Editing a novel is a back and forth process. I send the manuscript to my editor, then wait for her to get back to me with comments and suggestions. I make revisions, then send it back to her and wait for the next stage of comments and suggestions. I actually like the editing process, because I can feel it making my story better.

I’m waiting to hear back from my editor right now, and while I wait I should ideally be working toward crossing things off my long “to do” list or resting up my eyes for the next round of revisions. Unfortunately, I keep finding myself getting stuck on the internet (they don’t call it the web for nothing). Today I spent several hours looking up the websites and blogs of various artists, whose links led me to other artists, whose links led me……and so on. I also spent way too much time researching button-making machines (saw some cool art buttons in a little shop on Main Street yesterday, then saw something on TV about a one inch button art show… got thinking about how it would be fun to make some buttons of my own, as well as work on some other art, and ….. next thing I know I’ve been staring at the computer screen for two hours, and I haven’t actually made or accomplished anything).

Anyway, here’s a photo of two artists in Tokyo’s Harajuku district who were selling buttons and other things they’d made. Sadly, I just lost the button I bought from them last spring. It had a D.I.Y. (do-it-yourself) and anti-war message. My goal for the next week is to take up the D.I.Y call to action and actually make some art of my own instead of just drooling over other people’s…..

P.S. I just checked one more site (how many times have I said that) and discovered Blim gallery rents out their button-making machine.

About noon today I decided to take a break from writing and go out for a Starbucks hot chocolate. I just missed the bus, which was frustrating, and had to walk to the Skytrain. Half way there, I looked up to see a bald eagle circling low in the blue sky (yes, blue sky, not gray and rainy). The eagle continued to circle above me the whole rest of my walk. Eagle sightings always feel significant — like you’ve been honored by their presence or they’re markers of something important that’s happening or about to happen…. At the very least, they remind us to pay attention…. And if I hadn’t missed the bus, I would have missed this one.

I have a backlog of topics I’d like to post about, but I’ve been trying to focus on finishing my current novel, which is due next week (I’ve already asked my editor for two deadline extensions, so this is it!).

Immersion in writing about Japan has got me, not only wishing I could go back for another visit, but also craving a different Japanese food each week. Last week it was yam sushi, this week it’s Kakinotane peanuts, a few weeks ago it was yuzu (a kind of citrus fruit) tea, before that it was Gaba chocolates, vegetable tempura, and so on…..

So, for now I’ll leave you with three images to taste: a delicious cup of yuzu tea and chocolate cake (which I had at a tiny cafe in Nara after ducking in out of the rain), Gaba chocolates, and cherry blossom KitKat (apparently only available in Japan and only during cherry blossom season, and especially popular with students taking exams — as a kind of edible good luck charm).

In Japan, when people look up at the night sky they don’t see a “man” in the moon, they see a rabbit. In the day, they see a crow in the sun.

Anyone who has read this blog knows I am intrigued by crows. Before I travelled to Japan, I didn’t know whether or not I would see crows there. On my first day in Japan, I woke up to familar caws coming from the rice field outside my window. I was thrilled to discover that Japan does indeed have crows, and not just ordinary crows — but giant Jungle crows.

The crows I saw that first morning were not this kind, however, though they were a little bigger and had a slightly different pitch to their calls than the Northwestern or Common crows I see at home. My first encounter with Jungle crows did not happen until my visit to a Tokyo cemetary.

Although crows (and ravens) are often associated with prophecy, wisdom and longevity (positives for the most part), when you see the huge, heavy-shouldered, bulky-beaked black shapes swooping and skulking around an old graveyard, it’s hard to forget that they are also somethimes linked to death and bad fortune. Unnerving, to say the least (although personally, I thought they were great and spent about an hour following them around with my camera, trying, unsuccessfully, to get close enough to take a recognizable photo).

While ordinary crows may be considered bad luck in Japan (especially since they have started attacking people in Ueno Park and other areas of Tokyo), if a crow happens to have three legs, it’s a totally different story.

A Japanese legends tells of how, long ago a monster was about to devour the sun. To prevent this, the rulers of heaven created the first crow, who flew into the monster’s mouth and choked him (I assume this crow had three legs, since the “crow in the sun” is supposed to have three legs, representing dawn, noon and dusk). Another story tells of how the first Emperor of Japan was travelling through the mountains and became lost. The sun-goddess sent a three-legged crow to guide him, and from that day on, the three-legged crow became an emblem of Japanese imperial rule (and the Japanese National soccer team).

                                          Note: the top photo is a crow statue outside the shrine of Miyajima near Hiroshima, and the photo at left shows a crow and some stray cats who were “sharing” food scraps at the back of a restaurant in Ueno Park, Tokyo (see, the Jungle crows really are big!). Although the story I’m working on right now is not specifically about any of these things, I’m having fun working them in (manga-loving North American girl on an exchange trip to Japan discovers Japan is not quite what she expected…. learns a lesson from some Tokyo crows….).

Anyone who has ever eaten at a Chinese food restaurant has probably seen a lucky cat. The statue cat with one raised paw often stands inside the entrance of Chinese restaurants and stores, wlecoming or beckoning people in. I was surprised to discover that the lucky cat originates, not in China, but in Japan. There, it is called Maneki-neko, the beckoning cat.

Before I travelled to Japan last spring, I did some research about the origins of Maneki-neko. I came across a few different stories. One involves a cat who saved a geisha from a snake dropping on  her head. But the one that seems most accepted is about a cat who lived at a poor temple near the city of Edo (the old name for Tokyo) about 200 years ago.

The temple priest had a calico cat, who he was fond of and shared his meagre food with. One day the cat sat at the side of the road near the temple when it began to rain. At the same time, several samurai road up on horse back. They saw the cat raise its paw as if to beckon to them, so they followed the cat to the temple. The priest welcomed them in out of the rain and gave them tea. One of the samurai, Lord Li, was impressed by the priest, and later returned for regular visits. The lord and his family gave money to the temple, and it was never poor again. The story of the faithful cat, who brought luck and prosperity to the poor temple, spread across the land. Soon the first Maneki-neko statue appeared, and eventually the lucky statue spread from Japan to China and to North America.

I thought I might like to write a story for kids involving a statue of Maneki-neko (and perhaps a cat spirit who inhabits the statue), so on my trip to Japan I kept my eyes open for Maneki-neko statues and for real cats. My quest took me from a little antique store in the ancient town of Seki-cho, where the store owner showed me two Maneki-neko figures from the Meiji period (about 1900), to the backstreets of Tokyo, where a tiny shop was filled with lucky cats and real cats lounged up and down a market stairway, to a town beside the ancient shrine of Ise, where a giant stone Maneki-neko stood outside another store filled with lucky cats. (Hello Kitty, or Kitty-chan as she is called in Japan, was also in evidence.)

After all this, the story I ended up starting to write is not about cats (although I may write the Maneki-neko story yet). Instead, it is about (or partly about) two other things I found myself looking out for in Japan: crows and manga. I will tell the you about the crows next.

How many wind storms can we have in one winter? Right now, the trees in my yard are dipping and dancing, and a rolling current of crows just flowed over the neighbourhood rooftops like snowboarders over a mountain.

The crows do seem to be enjoying themselves, but the dancing frenzy of the trees is getting me nervous. I should probably get off the computer before a branch falls on the power lines again.

To be honest, what I really need to do is get off the internet and get to work on my current story. I have a deadline looming, and I’m not as far along in the writing as I’d like to be. I need to stay away from internet distractions (and the urge to write crow and wind haiku) until I get a serious chunk of writing done.

I’ll leave you with two hints about the story I’m working on:

1. I found out last spring that there are crows in Japan (really big crows).

2. The oldest comic, or manga, in Japan is said to be the 12th century Choju jinbutsu giga (Frolicking Animals and Figures Scrolls).

(crow in Ueno Park, Tokyo, Spring 2006)

Like crows, rats are another sometimes maligned species. They are associated with disease and filth, considered dirty, sneaky, etc. Usually they get cast as the bad guy in children’s cartoons. Although, there are exceptions (the wise martial arts rat who teaches the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for example), and rats can have different significance in different cultures. If you are born in the Year of the Rat in the Chinese zodiac, you are supposed to be charming and attractive to people of the opposite sex, as well as thrifty, honest and a hard worker.

Athough their public image may not be as bad as it once was, rats are examples of urban wildlife that we generally don’t enjoy catching sight of. Still, I do get a kind of covert thrill when I see a rat run along the underground part of the Skytrain tracks, and I imagine a whole secret world existing under the noses and feet of all the busy business people in the city above. I have to admit, though, that I don’t get the same thrill when I hear rats scrabbling around inside the walls of my house.

When I was writing my latest novel for kids, “The Truth About Rats (and Dogs),” I fostered a rat from the SPCA shelter, so I could experience what pet rats were like and what it would be like to look after one. I found Oscar quite enjoyable and modeled the rat in my story after him. It did seem ironic, however, to be pampering a pet rat inside my house, while scheming of ways to get rid of the wild rats outside my house and in my walls. I’d be sitting at my computer in the basement writing my rat story, and a wild rat would scuttle along outside the window on his nightly rounds, as if to remind me of who the real owners of the city are.