Tired of Japanese people thinking I'm christian

As an atheist and anti-religion person (not that I say anti-religion and not anti religious people, because I have nothing against them) it truly bugs me every time people assume that I am a christian.

When I first came to my new school one of my classmates told me that they don't believe in god or a life after this so they really wanna do whatever they want with their life as to not have any regrets about it. I told them that "Oh, I am also an atheist!" and they were like: "Huh? Really? I thought everyone from over there where you live were religious."
I told them that Sweden, where I am from, is the most non-religious country on earth with around 90% of the population being atheist/agnostic/non-religious. Their answer: "Oh, I thought Japan was the most non-religious country."

What? Seriously? No way José.

This Tuesday, the teacher I mentioned in a previous post, had on their list of things that too often appear in students manga: angels. They gave a short description of how people usually draw manga-angels now-o-days and then proceeded to ask me:
"Where you live there are lots of churches right?"
Me: "Uh, I guess, idk."
Teacher: "So there must be lots of angels right? How do they look?"
Me: "Uhm, no I haven't seen any angels to be honest." (Cuz even if there are churches in Sweden they usually don't come with any angels, unlike in Italy for example)
Teacher: "Oh, really? But your country is chatolic, right?"
Me: "No, definitely not."

Really! Not just christian but even chatolic x_x.

If you can even call Sweden a christian nation it's of the protestant division. There is a big difference.
Though I don't think it's fair to call Sweden a christian nation since almost no one is a christian. We should just call it an atheist nation if you wanna be like that. Or just, "we want critical thinking not religion-nation-plz".

When you meet a Swede, if you have to assume something about their religion, you should assume that they have none. Because you have a 90% chance of being correct in that assumtion.
While the assumtion that we are christians is most likely dead wrong.

Not even my grandparents are religious. Marriage is not something that everyone does in Sweden, and most people who do it, don't involve a church in it.

I don't wanna hear everyones suprise anymore when I tell them I'm an atheist. I just wish people had a clue about the non-religious countries aswell. I mean, take any country and most people can tell you what religion they have in that country. But can they tell you any countries with pretty much no religion? I don't think so, because they don't teach you that in the religion class at school. I think they should though, because atheism is just growing and growing as people become more educated and stuff (lol).

Sorry for rant, but rly, it's my blog. I can write w.e I want. ^^

In Japan there is "homo" and there is "normal"

So in English we commonly call heterosexuals "straight" and homosexuals "gay".

In Japan tho they call gay -> homo and straight -> normal ...

Hmm, I see something a little off with that.

I've read about this before on the internet but never heard it with my own ears until yesterday when one of our teachers made a list of manga ideas they didn't want to see anymore because they are so common.
One point on the list was about Shonen-Ai (boys love manga) which the teacher just referred to as Boizu (boys) so I wasn't really sure what she was talking about first. She said that you shouldn't write a manga where you force the "normal"(straight) guy together with the "homo"(gay) guy, because that doesn't happen in real life.

"Normal guy? So you are saying the gay guy isn't normal?? Oh, now I remember, that is just how Japanese people say "straight"". It was a bit of a confusing moment for me.

I didn't get the vibe that my teacher is anti gay people, this is just the word a lot of Japanese people use. We can only wait and hope that they come up with a better word, I guess.

Studing manga in Japan - Manga making process

 (Warning for awful picture quality in this post..)

I've been very busy lately and I still am but I have been drawing for 6 hours today and my hand hurts, I need a break. So I decided to make this post giving an attempt at explaining how a manga is made (atleast this is the process at my school).

When I decided to study manga I didn't even know what I was going to study! I had no idea how a manga was made, so everything was new for me starting the school I am have now been attending for almost a year.

Right now I am drawing my second manga of the year, it is a 28 page story and an adaptation of a manga I draw many years ago! It's actually my third adaption of the same manga, so in another post I just want to show you my improvement by uploading some pages from all 3 different versions, lol!

Anyway, let's get to it.

When you have an idea for what you wanna write/draw you draw a rough draft a "Neemu" that you then show to the teacher. If the teacher says it's ok, you can continue on to drawing the real thing on a big, thick paper called "manga you genkouyoushi" (google translate said genkouyoushi is called manusscript paper in English, but these papers are specially made to be used for comics etc).
Most of the time though, the teacher will give you a lot of pointers and have you change the story a bit before you are allowed to continue.
Some people start with just a written "script" that they show the teacher before they make a neemu.

That way if the teacher doesn't like your story, you don't have to redraw anything you rewrite it a bit and then move on to drawing.


 This was my neemu, last pg                                      This is the same page on the genkou

(Click on the pics to make them bigger)





On the genkouyoushi you draw your final draft in pencil and then show it to the teacher, who will tell you what to correct. After correcting everything you show it to the teacher once more and if they say that it's okey you can continue on to inking and putting on tones.

Page I inked (not done yet tho)

For inking you use dip pens with black ink. There are several different types of pen tips you can use, some of the common ones are: Marupen, G-Pen, Sajipen, Tamapen, etc. They are all good for different things. Marupen, for example, for drawing thin lines, and G-pen for really thick ones.

Big one: Tamapen, Small: Marupen

There are lots of other things that you will need aswell, like white color and brushes to use with it (forgot to include it in picture), white to cover mistakes, a "brush pen" to color big areas black, blue pencil if you dont want to make your genkou dirty, cutter to cut tones, "French curve" ruler, etc.

After you are done inking and making everything you want to be black black, its time to put on tones to get the different types of grey. Tones are pretty expensive, one paper is about 280 yen if it's cheap!
It's this thin seethrough paper(?) that you can cut out and plaster onto your manga pages as you please.

Some of my half-used tones

When you have inked everything and put on all the tones, you again show it to the teacher and if it gets an ok you go copy that manga and on the copies you glue the text on that you wrote on your computer using Adobe Illustator (atleast that's what we did) and printed out, in the speech bubbles, headlines etc. You also have to draw the "tonbo" (register marks??) on each page to the people who print it will know where it should be cut.

A page from my last manga (aka my first real no ever), inked and with tones

Done! Finally! Yes! That took forever (srsly it might seem easy now to draw manga but it takes a long time)!

Give that shit to the teacher and get it published in the school manga! In real life you send it in to a publisher to get it published in a magazine like Shonen Jump, Ribbon or w.e if you are lucky.

That's it! Well, I hope you learned a little bit about manga making from this! (If not.. I need to do something else with my life) Cya!

illuminate me with your illumination!