Bear Cards

Wow, illustrations finally right?

Well, if you didn't know, I've been working as an English teacher for a Japanese middle school for the past two months. While doing this, I've basically tried to take advantage of any conceivable opportunity to using my drawing skills.

So, in this case, I was asked to make some cards that would make it easier to divide the kids into random groups. So, I made this cards which I dub 熊カルタ (Kuma Karuta or Bear Cards). There are six of them so that when passed out, they will create six groups based on the card that each child receives. As an extra, each card has a theme or vocabulary word associated with it.

They were painted with watercolor and were very fun to create.

Btw, these are my images...please don't use them without my permission...just have to get that out there.


Bright Bear


Bad Bear- A Yankee, or the Japanese version of a punk student. This was my vice principal's favorite.


Bed Bear or Sleepy Bear- This was the favorite of the teacher who asked me to create these.


Big Bear


Boring Bear


Brave Bear

From SFO to KIX

My final day in the states. On the plain, waiting to go to Osaka, where I currently am.



Some notes that I wrote on the way...

- There was a man who was probably of high status in some Muslim sect that I sat next to while waiting in JFK. He was wearing a long black robe, with a matching, black head wrap. He smelled a little raw, but other than that seemed like a very nice guy.

While boarding the plane, I was slightly upset by a lady ahead of me in the line, because she made a very ignorant comment about that guy. Something like "I hope that man in the black robe isn't on the same flight..."

But kudos to the flight attendant who she said this to, because she kind of rolled her eyes and assured her that he posed no threat. Sometimes I feel embarrassed to see people like that lady...


- When I came to the waiting area for my flight from SFO to Kansai International, I noticed a familiar looking man sitting rather far from the other passengers.

Lo and behold, who could it be, but Billy Blanks of Tae Bo, and "Billy's Boot Camp" as it's called in Japan. He was on my plane, and I spotted him again in front of the line when I went through customs in Japan, but I opted to not bother him. I thought it might be a little awkward.

July in Union Square

Uploading some sketches that I did before I came to Japan.
Here's one from Union Square in July, before I went to Miami, and eventually to Japan in August.

...Without a doubt, I miss New York.

Memes I've missed

Sorry for the random post.

There are a lot of things going on for me here in Japan, but I'll start writing about that in due time. I got internet rather recently and it's bit hard to organize myself, start writing, and get the ball rolling.

In the mean time, via Lifehacker, I found the Internet Meme Timeline featured on the Wired Blog, and created by BK Gupta of Dipity.

Looking at it, I noticed a few memes that I missed in the past year.
So, I present them to you, my reader(s).

First, is Yo Tengo Miedo. Which was interesting to me because it was a meme in Spanish (Mexican, I believe.) It's interesting to see the memes that each section of the world has. Of course there were some other foreign language means that were brought to my attention, but I can somewhat understand what's going on in this one.

Basically, this guy is being stopped by the police for being drunk, and I guess they want to do a breathalyzer test on him. He displays his degree of inebriation by constantly say, "I'm scared, I'm scared" and so on.




Next is a video that features IT/Helpdesk humor, which I found amusing. I worked briefly as a tech in college, I didn't do very advanced work...but I understand how things are. Actually, if you've worked with people or in the service industry you should understand this.



Finally, is the most recent meme that I've missed. Which is that Oprah got pranked by Anonymous. I'm not going to explain about this. I'll just provide the necessary links and you can learn on your own.

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/IT%27S_OVER_NINE_THOUSAND! (ads are nsfw, click at your own risk.)



Enjoy.

A small update

So...I'm in Japan.

I want to make this short...because I'm in an internet cafe and I can't stay too long. I won't have stable internet for at least another few days, but I'll be able to get into more detail once I do.

So, let's see...

I've been　in Osaka, Japan for almost 3 weeks now. My trip over here was fine, and until recently I was staying with an old friend. Luckily but not without an incredible amount　of hassle and frustration I was able to acquire an apartment of my own...but that's the first jumped hurdle of many many more that are here in　the land of the rising sun.

I'm here teaching English, which is what everyone and their mothers do to teach English...and I haven't started yet, but tomorrow is my first official day.

Right now, my mood is a sloshy mix of excitement, frustration, lonliness and hope. ...though my frothy mix of feelings is tipping over with large helping of frustration.

Most of it lies in that I truly am a "foreigner." I'm a spectacle, a walking curiosity, yet I feel untouchable and at times unwanted.

This could be for a myriad of reasons, but I'm afraid that being an unstereotypical black guy on top of being a foriegner itself has a smidge of blame in this.

I don't want to knock Japan at all. I do like it, and when I've been introduced to people or had obligated interactions it's been nothing but good. But my day to day　involves being gawked at and mentioned in passing by people who don't think I can understand Japanese.

Of course, this could all be something with me too, and maybe I should be all smiles and put on a show of sorts...

Anyway, like I said I'll explain in more detail late, but from my understanding, it seems that I have to walk on eggshells and be a model citizen to get by.

Ugh...well...there are a lot of good things here besides that, and I'm happy to have good friends, good supervisors/coworkers, and most of all, my lovely girlfriend for their support and company.

Alright, I guess my time's up. I feel bad that I wrote what is seems to be a mostly negative entry, but I'll write a more balanced, in-depth look into my life once I can get internet.

...With pictures too!

好きなイラストレータ/Illustrators I like 7.4.08

ケン・ヲンはアストラリアからのイラストレータで最近HPが再開された。
作品は色使いが良くて特に感触がうまく出る創作を描くアーティストだと思う。
特にこのポストに載ったブルーと言う絵が大好き。

Ken Wong is an illustrator from Australia who recently has redone his website.
I think his use of colors are great and he uses texture to great effect in his illustrations. My favorite piece of his, is blue which you see in this post.

See more of his art here, http://www.kenart.net/

マインドハックス/Mind Hacks

最近、色んな事を整理しながら本棚の中身を見たら読みきれなかった本が気付いた。
実はほとんどのは漫画とアートに関わった本と雑誌だけどたまには情報的なものか面白い科学的な本を読んで楽しむ。
読みきれなかった本の中にはマインドハックスという本がある。
今から２、３年前ぐらい本屋を立ち寄る時にこの本がタイトルだけで注目を引かれた。マインドハックスというのはマインドのハッキングすると言う意味なのでふと考えたら脳の改善とか何かの超能力を得る事についた本と考えてた。それにオーライリーという出版社は普通にいろんなプログラムについてマニュアルとか一般の知恵に以外情報と手段を身に付ける本を出す会社なのでそのことをマインドという新たな分野につないだのは面白いと思った。

買ってからちらと見たら予想以外、本の中身は違う。本当は認知神経科学についての本だった。つまり脳の機能を調べてそれをもとにして日常生活に当然のことを深く分かってハッキングする。ところで、ハッキングは普通に言うとコンピュアターの不正侵入の意味があるけど現代用語（英語）ではハッキングはある物事か行動を元の機能以外、他の方法・手段で使う。

とにかく、当時、ちょっと読んでたらこの本がちょっと怖いと思った。基本的に言って我らのすべては脳に込めてそれで何かの機械みたいな者だからこの本に載った機能に限って人間の生命とか命は脳そのものだけだ。監獄のように考え、想いなどはこの目によって投獄された。その雰囲気でなんとなく読み切れなかった。

しかし、本棚に見たと再び読んでみたかった。ゆっくり読んだけどやっと終わった。結局、とても面白くて考えさせた本だった。脳はそれだけだと言うより脳はそれだけじゃなくてすばらしいと思わせた。

脳そのものは見事にこの世の資料などを吸い込みながら現実を見分ける非常に美しい機械だ。日常生活の当然の事はどんなにちっぽけと思われても事実的にいってその小さくてくらないことはたいしたことだよ。そして、そのことを受け取ってついた可能性を解放さられた者はその脳だけだ。

ってことはすばらしいなあ、人間は

っということでこの本はおすすめ！是非読んで下さい。

So, lately I've been reorganizing/going through a lot of my possessions and I came across some books that I hadn't read or just never got around to finishing. To tell you the truth, most of the books I own are comic or art related, but I have been known to enjoy a book or two about science or general knowledge.

Anyway, so amongst my books I noticed the books Mind Hacks, which was published by O'Reilly pubslishing a few years ago. I remember coming across this book at my local bookstore and just the title alone was able to grab my attention.

Thinking about this, as silly as this sounds, the title evoked images of improving my brain, and have super human brain abilities. ...not like ESP or anything, but being able to impress people with my awesome cognitive skills or something along those lines.

Anyway, with this though firmly set in my consciousness I set about purchasing it and glancing at it upon getting home. it ended up not really being what I expected it to be but it was interesting none the less.

The book itself is mainly a primer on cognitive neuroscience, and explains the various functions of our brain in our day to day life. Upon reading a little bit further into it, I remember actually having a sense of fear...because I had the impression that we are limited by our brains. We can only see reality only as our brain presents it to us...and to speak truthfully our brain is not the most efficient piece of machinery imaginable.

Of course, there is a kernal of truth in this, reality isn't exactly the reality that we perceive it to be, and by reading this book one can learn that the brain uses a lot of tricks to makes sense of things and isn't always giving us the whole picture for a multitude of reasons.

However, I decided to give this book another gander, and although I took my time reading it, I finally finished it last week.

I'm familiar with O'Reilly publishing as a company that often releases a series of hacking books in relation to various software and PC technology. Hacking is presented in the sense that we can make use of various technologies for purposes outside of their intended or basic functions by using "hacks." Along those lines, this series has been purported to the realm of the mind. Furthermore, through cognitive neuroscience, which is in essence, understanding the mind and it's functions, we can set the stage to "hack" our mind.

Reading this book has brought a sense of wonderment to me. The book is divided into a series of experiments and explanations for the various activities and functions that we experience in our daily lives. Often taken for granted, one can discover that these things, no matter how small, are not very small at all, but incredible feats of engineering worthy of amazement.

Sometimes, in life, we tend to lose perspective. We can get lost amongst the grandiose manner of the universe itself; but sometimes you have to stop and smell the flowers and realize that even the ability to walk and talk in something to revere and admire.

...Humans are amazing creatures aren't they? That's the sentiment that I can take away from reading this book.

With that said, I'm going to wrap this up and say that I recommend this book as an interesting read.

So, yea...buy it.

ご無沙汰/A long silence

Been a while since I've updated
From now on, I'll be heading towards a new direction with this blog.
Right now I can only offer you this sketch but I'll be updating soon with more information and posts.

Thanks for reading.

ご無沙汰、長い間更新しなかった。
でも今からちょっと新たな方向に向いてる。今はこのスケーチだけを提出するけどすぐこのブログについての詳しい事を書く予定がある。

このブログをお読みになった方に感謝しております。

Photoshop Skills +1

Alright, I've gained a sense of accomplishment from this picture for two reasons.

1. I actually did a painting/drawing on something larger than 8X11. This was probably about 18X14...something around there.

2. I successfully scanned it using my regular flatbed scanner and assembled it using photoshop skills. I feel like I've leveled up.

Gotta keep doing more stuff like this...stay tuned.

Slow Jams

Things have been a little slow lately, I've kind of just settled into the way things are going for now.

Normally, this would upset me, but I need to just give myself a break and ride the situation out sometimes.

Right now, my girlfriend is in the city for the month, and I'm waiting to see if I get the good or bad news from SVA concerning my entrance. So, until I get the news I'm just going to relax a bit, enjoy my time with my girlfriend and organize what I'm dealing with right now instead of getting ahead of myself and consequently mixed up and confused.

I still have a lot of ideas and projects in my head though, and i'm making an effort to get things done, so when those start I will be posting here.

Anyway, enjoy these two recent skecthes...one is from a Japanese restaurant I went to with my roomate and the other is from my friend's apartment.

I had some time on my hand at my friend's place because I don't play first person shooters (i.e. I am terrible at them) so I sat back and entertained myself by drawing them playing Halo 3.

Slow

Not much to say right now... but things at work have been a bit slow lately. As you can see by this picture.

Rehash

This year hasn't exactly been going the way that i've been wanting it to, but it's still early in the year.

From now on, I want to use this site to write more, particularly to ask questions and to have a conversation with myself and whoever else may be reading this.

So from this point, this will be mostly text based. I will put up pictures and sketches as they come a long. But for the most part, those will be distributed amongst my portfolio site http://www.ajanioloye.com and my two other blogs...which I will mention after this.

So, before I go into the heavy writing I would like to give an update on various events in my life.

-I came back from Japan unscathed. I had a good time.
-I didn't get into the JET programme... I'm still a little disappointed about this, it meant a lot to me. What gets me is that although I have my hypotheses on why, they never tell you why, so it makes me wonder if there's something wrong with me.
-To balance out the bad news, the good news is that I passed the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) at level 2. Level 1 is the highest level, I will take that, but I'm not sure when excatly. (I think I would have to spend time in Japan before I can do that.)
-I've applied for graduate school. Specifically, the MFA in Illustration and Visual Storytelling program at School of Visual Arts. I'll be informed of the results before April 1st. This is a very important thing for me. If I don't get in, I'm not really sure what I will do.

-I started a blog with Shaun Peterson so that we can keep drawing illustrations and characters... http://illchallenge.blogspot.com
-I've also started a blog just for my subway skecthes...it's supposed to be collborative blog...but no one else is really posting except me. http://nycsubsketch.blogspot.com

Other than that, I'm just chilling out in New York. A lot going on in my head, so I'm hoping I can clear things up with this blog.

That's all for now.

Classy

It's official... I can no longer stand to watch an episode of Flavor of Love...

I think I have grown as human being, I can only hope that others will join me.

Night Owl/ 夜型人間

Since returning from Japan my schedule has been kind of weird. I work in the morning come home, fall asleep, wake up in the evening and stay up until some absurd time. The I still have to work the next morning, so the result is that I've been sleeping less.

Anyway, today is one of those nights, and I decided to sleep in the morning because I have to pick my friend up from the airport early in the morning.

I've been meaning to upload some new sketches, and finally got around to scanning a few things, enjoy.

I'm going to really try and update with more work from now on. I'll write when I can but will focus on the pictures for the most part.

Enjoy.

Age Sage

I was supposed to post after I arrived in Japan, but a few things happened that slowed things down for me and didn't let me do things as I wanted.

First off, I didn't have net for a little while so it made things a little hard for me.

After that, I got sick, which didn't put me in much of a mood to write.

But I'm here now, that's what matters.

I had really put a lot into this trip. Since I began working part time in July, I had been trying to save what little money I have to make this the most awesome trip that it could be. Actually, concerning money I was surprised that I was able to make it. Both in saving enough money to get there and saving enough money so that I'm not dead broke, but thanks to various freelance jobs I was able to do I made out okay.

That was one of the various good things that came from this experience. Unfortunately, there were a few bumps on my foray into awesome, and I would like to get those out of the way before I go on.

Of course, it started out with that terrible trip over there, but I already wrote about that. But what really kinda took the air out of my tires was that I came down with a cold.

I had spent the time before my trip trying not to get sick. I exercised periodically in the morning, I ate well and tried to stay away from sugar. I took vitamins, and those immune booster things.

But it seems that life has a funny way of doing things. Sometimes it seems like there is a very thin line between being cautious and being too anxious, and when you cross that anxiety line, whatever it is that you were trying to prevent is exactly what will happen to you.

After all that I did, not long after arriving in Japan, I felt a tickle in my throat.

That was it. The beginning of my cold and the end of my grand plans.

Damn you Irony. I shake my fist at thee.

Now, of course it could have been a lot worse, I was still able to enjoy my trip. But I could have done more, including getting some actual sketches done. It was unfortunate that I couldn't do that.

Alright, with that out of the way I can talk about the cool stuff.
Actually, I'm not really sure where to start, there really was a lot going on in my head while I was there.

This trip wasn't a life changing experience, but it was an experience. It's a bit strange to think about it, but I've spent a good chunk of my actual life studying Japanese and learning all sorts of random things about Japan, but this is only my third time there. In addition, in total I've only been in Japan for a total of about 3 weeks between these 3 trips.

To step on the ground and to be in a place where people are speaking Japanese is surreal. Actually, it was intimidating and relaxing at the same time. Having just got there I was kind of shocked into shyness. The overload of Japanese was like jumping into an ocean when you've only swam in rivers. I had no choice to speak Japanese to buy food and books and things, but I felt like an idiot and was stumbling all over the place. However, as I was there I felt more comfortable with Japanese, and I know that if I had a lengthier stay I would be able to once and for all have Japanese conversation with the same confidence that I can have in English.

But the reality of the situation at the time was that I ended up speaking little Japanese when I had someone that spoke English around me...which was most of the time. I'm a little dissapointed in myself, but only a little...I have to give myself a break because I was only there for about 8 days. If I lived there for a year and did that, well then we have a real problem.

Another thing about Japan, though it wasn't what I expected, was how people saw me. Being African American is one thing in America, and something totally different abroad. Usually it ends up that people are nicer and have less hostile to you but you are still at the will of the various stereotypes that have been perpetuated throughout the world. What is also weird is that you can feel even more like an outsider, because you are, and it's so much more apparent in a country that is 99% ethnic Japanese. In America, though I'm disturbed by how people are mostly identified by race before nationality, I still feel American. In Japan, I'm a gaikokujin (foreigner) in addition to being a kokujin (black guy) compounding the degrees of separation... and hilarity!

I joke.

But it turns out that I didn't really feel much of that at all. Yes, I got stares, mostly from young children. But that was it. I started out having all these ideas of the crazy and strange comments and conversations I would get into, because I was the only black, afro sporting (by the way, I shaved my afro a few days after arriving), guy in the city but in the end nothing happened.


...this blog is going a little long, I'm going to try and wrap it up and skip all the details.

Anyway, I'll give a synopsis of what I did.

-Arrived in Fukuoka, stayed in awesome design inspired hotel (Querega I believe)
-Spent a lot of good time with my girlfriend, and I'm a bit sad without her here...
-Did a lot of walking, eating, looking around Fukuoka city, mostly around Tenjin. I like it a lot, and I prefer it out of all the cities I've been to in Japan.
-Took the bullet train to Osaka and hung out with my friends.

Some observations on Osaka...
-extremely crowded (but this was probably because it was a holiday for everyone)
-more fat people
-people dress differently
-feels totally different from Tokyo, or the places I've been to in Kyushu.
- the food is delicious, my pallet will never be the same.

- I did hatumode (visiting temple on new year's).
- I bought a lot of books including the newest volume of Detroit Metal City,completed π/Pai, and a few art books by Katsuya Terada
-I watched a lot of tv, most of it was pretty interesting thought nothing to really write about...except full house in Japanese. The voices are really strange and it was interesting how they translated their catch phrases. For example, Joey's "cut, it, out!" is "Hai! Kore de, owari!"

Anyway, a good time was had by all. I'm looking forward to when I can go again, which I hope is soon because I applied to JET and hope I get in.

Also, this trip made me think a lot and motivated me to make this year a better one then the last. I could write a lot about that and be all...thought provoking and sentimental...but I'll spare you because I know hardly anyone reads this, and if they do just probably just want to see pictures. (Actually, I'm just kind of tired today.)

So, on with some pictures.

I posted all of these on my Pro Flickr account actually. So you can go there if you want. http://flickr.com/samurabi



Yes. I took a picture of the bathroom because it was cool. When I took a shower the center of the mirror wouldn't fog up...ah, the future is here.


Hatsumode


Kimchi-nabe


random sign I saw in a bagel shop


takoyaki stand in osaka


Giant Enemy Crab!


View from my friend's apartment in Osaka