not put on the hazy gauze. The gauze made the book a bit fuzzy, of course, but it was also difficult to glue down, especially the edges. I would also had more pictures. Fiction Okay, sad to say this but I’ve been working on three, yes, Three, different pieces of fiction. As a result one has dropped by the wayside. Again. Caraculiambro is once again sidelined while I concentrate on the other two. The most further along is Zuihitsu. I believe this one is tying up loose ends in a satisfactory way. A few more months, I guess.  The third one, just begun, is The Lonely Izakaya Down a Quiet Street. Here is the plot: a woman in her 30s runs into her retired high school Japanese teacher. Again and again. They talk. So far, this is the plot of Hiromi Kawakami’s very popular Strange Weather in Tokyo (which has nothing to do with the strangeness of weather in Tokyo). In Kawakami's book, the two fall in love. In mine, they might not. I haven’t finished it, so I don’t know yet.  My novel has a touch of magical realism, I think. The main character, Rin, can “see” herself in different places with different people. Also, one of Rin’s co-workers can float in the air but nobody comments on it.  Flicks Rhino Tattoo – so called because it has a kangaroo on the title page with a tattoo of a rhinoceros – is up on YouTube. It has kangaroo in Chinese.  There are other videos that concentrate on bookbinding up as well. Please explore, subscribe, and enjoy.

Bookbinding You’re going to get a quick and easy Japanese lesson unless you already speak and read Japanese in which case this might be boring? Rhinoceros in Japanese is Sai with the accompanying kanji being 犀. The English river in Japanese transforms to Kawa with its kanji being three vertical lines; one is not straight: 川. Together they form one of the two major rivers that flow through Kanazawa: the Saigawa (犀川) – the K morphs into G in dual kanji. The other river is the Asanogawa which means shallow river, and it is. Shallow. The Saigawa could be called the Rhino River.  My Rhino River is a 120-page, A6-size, collage covered blank notebook. I’m attempting to push my personal bookbinding skill envelope out a bit. This is why titles appear on spines and collages appear as book covers. With my Rhino River the collage has rhinoceroses front and back. A solid rhino on the front and an outline on the back. People populate the interior of the rhino on the back and tower over the rhino on the front cover. There is also a cow, harvesters ala van Gogh, a guitar museum, and a vague Shakespeare photo.  Fiction Work is going slow on the two works in progress I have stacked up on my To Write List: Zuihitsu and Caraculiambro. The former is moving slowly but steadily onward. It has two or three separate stories that may collide at one point. Shortly after the collision, Zuihitsu might come to a satisfying closure. Caraculiambro is dragging. I need to re-read it to understand exactly what is going on but reading is wearing me down. Just imagine: the writer is confused about what he has written; someone’s brain needs refreshing. Moving Pictures TDGB 74 Rhino River is up for your visual pleasure as is TDGB 73 Making a Collage to see how I stumble through my collage making; you might learn something. Fingers crossed.  Feel free to subscribe to both my YouTube channel and this podcast; it would be greatly appreciated.  

Bookbinding I made a collage from a political pamphlet but I didn’t like it because I don't like the politician and I made the collage in anger. When I finished the collage, I didn’t like it because I made in anger; I was thinking of throwing it away. However, I did more digging into the politician. I’m not angry any more, but I do have some questions. For example, he’s against renewable energy, specifically solar and wind power. He wants Japan to have an educational system that encourages logic and thinking; currently the system is based on rote memorization for the sole purpose of passing tests. The problem comes when he wants schools to teach 'proper' Japanese history. His 'proper' is extremely right-wing: Japan as victim, civilians massacred by the Japanese army as 'deserving it' etc. Both the front and back covers have images from the pamphlet, including the main character and a stock photo of a smiling female. Rather than throw the collage away, I used it to cover an A6-size, 100-page, blank notebook with French link stitching. I added a coffee au lait sticker on the front for no particular reason other than to show, like coffee, politicians are for sale, too. On the back I applied the instructions on how to open a milk carton. I think the collage fit. It is a good cover. Fiction I’m working on Zuihitsu and Caraculiambro. Progress is slow. One problem with Caraculiambro is there are too many plots I have to clear up before the end of the book. I like the plots: brother-sister-brother conflict; murder; land fraud-infidelity conflict. They are all related but I’ve confused myself. I have to unconfuse myself before we can move on. Zuihitsu, while slowly merging into two or three stories that logically should converge at some point, continues with non-literary, non-fiction artifacts. Included most recently is what I think was John Steinbeck’s writing routine which included just writing anything or re-reading a work in progress. Hopefully, the two or three stories will merge so we the reader can get some closure and start re-reading it. As of today, it’s 80 pages but will continue as long as necessary. Video At TDGB 71 there’s a tutorial for the French link stitch for those who want to see how I do the French link stitch; not necessarily the best way or the best tutorial, but how I muddle my way through it. Also, at TDGB 72: Winter Spy you can see this collage-covered book being made (sometimes in 4 times speed) and point out my mistakes. However, enjoy.

Bookbinding I made a 100-page, A6-size blank notebook that I christened Apple Kayak Summer. As in the last book I made, this one, too, uses the French link stitich. Both the front and back covers are collages. The front collage has two people. One is the mayor of Kanazawa who is running for another term. He’s dressed in a somber, politically-attractive suit and a grin. The other person is from an advertisement for a funeral home. She’s dressed in black, of course, but with a bright smile, cheerful eyes, and a finger pointing toward heaven. Or questioning how many bodies are involved. Hard to say. The back cover has a pizza, a cartoon boy carrying a load of apples, and the kanji for mountain (pronounced yama): 山。The cartoon boy is from a political advertisement. It is supposed to be the candidate. It is also supposed to show how alive and healthy the candidate is. The kanji is there because people tend to climb mountains in the summer. (From the title of the book: Apple Kayak Summer). The pizza is there because I like pizza and it came in the mail. Fiction As in the last video, Caraculiambro is being edited and Zuihitsu is being added to. Increasingly, Zuihitsu is merging into two or three short stories/novellas. Nice. Video On Youtube you can see the making of Apple Kayak Summer in vivid color for your viewing pleasure. This is a picture of a couple of statues in Miyazaki, by the way, not in Kanazawa (which has different statues).   Also on YouTube is a tutorial on how I make the French link stitch; maybe not the proper way, but how I make it. You might be able to learn from it. If not, let me know.  

Bookbinding I have experimented with collage for a few weeks now and decided to make a collage cover. Expect to see more collage covers in the future. It was also time to practice making French link stitch binding so I combined the two in a blank, 100-page B6-sized notebook.   The book boards are recycled files destined for the garbage pit. The covers are a recycle kite and left over bits from another book.The endpapers are recycle pieces that lived in my To Be Used Someday pile for the last decade or more. Fiction I've been working on two things. One has been in production for ten years. But not consistently. Caraculiambro. I’m re-reading it to catch up to speed on the plot and characters. Hopefully. I’ll be writing and/or editing it soon. Two, Zuihitsu continues to converge to a (happy?) ending. At least to an ending, although I suspect there might be violence. Video TDGB 69: French Link Stitch II. A recycled collage cover; the first of a few collage covers. With 100 blank pages and the French link stitch. The first books using French link stitches; more coming, I suspect. With even a tutorial coming soon. I hope.

Bookbinding Yes, I finished Growing Slurry: A Whale of a Love Story. The title is on the spine and there’s a whale on the cover (front, spine, and back). The book is 265 A6-size pages, 17 signatures, with endbands, and a bluish book cloth for a cover. It took me a while to get the title printed on the spine and then to align the spine part of the book cover on the book boards. Properly. Fortunately, I managed. Practice, I’m told, leads to success. It takes place over the course of about 12 hours but each character (Sliven, the male; Gina, the female) has flashbacks to the past where their past lives are shown, examined, and explained.  Throughout the novel, both characters discuss Moby-Dick. In fact, they meet because Sliven is carrying a copy of Moby-Dick; when Gina sees it, she makes the first move, she ignores everything else about Sliven and they strike up a conversation, discussion, romance? – relationship. This relationship deepens with each flashback and what they discover about each other. Fiction I’ve started a journal/novel called The Zuihitsu of Mrs Collier. Zuihitsu is a Japanese word that literally means writing from the brush. It is a journal that can include anything the writer wishes to include. The original zuihitsu was The Pillow Book (Makura no Shoshi) by Sei Shonagon who wrote in about the year 1000. She wrote about Heian era court life, the food she ate, the people she met, and lists of things she thought important. The Zuihitsu of Mrs Collier is similar. There is a bread recipe, observations and comments on recent events, and two fictional stories. When the two stories end, the book ends.  Video For your view pleasure there are two videos up about Growing Slurry. One is longer and about the construction of the book and the plot. TDGB 68. The other one is the first two sentences of Growing Slurry. TDGB 67. Enjoy.

Bookbinding I’ve made three books in the last week or so. All the same topic. All the same size - A6 or pocketbook. All with some mistakes. All three books have the same four short stories: • Morris & Maurice is about a janitor and his Siamese cat, if you please, who witness both the development of a park and a murder. • Paul’s Paris Disneyland’s Farewell Party about three friends who get together in Paris to celebrate Paul’s retirement. They walk in the footsteps of Marcel Proust primarily because I discovered Paris Disneyland is very close to a small village called Guermantes.  • Satan Rains is about a heavy metal band that has trouble getting gigs until a tragedy occurs.  • Snow Country. I told you about this short story last time, but I’ll refresh my memory. Three work-from-home weavers Zoom each other before their work day begins and tell each other ghost stories to give them something to think about as they weave. Two experience a ghostly event in their ’real’ lives. I put all four short stories into one book called Snow Country. I printed it out. In the first edition, I thought the type was too small and the leading too close. The first attempt has 117 pages. That’s the green volume. The second printing had an interesting problem: different fonts for the different stories. I don’t know how that happened. Probably when I imported the different stories into the book design app I was using.  Second, I usually want a new chapter to begin on the right page; the recto/odd-numbered page. One story in the second printing started on the left page; the verso or even-numbered page. Again, though, I thought the leading was too close. My biggest mistake on this printing was not gluing down the mull onto the book board. I did, however, glue it to the text block. I have no idea why I failed to do that. This attempt has 131 pages. This is the pale blue volume on the left. So, I tried again. I made sure the leading was good, the fonts consistent, and the type the proper size. I checked, and all was good. I printed it out. I began gathering the parts, bits, and material to case it in. I checked one more time to make sure. This attempt’s mistake is: it has two page 13s. Why? I have no idea. This attempt has 172 pages and is the pale blue number on the right. With the third printing, I didn’t want to waste the paper, so I continued making it. The printer decided the book-cloth cover, pale blue, needed a splash of ink on the back, so this printing has that. Unfortunately, I misaligned the cover. The name of the book on the spine is not centered correctly. Ah, how we wish we could live and learn. Fiction I started a semi-fictional something. In Japanese, it’s called a zuihitsu. I believe in English it would be called a miscellany or journal. Zuihitsu means to write where the wind blows you. No, it doesn’t; it means: follow the brush (as in a calligraphy brush, not shrubbery.) Ken Kesey wrote two zuihitsu, I believe. The first, Ken Kesey’s Garage Sale, contained essays, fiction, a play, and other musings. His second, Demon Box, had fiction and non-fiction essays.  The most famous, in Japan, zuihitsu is from the woman who invented the genre. Sei Shonagon wrote The Pillow Book (Makura no Soshi) in the late 900s and early 1000s. Yes, about a thousand years ago. Her book had essays, anecdotes, poems, her opinions, and descriptive passages of life in the Heian era court, and seemingly endless lists of things. I started it, in any case. There is a translator’s introduction that claims the writings were originally written by an Arab historian called Cide Hamete Benengeli.  So far, it has fiction, non-fiction, and a recipe (for bread). I started a novel, too. I have a name for it: The Tale of Kenshi. It’s about a woman who doesn’t fit her physical body; she doesn’t think she’s as beautiful as she’s been constantly told. She puts up an act when she’s around people, but buries her real personality out of sight. She meets and talks with an old crow, a bird, not an old woman. Or maybe the crow is a reincarnated old woman? Hard to tell right now. Video I have posted two videos for your viewing pleasure. The first is one of my attempts to make Snow Country. It shows the making of the cover, but not the casing in. The second is my third attempt at casing in Snow Country, which is available here: Casing in Snow Country: Is the Third Time the Charm?

Bookbinding In the last two weeks, I made two books. The first one was a quick, blank notebook using bits and pieces. The second one was a case-bound novel with one major mistake. First, the blank notebook. The base for the cover is a file cut to size. On the cover, I pasted a variety of bookboards left over from other projects. These boards were also partly plastic & paper files or folders, and partly real bookboards. Then I added a piece of string just offset the squarish files. The whole book was coptic-bound with 96 pages. I used US letter-sized paper (it’s wider and shorter than A4; 8.5 x 11 inches or 216 x 279 mm vs 210 x 297 mm or 8.29 x 11.69 inches). Why? Because, really, honestly, about 20 years ago, I bought five reams of US letter paper for a project that consumed only two reams. Why five reams? Because that’s the smallest amount the store would special order for me, and I thought I’d probably use it. Eventually. I still have three reams minus 24 pages. The second book was my novel, Molly Bright. About 250 pages, case-bound, B6-size paper, and one major mistake. Because it is B6, I needed to print A3 to fit the entire book. I don’t have a printer that can handle A3 (it barely handles A4). I printed everything on B5 paper: the front cover (with the title on the lower third); the back cover (with the Tedorigawa Bookmakers logo on lower than the lower third); and the spine (with my name at the top, Molly Bright in the middle (sideways), and TDGB on the bottom).  The front and back are purple with the words in black. The spine is off-white, close to off-yellow, with the words in black. I glued the covers on the bookboard first, then glued the spine over the book and the covers. It came out looking nice. I also added quick and dirty end bands (the purple cloth folded over a piece of twine. Naturally, with great caution, I test-printed everything. Especially the spine. Once everything was looking good, I printed everything on the bookcloth. I glued on the covers. So far, so good. I glued on the spine piece. So far, so good. I turned it over to smooth everything down. And there it was: the major mistake. The first letter of Molly Bright was 75% covered by the spine; only a vertical line of the M showed. Heartbreak. But I immediately tried to think of a solution. I practiced writing the M with a small magic marker, an ink pen, and a pencil. I practiced on the same fabric as the spine piece. But in the end, I let the mistake stand. And sent it off to a friend. Fiction Also, in the last two weeks or so, I wrote two short stories (of about 20 ~ 30 pages). While I should have been finished Caraculiambro and Growing Slurry. The first one is called Snow Country. Three work-at-home females who weave cloth on hand looms and knit sweaters and caps during the day start their day with a Zoom call. During the call, they tell each other ghost stories with ambiguous endings so that they have something to think about during the day as they weave or knit.  The second one is called Oh, That’s Good, No, That’s Bad. A man has a bully. (that’s bad) He makes a decision (that’s good). He decides to kill the bully (that’s bad). He needs to buy an unregistered, unmarked gun. He goes to a sleazy bar. (bad) He makes a friend (good). He gets beaten up. (bad) He ends up in the hospital. He meets two nice doctors who are married to each other (good). He falls in love (bad). The woman agrees to date him (good). On a date, they run into his bully at a nice restaurant (good). The bully is nice to the woman, whom he knows from a charity he works with (good) and the man (also good).  The man says he no longer wants to kill the bully (good). The woman admits her husband is a bully, and she wants to kill him (bad).  The title and the premise come from a 1967 song by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs titled Oh, That’s Good, No, That’s Bad. Sam, aka Domingo Samudio, is still with us at 88 years old. The songs vacillates between good and bad happenings in a man’s life (hit by a car, gets money, spends money on hospital, limps, gets a job in TV, horse falls on him, goes to hospital, meets a nurse, nurse’s husband is the guy’s doctor, operates on the wrong leg). I sort of took that premise. Plus, the characters in my short story are named after the Pharaohs and the Shamettes (Sam’s back-up singers). The bully wears wool. Why? Because Sam the Sham and The Pharaohs’ biggest and first hit was Wooly Bully released in 1964, got to number 2 on the Billboard charts (kept off number 1 by the Dixie Cups and their Chapel of Love) and stayed on the chart for 18 weeks (longer than any song that didn’t get to number 1 until 2000). 1964 was the year the Beatles, remember them? had six number one hits. Video No video again this time, sorry. But you can look at my back catalogue, i.e. videos I’ve put up before. Kind of catch up, if you want.

Bookbinding Continuing with working multiple books like in my October Build month, I made, in the last two weeks, five books. The fifth book I will talk about in the Fiction section as well, but now I will talk about the first four books.  The first two of the four books are called 24 for two (not 24) reasons. First, they were conceived on the 24th of October. Second, they have many facts about the number 24, not limited to math, but also the fact that in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams writes that the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is 42. The opposite of 24. This and other facts about 24 are included in my blank notebooks, 24. Each is 118 pages. I did something different in the 24 notebooks made this month. The differences all have to do with the cover: front, spine, and back. On the front, obviously, I printed the title, 24. On the spine, I printed the title vertically. On the back, I printed the Japanese equivalent of Tedorigawa Bookmakers: 手取川製本. My main concern was that they all line up perfectly. They did not. The titles on the front were aligned properly because they could be anywhere, really. I wanted them in the lower third of the cover; no major concerns. The spines, too, aligned nicely. The Japanese on the back came out too low on one book and a little too low on the second. Plus, I accidentally printed markers where the titles and company were to be printed. A learning process, if you will. The second two books are titled Black Moon Notebook and Cheshire Notebook. As with 24, I printed the title on the front cover, the spine, the company on the back, and the company initials (TDGB) above the title on the spine. These were 100-page blank notebooks. But also and in addition, I made headbands and endbands. Seriously, this time. I made them before but just to see if I could do it. Then I reverted to glue-on headbands; much easier to use. With Black Moon and Cheshire, I concentrated on making the bands. I did..... not disastrously badly, but not as well as I wanted. A learning process, if you will. The endbands on both were better than the headbands on both because I made the headbands first.  As for printing, they all — cover, spine, back cover — came out nicely. The initials, not so much because I didn't think about them until after I printed the cover. The B edged over into the spine gap. All four were bound in green covers; they are A6 (pocketbook) size, with between 118 pages (24) and 100 pages (Black Moon and Cheshire); and have floral endpapers with birds (except one version of 24, which has brownish floral endpapers). The fifth book is my novel, Molly Bright, which came out to about 260 pages (there are extra pages because I included a Japanese-English glossary, a brief origin story, and additional fiction) in a B5 printing. It has not been bound yet, but it has been sewn up (case binding), mull applied, bookboards and spine cut, endpaper chosen but neither cut nor applied, and cover paper tentatively chosen. The reason I printed the titles of the previous four blank notebooks was, they were practice for printing the cover of Molly Bright. And practice sewing headbands. Molly Bright is a much wider book than the four blank notebooks, of course, sewing a headband will be more time-consuming and, if history is any indication, frustrating. Next time, I can show you the results; hopefully done to my satisfaction.   Fiction I wrote a 30-page short story titled Snow Country (not taken from Kawabata Yasunari’s novel of the same name). Three women who are weavers meet on a Zoom-like app to talk about life, their children, and tell each other ghost stories. They do this because their life as a weaver means they work from home and only interact with their children (all three have two children, all in middle school) and a delivery person who comes only when delivering orders, supplies, or picking up finished products; they never appear in the short story. The ghost stories give them something to think about as they weave on their looms and, later in the afternoon, knit. Their weaving and knitting are their livelihoods; it pays their bills. They have husbands, I suspect, but they are never mentioned.  Snow Country comes in three parts: Snow Country, Seaside, and Mountain because the main character of each part lives in a snowy village in Japan, a seaside village not in Japan, and in a mountain village in Japan. At the beginning of each part, one of the main characters opens their Zoom and waits for the other two. They tell each other ghost stories and then get to work weaving (except Seaside, who is just finished weaving and knitting; she’s waiting for her children to come home from school). The ghost stories are based on my reading of several Japanese ghost stories.  After writing Snow Country, I went back to editing Growing Slurry and looking at but not writing on Caraculiambro. Then I picked up a 955-page book to read, The Books of Jakob by Olga Tokarczuk (Nobel, 2018). Oh dear. I just finished reading her Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Video No videos today, sorry.

Bookbinding   This was a daily building challenge where you were allowed to build anything you wanted for one month (one of the longest months: October, with 31 days).    I, naturally, made mostly books. In fact, I believe I made 22 books. I first ran across Building Days watching Evan Monsma’s YouTube channel at Evan Monsma where he said that October, for him, was a challenge he gave himself to build something every day. I took up the challenge and, except for three days when I had a debilitating cold, I made stuff. Twenty books and seven other products, including cleaning up a table, writing & mailing about 10 postcards, and uploading a couple of podcasts.   Almost every book I made used recyclable leftovers in my To Be Used Pile Hoard.   For example, the A6-sized book above on the left is called 24. It has 24 facts about 24 (James Dean died at age 24, as did Lee Harvey Oswald). It was made on October 24. The cover and endpapers are from the Hoard. It is about 100 pages of relatively new paper.    The book in the middle was made of a used Amazon shipping envelope. It’s called The Amazon Notebook and contains facts about a river in South America, not about a major corporation that makes a billionaire richer. It is about 100 pages of relatively new paper.    The book on the right, The Epson Screw-Up Notebook, has a brand-new cover, but the interior pages are recycled from printing errors made by a certain printer, which will remain nameless. It is about 100 pages of relatively new paper.    I also made an A6-size blank notebook called The Starbuck Notebook with facts and figures about a certain whaling family based out of Nantucket, MA called Starbuck. They were the basis for the Starbuck character in Moby-Dick. Of all the facts and information about the Starbuck family in this notebook, not one of them deals with a certain coffee company. It was shipped off to a customer who enjoys coffee and notebooks. Except one: Why does Moby-Dick have a hyphen but Starbucks doesn’t have an apostrophe?   Most of the expense of making these books was tabulated in Time and glue. What did I learn making books almost everyday in October? First, that I can make a book in one day if I put my mind to it. Second, thinking about the book before delving in to make it is time well-spent. Third, it’s not impossible to do what you think is impossible if you concentrate not on social media, but life.    Fiction By the way, despite spending many an hour making books, I also wrote a little bit. I managed to improve and expand Growing Slurry (one of the books I made, and simultaneously made a big rookie mistake making it). I also edited and improved Caraculiambro. The rookie mistake I made was putting the text block in upside down (or the cover wrong side up). The kind of mistake I thought I was finished making, but evidently not. What I have not worked on much in the last month (October), was editing Molly Bright or The Nuns of Nanao, both of which are finished but need a good edit.   Video  A video of the books I made in October’s Building Days can be seen Here! Enjoy.

Bookbinding I purchased three books from Amazon. Two arrived in a timely manner: Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, which deals with memories and remembering; and Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto, which deals with both sibling rivalry, obnoxious and entitled people, and forgetting and possibly forgiveness, but I was intrigued by the envelope my Amazon horde arrived in: corrugated cardboard, which was plain on one side and festooned with a variety of QR codes on the other; probably my name, address, the deliveryman’s name, and et cetera for all things concerning delivery. (A Proustian sentence if I ever saw one; and I have.) I made a book cover out of Amazon’s envelope and added some facts about the Amazon River on the recto side. Facts such as the first European to explore the Amazon starting from Peru and floating all the way to the Atlantic (Francisco de Orellana, Spanish); why the Amazon is called the Amazon (de Orellana’s crew was attacked by warriors, including many females, which reminded de Orellana of the Amazons in Greek myths), and the direction the Amazon flowed 15,000,000 years ago (west). The Amazon Book is 100 pages, A6, with red endpapers, a cover made of an Amazon (the company) envelope, and blank except for small tidbits of information about the river that was, about 60,000,000 years ago, connected to the Congo, the second largest river by volume after the Amazon. October is, according to one Youtube creating maniac (Evan Monsma), Building Days in which you build something –anything– everyday for one 31-day month to build, among other things, confidence in your own abilities. (It is also the month of my high school girlfriend's birth.) I am building books, of course, but also made a drawing,  and a podcast. Several books in October are made up of leftovers, scraps, and unevenly cut pieces from my To Be (Possibly) Used in the Future pile of leftovers, scraps, and other pieces. I shall display some of them in our next podcast. Fiction I’m editing one novel (The Nuns of Nanao) while writing the final chapters of another novel (Growing Slurry). Doing both is complicated as the stories, characters, situations, places, and outcomes are all different. I think I’m going to concentrate on The Nuns of Nanao as this novel is finished except for clearing up misspellings, wrong words used, plot holes, and clichés; i.e. the regular stuff writers have to do to make their work better.  But on the other pen (keyboard? hand?), I just had an epiphany about the ending of Growing Slurry (my Moby-Dick inspired novel about a forensic certified public accountant meeting a homeless murderer in a character-driven plot that concentrates on memories, the unknown, and, of course, a kind of love) that clicked so well I’m outlining it before I forget it and before I get back to editing The Nuns of Nanao. And Facebook reminded me that I started a novel Ten Years Ago! that I have as yet to finish (a Don Quixote-inspired detective novel called Caraculiambro, the first 100 pages I like, but have yet to finish; and the plot might be too complicated for my feeble brain.) Video I have yet to drop a new video, but there are three in the works. Stay tuned. Subscribe. And I promise to upload more in the future. Tedorigawa Bookmakers on Youtube.