It’s been a busy week for YTG. Lots of promising developments, but if I am completely honest, I have to admit that’s all they were: promising. Nothing is in ink yet, and we’ve got a bunch of deadlines on the horizon. *** I had my first interview with our third international intern. That …
Tag Archive: Yokohama
Oct 17
What Happens When the Sun Comes Out
Sunday’s rehearsal started out as a bit of a disappointment. Due to some schedule adjustments to accommodate one member’s participation in another show, this was our last full-day rehearsal of 2011. By the end of the day, two of the ensemble members had called in sick, one got stuck at work, and one showed …
Sep 27
The River is Wide
So the YTheatre Ensemble has started working on our first project. The first official project will still be Wall of Shame: The Musical, but we’re going to start doing a series of mini-projects to get us in the right headspace. The first project is to expand the world that I and a bunch of …
Sep 11
YT Ensemble, Assemble!
The Yokohama Theatre Ensemble met for the first time as a unit this past Friday at the Kanagawa Earth Plaza (or Global Citizens Plaza, or whatever it’s called). In addition to myself, the ensemble includes four brave souls: Hiraku Kawakami, Mari Kawamura, Mayu Cho, and Takahiko Arai. I say brave because we’re doing something …
Sep 08
The Dream I Stole From Sam
(mumble mumble) years ago, I was sitting in an apartment in Toronto, watching the real actors smoke, including Sam Rosenthal, now Artistic Director and General Manager of the Vaughn City Playhouse. This was a party of some sort (my memory is vague), possibly even the closing night party of The Diary of Anne Frank, my …
May 19
Good Day Becomes Bad Day
I set out yesterday morning to clear a bunch of stuff from my to-do list, related to my upcoming volunteer trip to Oofunato. I had 40,000 Yen in my wallet, thanks to scrupulous scrimping and saving over the last three months, which I planned to use for the volunteer trip. The day started out …
Mar 20
WTF Toronto Star
Here is an article filed by Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/955721–dimanno-no-rest-for-japan-quake-victims The article was brought to my attention by a contributor to the Bad Journalism Wall of Shame that I started Friday night. I clicked through to read it and was absolutely flabbergasted at it. I had expected a somewhat ill-informed, …
Mar 17
Why Bad Journalism Has Driven Me To Desperate Ends
In retrospect, I should have had this idea before, but I guess today I just hit critical mass (not sure if it’s appropriate to use a nuclear energy turn of phrase here): one too many pieces of bad journalism. So I decided to start a wiki Bad Journalism Wall of Shame and invite some …
Mar 16
Japan: I’m A Resident, Not A Tourist
In response to the big Tohoku earthquake, some people are fleeing Tokyo (and Kanto) and some are fleeing Japan. I am staying put in Yokohama. A lot of friends have offered me places to stay throughout the world should I elect to leave. Many have urged me to leave. This is heart-warming and …
Mar 14
Quake News – Bits and Bobs
Just some miscellanea regarding my quake experience before I continue with my interview thingy. My mechanical clock is running 20 minutes slow as of this afternoon; must be the continual bumping. I’m planning to leave it for a few more days to see how slow it will get. It’s losing about 5 minutes per …
Mar 13
Quake News – Interview PT I
As you may have heard, the largest earthquake in its 140 years of recorded earthquakes has struck the north eastern part of the main island of Honshu. Since the quake struck at 14:46 yesterday afternoon, I’ve been posting my reactions and any updates I can think of on Twitter and Facebook, which for many …
Feb 19
Exterior – Day 13
As we slept in this morning, the workmen came and removed the scaffolding. While I thought this was a little weird, since we hadn’t been asked if we’d approved it yet, but at least it means that most of the work is done. The workers will have to come back at least once more …
Feb 18
Exterior – Day 12
I popped upstairs to check a hunch when I got home today, and low and be-friggin’ hold, the roof was done! BEFORE AFTER Ooo! Shiny!
Feb 16
Exterior – Day Ten
Massive snow on the evening of Day Eight, so no one came yesterday. Today, however, they were back. Mostly, it seemed, putting finishing touches on the paintwork: Hard to see, but they’ve painted the drainpipe and eaves pipes running down the side of the house with the same brown as the metal deck/fence. …
Feb 14
Exterior – Day 8
I get home later on Mondays, so by the time I snapped these, it was raining and the light wasn’t so good. They’ve restained our front door so that the outside doesn’t look faded anymore. For reference, this is how it looked until today: You can see in this final …
Feb 13
Exterior – Day Seven
Day five and day six were no-gos. The weather was rainy and snowy, so no work got done. But on the morning of the the seventh day, I answered the door in my red bathrobe and walked around the building consulting with Tsukide-san about the work. A few hours later, the carpenters arrived to …
Feb 11
Exterior – Day Four
Painting started yesterday in earnest. Yay! Blue! And red! They did more work after I took these, but by the time I got back home last night it was dark, and today it is snow. I expect them to be back at work tomorrow, weather permitting.
Feb 09
Exterior – Day Three
Well, the men are hard at work. Today I came home to a fume-filled house, since they’ve started doing the primer coats on the wall and the wood. You can see that the coating is making the wall panels look really yellow. They seem to be leaving the metal alone for the time …
Apr 21
Tick Tock, Tick Tock
So, we put an offer in on the Kamiooka Tea House last Sunday, and we’re waiting to hear back. Apparently there are three owners that must all be consulted, so I wonder if our contract-signing date will actually be able to be this Saturday as scheduled, or not… In the meantime, here are some …
Apr 18
Real Estate Agent Weirdness
We had a meeting with Rehouse today to put an offer in on the house we’ve chosen. For some weird reason, the seller’s agent wanted craploads of info about me… Workplace, salary, etc. I made a bit of a stink about this because there is absolutely no legal requirement for this. The bank has all …
Apr 16
Higashi-Totsuka House
After the Idogaya Sunroom house got nixed, we moved to our next favourite, which we’d seen on the second big house-viewing weekend (the morning of the same day with all the drama surrounding Idogaya). This was a huge (135 square meters) house in Higashi-Totsuka, about ten minutes from my sister-in-law and brother-in-law’s place. We visited …
Apr 16
IDOGAYA SunRoom House
The third house we saw (on the first day that my wife and I looked together at houses), was this little place in Idogaya (click for full size in new window). Well, at 100ish square meters, not so small. The best part about this house was the sunroom. You could see Mt. …
Apr 16
Kamiooka Tea House
The first house I saw, back in February, was a 5LDK about 20 minutes from Kamiooka station. My wife wasn’t available that weekend, so I went with my friend Maiko in order to put the non-English speaking real estate agent (Hirasawa-san) at ease. I fell in love with the place. It’s 111 square meters (or …
Mar 10
Two Weeks of WHAT?
Wow, I really did think I’d be updating this house hunting blog more often. But with finishing a project up for my company, and being balls-deep in rehearsal for my next show, not to mention the house hunting itself, well… Let me quickly bring you up to speed. As I stated in my …
Feb 23
We Will Have To Move
We’re currently renting a nice little house up on top of a hill near Kamiooka station. It’s about 85 square meters, has a largish kitchen and living/dining room on the first floor, and two moderately sized bedrooms on the second floor. There is also a storage room, which was once in good enough repair to …
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