Just a gentle reminder to get your tuckuses down to Seattle's public library tonight at 6 for a meeting with two members of the Federal Communications Commission on whether it should loosen media ownership rules. For more info, check out Reclaim the Media.

We're invoking the spirit of Cleveland-area furniture retailers this holiday season by offering you crazy discounts on our beautiful, entertaining books. Trust us, the bibliophiles in your life will love the following:

The Chin Music Collection: All three titles for $40*
* A savings of $31.50 — crazy!

or, for the less fiscally endowed among you who still want to wow a book lover or two, we recommend:

Kuhaku for Kurisumasu
Our baby, Kuhaku & Other Accounts from Japan, for just $15, almost 50% off the $28.50 retail price.

These books make great gifts. And if you buy lots of them via our website, it will all but ensure that we can keep on making more. So, thank you, ahead of time, for supporting us!

If you're in New York City next week, check out Roland Kelts' launch party for his book Japanamerica at The Cutting Room. It sounds like a great bash — music from Gaijin å GoGo, anime installations and free manga. The party runs from 7 to 10 pm next Wednesday.

At least one of the Chin Music team will be there to help Roland celebrate. The book is beginning to get noticed. Here's a strong review that recently ran in the Village Voice.

This blog posting by Geov Parrish got me thinking.

The events of Nov. 30, 1999, played a big role in my family's decision to move to Seattle from Tokyo four years ago. And no, I'm not an anarchist — I'm talking about the events involving the other 69,900 people in the streets of Seattle protesting the WTO on that day. They were an inspiration, and my wife and I hoped they'd spark some sort of movement in the US to push the country to live up to its promises. But then came the 9/11 attacks and the slow, painful plunge of our nation into its current fearful state.

I still hold out hope for Seattle, and this Thursday will give me an indication of whether I'm at all justified in doing so. Two members of the Federal Communications Commission will be in town to take public comment on media consolidation. They'll listen to Seattle denizens from 6 to 9 pm at the downtown library. Anything short of a packed house — snowstorm or not — would be very disappointing. More media consolidation means less local reporting, more lock-step journalism like the sort that got us into Iraq in the first place, and a less informed culture. Ever wonder why your local TV news will report on a horrific car wreck in Oklahoma or an oversized baby born in Alabama? Media consolidation. It's not just about Rupert Murdoch (although, lord knows, we should be worried about him), it's about weekly newspapers getting bought up by one chain, radio stations using the same playlist — it's about boring and misinforming you for profit.

In fact, if that last sentence is really true, then Chin Music Press is the exact opposite of media consolidation ... which is why I need to get back to work. See you Thursday.

I just got word of a very interesting new lit prize for Asian novelists. The Man Asian Literary Prize is the latest effort to promote Asian lit beyond the region; it offers a prize of $10,000 for the winning writer and $3,000 for the winning translator.

So if you are Asian (both a resident and a citizen) and have a novel that has yet to be published in English, you can qualify by submitting an English manuscript before the end of March. Check out the site for more details.

The prize is sponsored by an investment company called the Man Group and the Hong Kong International Literary Festival.

If you're thinking of entering the contest but don't have an English translation of your novel, drop us a line. If we like what you've written, we may be able to help you out. We deal primarily in Japanese, but we can arrange readers for Chinese, Korean and several Southeast Asian languages as well.

I arrived back in Seattle after a whirlwind trip to Tokyo — man, I still love that city — to find this very positive review of Last of the Red Hot Poppas in the Chicago Tribune.

My favorite line is the reviewer's description of First Lady Amelia LaSalle as "a woman who could give Lady Macbeth a fair fight in an evening-gown-and-iron will competition."

This is the biggest publication yet to cover a Chin Music Press release. We're breaking through, little by little.

They came (120+ of y'all); they ate (40 bowls of gumbo in about an hour, plus a slew of other meals); they drank (oohh, my, did they drink 300+ glasses worth); and they bought them books (many, many dozen).

Thanks to everyone who came out last Thursday and made the Tokyo Poppas release event a complete success. A huge thanks to Sanbancho Cafe for being gracious and accommodating hosts. For Kaizan and Nakamura-san for dragging their giant JBL speaker over from Komae and performing a unique 50-minute ambient sax duo (described by one patron as, "Whale Sex Music"). Thanks to Kohiyama-san, the president of Yushin Printing, for providing us with giant blow-ups of 'ole Rex's mug. And thanks to Bruce for flying his nomadic self out here and making the event feel whole!

Sanbancho Cafe was probably the perfect venue for the event. We had as many people show up as we did at the Kuhaku release two years ago, but it never once felt crowded and, perhaps most importantly, we got to really meet and talk with a large number of Japanese writers and editors. Or perhaps most, most importantly, a lot of Japanese folk got to taste some damn tasty gumbo! To which, I send much respect to the Sanbancho Cafe head chef for stretching his culinary legs out and giving this Southern dish a serious go.

All in all a success and we hope to do more of these next year! Lots more to talk about from Bruce's recent trip out here, but for now, here's some more photos:

More photos after the break ...

Being a robot, I am not prone to emotional peaks and valleys. I am steady and clear-headed. But the results of the latest election in the US have made me feel tingly for some reason. My owner says it's because "that punk-ass chump Bush finally got a slap in the face," but, no, for me, it's not that. It's more about the way recent events have come together in my linguistic decoding center and formed names of rock bands. That's what it is. Perhaps you have a band that needs a name? Please use one of these:

Gay Evangelists on Meth

Osama Obama and the Blue Wave

The Frist F**ks

Iranian Women Poets for Donald Rumsfeld

The Nancy Pelosi Project

Thank you for your time. Cletus deshita.

I've long been fascinated with the way Japanese pop culture seeps into the West. And I can think of no better chronicler of this process than Roland Kelts, a gifted writer whose essay "Father Hunters" we plucked from the now defunct Doubletake magazine and resurrected in the pages of Kuhaku. Roland's new book, out later this month, is called Japanamerica, a provocative title that gets quickly to the point: Japanese pop culture has penetrated the American psyche to the point that, in many ways, America is following Japan.

Or so I suppose. I haven't read the book yet but have talked frequently with Roland about Japanese pop culture and its influences. This is a book whose time has come. Can't wait to get my copy.

Oh, and by the way, if you like the book's website, rumor has it that CMP art guru Craig Mod had a little something to do with its design.

The Polling Place Photo Project seeks to advance innovation in citizen journalism by documenting local voter experiences during the U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday, November 7. The goal of all participants is to both engage voters and to document voter experiences at the polling place, harnessing the power of online citizen journalism to build an archive of photographs that capture the richness and complexity of voting in America.

So go, vote and don't forget your finePix.

More info on the project here and here.

Most people don't know that Chicago's nickname comes from the bluster of its politicians and not the velocity of the wind. Many of the characters in Jason Berry's novel, Last of the Red Hot Poppas, should feel quite at home here as Jason kicks off the Midwest leg of his book tour.

Jason will be reading at 6:30 tonight at Kate the Great's Book Emporium (5550 N. Broadway, 773-561-1932). Come join Chicagoans and New Orleans evacuees in the area as Jason reads from his novel and talks about the fictive Governor Rex LaSalle.

Jason will be at Notre Dame tomorrow. He'll be at Columbia College in Chicago on Friday at noon, then at the Quadrangle Club on the University of Chicago campus that evening. He'll wind up this leg of the trip with an appearance at the Call to Action conference, a Catholic network to foster peace and justice, in Milwaukee on Saturday. Hope some of you in the Chicago area can catch him at one of these events.