Written on March 16, 1990 [Permalink]

March 14

Probably the busiest shipping day we've ever had on this project. Three of us (Michiyo, Ashida-san, and me) spent pretty much the whole day getting these prints out of here. The cases had to have all the labels pasted on, I had to pick up a load of cardboard from Yamashita san's place, all the prints had to be 'cut' into the folders, along with their labels (English for those needing it), post office labels had to be made out (a wrist-cramping job), and everything had to be put together, wrapped and labelled properly. It has really become a confusing job, trying to keep track of which print is which (they have the names written inside, and so are not interchangeable). It doesn't help matters doing the whole thing in such cramped quarters, and the three of us were tripping over each other all day. Anyway, it's all done, and I'll call the post office in the morning for a pickup.

There's also a dozen or so prints that are waiting for me to deliver by hand. I'm not sure what to do about this. When there was just a couple of local customers, it seemed like a polite thing to do, to run over and drop them off. Now that there's a dozen, it's going to take me the best part of a few hours to ride all over town (all over town). On the other hand, it seems a bit dumb to pay the post office 510¥ to run each parcel over a couple of blocks. I guess I'll keep doing it, unless it starts to get really ridiculous. (I should also keep in mind that 12 prints delivered represents ¥120,000 - certainly worth a couple of hours cycling around!).

We ran out of cases today (the last of the 50 I had ordered last year) before getting to the bottom of the print pile. I'm five short and so the 'freebie' recipients will have to wait until Kogado comes through with the shipment of 100 that he is making. He promised them by the 15th (about), so they should be here soon. I don't quite know where we're going to put them.

March 15

A solid English day, but found enough energy after the last class to prepare 60 sheets for some more copies of Koko Tenno [2-1]. This year, I'm determined to get a good 100 copies of each print run off right awav and stashed in the closet. If this project finally gets off the ground this year, I don't want to be continually running back and printing back numbers, like I am continually doing with last year's prints. Even now, I still don't have a good stock on hand of most of those prints, and a couple of them (Horikawa [1-8] and Asatada [1-7]), are almost completely gone.

March 16

Sumi on the 60. 60 sure feels like a lot more than 50. Over the past year, I've gradually been raising the size of the print runs, with the eventual target of reaching 100, the quantity that the pros make at any given time. What makes it tough raising this number, is not just the extra time it takes to finish any given step, but the changes that happen during the printing. The brushes seem to go quite soft after a few dozen sheets, and even the block seems to soften up. The pigments pile up in odd corners on the block and start to cause blotches. As the run goes on, I'm increasingly 'fighting' the materials. Both Matsuzaki and Seki-san deny encountering any such troubles. I suppose increasing experience will bring smoother operation. I used to have troubles with printing 10 at a time!