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The Santa Fe New Mexican from Santa Fe, New Mexico • Page A007

Location:
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Issue Date:
Page:
A007
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

Friday, October 31, 2008 THE NEW MEXICAN A-7 Monsters: Japan has thousands Penalty: Block must pay $21,000 total Jerome Block letter basically accused the secretary of state of ignoring another primary candidate's paperwork that was "rife with violations." of 'yokai' company that specializes in the translation of comic books and video games. Their work includes the English-language version of Dead or Alive Xtreme 2. They turned to yokai, they said, because they wanted to do original work and because they love them. Since she was a child, Yoda has been reading yokai tales of terror and studying yokai art. Alt traces the roots of Japanese pop culture, including anime, manga and films, back to yokai cards that Japanese children played with in the 1800s.

Their book is a breezy summary of what the average Japanese adult probably already knows about yokai. And what about Slash-Mouth Woman, the one who cuts your face if you are nice and cuts your face if you are not? How do you escape her? "She likes candy," Yoda said. "The best way to escape is to always carry candy, and when she comes near, throw it as far as you can and run like crazy." pop culture, yokai haunt mountains, swamps, subway stations and toilets across Japan. One yokai likes to plunge a large, hairy disembodied foot through the roofs of rich people's houses. Another enjoys eating the livers of unborn children.

A third is made entirely of discarded dinnerware and is more dangerous to himself than to others. While Western ghosts and ghouls tend to surface during the Halloween season, yokai are almost always hanging around. This fall, yokai are featured in a new book, Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide, by the husband-and-wife team of Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt. Yoda, 37, grew up in Tokyo, where she says she spent a good part of her elementary school years devising strategies to avoid being mutilated by one of Japan's best-known yokai, Kuchisake Onna, the Slash-Mouth Woman. This yokai is a shapely, well-dressed, but violently insecure young woman who wears a mask over her monstrously disfigured mouth, which reaches from ear to ear and is bursting teeth.

"First of all, she asks you if she is pretty," Yoda said. "If you say, 'Yes, you're pretty' she's going to cut your mouth just like hers. But if you say she is not pretty, she is going to cut your mouth anyway." While Yoda was debating this horrible conundrum in Tokyo schoolyards, her husband-to-be was growing up in Potomac, where he was desperate to read Japanese comic books. Alt and Yoda met when she was in graduate school at the University of Maryland in College Park and he was working at the U.S. Patent Office, translating Japanese patent applications into English.

He moonlighted translating Japanese video games. At a party, he asked her to help him with the games, and their collaboration soon turned into a marriage. In short order, they moved to Tokyo and formed a successful two-person Continued from Page A-l and "weird." Yokai were tormenting and delighting the Japanese hundreds of years before Halloween chocolates and pumpkin-colored cupcakes showed up in this country's supermarkets. Professional chroniclers of yokai say the spooky creatures are remarkably similar in their folkloric origins and unspeakable powers to the ghosts, zombies, skeletons and assorted night stalkers who have wandered for centuries through the Western imagination. "Anything that is unexplain-able, anything that is scary, anything that is really weird can be considered the doings of a yokai," said Kenji Murakami, author of a yokai encyclopedia and 19 other yofcai-related books.

"We do not have a tradition of Halloween, but I think yokai are perfectly appropriate for Halloween. They help explain the inexplicable, and they are fun." Part myth, part tall tale, part Big Savings With Color Coupons on Sunday in THE SANTA FE NEWMEXICAN Get the whole story. Continued from Page A-l the secretary of state released Thursday. The Democratic nominee for the PRC District 3 seat faces a $21,000 penalty in all, which includes reimbursing the $10,000 and paying $11,000 in civil fines. Much of his letter deals with a $2,500 check campaign treasurer Jacob Martinez wrote on June 9 to San Miguel County Clerk Paul Maez, purportedly as payment for a performance by the county election official's band at a rally that was supposed to have taken place about five weeks earlier, on May 3, during the primary campaign season.

Block reported the check on his July 3 finance report to the secretary of state, the first accounting after the primary of how he spent public campaign funds. But it turned out the performance never took place. The secretary of state says Block violated a statute that says candidates must return within 30 days any money unspent money from the primary election. Block won a six-way primary in June with 23 percent of the vote. He faces Green Party candidate Rick Lass in Tuesday's general election.

Block at first maintained that 75 to 100 people attended the performance. After two members of the band, Wyld Country, said there was no show, Block later admitted that he had lied. In the aftermath, he said he had intended for the band to play at September rally after an earlier cancellation. "I believed that by paying the band in advance for a future performance, I was encumbering the funds properly," he wrote. With his letter, Block included a copy of the check, which is signed to Maez, with the band listed in the memo.

He also included a band invoice dated May 31. There's no evidence of when Maez cashed the check, but the clerk has said he cashed the check immediately and gave the money to Block. Block doesn't specifically mention the $700 he gave to Hillary Clinton to help pay down her multimillion-dollar presidential campaign debt, which the secretary of state also cited in imposing the penalty. This week, the Secretary of State's Office said it also is looking at three more Block expenditures. Block's letter basically accused the secretary of state of ignoring another primary candidate's paperwork that was "rife with violations." He didn't identity the candidate, and efforts to reach Block by e-mail were unsuccessful.

Secretary of state spokesman James Flores declined to comment on Block's letter, saying it is still under review. He said Secretary of State Mary Herrera plans to decide today whether to impose the $21,000 penalty or lower or raise that amount. Flores also declined to say whether Herrera's office is still looking into pursuing a criminal case against Block. He has previously said that all depends on how Block responds in the civil matter. A spokesman for Attorney General Gary King, who last month called the matter a "front-burner" issue, said this week his office is awaiting a secretary of state decision on how to proceed.

Contact Doug Mattson at 986-3087 or dmattson sfriewmexican.com. Did you know we sell tires too? (3HEWE EsE'S? Service PS perennials, trees, shrubs, mulches soils, pottery You NEED to know the TRUTH amid all the bad news from Wall Street www.sfchevy.com 2008 FE The average consumer can get a loan for the purchase of a vehicle. The mortgage banking industry crisis has not "dried up" main street credit. We have 20 area lending institutions looking for automobile loans. Nissan Motor Acceptance Corp.

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