flemmings | (no subject)

I have FAXed off my order to Vancouver's Iwase Books and am hoping they got it and will be able to provide me with ZeroSums and Shounen Gangans in a prompt and uncustomised fashion. (FAXes, she scoffs. How last century. The Japanese love of the FAX machine is beyond my understanding. So is the love of .pdf documents, and Iwase requires using both.)

I must be grateful there's at least one Japanese bookstore in this mighty land that will import, but I'm still mightily pissed that Kinokuniya sees no reason to open a store in Canada. Shipping across the border from NYC shouldn't be a problem, you think? Not if they'd use the mail- but all America-based Japanese companies ship by Fedex et al. Customs stops all Fedex parcels automatically and the others randomly to see if there's GST to be had; and if there is- a pittance, always: I was once charged .99 for some used magazines- the shipping companies charge me $25-30 for filling out the paperwork.

So screw Kinokuniya, screw Fedex (though Purolator is worse), and screw Canada Customs and Revenue. This is sometimes a great nation but not when its borders are involved.

Googling in vain hopes of finding magazine codes, I discover Shounen Gangan has become much bigger than when I read it a dozen years ago. FMA will do it to you. But I'm getting it for Papuwa which continues to exert its old fascination over me in the old way: the family's backstory. In the last ep I have Magic is leafing over a family album, and there's a picture of *his* father with his four sons, and oh how we would have drooled for that back in the day. But more: there's a picture of some tall guy in glasses standing in back of a group portrait. 'What- *still*-?' Magic snarls and rips the picture out and tears it apart. Ahh, the old deadly poison works in my veins. Who is this man? What did he do? Why does Magic feel strongly enough about him to destroy all his photos?

So I want to say- C'mon, Iwase, deliver. But knowing Shibata, who dangles hints for years occasionally before resolving them, I shall say- deliver with all deliberate speed.

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(looks guilty) And I owe you Cortege des cent demons, a la Ima Ichiko -- I do apologise, and will get it sent your way. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Oh not at all. (waves airily) I've read it already. ^_^ I'll just be intrigued to see what it looks like in French.

It does look extremely pretty, I must say.

AND bloody Customs and Revenue can randomly decide that what you've ordered is 'obscene' and confiscate it. I had a Sorcerer Hunters music CD 'searched', ie. they played it, because it had the girls on the cover dressed in S&M outfits. It's a bloody music CD! Then to add to the indignity Customs billed me $18.

I should stop before I go on about Little Sister's (http://www.littlesistersbookstore.com/court.asp) fight against the power given to Customs officials.

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How did the Norse of Ibsen's time grow into the Norse of now, she asks morosely. And can it be duplicated in other northern countries.

I can't figure what the border problem is but I suspect it started with a few people, drunk on power, beginning a crusade and was allowed to grow unchecked by the authorities. OTOH our pornography laws have always had this paternalistic 'we must protect the weak!' slant to them (weak= female or young) even after that attitude dropped from sexual legislation. It leaves one with the classic anomaly of being able to do things one cannot read about. And it may be that attitude that Customs is operating on. It's discriminatory and outdated but until we get a clean sweep of the agents who do this, Customs will keep on doing it.

When one considers that little-red-dot has like, four or five kinokuniya's (although only one is really big enough to get lost in), and that Australia has only one (Sydney) and that Canada has none... the inevitable rage and the urge to take up a chainsaw rise, and eh ^^

I understand the plethora of Kinokuniya's in S'pore. It's a certified manga-reading population. No one has cerified us or the Aussies as yet, and I'm sure the thinking goes 'If there's no large expatriate Japanese pop'n there's no need for a Japanese bookstore.' They may even be right. NY's Asahi closed, after all. It's still a pain.

Wait a minute... TO is almost as multicultural as Sydney and they ain't that many Japanese expats in Sydney either (not that significantly many even compared to Melbourne, where there is no Kinokuniya). Yes, the non-existence of Kino in TO does boggle the mind (mine, at least).

Oh my. Singapore has a multitude of Kinokuniyas?

...I just might have to take my relocated dad up on the idea of visiting.

(There's always mail order, yes, but the thing about mail order is that you can't tell whether something's unreadable or uninteresting until after you've already bought it).

If it's novels, yes, since you can browse. But surely New York is not merely closer but cheaper than S'pore?

it makes me giggle "lil' red dot". Doesn't matter what scale the maps are, even a map of the SE Asian region, we still are a little red dot! ^__^

anyway, I am sorry that you have to wait awhile for the Zero-Sums,Ward and what not. But speaking of which, I saw Papuwa on the shelves of the HQ Kino here, whilst looking for WA05 (which sold out here in like 3 days, in ALL branches)and because you mentioned it so much was actually giving it some serious thought. Hehe! Unfortunately I can only afford (financially) only so many fandoms at a time. At the moment it's all Minekura based I'm afraid.

Though I have had to fork out a pretty penny for the next generation on Cardcaptor and Tsubasa Chronicles. She is only six and a half!!! ^_~.

But yes it surprises me too when my friends overseas complain that Kino does not exist in some places I would have thought (based on the fact that they are bigger and more metropolitan) they would have a store.

Aaah! But I could go on and on about our censorship laws here, and how they get it to apply to customs and their post here! A friend of mine had to either fork out a hefty bill for the board to go through his entire Dr Who DVD collection, or pay for it to be shipped back! As far as I know he's still hasn't decided. Six months on, as far as I know it still is sitting in some PO here! Poor guy! I think he's trying to arrange for it so he can pick them up UNOPENED so he can arrange for it to be sent back with his stuff, when his contract here ends in mid 2007!!!

Bizarre! Totally.

Dr Who? Why would the censorship board even be interested? and why haven't they seen it before, one wonders. Yes indeed: to paraphrase my favourite novelist, we Canucks may have our disconveniences but to be born a Singaporean, one hears, is to live and die in prison.

*grins* it isn't soo bad.

I think it's the paranoia, and partly because piracy is BIG business here. It may say Dr Who on the discs but who isn't to say its Dr Who on the inside??? That's what the thinking is! It's a bind though for all those with legitimate request.

The only satisfaction I get is come graduation time, When folk get all the grad vids sent home, well they have to sit through all that! (I know cos my sis got hers sent home and believe me it is hours of nothing!!!) She had to pay them to watch it though! One vid cost her S$5.