The Pen Monster Blog

I haven't been posting up art recently because I haven't been making art recently. I'm in that stage of my job where I need to get stuff ready for my replacement and it has been a real drain mentally. Trying to pull five years of work together is kind of like a tug of war...

SEGUE OF THE YEAR!

On the Japanese island of Kyushu, the place I made my home for six years and will always remain a fond memory, there are two cities that grew into each other to the point that you only knew you passed from one to the other when a local told you. Omuta was the larger of the two. Arao was the scrappy underdog. They also marked the border between Fukuoka Prefecture and Kumamoto Prefecture.

Arao was notable for its coalmine and Ultraman amusement park. Both of which shut down some time ago and the Wikipedia article is badly dated. That no one has bothered to update it shows how forgotten the city is.

Omuta is known for having a lot of yakuza.

Every year the two cities would have a tug of war event. A 500m rope snaked out across the border. Local high schools, businessmen, and civilians would try to win two out of three tugs and bragging rights for the following year.

They stopped because the population got too old to keep doing it. Even the yakuza.

Japanese fascists were a common pest in Tokyo's busy areas every time I visited the city. I like to hope they all died of covid but that's unlikely and they're probably still making a nice day out in Shibuya a pain in the ears.

The sad part? They always had at least one young man listening intently each time I saw them.

While I'm on about how hate groups grow and of various internet pipelines folks pin the blame on: 

The idea that Andrew Tate or Matt Walsh used their seductive voices to lure people to the dark side is nonsense because it only takes five minutes to realize that Tate, Walsh and their peers are jibbering morons. People become incels, fash, TERFs and the like because they want to. The freedom to hate appeals to them. If there's any coercion or trickery it's merely a twisting of a rubber arm.

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As mentioned in a previous post: Instax cameras are fun if you have more money than brains like I did when I was living in Japan. But it's best avoided if money is a consideration.