November 2024

Donald and Kristin are back from our two-week trip to Japan, and more or less recovered from jet lag. After a disappointing start involving an unexpected overnight stay in San Francisco due to a canceled flight, we did arrive in Tokyo, albeit one day later than expected. We visited Tokyo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto, and had wonderful weather for most of our vacation (high 70s or low 80s and sunny; except that it always rained when we were in Tokyo).

Not Tokyo.

We focused more on castles, museums and outdoor scenery than on temples and onsen (hot spring baths). If there was a unifying theme to our vacation, it was probably food. We attempted to try as many different kinds of Japanese food as possible, from multi-course kaiseki dinners to sushi bars to shopping center food court ramen.

We also went to a French restaurant on our last night in Japan, because Donald was tired of Japanese food. Kristin once ate at the original Paul Bocuse restaurant in Lyons, France, over 20 years ago.

Kristin also spent some time trying to source hard-to-find ingredients such as Japanese fish sauce and high-quality mirin, scouring the shelves of grocery and liquor stores, and being crushed by crowds in the nightmare that is Kyoto's Nishiki Market.

Success!

Another theme was visiting with friends. We caught up with two missionary families from our old church, one in Fukuoka and the other in Kobe (although you'd never guess this from Mysterion submissions, the typical Protestant missionary is a married parent). The couple in Fukuoka act as mentors for newer missionary families, helping them with cultural orientation and to figure out their vision for the work they want to do once they're ready to "graduate" from the orientation program. In Kobe, the husband of the couple there co-pastors a bilingual church. (He estimated that the attendees are about 30% Japanese speakers and 30% English speakers, with the rest from all over--when we attended a Sunday service, we met a Korean woman who grew up in Japan, a Chinese woman, and a German software engineer from the same obscure small city as Kristin's grandfather.)

We also met up for drinks in Kyoto with some local friends (i.e., they live in the Boston area and we see them regularly here), who are in Japan for a few months for work and managing to fit in some sightseeing along the way. A lot of people whom we know went to Japan this fall, in fact. It seems to be the trendy destination for middle-aged westerners who haven't gone on a big vacation since the pandemic. This might go some way toward explaining how crowded Kyoto was. Everyone goes to Tokyo first and Kyoto second, and Tokyo is a big enough city to absorb all those additional people without anyone really noticing, but Kyoto (Boston-sized) isn't. We were glad to have a good reason to include Fukuoka and Kobe in our itinerary: less popular destinations, and far less crowded as a result.

Here are some additional pictures:

An eel restaurant in Ueno Park, Tokyo, with traditional seating. Sitting at these low tables is even more uncomfortable than it looks.

Fukuoka, from the Fukuoka Tower observation deck.

The Fukuoka Tower mascot, all decked out for Halloween.

An artisanal sea salt factory on Itoshima Peninsula near Fukuoka.

Kobe Harbor from the window of our hotel room.

Kobe at sunset.

Nijo Castle, Kyoto.

A quiet street in Kyoto, carefully framed to exclude the hordes of tourists.

Fluffy's Cafe, Kyoto.

Koishikawa Korakuen, a 17th century landscape garden in Tokyo.

Unfortunately, the wifi on Japan's bullet trains was not nearly as good as we had been led to believe (i.e., consistently usable), and we struggled to stay sufficiently awake in the evenings once back in our hotel rooms to read Mysterion submissions. We're still determined to make our selections by the end of this month, but are not as far along as we would have hoped.

Speaking of making our selections, we're very close to our next Patreon funding goal! Right now, thanks to some recent new subscribers, we're at $260/month. If we reach $275/month, we'll be able to accept eight stories from the July submissions instead of only seven. Only $15/month away! One more subscriber at $25/month would get us there, or two at $10/month.

So if you've been enjoying Mysterion and thinking you might consider supporting us someday, this is a great time to sign up! All our subscribers, even at the $1/month tier, have access to our Discord, where we host monthly chats for our authors and Patreon supporters, and receive our monthly Insider posts where we try to share more of a behind-the-scenes look at publishing an obscure online magazine (sometimes including book, movie, TV, and/or game reviews). For $3/month, subscribers get early access to all the stories we publish; for $10/month, we also offer early access e-book versions of our magazine's fiction content. (There are also $2, $5, and $25 tiers, with additional rewards.)

Please consider signing up if you aren't already a subscriber! 

Coming Soon

We're pleased to announce that we've finalized our fiction lineup for the rest of the year. Later this month, we'll be publishing Indonesian author A.W. Prihandita's magic realist tale "In (Future) Memory of an Absent Father", about a boy struggling to discover his magical Intuition, without which it's impossible to find a good job after graduation. Could learning about the long-dead grandfather no one will talk about be the key? Then, just before Christmas, Miranda Miller brings us "Changeling Child". Marta's curiosity leads her to try to befriend the fairy who attends her church, even though everyone knows God and fairies aren't on speaking terms.

Stories always come out on the 4th Monday of each month... or have them delivered on the first day of each month by signing up for our Patreon!

Feline Update

We missed our cats while we were away for two whole weeks, but they were fine. Our friend who was cat sitting said that, whenever he came over, the cats made it clear that his number one priority needed to be opening a can of wet food; but also, that they didn't get into any serious trouble. They were very clingy for the first few days after we got home.

Thank you for reading, and please be sure to come back on November 25th for A.W. Prihandita's story!

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