Coraline

The title of this Story was a lucky Mistake by it’s Author Neil Gaiman. He started to write a story about a little Girl, just like his daughter. He wanted to call her Caroline. But on paper he twisted the letters and he thought, Coraline sounds like a real name. Weird maybe, but real.

Coraline is the Story of a little smart Girl. She and her Parents just moved into a new Flat and Coraline is ready to explore her new neighbourhood. She gets to know her new quirky neighbours, a circus of singing mice and a suspicious black cat.

Her exploring leads her to a strange place where she has to engage with an old and deceptive Evil.

Coraline is a great scary read and teaches some quite excellent lessons about what true bravery is and the value of the mundane everyday life.

Fortunately the Milk

“Fortunately the Milk” in the Edition in front of me is Childrens Book written by Neil Gaiman and Illustrated, like so often, by the great Chris Riddell. It was published 2013 by Bloomsbury.

The plot of the Story is easily explained: a Dad is left alone with his two Kids, as his Wife is on a important Business Trip. The Milk is empty and the Dad has forgotten to buy a new one. To safe the Family Breakfast from ruin he steps out to buy some.

What starts as a mundane everyday Story develops faster than Light to a colorful Adventure as the Dad in his quest for Milk is Meeting Aliens, Dinosaur Space Cops, an Aztec God and many more strange figures through the space time continuum.

It’s a fun and silly Story that will lighten your heart 😀

Art Matters

Art Matters is a motivational Book written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Chriss Riddel. My edition was published in the year 2018.

The book is quite short but beautifully illustrated very fitting to the contents of each Essay. The Book is basically a compilation of different Essays about Art and the Process of Creation written by the author. The Essays are titled: “Credo”, “Why our Future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming”, “Making a Chair” and “Make Good Art”.

The book talks about our power of imagination, learning from other people, cultures and stories. It’s about the joy of writing and creating. The worries and hopenessless of an Artist. The motivation for creation in the first place and how it will influence the world view of our children.

It’s a very short read, beautifully written and inspirational!

Your pants don’t come from undies

Fundoshi, the original japanese undies.

Yesterday i watched a short News Story about some budo training in the parks in germany. There was a teacher i respect quite much telling the reporter about his art and the equipment. And he made the statement that the Keikogi they were wearing was basicly an undergarment. Which isn’t exactly wrong. But could lead to wrong associations.

I talked since then with said teacher and he already was “corrected” by somebody else in his circle about it. But as this is a notion one can quite often find on the internet i thougt: well let’s write a post about it.

The Keikogi, meaning clothes for Budo Training, were developed by Jigoro Kano the founder of Judo.

Keikogi-Zubon

The Training trousers called zubon were derived from western pants intentionally to give Kano’s Judo a modern international feel to it. As the traditional martial Arts were generally seen as to archaic and inferior to western culture and weaponry. So Judo was marketed as all the good things of the japanese samurai spirit, improved through western teaching methods and Science. The missunderstanding that training pants come from undergarments then comes from the origin of the word zubon itself. It stems from the french jupon which literally means underskirt. This comes from the fact that clothes similar to western trousers were originally worn under the Hakama. But because this word got used for western trousers/pants in general the meaning of it broaded alot. So yeah, training zubon kinda are similar to classical Hakama undergarments but they are not undies! Samurai wore fundoshi for that.

a classical firemens jacket

Also it is theorized that the Uwagi or Training Jacket, be it from Kendo or Judo or other gendai budo was derived from the Jackets of japanese Fire Fighters. This jackets were designed to absorb as much moisture as possible, so the firefighters got soaked in water before running into action. This quality then was also wanted for the training jacket to absorb as much sweat as possible.