(Hannin)

I went jogging for the first time in months. 3 times this week.
First comment from Hiromi (guy) when meeting him: “did you loose some weight?”

Amazing.

Had to update my “Alien Registration Card”.
I look French. Don’t I look French? I think I look French. Like a Frenchman.

…when celebrating birthdays with these guys

Next ‘thanks for the hard work’: Kouken

Fun, but most of all: dirty inventive. The Beer-marinated, served by the hand Napolitan was born.

(The place were cleaned Monday… Right: Jumping ropes)

(Right: Thanks Kosei, we wouldn’t want to get dirty by some beerdrops)

I’ve had this reoccurring nightmare for years now. My neighbors must be sick of my screams. It’s pretty simple and it goes like this:

I wake up in my bed. It’s at night, but the streetlights makes it possible to see that all the furniture’s (and clothes dumped on the floor) are in the same order as I left them before I went to sleep that day.

I’m lying down in my bed but can’t move no matter how much I try.

Sometimes it’s the knob on the door turning, sometimes it’s the window-panes sliding, but a person always does enter. And it’s always too dark to see its face.

I try to get up and do something about it but my body never moves, ever.
He comes closer and all I can do is panic.

That’s when I scream.

That’s also when I finally move, but, for real. Really waking up. It’s so freaking chilly to see the same clothes on the floor as in the dream when I do.

I get this dream a few times a month.

Anyhow. Something must have happened since the dream changed for the first time yesterday.
Everything is the same, the person came in through the window and moves in towards me, but this time he’s not heading straight forwards me – this time he passes by with a few steps. He looks back at me and for the first time I could actually see his face, thanks to the streetlights outside.

It’s no one I know, btw.

Young Japanese though. Previous tenant? No wonder the rent is so cheap for this apartment, in this area.

Getting back to why I am here, Japan, (or at least the reason I came the first time); design.

With all the Geisaing and sayonaras (including springcleaning. Autumncleaning) behind me what’s left is a fresh feeling of whatever comes from here will be new.

Well also what’s left is my ads (and gradwork. And work).

But all wasn’t 100% fresh. My closets only have clothes that are year’s old, pants that are too big, so on.
I went shopping and it felt great. Got a compliment right away first day wearing the stuff.

Anyhow,

Had a re-look at my ads so far. For the first time I notice that I’ve really got some good things going. And when a designer is actually satisfied with his/her work it’s a very very good thing. Felt great.

Contacted some people in the industry and slowly start setting up some meetings, and they’re happy to see me.
Felt great.

Good friends are planning to come back to Japan next year and we’re already planning for fun.

On top of things I just finished structuring the layout of how I’d present my stuff at the gallery in Harajuku come early next year. Felt great too. It’ll be sweeter then cheap annin-doufu.

Jonas might (I hope) set me up with some of his music for the exhibiton. Greatness.

Linda, whom I’ve never met, told me I looked “rugged”. First time I heard that. Pretty great.

Daniel, my French (and designing) friend is leaving Japan (not great) but for what seems to be one of the most awesome jobs (great) – and I’m happy for that.

Gyama, for some reason, feels even more of a brother. We talked about me applying for Draft (the company, not the army) so we’d work together. That’d be great too. I’d make him mask images and color correct them for me until he’d choke!

Generally, stress is finally starting to ease back to the levels where they’re actually useful and not disparaging. Great, great great. Life is good. Design is good.

Greatness plentiful abound. What am I still doing inside wasting time writing my blog?

That’s right. Later dudes & Bettys.

The long weekend of sleeping outside in plastic tents for Geisai for about 3 hours a day, plus the trip to Yamanakako right after with only 2 hours sleep (okay, an extra hour or so in the car. And of course that sleepless day of 10 hours work that same day topped off with what was suppose to be a meeting at the university for another few hours really had me…a bit worn.

While the above isn’t really related to the actual work I’m doing (that is so time-consuming) I’d like to repeat what was previously stated: I’m busy. I time-manage. Barely. And I’m back now, working at the ad agency while working with my personal work while working on a grad-work.

Here’s the ice-frosting on the time-cake –or– signs of obsessivity bordering to mad scientist-like yahooness:

I’ve created a monster.
My own time-managment software monster:

(…looks pretty innocent for a monster though)

Getting slightly fed-up with scheduling in Excel (I’m not going anywhere near Microsoft Project. I heard PMs hate the thing) I made my own thing. The biggest nuance about Excel was that it actually stole time whenever I had to rearrange tasks. To put it in more ‘mad scientist -like manner: it didn’t map relations between tasks, and thus wouldn’t move stuff around coherently. It all had to be done manually – copying/pasting away precious time. Oh, preeecious.

Nor could it predict delays or automatically fill gaps. Or help when I were synching availability with other people – couldn’t see what could be moved around, schedule-wise, to fit dates that suited everyone trying to decide where to have a dinner after Geisai.

…Yokohama, food (everyone skips the booze except for me) and a trip to the beach in the early morning. Everyone’s tired, someone’s trying really hard to hit on someone in the group, why did I bother to go…

Anyways, it was fun. But again, I wasn’t really into it.

At 8 in the morning and we’re heading back. At 9 or so I get to work, sleepdeprived and really not in the mood.

Fight eyes from shutting, dozes off once or twice but only for a second.

Write grad-work with left hand while laying out boring old press releases using the computer to the right side of me.

Around 7 or 8 in the evening I’m done with work and surprisingly not sleepy anymore.

I go shopping for a book but ended up buying a jacket, jeans, more, instead. It’s freezing.

Got home, stay up until 1 at night writing a blog. Hit the publish button with my forehead (previous entry…Geisai Saturday, maybe?)

This is the day of the great cleanup. Campus is like a battlefield (bodies, trash everywhere). I went to work in the morning after sleeping 3 hours or so in the cold tent and thus had the perfect excuse to leave.

But I got back. Geisai isn’t something that one can run away from. The Yumi Kaoru team headed for mention sobering up trip. And off we went. Yamanakako was the goal. That place close to mister Fuji.

(Btw. Willie is a freaking badass driver! Awesome driving. Really the mountain curves. Too bad the rest of the passengers protested)

While driving the steep hills and narrow roads of that mountain area there’s someone racing by, crossing the roads yellow line. Yoshiko, in our car, says in a low voice “ouh, Amerika”.
This is the kind of cute humour I appreciate to the level where I can’t help to burst out a crazy laugh. And I don’t think anyone in the car understands why I laugh.
Yoshiko is teh funniest. A few days later we are all rolling down a grass-slope (not in a car. Really tumbling down a real slope). She yells out “Waah, adobentchua! (re: wow, adventure).

The funniest.

(Arrived at the lodge late. Games until 6am or so)

All right, back to the trip. Booze, games and whatever. I wasn’t really into it that night.
Mood-killer, babeeeee. No matter how much tension were raised.

( 2.0h? )

I started this blog about a year ago after I bought a handy little pocket camera. I said stuff like this about that camera: “[it] will serve me for years to come“.

I broke that camera early this spring and ‘ve mostly been snapping with my keitai as a poor substitute since.

Got a new, somewhat shiny camera today. Ixy digital 10. Will I still be here next summer to brake it? Hope so. Sincerely.

With that said, happy anniversary (on the 14th, actually). I go to Geisai from now. Report back after. Expect pictures.

(Now also at station platforms)

As mentioned in yesterdays post I went shooting today. All turned out well, almost better then expected.

Anyhow: Jibeterians – the word comes from putting “sitting down” and “-terian” (as in vegeterian, etc) togheter. It’s a few year old slang for people sitting outside. Mostly in front of conveniensstores due to a lack of benches. More then often with snacks.

I used to be under the impression this is an inner-city phenomenon, but through more focused observations I’ve lately been proved wrong. Here, I made a graph of my findings:

That was a long and boring post.

(In lack of a monday-specific picture: 100 yen toilet toys. The see-through one has rainbow-colored poop)

Where to vent, where to vent…
Mondays, one of the more busy days of the week for me.

Sunday nights I do ads ALL night. It’s the only day of the week I have to get in the mood for ads during these months. That means no sleep. Unless of course you coun’t those coffee-injected hours between 5 to 7 am when your body crawes sleep but your mind is still in high gear. Last night I made an ad of a pen leaking ink on a shirt.

Back to Monday – with about an hour behind me of lucid dreams from sunday I do the university bit until 12:30. After that I head to work where I plan ads, schedule my days, prepare mails and write copy for my ads – while actually doing some work too. This finishes after 9 pm and I head back home.

Food.

I check my schedule I’ve just updated at work and find I don’t have too much varied stuff for tonight. For the ads I need to reach some PR persons for images to download. I do some more mails, some product shots I can take home, etc.. Yesyes, but the real big thing on my schedule is jolted down as “DynaSched, Scenario 1-3 h-w”. It’s my gradutaion-work and this thing has to be fully designed before 31st. Mind you, haven’t started on the graphics yet – need to write a few more pages of “flow of events” and such before I can even start working on the graphics. That’s this weekends work. 6 months of piled up work I honestly don’t care much for compressed into a day or two.

Did I mention I do most of my university thesises and papers either at work or on the train?

So anyways that flowchart I’m writing tonight have to be in Wednesday. Also dutifully noted in my schedule. This means tonight I don’t think there’ll be much sleep again.Tomorrow I’m heading out all the way out of Tokyo to shoot more materials for my ads, so it has to be tonight. However I should be able to squeeze in an hour or two of furtherering my writing by doing it on the train over there tomorrow. On my cellphone of course. Forget laptops, they require seats. Or, you know, one of those camerastraps, but that’d just look moronic.

Wonder how many people do this? Writing grad-works on their cellphone, on packed trains, carrying a ruck of photo-equipment…

Sidenote: the stuff I had to turn in today at University…written on my cellphone this morning, on the train there. Printed during recess. Rushed to the teacher after. Made it in time.

So, what would my schedule look like without a cellphone?
I certainlly wouldn’t have written this post on the train back tonight.

There you have it, my general monday. Ok, end of rant/vent. I’m not doing Tuesday. Fridays I do, they make up for the majority of posts on this site. The coming Friday is marked down as “Fun”. Should be great. I need to reschedule some sleep for Thursday night. To enjoy “Fun”.

Yasu – to some – known as the sharpest dresser in Hashimoto.
Hello Kitty undies, fleece-bag and gitarrstraps as belt. How awesome isn’t that!
Had to take points – even for when just buying innerwear.

Mattias, a.k.a. unagi, came to town. In need of some elevation we headed for Park Hyatts New York bar 52 floors up for cigarrs and a few cosmopolitically correct drinks. No, not cosmopolitan – long island ice tea. Hold the mint, straw and most of the coke. I don’t do drinks that comes in a pointy cylinder-shaped glass.
We talked about sex on spacecrafts, private trains and the good old days of Razorfish Tokyo; representatives from Sony in sweaters and jeans.

Aah, the days when you could afford to look sloopy.