Story and Painting by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

Then of course, having spent seventeen years of my life in Brisbane and then eleven in Hakodate, I can tell you this. Small towns have little enclaves of scorching eccentricity. Small towns are where otaku are germinated. Here in Hakodate there are roving hordes of african drummers. Small hives of animation geeks. More classical artists slogging away at their craft than you can put pins on a map. All tucked away quietly where no tourist program would ever think to go.
Small towns are breeding grounds for obsessive excellence. It’s just that you don’t see them, don’t hear of them. These days you’re more likely to know about them if you live in another small town in a completely different part of the world. Tapping signals at each other through the electronic waves.

In Hakodate they have a certificated course about squid, culminating in an examination. It’s called the “Squid Master Course”, or something like that. It’s very popular. But it’s a novelty thing. Anyone who really cares about squid enough to know a squillion things nobody else knows is going to be keeping their heads down, contemptuous of the Squid Master Course’s low standards,  known only to the people who know a squillion things about octopus or flounder.

I hardly remember any more what people knew about in Brisbane. But like Adelaide, Canberra, crazy incredible feats of theatre and music and art flickered intermittently, and if they had enough power to turn into a steady light those people would be sucked up out of the town and find themselves on a street in Sydney or Melbourne, New York or Berlin or London. Where they too would either flounder or learn to suck up to funding bodies.