Hello stranger.

No, I’m not giving up the mumble. Just a bit too busy living life to write about it. In the past, after a few days of not writing I would find myself with a burning desire to share stuff – but with the arrival of Twitter, and now all these other creative projects I’m involved in, I find that the thirst for sharing is constantly quenched.

But I absolutely no intention of abandoning the mumble. It’s my record of my life – vital for the movie that’s coming out in 2040.

I released another episode of Japan Podshow last week – a music video special recorded at a Shibuya bus stop. That was a promo for Emily and Serey, two enourmously talented musicians who are just at the very start of their careers. In fact, I went along to their first performance as C Cedille last Saturday, and was absolutely spellbound by their performance. Beautiful original songs, but a couple of great covers too – notably Radiohead and Kings of Convenience (one of my all-time favourite groups).

I believe that C Cedille are going to be very popular. They have the talent, and an established following (albeit for other reasons).

This week also marks the start of a new adventure for George and I – a weekly slot on the Tokyo Metropolis Magazine podcast – Metpod. This is a big deal for us as they have thousands of downloads every week. We had a lot of fun coming up with our characters – these will be developing as the weeks go by and we figure out what does and doesn’t work. I’ll put a link here when the first episode goes live.

Oh, and George and I had an amazing time at Cirque du Soleil – if you ever have the chance do go see them – we’re going to go back with cameras and make a mini-documentary; watch out for that!


Our company moved offices at the weekend. The new office is far nicer than the other one, which was a horrible dark corridor wedged between other buildings. The new office has windows on three sides, I have a much larger desk, and the local area is a lot more interesting than Google Street View had me believe. In fact, not 5 minutes down the road there’s a really wide river – well, more a canal between reclaimed islands. The banks have grass slopes – it’s a great place to eat a lunchbox. These things help counteract some of the negativity I feel connected with my job.

Yesterday was quite different from the usual routine – Myself and a member of the sales team headed out to another manmade peninsula jutting out into Tokyo Bay to visit a factory owned by one of Japan’s electronics giants. It was fascinating to see the factory floor – great vats of liquid with dry ice pouring out, huge turbines waiting to be loaded onto lorries – and a lot of staff who weren’t as interested in learning English as we would have liked. My job was to give a ‘performance’ that would encourage them to consider studying English – I told them my learning-japanese-and-how-it-changed-my-life story. I haven’t spoken in Japanese in front of that many people for quite a while (and they weren’t exactly a receptive audience), but found the experience pretty rewarding.


In the evening I met up with Bruce Nachbar, a movie producer from LA moving over to Tokyo later in the year. He has some really interesting projects up his sleeve and I look forward to his return. Many thanks to him and his family for the delicious meal!


Well, I’m out of time. Lunch is over.

Basically everything’s going really well. I’m studying japanese for an hour a day again, and making packed lunches every night. *Twinkle* is doing very well. Working hard. The spring weather is beautiful. My pineapple is happy in its new pot.

TTFN

2 Responses

  1. I’m glad to hear that the location is better than anticipated, and especially that the new office is better than the old one. The old one always seemed like two little boxes connected by a tunnel. If you have time, I’d love to see some pictures of the new office once it is all set up. That is, a virtual tour from stem to stern, maybe on a Saturday when it’s empty so no one is bothered by your picture taking.

    Congratulations on the podcast opportunity. I hope it yields some fruit for you (and I don’t mean just more pineapples).