04.08.05
Is this thing on?

I'm back.

But...

The Account is coming to a close. On April 20th, I'll be leaving Tokyo to pursue my film-career ambitions in New York, yet another city I've never lived in before. (I'll also be making a weeklong stop in San Francisco, if anyone wants to hang out.)

I apologize for abandoning the blog this year. Over time, more and more of my overseas friends have stopped responding to my e-mails, and by January, I wasn't sure there was anyone left who was still reading this. It's not that I stopped updating out of spite, or anything like that—it's just that it didn't make much sense to spend all that time relating my experiences to an empty theater.

In the last few weeks, though, a good number of my local friends have chided me over the lack of updates, and with my impending return to the States (and considerable increase in free time, now that all my classes are over), now's a good time to wrap things up.

Here's what you missed:

January

A photo of Shinjuku I took during a New Years' shrine visit with Daisuke.


The first half of January in Japan is basically an extended national holiday (much like the last half of December in the U.S.), so I took advantage of all the cancelled classes to grind away on my animation project, which went well. I also continued "Movie Night," a biweekly get-together in my living room at which I screened movies for my Japanese, Australian and British friends. Highlights included Shaun of the Dead, Say Anything, Tremors and Supersize Me.

February
More of the same. English teaching during the day; animation at night. February's a pretty bland month in any country. By this point, I'd already made my flight arrangements, and I began informing my students of my imminent departure.

March

Shao Guee, animator at large.


March was a crazy month, the kind of hectic, unpredictable whirlwind I fantasized about before I came here. I feel kinda bad about not writing about this one before—as you can see, I took pictures and everything.

It all started with the Hash Animation:Master Forums, an online community of animators devoted to the character-animation software of the same name. One of the members posted a link to Haruwo, a stunningly elaborate science-fiction anime epic. At 37 minutes in length, it represented one of the most impressive projects ever put together by a Hash A:M user, and the community was in awe. Just one problem: It was completely in Japanese, with no way for the forum enthusiasts to understand it.

Which is where I came in. Now, my Japanese is still, even after all this time, sub-kindergarten level. (What can I say? Speaking English all day is my job.) But I have a good conceptual understanding of the language, and a lot of free time, and... well, you can see where this is going. I volunteered to spearhead the translation effort. The next four weeks were an obsessive, grueling crash-course in online dictionaries, yakuza lingo, dialects and slang. I made a number of bizarre mistranslations, but fortunately Haruwo creator Shao Guee was able to catch them, and helped me out with lines whose nuances I just couldn't figure out.

It was this same Shao Guee who treated me to yakiniku a few days into my self-imposed linguistic marathon, partly out of gratitude, partly out of curiosity. Shy and self-effacing, he spent hours describing his style and his influences, from Akira to H. G. Wells. My own meager animation experiments have thus far yielded about 14 seconds of finished product; now I was sitting across from a man who had produced almost 40 minutes using the same tools. "Dedication" doesn't even begin to describe it.

(Incidentally, my Japanese-to-English translation of Haruwo can be viewed here.)

April
I had to make a lot of goodbyes to a lot of great students. Being poor, I couldn't buy them going-away presents, but I did what I could and printed out a "greatest hits" selection of my favorite photos, with my e-mail address printed in the margins, and passed them out. The Karuizawa Mist image was the hands-down favorite, for some reason.

I also went to visit Daisuke in the hospital. He'd torn a ligament while snowboarding, which not only forced him to cancel our trip to Studio Ghibli, but also jeopardized his plans to attend Alliant University in San Diego this August. Now he's stuck in a grimy, sweltering military hospital, with only the pirated Hollywood movies I bring him to ease the pain.

Well, that just about brings us up to date. Sorry to leave you all hanging like that. I'll try to post a couple more entries between now and when I board the plane, but no promises.

April 27, 2005  //  11:23 AM
3
Comments

Posted by Dinah:

wow. Lose a couple months of regular blog reading and see what I miss out on?

I wish you great good luck in the next adventure. Now I *really* have no excuse not to get my sorry ass to New York City.

April 25, 2005  //  07:30 AM

Posted by Chuck Glow:

Hey Mike,

It's been a month or so since I've visited your site. I've enjoyed following your experience in Japan. At times, your writing actually made me miss Japan somehow - which says a lot about your ability to write well. But I do wonder if I would have had a better experience if I made some of the changes that you did (ie - moving out of Fujimi-shi & quitting Nova). Anyway, it sounds like you are making another exciting and challenging move.

All the Best! - Chuck

April 26, 2005  //  04:49 PM

Posted by Mike:

Thanks, Chuck! I hope you're enjoying your own path through life, as well.

April 27, 2005  //  11:23 AM
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