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!

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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.

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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!

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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