I ended up corresponding with White Moon, the Chinese woman that did the translation of Hokkaido Green.

And now there is an authorised Mandarin translation of my story, Reading By Numbers.

Given the structure and formatting of the story, it wouldn’t have been the easiest story to translate, but she has managed to translate it and still preserve the story’s hidden message.

http://article.yeeyan.org/view/134824/153390

Another interesting comment about my story, Hokkaido Green:

You’ll sorta understand this feeling when you get older. But it’d be really good if you understood it now so that you never have to.

http://www.vgf.com/forums/mindless-link-propagation/76026-hokkaido-green-short-story.html

You know you’ve made it as a writer when someone in China is pirating your story.

Someone did an unauthorized translation of Hokkaido Green into Mandarin.

http://article.yeeyan.org/view/134824/149206

It’s amusing putting the Chinese into Google and seeing how it comes out in English.

Closed due to bear sightings.

becomes

Bears come and go, here closed.

UPDATE: The translator contacted me and removed the article.

A reading group on Good Reads is discussing Hokkaido Green.

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/431669-november-5-2010-hokkaido-green-by-aidan-doyle

Their previous choice of author was Neil Gaiman.  I’m in good company.

A Metafilter user posted a link to the story and lots of people have commented how much they liked the story.

http://www.metafilter.com/97410/Closed-due-to-bear-sightings

One of the comments compared the story to Terry Bisson’s Bears Discover Fire – one of my all-time favorite stories.  I love the mood of that story and I tried to capture a similar feel in Hokkaido Green.

Another comment mentions Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational.  It’s a fascinating book that examines why people do the things they do.  This article talks about one of the experiments mentioned in the book – the fact that even though it will keep them more to keep their options open, people in general are reluctant to close off choices.  The closing doors experiment did stick in my mind.

Other people have commented on the theme of experiencing events versus recording events.  I’ve travelled a lot and I enjoy taking photos – it helps me remember my experiences.  Places where I’ve been and haven’t been able to take photos, often my memories of the event have faded compared to places where I took photos.  But I’m also aware of people that are too busy taking photos (videos are even worse) to actually experience the event firsthand.

Perhaps the worst example I saw of this was a tourist at Versailles who didn’t even walk into many of the rooms in the palace.  He just stuck his camera into the room and took a photo without seeing what he was photographing.

This tension of experiencing versus recording is also a conflict that can arise for writers, particularly journalists.  Writers are often observers.  If you get involved yourself, that can change the story.

I’ve been getting quite a few new readers visiting my web site after having read Hokkaido Green, my story on Strange Horizons.

I visited Hokkaido in the summer in 2007.   It has some really beautiful places.  Otaru and Sapporo are both nice cities and Arashiyama has a great zoo.

The hot spring waterfall I described in the story is a real place.  It’s in Shiretoko, in the north-east of Hokkaido.

The five lakes is a popular place to go for a walk.alk.

When I visited some of the trails were closed due to bear sightings.

I didn’t encounter any bears offering secrets though.

Japan Guide Shiretoko Travel Guide