In between all the other stuff (work, life, family, sleeping) I am, very slowly, learning Japanese. Not very seriously, it's a hobby, but I'm enjoying it.

My interest in things Japanese goes back to the 1980s when I got into martial arts, and through that developed an interest in Samurai, and through that an interest in Japanese film, and that led also, eventually, to an interest in some Japanese manga and anime.

As a karate teacher (I'm testing for my 5th dan next weekend, gulp!) I have some Japanese already, so it's nice to work out from there into more of the language. Also, as an artist, it's nice to be able to write it, the kana forms are very satisfying. At the moment just hiragana, but I'm currently working on katakana, and then I'll dive into some kanji.

a page from my workbook - Japanese names and karate kata written as hiragana

Years ago I came up wih the name for our karate club, Kanzenki, which consists of three characters for kanzen (perfect, complete, whole) and ki (spirit, life essence), reflecting the idea that through karate you can improve all aspects of your life.

This past summer one of our club members went to Okinawa to train with Hokama Sensei, whose bojutsu (staff) sytem we practice. Whilst there Hokama Sensei brushed calligraphy for our club - at the same time confirming my Japanese was correct (phew!). We now have banners featuring the kanji (Kanzenki dojo).

Kanzenki dojo banners and Hokama Tetsuhiro Sensei brushing the calligraphy

A quick note to say that I have ended my active participation on the platform that used to be known as Twitter. As I posted there yesterday, overall I have had a positive experience on the site, but I cannot actively engage with a platform whose current owner is a conspiracy theorist, promotor of misinformation, and a supporter of fascism and hate (and I don't use those words lightly).

I have not deleted my account, but it is locked, perhaps in the hope that one day the current owner will realise what a mess he's made of things there and it will pass into more enlightened hands. But I have removed links to my Twitter page and will no longer visit or update there.

I am not a strong user of social media - I'm just not very good at it! I certainly see the positives, and, as I said, that has mostly been my experience. And I have no criticism of anyone who continues to use Twitter - we all have out own priorities, whether business or personal, and I respect that. I am not losing much by opting out.

This blog remains my main home on the internet. I do have a Bluesky account which I am keeping engaged with, and the same goes for Instagram - so please consider giving me a follow at either or both of those, if you wish (see the community section on this page for more). Thank you!

Continuing my determination to have at least one blog entry a month this year and it's the final day, the final hours, of September, with nothing to show for it.

We had a very late-booked summer holiday - my first time in Spain, and my first time ever on the Mediterranean, at Sitges near Barcelona. It was very nice, if just about at the limit of my heat tolerence.

The Brambletye Box is still chugging along with this theatre scene, which (as already mentioned) was the genesis of the story ... a stage magician's assistant turning up to ask Julius Chancer for help. I'm really enjoying drawing it - despite the numerous audience-filled backgrounds!

I did end the month with a very nice and long overdue get-together, having dinner with Colin Mathieson (Zulu Water Cart Rescue) and his lovely wife, who were down for the Battles Through History event at the nearby Ardingly Show Ground. We worked out, rather shockingly, it's been seven years since we last met up, at Copenhagen Comics in Denmark. It's actually been that long too (the Munich show, three months after) since I've had any (real-life) interaction with comics folk at all! I need to get out more ...

The highly respected karate master, Soke Takayuki Kubota, has died at the age of 89. I record it here because he had a huge influence on my own karate as I trained at his Glendale dojo from 1985 to 1986, four to six times a week, gaining 3rd kyu under his tutelage.

Kubota's father was a jukendo expert (bayonet fighting) and during the war his home village took in two Okinawan refugees who taught the very young Kubota some karate. As a teenager he moved to Tokyo and hung around various dojos, training whenever and wherever he could, or just watching and learning. Kanken Toyama and Yasuhiro Konishi were two such sensei from this period.

Shotokan must have had quite an influence on him too - besides his numerous own kata his school teaches the Shotokan forms - though it is rarely cited in his biographies. But a Black Belt magazine interview from 1964 mentions Shotokan was his favourite "method" and that he was a member of the JKA at the time. Soon he was helping to train the Tokyo police and accompanying them into various dangerous situations, helping to forge his own 'hard and fast' style of karate further. More connections came as he taught at a variety of US military bases in Japan.

In 1964, invited by Ed Parker, 'Tak' Kubota brought his now named style, Gosoku Ryu, to the United States. He was present at the 1967 All-Star Tournament, giving demonstrations alongside the likes of Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris and his longtime friend, Fumio Demura. Some of these relationships hinted at his future 'side-hustle' in Hollywood, with roles in films alongside Charles Bronson and James Caan to name just a couple of his numerous appearances. Kubota's reputation continued to grow as he helped train the Los Angeles Police and invented the kubotan key-chain as a self-defense weapon.

I have a number of fond memories of my time at the Glendale dojo, including attending the 11th Annual IKA Tournament where So-Shihan (as he was called when I trained there) was presented with a 400-year old Tokugawa meditation bell. Kubota struck it three times and everyone present meditated to the nearly endless ring that the Shogun himself had once meditated to.

In a 1965 Black Belt magazine interview, Kubota summed up his 'Tokyo Way' of karate: "Practice the first form five years, one and a half hours every day. Begin kumite at the age of eleven. Now practice three hours every day; more kata! More waza! That's karate the Tokyo Way."

I don't have a lot to show or tell from over the past few weeks. But I've been determined to make sure every month this year has at least one blog post, so here's some bits and bobs ...

Recent work on The Brambletye Box has mostly been writing, and I can't really show much about that. An article I wrote back in 2010 on the actual Brambletye House ruin was recently reprinted in a local community magazine - you can read it online here, and have a look at various images I've collected over the years.

In other Julius Chancer news, I have a new stock of Secret of the Samurai books - head on over to the shop to order a copy if you've been meaning to get one!

The other writing I've been doing, when I can, has been my first Tunnels and Trolls adventure in about, crikey, twenty-five years, I think. It's to play with my children over the summer holidays and is called 'The Well of Sarduk' - it's been great fun getting back into saving rolls, Monster Ratings, dungeon-building and so on. We'll see how it goes!

The other main thing in my life is the karate club I run, which is going pretty well with almost 40 members now. One new aspect for me, started last year, has been adding bojutsu to my repertoire (the bo is a 6' bamboo or oak staff, like a quarterstaff). A recent trip to Okinawa by some members of our head organisation has brought back lots of information and training material for us to work on. But I'm also going to have to step up my own karate training as I'll be testing for 5th Dan in November.

A short while ago I managed to make some new family history discoveries, resulting in finally being able to write something of the story of one of my more interesting antecedents, Thomas Levell Hammond. The article is here if you're interested in, or connected to, the Perthshire/Fife Ewings (or if you just like a bit of eighteenth and nineteenth century social and military history).

I've not been watching or reading much lately. I did start to watch the new Shogun on Disney+, but gave up half-way through (I may come back to it). Despite it being flash up-to-date with modern effects and direction I think it pales in comparison to the 1980s version with Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune - which had a much tighter script and even seems more authentic, despite its vintage.

In books my reading has dropped off with too many late nights, but I've been greatly enjoying the comic work of Olivier Schwartz, his Spirou stuff (especially the La Femme Leopard volumes) and his Atom Agency stuff. I'd seen an exhibition of his originals in Munich a few years ago - a fantastic artist.

Today sees the release of 50zine. It was supposed to be a release for my 50th birthday back in June 2019 ... so a slight delay, but it's here now.

It's a collection of some of my writing, 100 A5 pages with 60 articles from 1987 to 2023 and covering various topics, including comics, creativity, films, games, music, history and more.

It's £7.50 + p+p, and if you're interested it can be purchased here.

A few anniversaries in 2022 ... 30 years with my wife (married 20), 20 years since I went self-employed, 20 years since The Rainbow Orchid was published in BAM! ... and 20 years since the first entry on this here blog.

Though, actually, the blog is older. It started on AOL in 1997 as the news page of my website, called Nucleus (Internet Archive from 1998), and then became a blog called Webbledegook. Not all those early entries were kept, but 15 Dec 2002 is the earliest I still have archived.

Blogs don't seem to be the in-thing any more, with social media (which I'm not very good at) largely taking its place. But it's still my preferred home on the internet - a natural successor to the fanzines I self-published in the 80s and 90s.

I've not been as prolific with it lately, the most lively era, I think, being during the publication of The Rainbow Orchid. But it still serves its purpose, and I still enjoy it, so I'll keep going.

If you're still reading - thank you very much!

Perhaps you know, or perhaps you don't, that I have a YouTube channel. It's been in existence since 2006, but is not exactly buzzing with content.

Most recently I've uploaded some old audio interviews from around the time of The Rainbow Orchid - one with the Comic Academy, one on BBC Radio 2 with Simon Mayo, and then one on my local radio station, Meridian (there may be a couple more to come).

You'll also find some the Curious Expedition 2 trailers, as well as a handful of drawing videos (I'd like to do more, but am never quite organised enough).

The biggest playlist is the Adventure Films Podcast I did with my brother, Murray. These each have, currently, around 100 views each, except for The Golden Voyage of Sinbad which has 10k! I presume this has been linked from somewhere.

I do plan to get the War Films Podcast episodes up at some point, and more comics and art stuff in the future too - just don't expect a lot in a rush. Subscribe to keep notified of anything new, though.

As I stated a couple of entries ago, I spent some time over the Christmas break updating the Julius Chancer website, and it's now uploaded. At the moment it's largely the same old content, but that will change over the next few weeks.

What about the new Julius Chancer strip? That will launch in February, once I've completed my work for Maschinen-Mensch and I can turn my attention more fully to it. In the meantime, have a look around the site, and do let me know if anything is broken. I have not yet fixed blog comments, and there are coding and css improvements to be made, but there's time for that yet.

As a little blog test I thought I'd indulge in a post about my Minecraft world ...

My house with workshop, barn, farm, bee hives, Nether-portal 'temple', and bridge leading to the village

I'm kind of new to this, buying the game for my children during the lockdown months of 2020 and having a go myself in August of that year. In 2021 I didn't play much at all as I got rather absorbed in the incredible Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but I picked up Minecraft again a little over Christmas.

The village, with a number of new dwellings and 6 or 7 golems on patrol

Really, I've not explored very far from my spawn point at all. I'm a bit of a scaredy-cat, especially with caves! I've built a house with a farm and barn and I've done a lot of strip-mining. It took me a number of weeks to realise there was a village just across the river, beyond a few trees, and when I got there it seemed to be deserted.

My converted-church village residence looking out towards the lighthouse

In fact the few villagers had all got themselves stuck in a cave, so I rescued them and went home. When I returned a little while later there were only two left - so I blocked off the cave and started developing the village. Now it's bustling with master craftsmen, new houses, and a very healthy number of golems, as well as being protected by a wall of thorny sweet berries!

The lighthouse and boathouse - the lighthouse has been the most dangerous thing I've done - I've been killed four times falling from it and once getting trapped on its flame

Eventually I decided I should get a bit braver about exploring, so I've built a boathouse and a lighthouse from which to launch my expeditions. There's also a big ravine near the village, and my 10-year old daughter, who's far braver than I, has promised to hold my hand when I go down it, and pass on some of her top adventuring tips. My 8-year old son has about my level of bravery, but is a walking encyclopaedia of Minecraft lore, so he's good to have close at hand as well.

Wish me luck!

In the workshop with my hard-won diamond-enchanted armour, and relaxing outside my front door

It's a cliché and also true of every year as you get older - but, boy, 2021 zoomed by, didn't it? Of course, it's been another eventful year and again, not in the best way, though it did start with some optimism as the worst US President ever left office in utter disgrace, hopefully never to return (fingers crossed).

Optimism also as human ingenuity through the power of science came through with several effective vaccines against the virus that has caused so much misery and death. Of course, it's not over yet, and in the UK we are currently witnessing the worst wave yet - though not with the previous high level of deaths - thank you vaccines, scientists and health-workers (no thanks, Tory government).

Our own household has not been hit too hard. Schools were disrupted which meant homeschooling our two children at various times, and that did affect my wife's and my work (and earnings), but we did not have it as bad as I know many did. And we staved off the actual virus until November, when both children and my wife came down with it. I'd just had my booster-shot, so was probably fizzing with antibodies, and despite the close quarters we kept I experienced no symptoms and had negative daily test results. For my family it was an annoying heavy cold, thankfully with no lasting effects.

Antony Sher and David Westhead in Travesties (programme, Donald Cooper)

I was extremely sad to learn, in September, that the actor Antony Sher was terminally ill, and then that he died in December. I'm a long-time fan of Sher, first seeing him in Tom Stoppard's Travesties in 1993, and then being hugely inspired by his diaries, particularly Year of the King. I followed his career closely, read his books and enjoyed his art. In 1994 I sent him a copy of my comic adaptation of The Tempest and had a short but kind postcard from him in reply. (Here's an old blog post about Sir Antony.)

Work-wise, 2021 saw my third full year working for Berlin-based games studio Maschinen-Mensch on Curious Expedition 2 - in fact I did no other work this year at all. Alas, this wonderful project is coming to a close at the end of January 2022. I'll leave a review of the project until it's all done, but it's been a fantastic experience, and the game is so good - I urge you to give it a play if you haven't already done so! (Available for PC and Switch now, with X-Box and PlayStation in the next few months).

What will I do next? I don't know yet ... except for one thing - Julius Chancer will make his (long-awaited?) return. I spent my Christmas break re-designing the Julius Chancer/Rainbow Orchid website - this will be uploaded early in the new year and will include the first few strips of the new adventure, which I plan to continue as often as possible throughout the year. So watch out for it in the coming days.

I wish you all a better, prosperous and happy new year. Deep breath, let's go, 2022 ...