Unlike the “keitai novelists” in this booming pop-fictional form in Japan, I'm a “literary” guy, translated by Motoyuki Shibata, Japan's foremost translator of contemporary American fiction.My books have a nice following in Japan.

I'll read the original English versions of mini-tales I wrote specifically for NTT DoCoMo's "i-mode" cell-phone platform. 100,000 readers accessed the stories before Shinchosha, a leading literary and keitai-fiction publisher, brought them out as a book, I-mode Keitai Stories, which only exists in Japan.

I'll also read revised versions of some of the stories included in my latest American book for weird & eerie kids, Yet Another NASTYbook (HarperCollins, 2007).

Here then are story excerpts from both books (more in Brain Flakes archives).

From I-mode Keitai Stories:

MEANT FOR EACH OTHER

You make a date through the Internet. You meet the girl for the first time at a sake bar. She gulps down a whole bottle of sake by herself. “Okay,” you think. “I guess we know what sort of problem she has. But man, is she cute.”

After two more bottles, the girl falls asleep on her bar stool. “That’s our sweetheart,” grins the bartender, shaking his head at the girl’s snores.

“You mean you know her?” you inquire, uneasily.

“Sure, she’s here every night, with a different guy,” says the bartender. “Whoopee, whoopee.” He winks.

“Really,” you reply. You eye the unconscious girl slumped headfirst on the bar counter. And you decide no matter how cute she is, this first date will also be the last, thank you very much.

And this is how you two meet, you and the love of your life. Four months later you get married and move into a lovely apartment together, where you start to raise a large and happy family.

How you get from point A to point B is a long, complicated, heart-warming, and in many ways wonderfully unbelievable story. But alas it requires someone with far greater narrative powers than mine to properly relate.

WOOLLY

A man goes for a swim in a creek. When he gets out of the water, he sees a sheep standing on the bank, watching him. The man looks at the sheep. The sheep looks at the man. Slyly, the man smiles. He checks up and down the creek. There’s no one in sight. The man steps toward the white, woolly mammal. “Here sheepy, here woolly,” he says softly. The sheep backs up slowly into the bushes, looking confused by the state the man’s in. But the sheep is only faking.

Later, the man dresses by the creek. The sheep lolls next to him, watching him, warm-eyed. The man combs his hair and says, looking down the creek in the direction of his off-road vehicle, “So that was a lot of fun. Maybe I’ll be back up this way sometime. I’ll get in touch.” He puts his comb back in his pocket and gives the sheep a quick pat. He gets to his feet. “Okay?” he says, dusting off his pants.

The sheep lies perfectly still and watches the man picking his way awkwardly down the creek into the distance. “Yeah sure, bud, I believe you,” it thinks.

EDGAR ALLAN POE RICE BALL(MEDIEVAL LANDSCAPE)

Disease strikes a distant town. The victims develop loathsome sores all over their bodies; at the same time they’re maddened by extreme lascivious impulses. Down street after street door after door is splashed with a crude red cross: inside, the lunatic disfigured coupling rages on nonstop—men, women, even children—until exhausted dawn, until death.

In the hills beyond town, a monk makes his way along a darkening road. He chews a stale rice ball for his supper as he goes, so as not to interrupt his march. His sandaled feet move one in front of the other inexorably. His staff leaves a trail of dots behind him in the dusty distances. At last he comes around the side of a hill and he stops. The prospect of the dim town spreads before him. A look of disturbance moves over his face, as he slowly chews the last of his rice ball. Even here the uneasy wind carries the grisly minglings of lamentation and carnal grunting The monk becomes watchful; he looks uneasily around him and grips his staff in both hands. Two figures are moving feverishly in the darkness ahead. They seem to prance toward him, half-naked, hideous, moaning hoarse endearments. The monk calls to his god as he raises his staff and prepares to meet them.

from Yet Another NASTYbook:

HOUNDSTOOTH

A girl named Keri, so cool and full of fun you’d want her for your friend, suddenly becomes ill. She lies in bed wasting away. Ominous black-and-white patterned marks appear on her skin. The terrible diagnosis is made: houndstooth-check poisoning. “More than others, Keri went overboard for this new craze for houndstooth,” murmurs the doctor. “And it will cost her her young life.” He shows her distraught parents the x-rays: houndstooth has invaded Keri’s bodily tissues, her vital inner organs; soon even her lovely big blue eyeballs will be houndstooth! Her parents clutch each other, wailing.

At home the tragic girl sighs through her houndstooth-checked lips, on her houndstooth pillow, under her houndstooth sheets, by her houndstooth-papered wall, under her houndstooth-decorated ceiling. Houndstooth curtains stir in the window, trendy in their deadly way. Keri’s friends gather around her bed, somber at the fate of one who will die simply from being so devoted to style.

“But the silly thing is, houndstooth isn’t really cool anymore!” mutters a buddy of Keri’s younger brother, who happens to be visiting. This remark provokes outrage. The buddy is forced to apologize, before being banished from the room.

But he knows he’s right. Corduroy is the new coolest thing, just ask him. Or go after him and pry a look under the big bandage on his neck—where the first fatal corduroy markings have already appeared.

NEW WORLD

A guy decides to invent nature. That’s right: First he invents the tree. Then he invents the moustache, why not? Then he goes even further and invents hot chocolate.

After this he takes a break and just sits around for a while, drinking from his new mug and thinking things over.

When he gets back to work, it’s with a splash. In one stroke he invents the whole line of portable things: portable TV’s, DVD players, boomboxes; portable toilets for use during parades; portable plastic swimming pools for backyard fun.

And he confides to his friends his ultra-secret ambitions—the plans he’s been hatching late at night in his notebooks—those pet projects of his inner vision that will dazzle the civilized world beyond its wildest dreams!

His friends smile faintly and stare down at their sneakers. They arrange a meeting among themselves; they’re worried about the guy, very worried. They wonder if he isn’t losing his marbles! They decide to seek out a wise counselor, for advice. The counselor doesn’t exist quite yet, though, and they pace about anxiously, waiting for the guy to create him.

BLOSSOMS

A girl discovers a blossom growing out of the side of her head. She touches it in disbelief. She tries to wiggle it off; but it hurts. So she stops. In the drowsy moonlight of her bedroom, the blossom’s scarlet petals nod out through her hair-do. And then they start to swell, heavily, pulling her head over to the side. The girl flaps, and struggles to her feet; but her cries are muffled by the sudden green embrace of an encircling vine. More vines topple the girl onto her bed. A carpet of gorgeous flora swarms over her, drowning her pajama-ed figure in a swarming riot of growth and scent, there in the moonlight of her bedroom. This is the daydream of a young florist, dozing in his flower shop. The girl is a customer of his. Next time she comes in, he works up the courage to shyly present her with a lovely red rose, for free. But she just looks at him, and sniffs, and says, “No thank you.”