Written on February 21, 1990 [Permalink]

February 19

First thing in the morning, I headed down to Higashi Nakagami where there is a 'speed printer'. I've left the printing of the pamphlet just a little too late, as I'll be needing them tomorrow morning at Mitsukoshi. We found these guys in the Yellow pages, and they say they can do it by tonight.

Ashida san's second day. Instead of having her make up more folders (which I will be needing shortly), I thought that it would be better to have her get familiar with the whole process of getting these things ready for sending to customers, so today's work was pasting up the labels for the folder covers, using the name slips that I have pre- printed. She did fine - way too slow, but I've told her that speed is not a concern at this point. I'd rather have her focus on quality first, and speed later. After she made up a bunch of those, I had her prepare the three labels for gluing on the blue cases.

Paid up Yamaguchi san and the dosa people, and got in a bit more carving.

The word processor had just been leading me on yesterday, and packed up again. I got out the sales slips to call the service center, and found out that the one year guarantee expired yesterday - really! Of course, this is the oldest joke in the world - a machine giving up the ghost a day after the warranty expires, but I've never actually heard of this happening to anyone! What makes it worse is the fact that it actually broke down a day before the expiry, but I fooled around and wasted a couple of days ... Anyway, we called the service number, and they arranged to come out soon.

In the evening, picked up the 2500 pamplets (a backbreaking load). They came out generally OK, if not particularly beautiful, and set me back 22,000. Got the whole gang busy folding them ..

February 20

6:30 train to Tokyo. First stop - Kogado, to order another batch of blue cases. I have just about 30 left in stock, and the shipment of Koko Tenno [2-1] to the new subscribers, along with the repeat subscribers (who will now need new cases), will use these all up. I actually placed the order on the phone yesterday, but as the size needs a little bit of adiustment (the last ones were a shade too large), I also had to speak to him face-to-face. He says that they will be ready by the middle of March.

Then on to Mitsukoshi. It's a very interesting show, with all kinds of neat stuff on display and for sale. Seki-san has laid out the booth well, with my stuff being quite visible, if not prominent. The problem was people - too many of them. As he was demonstrating, the crowd presses so tightly around, that nobody can see the prints at all. All they have eyes for is his demo, and when he takes a break, they disperse. In the afternoon he realized what was happening, and gave up the printing, choosing to just hang around and talk to people. It worked, and he started to sell stuff. He was very fair about promoting mine, constantly bringing them to people's attention. Nobody bought any that I noticed, but a lot of pamphlets disappeared. This suits me perfectly. If I can bring home 100 prints, and no pamphlets, I will be quite content. If there are no subsequent phone calls, I will be less so ...

I left at four (just after an earthquake), to get home in time for the evening's sole English class. I'll head back there on the weekend.

February 21

English and carving. I'm getting settled in to the carving routine again. It's really been tough getting this one going, and it certainly doesn't help that the first one of the year has such an involved kimono pattern. All of the emperors in the series are like that. I'm not sure which would be worse, having them first, or last.