Traveling to another country and enjoying the ins-and-outs of fumbling through an unknown culture is something few of us are lucky enough to experience at least once. Although most of us tend to remember our time abroad through a folder of pictures on our desktops, Tim Anderson managed to piece together a hilarious novel based on his less-than-ordinary experiences in Japan. Originally from Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, the writer and editor currently lives and works in New York. Between self-publishing and promoting his book while working on new projects, Axiom had the chance to pry into the mind of this upcoming author.
For those of us who have yet to figure it out, who is Tim Anderson?
Tim Anderson is, apparently, a former defensive tackle for the Buffalo Bills. He’s also an artist known for his drawings of traditional Pacific Island sailing canoes, a Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Florida, an oil painter with shows hanging in galleries in Los Angeles, Chicago, and two cities in Germany, and an Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
But if you scroll down far enough on your Google machine screen, you’ll see that Tim Anderson is also the author of the book Tune in Tokyo: The Gaijin Diaries and the writer of the not-award-winning blog [ link ] , the #1 site for folks typing in the search item “gay Speedo blog.” He enjoys playing Angry Birds while taking long walks on the beach and his goal is to see all of the world’s largest statues before he bites it.
Okay, enough of this talking about myself in the third person. I am Tim Anderson and my favorite fried food is deep-fried Snickers Bars. I’m an author and editor in New York, and I play viola in the Brooklyn band, simpleshapes [ link ]. We will shortly be taking over the world, probably.
The latest edition of your book Tune in Tokyo: The Gaijin Diaries just recently celebrated its launch party (congratulations!) at the Wix Lounge [ link ] in New York. How do people who have not had the Japanese experience react to your work? Do you find that most people can relate through other means?
I actually think the book has pretty broad appeal. Of course, if you are interested in Japan—particularly Tokyo—then this book is probably right up your alley. (As long as you don’t have a problem with the gays.) Likewise if you like travel writing and humor. And if you like sexiness, you are in luck, because there’s so much of that. There’s also intrigue and miso soup. So to answer your question, I think even folks who haven’t been to Japan can have fun with this book, because I’m the tour guide, and I know where all the best heated toilets are.
There is no argument that Tune in Tokyo: The Gaijin Diaries is one of the funniest reads on modern life in Japan. Did the project start off as being comical or is that just how things came together?
I certainly didn’t set out to write an earnest, soul-searching memoir of Japan—it’s just not in my DNA to do that. I just wanted to write something fun and relatable. And to tell the stories that were accumulating as my Japan experience continued. Actually, when I first started developing the idea for the book I was convinced that someone else was already writing it, because it was just such a no-brainer to me—with so much incredible material around, how could one NOT write a book? I thought surely someone had the same idea I had. So I felt like I was in a race to get mine done first.
Of course, I was incredibly naïve, because it was an uphill battle getting publishers to warm to the idea of a book about Japan through the eyes of an American—they all thought it had been done to death. (Mistakenly!) But I felt like I was bringing something fresh to the American-in-Japan book—for one thing, I was bringing a gay sensibility to the topic, as well as a particular focus on Tokyo. So after my agent gave up pitching the book to publishers, I decided not to take “no” for an answer, and I self-published it in June 2010. About six months later, by the grace of Buddha, an editor at Amazon Publishing discovered the book and contacted me about bringing it to a larger audience. I played coy for a few seconds before saying, “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Hurry, for the love of God, where do I sign?”
You’ll have to forgive us if we interpreted it wrong, but who is the “sword-wielding mouse” on the cover of your book?
Love this question. A few years ago I was writing a column called “Consumer Hero” for a magazine called The Hatchet in my hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina, and one of the columns was an ode to Japanese advertising. My friend Kristin Matwiczyk [ link ] always illustrated my columns and for this one she created this little Hello Kitty-type mouse character that I totally fell in love with. When I decided to self-publish the book and was coming up with a jacket design concept I had the idea of putting that mouse head over this photo I’d seen of Yukio Mishima [ link ] dressed as a sword-wielding samurai. I did a very rough rendering of that and then had my boyfriend do a master drawing of that. I then Photoshopped and voila: Hello Kitty–type mouse mascot for Tune in Tokyo, hooray!
Your journey to Japan seemed to be purposefully spontaneous. Although the allure of a new foreign country tends to attract a lot of people, what is it about Japan that struck your interest? What made you decide to head back to the States in the end?
I had been teaching English part time at a Berlitz Language Center in Raleigh and most of my students were Japanese professionals and their children, so I just started developing a real interest in the country and the culture the more time I spent with these folks and their families. But of course the main reason I chose Japan is because my favorite show when I was a kid was Space Giants (aka Maguma Taishi) [ link ] and I really wanted to visit the land of Goldar, Silvar, and Gam. (Sadly, I never ran into any of them at the conbini.)
As for why I came back, the main reason was because I had promised my boyfriend that I would. He indulged my wanderlust for two years and the time had come for me to return. Plus, I didn’t want him to divorce me and sue for custody of my cat, Stella. (Gay divorce is always hardest on the pets.) Also, I had really burned out on teaching—I enjoyed it for a long time, but I hit a brick wall after a few hundred thousand lessons.
As you read back on some of the stories you lived, how do they hold up? Have you ever thought about writing a similar style book about your life in New York?
It’s really fun to read back through the stories because they just leave me feeling warm. I had the time of my life in Tokyo, and I treated the writing of Tune in Tokyo as my love letter to the city and all it gave me.
I don’t have a New York book in the works yet, but after I complete my next book, I’ll be working on a collection of travel stories featuring jaunts to Amsterdam, Blackpool, London, Florence, Buenos Aires, Bangkok, and, yes, Tokyo once again.
After moving back to the States, you have returned to visit Japan on occasion. What is it about the country that keeps you coming back for more? Do you see it in a different light having lived there as an English teacher?
I love going back to Tokyo too, among many, many other things, see what the latest insanely popular thing is, as well as to experience once again what prompt subway travel is like. I regret that I never made it to Hokkaido and Kyushu and Okinawa, so I’m always feeling the need to get back to that unfinished Japan business. I’d love to return to Kyoto and Nara, too, because I had wonderful visits there. I saw one of the world’s biggest rats in Kyoto! (Seriously, it was at a pet store and it was the size of a French bulldog.)
It’s funny because in so many ways Japan is such an inscrutable place, but when you live there as an American/westerner, you get used to the inscrutableness and it becomes just a normal part of every day life. You do what you can to understand what’s around you and just have to accept that you won’t ever begin to understand everything and that you will always be, to a certain extent, an outsider. There’s a strange comfort in that. So whenever I go back, in a funny way I feel like I’m returning home. (A home where I’m always hitting my head.) The prodigal gaijin!
When are we going to get the chance to see you on this side of the sea again? Any plans for future writing projects?
I’m absolutely dying to come back to Tokyo again next year. I’d love to be able to do some sort of Tune in Tokyo event there—that would be a dream.
I’m currently at work on another book that is basically a gay, diabetic, new-wave memoir of adolescence in the ’80s. I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when I was 15 and almost died. Hilarious, no? (Seriously, the book is a comedy.)
To read more on Tim Anderson’s adventures in Japan and beyond, make sure to check out his blog site at http://seetimblog.blogspot.com/and to get your own copy of Tune in Tokyo here [ link ] American Amazon Store and [ link ] Japanese Amazon Store.
ありがとうございました！
