Written on March 14, 1992 [Permalink]

March 13

Japan Times interview today. This was kind of interesting, as the reporter turned out to be a guy who's picture I've seen in a magazine somewhere before - playing biwa. He's apparently quite avidly studying Japanese traditional music, so he makes a pretty good choice for someone to interview me. At least we escape the usual parade of questions about 'Why is a gaijin studying this ...?' We had a good discussion about various aspects of the work, and I think he should be able to put together an interesting story. It should be out in a couple of weeks.

Earlier in the day, I had a phone call and quick visit from a guy putting together a series of four TV shows on 'arts in the Ome/Tama area'. Each show is fifteen minutes, and is to be broadcast over somebody's satellite network (I'm not sure who, why or when). One show is to be on the Gyokudo Museum, one on me, and I don't know the others. They want to come next week for a 'couple of hours' to do the taping. Our experience so far has been that for a fifteen minute show, they need most of a day, but we'll see ...

An interesting note today from Suezan Aikins, the Canadian woodblock printmaker. Yamaguchi-san must have sent her a copy of my newsletter, and she wants to get in touch and find out what I'm doing. I sent her off a bunch of newsletters and clippings, along with a few prints. She'll be in Japan sometime next year, and I suppose we can get together then ...

In between all this, carving continues ...

March 14

A nice 'bonus' today. The payment came in from Ishikawa-san in Utsunomiya for the prints he sold in his exhibition - 450,000¥. This is for the 60-odd prints I sent him during the past few months. Discounted to 7,000 - and then sold at 75,000. Not bad ... for him. Anyway, it means I can send some money to Michiyo for her plane ticket home ...

The TV producer who dropped round the other day called back, and we set up for taping this coming Tuesday ...

Picked up the Spring newsletter from the printer in Ome. It's disappointing to see that the quality is really getting worse with each issue. This time they've used two different colours of paper for each copy, and the printing impression is very weak and faint, especially in the Kaneko Shoten story. I don't want to behave like a jerk, but I'm going to have to make some noise before I pay the bill. If I sit and simply accept it, it'll only get even worse next time ...