Decision time

Hey everyone,
Apologies for not have written anything for a while. It's been getting busier by the day. A lot of fun really, but a lot of things that need to be done. Lets see, the last time I wrote in my blog was three weeks ago... I guess what came short after that was doing some siteseeing with two classmates, particularly temples, landscape and roads full of shops that light up beautifully in the dark. Eating lunch at a restaurant was really good as well, eating eel for a change (still I often run into the 'what-is-this-sort-of-food-and-how-do-I-eat-it' kind of thing). Also, before the snow starts falling, we'll probably go hiking again with a group. Next wednesday, some 2nd, 3rd and 4th years illustration students will go drinking together, in order to forget all the trouble that happend this year, I have been told.

These kind of things are a lot of fun, but if I had to say what I have been enjoying the most in Japan it's talking to Japanese people. Somehow, I find it really easy to get along with the residents here and it's been getting more and more comfortable to talk with all sorts of people. Although I'm not satisfied yet with my Japanese level yet. It's enough to get a regular conversation going or have a serious talk with teachers, but there is still plenty of speech I don't get yet or times when I can't explain myself properly. I want to get to a professional level that's high enough to be a reliable source of translation ability in a company. So, still studying about 3 hours a day.
Speaking of Japanese, I took the JLPT last week on sunday, in Kyoto University, about 20 minutes by train from my place. The level I selected was three out of five, 1 being the highest. In january the result will be announced on internet. Although I don't have full confidence in passing the test, as it was quite tiring (took about five hours) and there were a lot answers I wasn't entirely sure of, I'm practicing for level two already with the teacher on monday (a bit more grammar now) and a lot at home. By the time I get back to Holland in the beginning of september I want to be able to clear level two, around graduation (I'll enter graduation year directly after returning to the Netherlands) level 1. If I'm able to reach that goal, it should hugely increase my possibilities of finding a job in Japan, as the country finally is opening it's doors to foreigners, especially if you can do both English and Japanese well.

Another time that takes quite a lot of time is making artwork (naturally) as the school assignments of each class I'm taking entered it's stage of creating the final, big projects of this semester. As I'm aiming for creating work of a quality high enough to put in exhibitions and entering competitions with, it needs a lot effort but also creativity to create something that stands out and shows my style/trademark, improved from last time. I have to say it's really satisfying to be constantly pushed to a higher level. As the weird exchange student, I want to make something again that makes people curious to what comes next. I can't fall back on other classmates as well: For example, we had a workshop a while back on making a giftbox, because a later school assignment would be to create your imaginary brand for fashion or other goods and make a gift box for that. In the workshop, everyone had to stick to same model, but now I'm seeing completely things over and over again from most of the class, making me smile brightly each time.
Competitions I want to look into as well. Recently I received an email about World Illustration Awards, in which I will enter my class exposition work, which is a painting/drawing/wood- and metalpasting piece on a wooden panel of about 60x130cm. So that gets a bit of special attention
Next weekend is an exhibition with the exchange students, which is all paperwork I heard, so before that I need to make sure to prepare pictures, descriptions and frames for both the pictures (of 3d works and older works) and original drawing brought from Holland. The exposition I'm most exicted about might be the duo-exhibition I'm doing with a classmate/friend in june. Next week we'll talk a bit more on deciding a theme an searching for galleries, but the date of 20-25 june has been confirmed, which means I'm going to have to arrange a lot of things myself as well this time. Not to mention the guy I'm working with - Koichiro Kashima - is a really skilled micro-artist who seems to like the same sort of things as I do.

Those two things were already there from the beginning though, but start to take up a bit more time. What's changed the most is making serious future plans. I've talked with the head of illustration before about it. The easiest option to get a VISA for Japan would be to get a job as an English teacher and selling my own works besides that. At the time, which was about a week ago, it seemed like a great idea, but I'm starting to getting doubts about how much room there would be in that situation for the art part. So, today I and the beginning of the week I will take a look online to see what sort of design companies there are and talk with the same teacher again to see what he thinks of it and what would be the best route to reach that goal (maybe fashion even?). No matter what, I want to decide on a future goal and plan to reach that this month. Which was also a piece of advice I got from two former students of HKU (Dutch art school where I'm studying) who are working at a game industry at Osaka. I met them a few weeks ago to get a bit of advice: decide on a goal quickly and work fully towards it. I have been told to be already a few steps further up ahead then they were at that time and that I have a good chance of succeeding my goal. But I have to comfirm what sort of artistic company I want to aim to enroll in. Another thing that I remembered from that conversation and got me interested in companies was that Japanese companies - compared to Dutch ones - are much more interested in the quality or your portfolio and much less interested in your experience. For me, this is a really big advantage.

Also, if that topic gets sorted out, it's time to look for a part-time job as an English teacher, which pays much better than a regular part-time job and probably is much more useful on my CV as well. I've got some advice from the international office already on where to look, so once I tackle the future goal decision it's time to find a way to collect a bit more money for buying art materials, travel expensions for visiting galleries and other things.
For now, I'm going to complete a school assignment with the daylight still being bright while eating lunch and listening Japanese.

Cheers!