I am speaking, of course, about my faithful iMac.  Pristine and white, and oddly square, it has perched on the back of my desk for nearly 3 years now, providing constant inspiration and assistance in my endeavors.  Recently, it has been making an off-putting clicking sound when starting up.  Then, yesterday, it finally clicked it’s last, and will start no more.  Instead of the comforting grey apple floating in the middle of the screen, there sat a file folder and a blinking question mark.  A last cryptic remark on the inability of those left behind to know what lays beyond that last shadowy vale, in that undiscovered country.

Like a good soldier and friend, my iMac managed to gasp back to life long enough for me to copy most of the important files I needed.  I’m sure I’ll lose some things, but I grabbed everything that looked even slightly dire.  And thank god for extended warranties.

Actually, alot of folks have been asking lately about the part computers play in my creative process.  Many assume that, because I prefer to work in real-world materials like paper and wood, I’m some sort of Luddite.  The truth couldn’t be more different.  I love our silicon brethren who, I’m certain, will one day be our cold and merciless overlords.  Got my first computer when I was in Junior High.  It was an Atari 800XL, and I scrimped and saved my allowance for a year to afford that 64k beast. Since then, I’ve had some sort of computer following me around, bouncing through uncountable brands and at least 4 operating systems. I’ve even tried making art on them. It didn’t take.

Nowadays, the computer assists with nearly every step of my process.

And let me head the Mac v. PC thing off at the pass. Yeah, I prefer the Mac. The way the system works, especially the filing system in the OS, just seems to be a match for the way my brain works. When I was on Windows I could never find a dang thing. On this machine, I know where everything is, and nearly everything does what I expect it to do. Which isn’t to say that Mac is intrinsically better. It’s just better for me and my thought process. Your experience may vary. Use what works best for you.

Step one of every project is research and inspiration. There are a million websites out there that help with that. And some days, boy do I need help. From quote collections to photo albums to websites dedicated to some bizarre niche interest, there’re a billion ways to get ideas from the internet. I use as many as my deadlines allow.

When I sketch, I work tiny. I have a habit of being a little detail oriented (you’re shocked, right?). Doing my layouts in thumbnails no bigger than 3 inches helps me to keep my composition balance and succinct. These get scanned into photoshop, mixed with more detailed sketches and perhaps bits of older work, tweaked, twisted, turned, erased, flipped, squished, altered and massaged, then enlarged to the final size, and printed out.

The next few steps don’t usually involve the ‘puter (tracing, drawing, cutting, gluing). But all through, I might be scowering the web for ideas for color combinations, details, and last minute addenda. When the manual labor is done, I’ll scan in the image. This gets cleaned up in photoshop, and occasionally repaired. If the work is for an illustration client, there could be a few more steps. Objects moved, colors changed, things added or erased.

After that, the digital file is put to a billion different uses. Promotion on the web and in print. Website images. The database I keep of all my work. And on and on. Not to mention the fact that computer has become invaluable when it comes to communication, negotiation, planning, promotion, etc.

All reasons why I will miss my minimalistically styled pal while he’s out either being repaired or bid a tearful farewell.

Ah, the drama continues. I’ve decided, after a little bit of soul-searching, to make the 2009 Cut Paper Art Calendar available again.

Why all the soul-searching and fingernail biting? I’m only 95% sure that the printing problems are fixed. And I like to be 100% sure of stuff. Unfortunately, until Lulu squishes the bugs in it’s website, I can’t create a calendar preview and verify that last 5%.

Still, I’m reasonably certain that the calendar was created correctly, right up until I pushed the “publish” button. The images printed great before, so it’s just the dates I’d like to triple check. More importantly, if I wait for Lulu to iron things out, chances are we’ll miss Christmas. And maybe next year too. The whole year. I’ll let all y’all know if there’s any change to report. For now, you can feel 95% confident that you’ll be getting a cool calendar.

Thanks to the fantastic art fan who emailed me to let me know there was a problem with the calendar. Even bigger thanks and a giant internet hug goes out to all of you who bought the calendar, then emailed me to say that you picked it up for the art and the dates weren’t a big deal. You guys are the greatest.

The An-Burger is the latest entry in “Things Which Should Never Be”, where it will hang its head in shame next to pizza with corn on it (which I consider a crime against humanity).

The first time I saw Mt. Fuji, my wife pointed it out to me through the train window. I looked out at a group of impressively tall and craggy peaks and picked out the large central one. “That’s tall and impressive, ” I said. She laughed, and told me I was looking at the wrong mountain. It was the one behind that other range. Looming over them, above the clouds, and extending out sideways as far as the train window allowed me to see.

A few days ago I took a walk down to the Tamagawa river with a friend and got a reminder just how big Fuji is. You can see her from my neighborhood. You have to get the timing right of course, waiting for the sun to sink down behind her. The less humid the day is, the clearer you will be able to make her out. Regardless, she’s always there, keeping watch over all of us tiny mortals crawling around beneath her.

(Tokyo) In a city as massive as Tokyo, a person wouldn’t expect to notice the change in the season all that much. When I taught English in the Imabari countryside the signs of Autumn’s coming were hard to miss; the foliage slowly slid into warm reds and golds and the farmers busied themselves with the harvest. Even without these obvious hints, I woke a few days ago and knew without a doubt that it was Autumn.

Summer in Japan can be brutal. One hundred percent humidity feels literal; every breathe a lungful of water. Late August brings the threat of typhoons to a nation surrounded by ocean. So, when I slid open the big glass door onto my three foot by eight foot “backyard” (good-sized by Tokyo terms) and sucked down that first comfortably un-conditioned air in two months, the change was unmistakeable and very, very welcome.

Like Warwick, Japan has four seasons (five if you count Tsuyu - the rainy season which usually lasts from mid-June to mid-July; although this year I think it just ended the day before yesterday). Late September brings cooler days and an end to the dampness. The leaves haven’t started to change color yet, but when they do, the mountains will be spectacular. Japanese culture is tightly tied into nature and its changes. Right now, city folk are planning trips to the mountains for momiji viewing. Momiji is a small-leafed maple that turns a brilliant red as the days get chillier. The leaf is ever-present; its shape cooked into souvenir cakes, advertised in travel posters plastered all over the train stations, even used as garnish on seasonal dishes.

Seasonal Harvests, Japanese Style

In Warwick, we are looking forward to apple-picking and pie-making, pumpkins and squash. There are some new tastes, but generally speaking the American diet tends to be pretty stable throughout the year. Here in Japan, even in the heart of the city, the neighborhood supermarket or greengrocer’s feels like you are walking into a shop you’ve never been in before. The leafy greens of summer can be a little tough to find as they are replaced by kabocha (a small green pumpkin), eggplant, and sweet potatoes. The most famous of the autumn foods is the Matsutake mushroom. This mushroom is made into a cornucopia of dishes and soups, or served grilled on its own. Specially grown fruit and food is often given as gifts here, and the matsutake is especially cherished. Extravagantly over-wrapped packages of three or four mushrooms can go for as much as one hundred dollars.

Right now, the Nashi pear is in season. Its taste is similiar to the western-style pear (called yonashi) but it’s a massive beast. Round and roughly the size of a softball, it’s nearly a meal on its own. Around the end of October, the nashi will be replaced by apples, persimmons and other winter fruit.

For an island nation, there’s very little that is more important than fish. Coming from an inland area, I had never known that fish came in and out of season. Like most high-tech nations, much of Japan’s fishing has been taken over by large-scale operations. The further you get away from the big cities, however, the more likely you are to find fish caught by local villager fishermen and sold at obscenely early hours near the port. Autumn brings Sanma (pike saury) and Saba (mackerel) to supermarkets and sushi shops around the country.

Rice, Rice, Rice

Fish are good and fine, but in Japan nothing tops rice. Rice is more than just a food here; more than the foundation on which nearly all of the meals are created. Rice is culture, national identity, and pride. Back in 1994, at the start of my first stay in Japan, an unseasonably cold summer caused a national rice shortage. There was absolute panic. Morning talk shows featured debates on the merits and deficencies of imported foreign rice. Nearly every level of society was affected, from the sake makers to the restauranteurs to the individual households. Rice was the topic of conversation. I never could taste the difference myself, but then, my palate wasn’t refined by a lifetime of practice.

In southern Japan the rice fields have turned from a muddy green to a golden brown. As the season progresses the autumn colors will spread northward, and farmers will begin harvesting the rice; cutting it and tying it into neat bundles left to dry in the sun. That’s when the matsuri begin.

Everyone Loves a Matsuri

A matsuri is a festival, complete with parades, food vendor’s stalls, and alot of sake. Not so different from our own Applefest, except that instead of apple pie, you can snack on octopus dumplings called takoyaki. They are surprisingly tasty and addictive. That, plus a lot of sake.

Nearly every village, town and city has a matsuri to celebrate the rice harvest, most based around a local shrine or temple. They vary in size and date depending on the area. In Asakura-mura, a small village where I used to teach, the local kami (god) is carried around in a modestly ornate o-mikoshi (a portable shrine) to each of the village houses. The local families pay their respects and offer thanks for an abundant harvest. The gods themselves partake in the same rice as the farmers.

The slightly larger town of Kikuma has a horse matsuri, where eleven and twelve year old boys wearing traditional outfits race horses up a steep hill in a coming-of-age ceremony. Another has an archery contest. Some of these matsuri have been going on for over a thousand years.

At this time of year, the Japanese often say “chi ga sawagu“; the sound of the matsuri drums excite the blood.

Even here in Tokyo where nearly every tree and blade of grass is boxed in by a wall and a long, long time has passed since any rice was planted, the neighborhoods still celebrate their various matsuri. Even though agriculture has faded as a way of life, the people still feel a connection to land and seasons, and a need to give thanks for the harvest. Besides, everyone loves a matsuri.

He’s also only ¥100 (about 86¢US as of right now; although I’ve always found the ¥100 = $1.00 rule to be a fairly safe bet. It all balances out over time). We picked him up a few months ago from the 100 Yen shop when we decided that our backyard needing some color (green) in the form of plants. When I say backyard, I refer to the 3 foot by 8 foot rectangle of concrete and hard earth. Just enough room to hang out the laundry, keep a few flowers, and provide a little bit of earth for the local fauna to romp on. We’re luckier than most Tokyoites in that respect.

We were fortunate to get MechaZo-san when we did. He sold out shortly after. That’s because he’s kawaii, you see. Cute. Kawaii is one of the central pillars of modern Japanese civilization. Nearly every box, bag or package you pick up has a cartoon character on it somewhere. Half the time, the products are in the shape of a character themselves. Even my National Health Insurance Instruction booklet is set up as a comic. This is a good thing, because even thought I don’t know the kanji (squiggly alphabet character) for food poisoning or lycanthropy, I can sure follow along with the pictures. Stomach cramping and hairy palms have never seemed so adorable. Nor has watering the plants.

Above, you can see Toyo, my wife’s cat. Toyo is currently rooming with my in-laws until such time as we move into a pet-friendlier place and I am magically cured of my allergies. Like all cats, Toyo can sense people with severe dander problems, so she spent most of the time crawling into my lap. Or maybe she just likes the sound of sneezing. Good thing I like cats.

Typically I’m not one for the ocean (or inland sea), but I completely enjoyed the island, with its salty air and its jaggy mountains climbing right out of the narrow beaches. After such a nice break, it’s good to get the nose back to the grindstone. And what a grindstone it is. Big and rough. Posts may be scarce for the next few weeks until I get some of these deadlines behind me.

One of the great oddities here in Tokyo are the wildly inappropriate shop signs. Not “inappropriate” as in “naughty”, but rather “why does such a tiny shop have such a huge sculpture, and what does an octopus have to do with bicycles anyway?”.

I snapped this one in Asakusa a while back. It was out front of a shoe store - so there is some connection. A run-of-the-mill, everyday, nothing fancy shoe store on a back street. You may not be able to see it in this shot, but there is a wicked barb on the back of this flying boot. The ultra-modern sci-fi chrome stand in front of an old wooden shop only adds to the mystique.

You can see the entire pilot online at SciFi.com. Then take the survey to know that you want to see more. I sure do.

One of the quirks of living in Japan is that furniture is just a touch smaller than I’m used to. This table is 2 or 3 cm shorter in all dimensions than the student drafting table I was using back in the States. Until I really get used to it, I expect I’ll keep knocking things off it. I learned quickly to be careful with anything liquid or sticky. Or sharp. On the plus side, it’s built like a rock. I also hope to be able to add a lamp to the mix one day.

Space is pretty vital over here, which is why everything is piled on top of one another. Rooms are measured in tatami mats (about 34 x 70 in). An average room like this is 6 mats. I began using one of the tables to flip through my piles and piles of paper, but that didn’t work out. The paper has a tendency to spread and fill any semi-available space. I’ve tried to control this entropy, but it’s pretty futile.
Here’s the business nook. I try to keep my business and promotion work separate from where I do my art. The idea is to prevent distractions. Occasionally it works.

The computer is one of those newfangled intel-powered iMacs. Love it. It’s great to watch movies on. At night. After work. It does keep the music playing all day - something I find essential to doing any kind of art.