Written on October 5, 1990 [Permalink]

September 27

Finished carving the hakama pattern, and started in on the upper kimono. Mailed the flyers that I had prepared yesterday. Umpteen English classes.

September 28

Finished the general outlines, flipped the block over, and started the kimono pattern. I goofed when making up the sets of 10 for each year's work, and this guy's kimono pattern is the same as Abe no Nakamaro, just a few months ago. I hope nobody notices! It's another one of those curly, curly designs, and its going to take a while.

October 2

This is Tuesday, and the whole weekend has been nothing but carve, carve, carve.... Kimono pattern finished! This puts me right back on schedule (I was afraid that it was going to take weeks). This one should now be finished near the 15th of the month, and the next will be done before we leave.

On Monday morning, Yamashita san called to tell us that he had seen the newspaper article. It's in the Mainichi alright, but only the Tama-ban, and not the Tokyo-ban as suggested .... Other than that it looks fine. There are no errors, the picture is OK, and the phone number, etc. are included. Should I be holding my breath to see who calls .....?

October 3-4

Carving the face. This is the first one with white hair that I've carved, and it's much easier than the others. The hanshita for this one is a little bit on the faint side, and all the lines are somewhat thinner than the original. Usually I find myself trying to carve on the 'inside' of the lines, but this time I'm having to try and keep everything on the 'full' side.

October 5

Yamashita-san dropped by today. He had been out to the site of his future museum, to do some deal or other. He asked me how many prints I would have finished in another two years, and when I said 40, he said 'perfect'. That's how many the print room will have room for. I assume that he was trying to tell me that he expects the thing to be finished in two years, but he wouldn't say so directly.

Phone call this morning from a Mr. Sasaki of the Yomiuri Shimbun. We set up for a 4:00 interview, leaving enough time to finish before English class. He phoned about 3:30 asking for a change and we pushed it back until 9:00.

He had received a copy of the newsletter from the downtown head office of the paper, which was kind of strange, because I hadn't sent them one! (I only sent the newsletter to people who had had some previous contact with us.) The Yomiuri downtown office must have received the little flyer I sent, but not the newsletter.

Anyway, he was here, and we went through the now familiar questions and answers. He spent about two and a half hours with us, considerably longer than usual, and certainly got a full note pad of information. He'll be submitting a story to the main office. If it is refused by them, he thinks that it would probably be accepted by the Tama edition. We may have learned more from him than he learned from us. He happened to mention during our conversation that the universities on the nearby air base were planning to open their doors to 'outside' students in the next couple of years. Michiyo's ears immediately pricked up. She's been planning to go back to Canada next fall ('91) to enroll at UBC, but if it was possible to get the credits she wants right here within a bicycle ride of home, it would save having to go through a long separation each term .... We'll look into it.

I've been looking back over a bit of this little journal, and am struck by how little of our daily activity on this project is making it into these notes. For example, today we printed out for proof-reading all the files of the articles for the next newsletter (both Japanese and English). They're now all written, translated, keyed in, and checked ready to go. Not a word about this has appeared here, and yet it has taken uncounted hours of work by both of us. The brochure for next year is now ready for printing. The labels and descriptive inserts to go with each print never get a mention, yet take lots of time. And of course, sitting in the workshop are stacks of boxes full of finished prints, about 75 each of this years editions, and about 50 each of last year's prints - all in folders, ready to be sent out just as soon as the orders come in.

This journal may seem a bit sparse, but believe me, we're busy every day from morning till night.