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Happy New Year! Wishing you a happy, healthy & prosperous 2008!

Another year has gone by…most of it a blur. Thankfully my family and myself are healthy and busy…too busy. But that is good, keeps us out of trouble.

I am still working at the design studio. This month the city opens a new creative center, a kind of SoHo for creative business. And in February is the annual design festival here. Promises to be good with guests like industrial designer Michael Young, character & Flash design company FuriFuri company and more. Now only if we can survive the preparation of it! so much to do…so little time.

New year’s resolutions include every resolution I didn’t honor last year – write more! draw more! travel more! write more! and write more! did I say write more?

May this year be great. My thoughts are always with you.

明けましておめでとうございます。今年もよろしくお願いします。

また１年があっと言う間に終わりました。ありがたく、家族皆が健康的で充実な仕事をしています。忙しい…忙しすぎ…だがそれが良い。暇だと悪いことをしちゃうからだ。

私はまだデザイン会社で勤めて、また今月に市が新しいクリエーティブセンターを開館します。デザインなどのクリエーティブ産業のためのSOHO見たいな施設です。そして２月にまた毎年行うデザインフェスティバル、SCVF,があります。今年も面白そう、工業デザイナーマイケルヤングやキャラクターデザインのフリフリカンパニーなどが来てくれます。ただ準備で疲れすぎてしまうことが心配です。やることがいっぱい、時間がない！

今年、も、もっと書くように、もっと描くように、もっと旅するように、もっと書くように（何回も言わないと…）頑張ります。

皆さん、今年がとても良い年になりますように。それが一番の願いです。
これからもよろしくお願いします。

I have a love-hate thing for people. People can be the most annoying and spiteful things on this planet, making me want to become a hermit and lose all contact with human kind.
But then, I have the privilege of knowing some of the kindest and inspiring people.

One lovely person recently is my friend Haru whom I met today. She just quit her job at city government to start a life coaching career, Coaching Garden (japanese only). While it is becoming more common in Japan, people here don’t usually quit a stable job of guaranteed employment–even if it is an unsatisfying one. Working in a collaborative manner to help people grow, she has found her path and is pursuing it with purpose and joy. I am so proud of her.

Nothing like getting oneself to eat better than going through photos of yourself.
Winter…well MANY winters…of jobs which I sit most of the day in front of a computer and my hardwired DNA have not been kind. Time to start watching what I eat, so for lunch I present:

From top left we have spinach and veggies in a sesame vinaigrette, a rice ball with azuki beans and at the bottom fried fish. No it isn’t diet food, but rather well balanced for a weekday quickie lunch bought on the spur of the moment.

Great thing about Japan is that it really isn’t hard to eat healthy. I sometime shudder at the thought of how large I would be if I lived in the US all these years instead.

Old habits are hard to change. I never was good at writing letters and I am still not good at it…even in blog form.

Valentine’s Day is old news, I know, but I can’t let this year go by without saying thanks to my man. He bought me roses! Now, any American female is going “but that is not anything too special, it is Valentine’s Day. But you see, in Japan things are reversed.

Valentine’s Day in Japan has women buying gifts of chocolate for the men in their life…true love and those they just want to get in good graces with. There is the “honmei-choco” or true feelings chocolate and there is the “giri-choco” or indebted chocolate, usually given to male coworkers and bosses.

Unfair! you may say, but the men are then indebted to give back chocolate on White Day on March 14th.  Celebrated in Japan and Korea, it was started by some ingenious Japanese marketing. If this return gift is for honmei-choco, then it better be way more expensive than the price of the chocolate given by the gal…otherwise the relationship could be in danger.

Personally, I never could get into the giri-choco thing, but dutifully go along with giving chocolate from the group of women at work (we’re usually outnumbered 3 to 1 so it can get hard on the pocketbook). And so I have always tried to instill in our marriage the western idea of Valentine’s Day, preferably centered around the man giving the gift.

And this year without having to give too many hints about romance and what-not, he came through. Besides having a dozen stemmed red roses, he also had a whole box of rose buds which are now decorating our living room and bathroom. And he thought that up all by himself. I am so proud.

Happy New Year!

another year has gone by and another resolution was left unfulfilled.
ok, this year…I will keep up this blog…I will not find excuses to put it off…discipline, yes, this is the year of discipline.
So to begin, I send you all my new year’s card for 2007. This year I played with Japanese text – it says a common new year greeting used here, ” Happy new year. Thank you for everything over the past year and for the the year to come.” (in essences at least).

Saturday we went to the Keyaki French Festival but unfortunately the rain gods decided to pick on us. Cloudy with rain off and on, it didn’t make for the best festival or picture-taking weather. There was a lovely accordian player who played many classic French songs. It helped to liven up a dreary Saturday.

With only a couple days left of complete freedom, my other half and I decided to go to a movie. “Last Days” is LOOSELY based on Kurt Cobain from Nirvana who killed himself at a much too young of age. We made the mistake of expecting insight, even a totally biased one, on the last days of his life.

Wrong! Warped is more like it. Though they claim it is only inspired by him, the promotion of it speaks otherwise. As we are at an age where we, ahem…, were around and experienced his impact on our generation, it was quite the disappointment. Even as a story, it didn’t make me care.

I will say there was a really good scene with the main character singing a song that was the closest to capturing the isolation and frustation he must have felt.

3 1/2 good minutes out of 110.

Now, I know what you have been thinking…already given up on the blog…knew it wouldn’t last…yadda yadda….

But really, I do have a good excuse for not writing. First I must back up a bit.

In April, I ended a 7-year CIR job (coordinator for international relations-essentially I helped with anything related to English or foreigners) at city hall. I was going to catch up on things and enjoy the unemployed life as long as the bank account would allow while preparing myself for a career more focused on design and communication. As everything in Japan seems to be focused around Tokyo, and me wanting to keep my base in Shizuoka, I figured the only option for me was freelance. Even though freelance work is unstable and learning how to market myself would be essential, the idea of working in my pajamas when I wanted did sound good.

But then all my plans changed…

I was introduced to a design company based in Shizuoka City who works on a local and international level with designers, companies and artists. Their design work ranges from print to web to even commercials; they produce multimedia art festivals, modern art shows and do non-profit work promoting design in the community. Their international network had grown to the point where they needed a native English speaker who knows design to join their staff full-time.

Me, me, me…!!!!

Design, art, cross-cultural communication & exchange…everything I want to do. I think we were made for each other (ok, the international business trips and my own mac laptop was also a big bonus!).

Work officially starts in June but I have been doing translations almost everyday for them already. That and hurridly finishing up other projects (been designing a bilingual map for the international association here) has meant that the blog has been idle.

But from now on I will have lots of new and hopefully exciting experiences to share.

On a different note, this weekend in Shizuoka is the Keyaki France Festival. Lots of music, food, and most importantly wine, will be available in the Marui & 5J department stores area. If the rain gods cooperate, tables will also be set up so people can relax in the French atmosphere.