Saturday, October 24, 2009

I'm touring Japan with The Smiths!


Getting ready for a trip to Tokyo.  I leave Melbourne on Monday at 5.30pm and will be away for 2 weeks.  It's a Japan/Australia science performer exchange, organised by Questacon (the National Science and Technology Centre) and the Australian National University's Centre for the Public Awareness of Science (CPAS).  Last year, a group of science performers from Japan visited Questacon and developed a performance with Australian science performers, this year the vice is on the other versa.

There are five of us 'science performer' types going (Victoria, Western Australia, Queensland and Canberra are represented), and we have two minders, one from Questacon and one from CPAS.  On Wednesday we'll meet the 5 Japanese science performers that we'll be collaborating with, and we then have 4 days (four!) to create a show together that will be presented at a big 'Science Agora', or festival, on Sunday the first of November.  Now that's guerilla theatre!  We will be rehearsing and presenting at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, Miraikan (literally, 'Future Museum').

After the exchange is over, I'm going to stay on for 4 days to have a look around Tokyo, to peek (and hopefully bike) around the centre of the Manga universe.  Now, my aim is to blog both the museum and the manga elements of this adventure (in a classics comics crossover moment, I have learnt that on the Monday morning, a Professor of Botany is going to give a manga mushroom lecture - WOW) and I aim to use both drawings and photographs to illustrate what I write about.

So, I'm getting ready to go: what am I packing, you ask?  Well, clearly I will need to be well dressed, so, in goes my...

well, I will need a...

let me tell you that it's  ---



Yes, my beloved Paul Smith shirt.  The two panels above are from a 4-page comic strip story I did in 2004, which I'll get around to posting, one of these years.  Hermann Flaneur is a character of mine who you can learn more about here.  However, man does not live by shirt alone (though some days I am sorely tempted), so I'm going to take at least two more items of clothing.

What might they be, you ask?

Well what else?

My Paul Smith socks.


Heck, I may just complete the quartet and take along my Paul Smith cravat.  

You never know when one will come in handy.

1 comment:

genevieve said...

Bernard I do hope you have read Hanif Kureishi's Black Album - it has a small role for a Paul Smith shirt.
Have a great trip!