I have a new shirt designed by David Murray of Seibei. I met him and his band of merry men at Design Festa Vol. 31 a couple weeks ago. I feature the shirt in the opening sequence of my latest video blog.
Design Festa was fun. I think my video sums it up pretty well, so I don’t think I need to delve into detail here except that my two favorite things from the show were dinosaurs, my Seibei shirt and the dinosaur mural done by MAGO.
I also spent about a hundred dollars on art supplies bought at Sekaido, a five-storey art store found in the heart of Shinjuku. That was probably the most expensive part of my trip, my art supplies. I’m excited to start painting again. Before I left for Japan, I was encouraged by some of my friends (read: Momo) to continue this silly hobby of mine. I never realized how much I would miss it until it was gone. I knew I would miss it and had packed it away on my little luggage to be brought to me next month by a couple of my visiting friends, but I had pined away for my paints and my beloved brushes to be in my possession after two weeks landing here.
Besides, I’m taking part of an art show next month.
Yeah, nothing big. Just an art show here in Japan.
Likely the only “study montage” in existence.
Also: now i wanna paint a big mural.
I really like that rainbow-drip picture. I would have totally bought that or something, it was beautiful.
@Marc: I actually stole the idea from The Big Bang Theory. Ha ha ha. Glad you like the study montage though.
I heartily approve of ANY video that contains dinosaurs. Dinosaurs increase the awesome value of anything by at least 178%.
In other news I can’t believe that was all done in pen. The man must be a fucking robot because I don’t see any errors anywhere. AND it’s huge.
Holy man, there was some seriously cool sh*t going on at that design festa. One of my favorites was the conglomeration of tiny model rooms and buildings… exquisite!
I’m not sure if I agree that spoken language fluency comes strictly from hitting the books… HARD… over and over again (if that were the case, then everyone in the J. would be fluent in English! Which they are SO not…) though I realize that the vid was mostly intended for comic effect
I’m not going to bore everyone with my half-baked theories on J-lingo acquisition here, but I will say this: 1) Sorry to burst everyone’s bubble, but not all students of the J-language were created equal, and 2) A certain amount of fearlessness (ie. willingness to make a complete ASS of oneself and not care) is a huge asset when acquiring Japanese.
@Murasaki: I could have tried to show that any achievement I have of Japanese is equal, if not overshadowed, by the many times I’ve failed. Even in my video it is apparent: I was talking to the artist MAGO and, in my folly, I was unable to realize that he was talking about a prefecture until he clearly said (and in deadpan voice), “It’s a place.” (I think his mental self was rolling his eyes thinking, “Why did I have to repeat myself THREE TIMES to this retard?!”) Ha ha ha.
I just wanted to burst the bubble of people who believe that it was achieved without any great effort on my part. AND I stronly believe in your second point: FEARLESSNESS (ie. overcoming the fear of failure) is a must to learn ANY language. I think that this point is the easiest and the hardest to do.
I’ll totally agree with that, mainly by virtue of being a glaring counterexample. “Willingness to make an ass out of myself” is not a quality I have or am particularily eager to acquire, and it’s been a huge barrier to learning ANY language I might be interested in.
Alas, lacking a willingness to make an ass of yourself is unfortunately NOT equivalent to not making an ass of yourself.
Lol at the “secret” of mastering Japanese. That’s what I’m doing right now, every day.
I was there at the event too and got the exact same tshirt you did, but mine is in blue
Heart your blog!