Written on July 4, 1989 [Permalink]

July 1

Visit in the morning from Sakazaki-san and friends. They enjoyed the little demonstration of printing, and chatting about the prints.

Bought a copy of a TV guide magazine, to try and figure out which type of programs might be interested in our stuff. Now that three prints are ready, I'll have Michiyo take a new picture, and we'll make up a new flyer and send it off to various TV people. P/R adventure - Part II!

July 2

Threw the shark skin in the bath to soak, to make it easier to scrape clean tomorrow.

Finished printing the colours from yesterday's samples. The original kimono colour has long faded into nonexistence, so it's every man for himself ... Chose a fairly dark brown colour, as the actual printed area is quite small, and faint colours seem just too weak.

All of the sumi that Matsuzaki-san gave me a few months ago is now gone, so tried making some more. I've had a bottle full of crushed sumi sticks soaking for a couple of months, and today I ground it up, and mixed in some nikawa, in an attempt to make a good 'bokuju'. How is it? I think there might be too much nikawa ... we'll find out next week ...

July 3

Made up the shark skin board today. What amazing stuff! It's incredibly tough, and it took us (mostly Michiyo!) hours to scrape the left-over fibers off the inside surface. After scraping it clean, we threw it back in the bath to soak some more, and then glued and nailed it down on a big board. Sakazaki-san came over to watch us finish off the job. Himi had told her at the Hoikuen that "there's a shark in our bathtub", and she had to find out what was going on! When its dry tomorrow, I'll try softening up some of my brushes. They are way, way too stiff and hard!

Got a new roll of film and had Michiyo take a bunch of pictures of me together with the three finished prints. I'm making a flyer ('Hyakunin isshu ... 3 finished ... only 97 left!') for a crack at getting some TV exposure.

Started the carving on Semi Maru - about 5 hours. Quite a different feeling this time. Instead of a weary "geez, I'll never get this finished" feeling, I simply felt like I was continuing 'where I left off the other day'. In a way, I guess I am!

Michiyo finished enough bamboo skin 'twisty bits' to have a go at winding the inner coil. Not very successful - she says due to weak winding technique, and using poor quality portions of the skin. Apparently, just a certain portion, of a certain type of skin is used. She shrugged that off last week ... Not so, next time! She's going to try again.

Carved a hanko ('Buru' in katakana). I will need it for opening a bank account for the business activity. When we send out prints, the bill should show our account number, so that people can make their payment by 'direct deposit'. We'll open one at the post office also.

July 4

Opened the bank account, and a 'furikae' account at the post office for receiving transfer payments from customers.

Printed the little labels that will go on the cover of the Dainagon Tsunenobu folders. Did about 8 hours on the Semi Maru [1-4] block, finishing the clothing and the biwa. No kimono patterns! I'm going to like these priests!