“Drawn to Japan – A Manga Adventure”, is a 12 minutes funny introduction to ten Japanese particularities: (1) exchanging business cards, (2) hot springs, (3) toilets, (4) riding the bullet train, (5) the tea ceremony, (6) the Japanese subway, (7) food and (8) how to eat it, (9) the samurai, and (10) karaoke. Oh, and manga. In fact, the whole program is centered on a basic cartoon character named Harvey, a “nezumi” or mouse, who just failed a cheese commercial and is tired of sleeping under his creator’s bed. Harvey wants a job in a manga story and his creator, Charles Danziger, thinks that Mimei, a known Japanese manga artist, might help him, so they end up meeting.
Mimei will give “Haey” (no “r” and no “v”, because they don’t exist in Japanese) a chance, if he passes the “All Nippon Manga Mouse Exam”, which consists of ten challenges, corresponding the ten Japanese particularities that this short story amusingly introduces.
The rat failed (1) exchanging business cards, because he didn’t receive Mimei’s card – her “soul” – with both hands and a respectful bow, or at least he picked his teeth with it… Harvey loved the (2) hot springs naked bath sessions, scoring a 9. He then got confused with “no paper” and too many buttons, in the (3) Japanese toilet, making a splash worth a 3. Things went from bad to worse, when he failed the (4) bullet train, leaving at 12:32 sharp, thinking that “trains never leave on time”, like in most countries.
The (5) tea ceremony was a sweet disaster, because Mr. Danziger offered him some sugar, which is wrong to mix with Japanese green tea.
Being a small mammal, he scored an 8 on the (6) subway “sardine like” experience, but couldn’t handle the chopsticks for the (7) Japanese food test, finding them only worthy for picking ear wax. He made his point when he questioned how would humans eat if they had to use proportionally big poles?, but Harvey was too nervous and that showed when he tried some FOO-goo and thought to have eaten the blowfish’s liver and been poisoned, because he felt a symptomatic “tingling” that can also happen with spicy food, in general – which was the case. He scored a 4.
On (8) he knew he should eat slowly and politely, but the Japanese noodles were so delicious that he devoured them noisily, which is surprisingly OK in Japan – that was a 10! That (9) samurai performance and his deep knowledge on the way of the Japanese warrior, showed as he mentioned “Tom Cruise as the last samurai” and bragged about his own black belt, worth a funny 9.
Harvey’s (10) karaoke exam was OK just enough, with a push from Ryu Goto, the violinist. In no time Harvey was in a manga story and receiving hundreds of job proposals!
This was an imangaginative story, effective in highlighting some Japanese ways in a very short time.
