Written on September 15, 1990 [Permalink]

September 11

Off to Tokyo to meet Kuchida-san, a representative from the Los Angeles exhibition. We discussed details of the show, hotel, flights etc. It seems to be better if we book our own transportation, rather than having them do it for us. It seems like it will be quite a small group going over, not the 20 or so that I had understood. Seki-san and I will be together, which should be fun, but which will pretty much kill any chance of selling anything. My prints are just too 'bare' when stood next to his multi-coloured stuff. At the least, the show will be a good warm-up for the one in Vancouver a couple of weeks later. I'd better get busy and finish my carving/printing/shipping box. The carving and printing parts are OK, but it's nowhere near ready to use as a shipping trunk yet.

Stopped off at Sekaido and picked up some machine made washi. T don't want to waste much of my nice Yamaguchi paper on these shows, and I'll need something that looks good, and yet is easy to print. The stuff I found looks promising, and quite cheap. We'll see.

September 14

Finished the sumi ban yesterday, and did the transfer to the colour blocks this morning. This print will need about 10 or 11 impressions, but I can jam them all onto one piece of wood (plus the sumi block). While I was doing the clearing work on the sumi block, I must have 'sprained' something in my left shoulder, as it's causing some problems today. I haven't been using a proper hammer for the chisel work, but just a bit of firewood I scavenged from grandma's wood pile in Mie prefecture a few years ago. It's very light, and I think that I've been having to use too much force to hit the chisels, and this has caused some kind of muscle problem. I'll switch to a hammer tomorrow (if I can pick up anything at all!).

Ashida-san sent out the Toshi Yori Ason prints [2-7] today. It feels good to have the next one pretty much finished, almost a month early.

September 15

No way. The shoulder is just too sore, and with some kind of bug also attacking (the kids have both been sick this week), I can't keep my attention on the work for more than a couple of seconds at a time. 60-odd days left, to finish three prints.

A call from the print shop in the afternoon. At last! The newsletter was ready, and I scooted over to Ome on my bike and picked them up. The envelopes were all ready to go, so I just slipped them in, and then dropped them off at the post office. It's really good to get this thing off the ground at last. Now that I read it in 'cold' print, it's not really so interesting, but I think that this wil help the customers to understand the prints a little better, and I think they'll make quite a nice collection over the years.