Joseph Simurdiak2020年11月12日5 分THE LORD OF MOUNT MIWAby Joseph Simurdiak (The following story is an adaption of an ancient Japanese legend recorded in the 8th Century text Kojiki: The Record...
Joseph Simurdiak2020年8月26日15 分SUMMER: THE SEASON OF GHOSTSI. The Gruesome Swelter Summer is easily Japan’s most brutal season—at least in the Kanto region where I live. Folks who endure winter up...
Joseph Simurdiak2020年8月12日5 分ICHINOMIYA: A REFLECTIONThe past five years… no chapter of my life has ever gone by so fast. My time as an English instructor on The JET Programme has concluded,...
Joseph Simurdiak2020年6月19日4 分MASSACRE AT HARA-JO (SPRING JOURNEY V)On Good Friday I crossed the sea to Nagasaki Prefecture, then hiked north up the coast. At night I reached the seaside ruins of Hara Cast...
Joseph Simurdiak2020年5月26日3 分TOMIOKA CASTLE (SPRING JOURNEY IV)Tomioka Castle lies on the northern end of the Amakusa Islands. I had planned to continue the trek on foot, hoping to walk the entire rou...
Joseph Simurdiak2020年5月22日3 分TYRANNY, REBELLION, AND SIGNS OF THE APOCALYPSE (SPRING JOURNEY III)If you were a Doomsday prophet in the late-1630’s Japan, you’d have had an easy time making your case. Those years were plagued with terr...
Joseph Simurdiak2020年5月20日2 分THE AMAKUSA ISLANDS (SPRING JOURNEY II)The Amakusa Islands don’t get many foreign visitors. Despite their beauty, they are a very quiet and remote region of Japan. Yet the view...
Joseph Simurdiak2020年5月19日2 分THE MARTYRS OF NAGASAKI (SPRING JOURNEY I)(The following post - the first in a series of five - comes from my travel journal detailing a journey I took through southwestern Japan ...
Joseph Simurdiak2019年10月15日10 分A CONVERSATION WITH PRICE COUNTY REVIEW(Following the awards at Killer Nashville, the Price County Review ran an article on my award, my writing background, and my upcoming nov...
Joseph Simurdiak2019年10月3日9 分KILLER NASHVILLE, PART 2: THE CLAYMORE AWARD“Just keep your expectations realistic,” my father told me as we prepared our trip to Nashville. “Who knows, you might actually win this ...
Joseph Simurdiak2019年9月30日4 分KILLER NASHVILLE, PART 1: FINALISTFor a first-time author, the literary world can seem a frightening, hyper-competitive place. It’s tough enough writing, revising, and com...
Joseph Simurdiak2019年6月3日7 分NARAAmid soaring temple pagodas, countless bursts of cherry blossoms, and herds of deer that rove among yards, parks, and even the streets, a...
Joseph Simurdiak2019年5月16日6 分THE NINJA HEARTLANDS: VISITING KOGA AND IGAIga and Koga. The names have a shadowy, almost mystical connotation as the twin heartlands of the ninja. Supposedly, as the stories go, t...
Joseph Simurdiak2019年5月12日2 分NOJUKUThere comes a point during many of my travels—usually when I’m huddled under an umbrella beneath a tree branch in a sheeting rain, or shi...
Joseph Simurdiak2019年2月26日2 分TOKYO COWBOYSAs someone from a small, rural Midwestern town, I’ve found Tokyo to be a veritable jungle of new adventures, experiences, and opportuniti...
Joseph Simurdiak2019年1月28日3 分IT SHOULD NOT BE EASYOn the wall of my room I have a printed page with a quote from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a quote that jumped out at me the very first ...
Joseph Simurdiak2018年12月18日2 分SYLVAN SHADOWSOne of Japan’s peculiar delights is the seeming prevalence of quiet, serene, out-of-the-way temples and shrines, hidden in the nooks and ...
Joseph Simurdiak2018年11月13日3 分PERFECTIONISM: SOME BRIEF THOUGHTSSomewhere in the midst of writing my novel, I reached a point where I could barely proceed. I’d hit writer’s block, though perhaps not in...
Joseph Simurdiak2018年11月4日2 分A MONTH WITHOUT GODSThough I was born in summer, I’ve always been an autumn child at heart. The poetry of fall lies in its distinct melancholy—that time when...
Joseph Simurdiak2018年10月22日3 分ON RESCUING A BOOK FROM A TSUNAMIOf all the things that can jolt a person awake in the dim early hours of the morning, a tsunami warning has to be one of the least pleasa...