In case anyone wonders what the black shadow thingies are in those panels, I didn’t wanna keep it all white, I finished the comic pretty quickly, and I was bored… I guess you can think of them as ‘emphasis marks.’

Thought I should chime in being that I am officially back from Thailand. Comics are rolling along smoothly once again, and are scheduled all the way through to mid September.

The trip was quite good, we went all over Thailand, saw the major cities, temples, etc. It’s a pretty nice place to visit, but DAMN they have some freaky bugs over there (see above photo, that freak thing was a good 4 inches long). I think I accumulated the largest amount of bites in the smallest amount of time as ever in my life. I even had an ant bite off a portion of my flesh, though he was quickly extinguished by use of the ‘pinch and finger roll’ ninja technique…I really hate bugs.

I have a big old chunk of notes and some good stories from the trip that I need to write out into comics, and I think they’ll be quite good. The question though for that is timing. Primarily I try to keep this comic relevant to Japan, and I don’t think I’ve really covered enough topics to make a month long jump over to Thailand stories, but they’re good enough that I gotta use ‘em. I wonder if I should stroll along the Japan road for now and hold on to Thai, but if I do that I lose that freshness of mind…ho hum, who knows what I will do…

Lately I’ve been feeling the need to post a photo or video with my blog entries, so the above is a side effect of that. I won that ‘rabbit in a monkey suit’ toy from a UFO catcher and snapped his picture in Dainohara Park…

As I had mentioned in an earlier blog post, I am leaving for Thailand tomorrow morning, and I’ll be away from internet communication devices until August 4th. Since that’s an odd mid-week, comics will start again on their regular 5-day schedule from Monday August 11th. Hopefully this little break will give me time to recharge my batteries (heal some of the calluses on my fingers?) and get caught up with writing so that I can keep bringing you all daily comics.

I feel a bit bad ditching out in the middle of a story line that I’ve already finished, especially to leave it on a pretty weak strip…but, oh wells. See you all next month! If you don’t forget to come back…

Sad news today from my little corner of the world. Yesterday, three new kittens were added to our pack of stray cats that live in the parking lot of our building. From the looks of them and since we know which cat is the mother, I’d say they’re about 2 weeks old.

The friendliest kitten among them (pictured above) we found dead early this morning. From what we can tell she was in the street at the wrong time, and couldn’t make it out of the way of traffic. It seems that many of our neighbors were also saddened to find out. I could hear a lot of people talking outside, and the body was recovered quickly.

The rest of today was a downpour of rain with thick clouds blotting out the sun. A very depressing end to the week.

My Wife and I are even more worried about the other two kittens now that this has happened. If anyone knows of an animal adoption agency in Sendai, please let us know.

Sorry to bring all of you down, especially the bait and switch picture of a cute kitten…

Monday marks the end of my “Pirate Week” experiment, so hopefully that was enjoyed.

Thought I should give an update on what’s going on here as it has been QUITE busy. July 4th was celebrated with class here in Japan. A group of Americans (including myself) met at a public park, and proceeded to blow things up, throw exploding ninjas at one another, and tie roman candles to a camel (dubbed the “Roman Camel”). Great fun was had by all, and much alcohol was consumed…FOR AMERICA!

We’ve also booked a trip to Thailand for a summer vacation. We’ll be leaving Sendai and heading for Bangkok on July 27th, and I won’t be updating comics during the trip, but you can bet that my characters will at some point themselves take a trip to Thailand (Who can resist with cities named Bangkok and Phuket? COMEDY).

The 5 day a week comic routine will begin again on Monday August 4th. I had hoped that if I took a cartooning break I could use the time off to finish up some other work (I have a ton of code to monkey out for the website), as well as catch up a bit more on my comic buffer, but I don’t think I’ll be drawing much in Thailand, I’ma ride me an Elephant and pet a tiger.

I will leave you with a small preview of the newest stories. Coming up next: Bob and Nicole visit Sendai Castle, a magical playground of ninjas, samurai, and booby traps! Following shortly after: Bob’s addiction to crane games hits a fever pitch, while Nicole goes wild for purikura! Exc!amat!on Ma!rks!!!

Yo Ho Ho! It’s Pirate Week here on The Life of Bob. For the rest of the week we’ll be doing something a little different with the comics coming up…Pirates!

If this goes over well, I’ll be doing another Pirate Week in a few months. If it doesn’t then meh, you can pretend the pirate ship sank.

Hope you guys enjoy it, regular strips will resume on Monday with a new storyline kicking off on Wednesday…yarrrr.