About me
A twenty-something male currently living in the North-East of England. Full-time employed and part time nerd with mixed feelings about both. Writes About pages in the third person because he’s uncomfortable with talking about himself at length. Interests include film and television, music, photography, science and history. Procrastinates over recording an album and writing that bestselling novel he promised himself he’d write. Visited Tokyo in May 2009, returned in September 2011 and intends to visit again. Also frequently online at the following places:
About the blog
物の哀れ, or ‘mono no aware’, was chosen as the name for this blog because it’s a concept that is Relevant To My Interests but one that can’t be explained by a single-phrase English definition. It’s a place for me to set out my thoughts on Japanese popular culture I’ve experienced and discuss said Japanese pop culture stuff with like-minded people; I’ve given up on writing posts that are clear-cut ‘review’ or ‘editorial’. It runs on a self-hosted installation of the WordPress publishing platform. The current design and layout are a self-modified version of the TwentyEleven standard.
Banner images
- Shiki Ryougi (from Kara no Kyoukai). Source: Pixiv
- Akari (from 5 Centimeters Per Second). Dir. Makoto Shinkai
- Ginko and Tanyu (from Mushishi). Source: Pixiv
- Reki (from Haibane Renmei). Artist: Yoshitoshi ABe
- Hikari Mitsushima (in Love Exposure). Dir. Sion Sono
- VF-1 Valkyrie (from Super Dimensional Fortress Macross). Artist: Hidetaka Tenjin
- Mono performing live. Source: HearJapan.com (dead link)
- Rainbow Bridge, Tokyo. Photo taken in September 2011, viewed from Odaiba
The individuals and groups that fuel my interests and have my utmost respect include the following, in no particular order apart from the alphabetical:
Yoshitoshi ABe, Hideaki Anno, Inio Asano, Boom Boom Satellites, Mamoru Hosoda, Yoko Kanno, Yuki Kajiura, Shoji Kawamori, Takeshi Kitano, Satoshi Kon, Akira Kurosawa, Mass of the Fermenting Dregs, Takashi Miike, Hayao Miyazaki, Mono, Haruki Murakami, Kinoko Nasu, Makoto Shinkai, Maaya Sakamoto, Sion Sono, Tenmon, Naoki Urasawa, Yoji Yamada and Yasuhiro Yoshiura.
Hey there,
Back in the old days we had a link exchange between my crappy site (Awesomely Shitty) and your far better site. This was on your old The End of the World blog. It wasn’t until recently that I realized you moved to a new site. I am really glad that you are still blogging. I sort of dropped off the earth for a while there, and wasn’t keeping up with other blogs. Anyway, I was hoping you could link to my site again? I will update my link to your new site. Sorry to contact you this way, but I wasn’t able to find an email address or other contact information. Feel free to delete this comment whenever you’re done with it.
http://awesomelyshitty.wordpress.com/
Thanks,
BrikHaus
Hello there. I’m not sure if you’re on this often, but I would like to tell you that I enjoyed reading about your thoughts on Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica, and I will quote your frank description of the anime in my thesis. Thanks :)
Hello,
Recently we visited your website and I found http://mononoaware.concretebadger.net/ extremely helpful, so just a quick thank you on that note. We would like to place one text link advertisement on your website or publish a guest post.
Text Link Ad: Our text link ad will have 5-6 sentences and 1 link. We want to place the ad on the main page only and not site wide.
Guest Post: The guest post would offer a very informative content to the visitors of your blog and will have one link pointing to our website.
About our school, we offer various film related courses such as game design, animation, photography, acting from our New York and Los Angeles locations. We look forward to your reply and the opportunity to work with you.
Anjum Bhardwaj
Director SEO
New York Film Academy
https://www.nyfa.edu/
e. anjum@nyfa.edu