I’ve been fighting off a nasty cold for most of the week, so no blog entry today. Next Friday, hopefully!

***9/2/2011 UPDATE*** Feeling better, but decided to give myself another week off, so I can spend the time preparing for my lessons which will start on Wednesday. Hopefully I’ll have time to put up a new blog entry next week!

***9/9/2011 UPDATE*** Just in case anyone out there is waiting with bated breath for a new entry, I should be able to get to it this weekend. It will not be worth the wait. :-/

Retro Game Master Homepage

As I confessed in a previous entry, I enjoy watching people play video games. I don’t know if it’s because it evokes nostalgic memories of passing around the NES controller at sleepovers, or maybe I enjoy it for the same reason that normal people enjoy watching sports. Whatever the reason, I’ve spent countless hours watching YouTube videos of complete strangers documenting their video game playthroughs.

When I first started watching them, I remember thinking that this form of entertainment couldn’t exist without the internet. It was to too weird and niche; I figured it just didn’t have enough commercial potential to warrant mainstream production/distribution.

As it turns out, I was wrong. In 2003, Fuji TV introduced a show called Game Center CX in Japan. During its first season, GCCX resembled any old video game show, with developer interviews and game previews taking center stage.

Beginning with the second season, the focus changed, and the show began to center around the host’s attempts to beat classic video games, from start to finish, in just a day (or occasionally, two or three days). The funny thing is, the host, Japanese comedian Shinya Arino, kind of sucks at games. He’s just so cute and good-natured you can’t help but cheer him on. I’ve been a fan of the show since I first discovered it five years ago.

I’ve always wanted to recommend the show to my video game loving friends in the States, but since it was in Japanese I always abstained. So I’m pleased to announce that the video game website Kotaku has started running episodes of the show with subtitles (and a somewhat irritating dubbed in English announcer). So check it out!

Retro Game Master Homepage

My favorite episode that they’ve run so far: Solomon’s Key

By the time this goes up, I’ll be on my way to Japan (or possibly in Japan, depending on when you read it). Pretty exciting!

I’ve prepared four entries to automatically go up every Friday for the next four weeks, because I’m sure I’ll be too busy to devote any time to the blog shortly after I arrive. After that, I’ll probably resume timely updates, including entries about my new surroundings.

Well, I’ve still got preparations to tend to, so I’ll leave it at this for now. Stay tuned!

****

Note: Since I’m in Japan, I’ll no longer be able to offer inscribed copies of my books. However, I signed a few copies of each book before I left (about ten copies of each), so you can still get a signed copy from my store. “While supplies last” and all that!

Via Neatorama

If you’ve read this entry, then you know that I’ve been lucky enough to be accepted to participate in the JET Program for a second time. I have just a month until I board that plane, and have a lot of preparations left to do… my departure has sort of snuck up on me. I have to admit it hasn’t completely sunk in yet.

One thing that’s helped to make the experience seem more real is I just found out where in Japan I’m going to be. I’m about 30-60min outside of Kyoto. I still don’t know exactly where I’ll be or what age groups I’ll be teaching, I gotta say I couldn’t be more delighted with the location. So for all your people who offered to buy me a beer, know that I’m coming to collect!

Oh, one more thing related to my departure: if anyone’s interested in getting a signed/inscribed copy of Tonoharu from me, place those orders now! Once I leave the US I won’t be able to do them for obvious reasons.

More updates to follow in the coming weeks!

Okay, this is totally outside the scope of this blog, but I couldn’t think of anything to write this week, so…

Here’s my list (in no particular order). All games are for PC or browser:

1. Redder — Play Online
A Metroid-type game with a shocking twist!

*******************************

2. HeroCore – Download
A tough-as-nails retro shooter! Even on “Normal” mode this game is super hard, and on “Hard” mode it’s impossible. But I beat it somehow. Are you up for the challenge???

*******************************

3. VVVVVV – Play Demo Online — Buy Full Game for $5
Awesome gravity-flipping action! This is the only game on the list that isn’t actually freeware; the two-level demo is free, the whole game will set you back five big ones. But it’s worth it!

*******************************

4. L’Abbaye des Morts – Download
Finally: a game that lets you play as a 13th Century French monk! Awesome Spectrum ZX-style graphics in this fun little platformer.

*******************************

5. Guardian of Paradise — Download
Neat little Zelda-style game. It’s pretty easy, but still fun.

Happy New Year!

Every year since I first started this blog in 2007, I’ve written a New Year’s entry reflecting on the year that was.

As I looked over last year’s entry in preparation to write this year’s installment, I realized that not much has changed. I’m still working on the second volume of my graphic novel Tonoharu, and still attending Shikoku University on an East Asian calligraphy research scholarship from the Japanese Government.

So this year, rather than write a recap of 2009, I’ve decided to write about the year to come, as it will bring dramatic change to my life. My two-year research scholarship is nearing its end. In about three months time I’ll be packing up my things and returning to the States.

I’ll write a comprehensive reflection on the experience when the time comes, but for this entry I’ll limit my remarks to what it will mean for me financially, as this has been weighing heavily on my mind recently.

When the scholarship ends, with it will go the monthly stipend that has been covering my living expenses since April 2008. The stipend was just barely enough to get by on, but it allowed me to devote myself to my research (and cartooning) without having to worry about shrinking savings accounts or part time jobs.

With the end of the scholarship imminent, financial concerns I have been blissfully ignoring for the past twenty-odd months have returned to the forefront of my mind. I need to decide what I’m going to do once the Japanese Government stops paying my bills. This decision effectively boils down to two alternatives: looking for a “real” job, or continuing my absurd little experiment of trying to profit from my comics.

I’ll admit I’m a dreamer (no reasonable person would even consider trying to make a living as a cartoonist) but I’d like to think I’m not completely out of touch with reality. If my efforts to earn a living as a cartoonist hadn’t produced any meaningful results by now, I’d like to think I’d see the writing on the wall. I’d relegate cartooning to the status of “hobby”, and seek my fortunes elsewhere.

It’s just that there have been so many encouraging signs. I got a $10,000 grant to self-publish Tonoharu: Part One. It was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal and Entertainment Weekly. The first printing sold out in a matter of months. I got the two-year research scholarship thanks in large part to the examples of Tonoharu that accompanied my application. My comics aren’t anywhere near earning me a living wage, but I have made some money off of them. I feel that for a first-time, self published author, I’ve done quite well.

And then there are other comics-related revenue streams that I’ve been meaning to explore, which I never got around to because I was preoccupied with my research. I’d like to try selling original art and foreign publication rights. I’d like to try giving presentations/lectures about my work/Japan/East Asian calligraphy/whatever (some authors say that it’s through presentations, not book sales, that they make most of their money). In the past couple months I’ve applied for a few other art/publication-related grants, so that may bring a few bucks my way.

Also, I never really gave Tonoharu: Part One the marketing push I should’ve given it, since I left for Japan to begin my research on the same month it came out. When Tonoharu: Part Two comes out later this year (in the third or forth quarter, if you’re curious), I hope to give it the sustained marketing push that I should’ve given Part One, and see if that translates into increased sales.

So for the short term at least, I’m going to continue my foolhardy pursuit of a cartooning career. This will mean I’ll have to dip into my savings, which have already been significantly reduced by the stock market crash and breaking my ankle without insurance, but hey. You gotta follow your dreams… er… right?

I’ve been sick for most of this week, so I didn’t have the energy to write the calligraphy blog entry I had planned; hopefully I should be feeling better by next week, and will post it then. Sorry! 

The view from the fourth floor balcony of the F Building, Shikoku Daigaku

I posted a recap of 2007 in an entry published a year ago, and figured I’d make it an annual thing. So here’s my recap of 2008, along with an obligatory New Year’s resolution.

****

2008 was a mixed bag.

The positive aspects of the past year were by-and-large me reaping what I sowed in 2007. I procured funds to self-publish Tonoharu: Part One in 2007, and saw the first printing sell out last summer. It’s received coverage in mainstream publications such as the Wall Street Journal and Entertainment Weekly, among others, and all-in-all has been a promising start to my cartooning ambitions.

I also successfully applied for a Monbukagakusho Scholarship in 2007, and beginning in April of 2008 I began a two-year post-grad program at Shikoku University in Japan, studying East-Asian Calligraphy. That experience has been really great so far, and will be the subject of a few blog entries sometime this new year.

Rotten luck was the cause of most of the negative aspects of 2008. The stock market tanked (perhaps you heard), and that, along with me breaking my ankle without health insurance, made the year very costly. I won’t say exactly how much I lost, but in general terms, it was a good year’s worth of living expenses. That would be a big deal for anyone, but since my financial future is particularly shaky (cartooning is hardly a cash cow), it’s all the more important for me to have money to fall back on. So losing a huge chunk like that was a big hit. Thank god I got the before-mentioned scholarship (it includes a living stipend), or I’d be in pretty dire straights right now.

It’s weird to think that if I had kept all my savings under my mattress and sat in my house twiddling my thumbs for all of 2007, I’d be in better financial shape than I am now. All the countless hours I invested in the creation and production of Tonoharu: Part One didn’t earn me enough money to compensate for the losses incurred by me slipping on some ice, and by some Wall Street assholes making some bad housing loans.

Granted, the time I invested in Tonoharu reaped benefits beyond the bottom line. And the broken ankle and stock market were freak occurrences outside of my control, so I shouldn’t beat myself up over them. I know.

But there was one negative aspect of 2008 that was within my power to affect, and it’s an area I’d like to see improvement in. Which leads us to my New Year’s resolution: I want to manage my time better and be more productive in 2009.

I certainly wasn’t a complete slouch in 2008, but I still procrastinated waaay too much. I was also fairly complacent, content to I reap what I sowed in 2007. In 2009, I’ll need to start “sowing” again, for when my scholarship ends in March 2010.

I can actually be really diligent and focused under the right circumstances. I can put in eight to ten hours a day on my work (not counting breaks & meals), no problem.

But my concentration is like a soufflé; all it takes is the smallest disturbance and it comes crashing down. If there’s some e-mail I have to answer, or an assignment I have to do, or a class I have to go to in an hour, I tend to get hung up on those things, and it disrupts my ability to concentrate on the task at hand. This leads to procrastination, which means even more work / obligations pile up. It’s a vicious circle, and could spell big trouble for me down the road.

If I’m even to have the remotest chance of making a living wage as a cartoonist, I have to learn to sustain focus and prioritize on the fly, to effortlessly switch gears between the business / marketing / artistic aspects of the profession. My slow progress on Tonoharu: Part Two is troubling, because I can’t make a living as a cartoonist if I don’t have comics available for sale!

I’ve seen this book recommended more than a few times:

So I’ve decided to give it a shot. I recently finished reading it, and have just started to implement its methods. It’s still too early to draw any firm conclusions yet, but I think it will be helpful.

There are a couple of things that author David Allen asserts that really stood out for me:

To be productive, it’s important to clear your mind of distractions. To do this, Allen recommends collecting everything that’s nagging at you (on paper or on a computer, or wherever; the point is to collect it somewhere physical, outside of your brain). Also important is to regularly  act on / review / update what you’ve collected, so you come to trust your system enough to truly keep distractions off your mind.

He also writes that it’s important to consistently define the next actionable step in any project you want to move forward. You can’t “do” a project, but you can do individual steps that will bring a project closer to completion. Those individual steps are often as simple as e-mailing someone or doing half-an-hour of work, but unless you define those steps, it’s easy to let a project stagnate.

In many ways, this piece of advice is similar to the proverb “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”, but it’s a sentiment that bears repeating. There are several projects I have that I haven’t done anything with recently (like “market my comics” or “become fluent in Japanese”), and I think my failure to define specific actions is largely to blame. I hope to do better in 2009.

****

I guess I’ll bring it to a close here. Happy New Year, everyone! Continue checking back to larsmartinson.com every Friday for more narcissistic ramblings and mildly amusing photos of craaaazy Japanese stuff! Haw haw haw!

Beginning next week I should be able to return to more “substantial” blog updates of thinly veiled self-promotion & narisicism. Next week will be a press release (oh boy!), and the week after will begin a series of posts in the form of an informal “how-to” guide about my experiences self-publishing. So see you then, dear readers.

Flower names, on the side of a cafe. The second word is probably just to see if you’re paying attention.

Finally! A butter-margarine mix with the least appetizing name imaginable!

The bathroom lock where I’m staying looks like a smiling metal duck.

Er… that’s it! See ya next Friday!

This blog entry is about my trip to Japan at the beginning of April, to study calligraphy at Shikoku University as a Monbusho scholar. At that point my ankle was on the mend from an injury sustained in January, and I could put weight on it and get around with a cane. But it was still quite tender.

It was a long trip; I flew from Minneapolis to Chicago via American Airlines, then Chicago to Tokyo via Japan Airlines, and finally flew from Tokyo to Osaka. I spent the night in Osaka, and then took a bus to Tokushima, where my school is located.

***
At the airport in Minneapolis, I rejected an offer for a wheelchair at the ticket counter. As we walked towards the security line, my dear old dad recommended that I take any assistance that I get from then on.

At that point I bid my dad adieu, and went through security. I was wearing a walking cast with metal buckles on it, so to clear security I had remove it so it could be sent through the x-ray machine. I was then patted down and checked with the wand metal detector before I could put the cast back on and be on my way. It took a while, needless to say.

When I got to Chicago, I ignored my dad’s advice and opted to find my own way to my connecting gate, which I mistakenly thought was just a short walk away. As it turned out, my connecting flight took off from a completely different concourse. By the time I figured that out, I didn’t have much time left to catch it. Due to the design and apparent remodel-in-progress of the airport, I had to leave the secure area, hobble my way down winding hallways with poor signage, take a shuttle, and then find the new security line, all while carrying a ton of carry-on luggage on my back. Then I had to re-clear security, take the cast off, get patted down again, etc., etc., all the while the clock ticking away…

I caught the connecting flight, but after that ordeal, I decided to take Dad’s advice, swallow my pride, and get wheeled around whenever I could. Luckily, the Japan Airlines staff took good care of me. First off the plane was half empty, so I was able to occupy two seats. And when I got to Tokyo they had a wheelchair and an escort waiting for me, allowing me to zip ahead of everyone at customs, and have one of my checked bags shipped directly to Tokushima. I was then delivered right to my connecting gate. In Osaka, the airport staff saw me as far as the hotel shuttle. Once I arrived to the hotel, I was on my own.

At that point I only had one suitcase, my laptop, and a backpack. Even managing just that from the front desk to my hotel room was almost impossible; I would have been completely screwed if I had both checked bags with me. My hotel room was in an adjustment building from where I checked in, and to get there I had to cross an alley, and climb a very mild slope. Mild though it was, I could barely do it, with my laptop and backpack constantly falling off my shoulder, all while dragging a 70lbs suitcase behind me.

When I got to my room, I unzipped the suitcase to its largest size, and stuffed my laptop and the heavy stuff from my backpack into it. It was now the size of a college dorm refrigerator and must’ve weighed close to ninety pounds, but it simplified my life a little bit. With that I went to bed, my bad foot swollen and purple.

The next day, I opted to take a taxi from my hotel to the bus station; it cost about ten times as much as taking a train there, and took about the same amount of time because of morning traffic, but I was in no condition to lug my suitcase around a train station and then try to find the bus station after that. The taxi driver and I had a nice little discussion about American politics and Creedence Clearwater Revival along the way. The taxi dropped me off right in front of the ticket counter. Even then, it was a battle of navigating mild inclines and the like to get from the ticket counter to where I caught my bus. But I made it somehow. Once I arrived in Tokushima, I took another taxi to Shikoku University. With that, the worst of it was behind me.

And I’ll cut it off here. Check back next week for an introduction to my school.