kian

Thanks to our families panicking in the face of the problems with the nuclear reactor, Friend and I came home a few days after the Earthquake. To say it was a hard decision would be a understatement. But for now, I'm just glad all our friends are living far enough from Fukushima to not be affected (much).

Out of hibernation, back into hibernation. Though, since I'm still not back to the top of my artistic abilities, it doesn't really matter.

In two days, I'm going back to Japan, this time for a full year. First I'm going to Florida to visit a friend, then I'm flying back to Germany and a few hours later via Beijing to Osaka. Oh joy.

I'll take my laptop along and hope to have internet every now and then, but I don't think I'll have much time to look at art and leave comments. I also won't post anything new, since I'll have no scanner, and I won't take my tablet along.

So, goodbye everyone. See you in a year.

My internet died. It's been a while since that happened, but for more than a month I was entirely without internet. Abd without phone.
So, during that time I couldn't come here. And when I got my connection back, I saw how many pictures had popped up on my watchlist and fled in a panic. For a while I dreaded coming to this site because it would mean having to deal with that, so I didn't, and the list got longer and longer. Today I erased it. I feel guilty, but it was either that or leave for good.

Now I can go back to appreciating and commenting on the new stuff that comes up.

I've never added a pic to my favourites without leaving a comment. Have you? If you like it enough to fav it it's not too much of an effort to tell the artist in words and not just by clicking a button.
When I came here after a long absence my pics got favourited more than 160 times but only got two new comments.

That's not actually what I wanted to say. I feel I have to appologize for being gone for so long. You see, I've had a terrible art-block for, well, years. Every now and then I managed to draw something but that happened more and more rarely. And so for a while I simply didn't feel like comming here.
When I came I was confronted with the ever growing list of pictures from the artists I'm watching. And if I like something I leave a comment. But I didn't feel like leaving comments, especially since my own creativity was pretty much dead. So I only ever looked at a few pic and left the rest for later. And the list grew longer and longer, making my visits to this site more and more scarce. In the end I didn't come here for weeks, dreading the long long list of unwatched pictures that awaited me.

So I've come to decide that if I ever want to return here fully I have to get rid of that list. And I will. I might leave a comment here and there but generally I will erase the pics from my watchlist uncommented. I hope you'll forgive me for that.

Lately I'm drawing again. I have mastered proportions and poses in a way I wasn't able to before and even though my colouring still sucks I have hope again. I'm not going to upload any of my new pics here, though, not even in the scraps gallery. I simply don't want to be accociated with them, not here.
Might be a while before I manage a normal picture again.

As I told you in my last journal, I've been in Japan for half a year, living with a hostfamily. Now the problem was that I don't speak that much Japanese, and while it was enough to get trough the classes at university and to handle most problems of every-day life, there were moments when I was just totally lost. In such moments, rather than atmitting that I didn't understand a word they told me, I just adopted the habbit of smiling and nodding when it seemed appropriate, hoping that they didn't expect me to say anything relevant in return. Most of the other German students handled such situations pretty much the same way. Which had it's downsides.
A friend of mine, for example, lived with a charming older couple that went to hiking-tours every weekend. She usually joined them, unless we had something else planned. So one day her hostmother said something with my name in it and my friend didn't understand, but it didn't seem very importand so she just smiled and nodded. A few days later she and I went to Takarazuka, went to the theater, and when we had dinner in a restaurant afterwards, she said: "I hope you don't have any plans for this weekend. I think I accidentially invited you for a hiking-tour tomorrow."
Another day we went to Teramachi to go shopping for books and were spotted by a woman on a bicycle. The woman stopped, waited untill we were close enough and then started a conversation. A very one-sided one I have to admit. It began with the usual "Where do you come from?" "What are you doing here?" "Oh, your Japanese is really good, where did you learn it?" (Really, you don't have to understand such questions, only have the answers memorized, because it's always the same. Ever. Single. Time.) After that, I was lost. Didn't understand a single word - to this day I have no idea what she was talking about, but I got the distinct feeling, then, that she wanted us to join a cult. But she didn't seem inclined to stop anytime soon and it seemed inpolite to interrupt, so I just looked interested and concentrated, nodded every once in a while and said "Oh, really?" and "Is that so?" whenever it seemed to make sense. From time to time I glanced at my friend and was quite frustrated to see that she actually seemed to understand everything.
After a while the woman drove off and when she was gone I admitted to my friend: "You know, it's depressing how bad my Japanese is: I didn't understand a single word, but whenever I looked at you, you seemed to understand everything just fine."
And she answered: "Funny. During the conversaton I ocassionally looked at you, and I was thinking exactly the same."