This sketch was done several years after I left Japan. It was the reproduction of the last picture I took from a place called Bentencho. I called it the ground Zero, since Bentencho was the first place I lived in Japan, and the last one I visited after the explosion of the second Fukushima nuclear plant in March of 2011. Bentencho is a polluted and gray area in Osaka full of small factories that throw small particles to the air. A rare spot in Japan that belongs more to China. But I have to say in Bentencho I was happy, I had good friends there, and people who understood my heart. In Bentencho I was reading all the time, specially science fiction authors like Aldiss, Ray Bradbury or Asimov, even I read there for first time 1984. Bentencho symbol was the Yodo River, a friend of mine and me we went sometimes to this section of the river to see its dark black and polluted waters, smoke tobacco and drink can coffee. For us, It was cool to be in Osaka, the places where parts of Solaris and Blade runner were shot. I spent in Osaka three years, and I called those years my wild times in Osaka. The book about my time in Japan still under construction, maybe still inside the waters of the Yodo river, or polish by China, but one day I will finish it, because there is a great story there.
