TOKYOH-NO
Posted by: Sutu on April 18. 2012 at 11:45 am
I was in Tokyo last week. I was fortunate to time my visit with the Katsuhiro Otomo exhibition. I felt shakey and nauseus. I was convinced I was overwhelmed by the complete and utter awesomeness of Otomo’s work. I definitely was impressed, the guy couldn’t possibly be human, but something else was going on too. I did the sketch above on my Shinkansen ride to Fukushima. The sketch turned out to be somewhat of a subconscious premonition. That night in Fukushima my stomach turned. I smashed Suntory highballs and laughed it away with delirious splender. In the morning I was vomiting so hard you could have cut my arms off and I wouldn’t have noticed. I never thought I was capable of such a terrifying screeching sound. I went to hospital and got on an IV drip for seven hours. The doctor said it was the Noro virus, most likely contracted from that raw oyster I ate that yakitori joint the day before. It had tasted so good, what an evill little package of death! NExt time I’ll just eat a hand grenade. The IV sorted me out enough to walk. I checked in to a hotel. The only movie I could get to play on the in-house network was Contagion – a highly dramatised disaster flick about a virus that spreads internationally and wipes out 20-or-so million people, lots of authorities run around saying “wash your hands, don’t touch your face, don’t touch anyone, it’s in the air…” yadda yadda. Gwyneth Paltrow gets her head cut open, that was cool, but other than that, the entire hour and a half was a torturous trick on my extremly dehydrated mind and then…. the earthquake hit. 5.9 on the richter scale, about 50 clicks away. I was on the sixth floor and the hotel swayed and it felt like a group of people were on either side of the bed, shaking it violently for 20 seconds. This is apparently an aftershock. Are you fucking kiding me. In Australia, that building would have fallen down. The Christchurch quake was only 6.0 and that pancaked the city centre. I was in Fukushima visiting friends. My friends mum says she’s felt more than 200 aftershocks, each time like a recurring nightmare. When she visited Austalia she said the relief to not feel a shake was enough to make her cry. My entire week in Japan was a gut wrenching, eye opening vista in to a fragile body and planet. I’m back in the desert now, away from oysters and jaded tectonic plates, I also feel relieved, but sad that I do. Japan I love you AND you’re people are amazing!
Here’s sum mores sketches I did on the smooth rollin’ trains of Tokyo…
I’ve been designing costumes lately and am obsessed with hypercoloured full body suits. I love this guy below, I just wanna draw a full comic of him stealing fruits from strange trees and constantly being chased…
I’ll be bringing some colour into these ones soon…
I got about ten other sketches on the go, not quite there yet. This last one wasn’t drawn while I was in Tokyo, but I just added the colours so what evs…
