All of my JTB articles for Kurashiki are done and turned in. Yay me.

Yasutomi-san seemed to enjoy my essay on pottery, esp. I’m very fond of pottery. I’ll link to these essays once they go online.

BTW - if you ever come to Japan and stay in Okayama-ken during summer (peach season) you must try them. Okayama’s famous for its peaches, and when something’s famous in Japan, it means they’re one of the best you’ll find in the world.

Finally I finished Kurashiki essays (seven out of nine…still waiting for the two from Li so I can translate those into Korean) in both English and Korean. The deadline is March 5, so I’m a bit early.

I really enjoyed my time in Kurashiki, so it wasn’t difficult to write flattering essays about what I did there. I’ll post links to the website when JTB updates its web contents.

I’m still alive and writing. I realized that the deadline for Kurashiki articles are March 15, so I need to get ‘em cranking this weekend. I plan to have all of them drafted by Monday and have James’ girlfriend proofread them for me since I only plan to write five short ones.

And today’s the last day for me to tinker with Nine outline. I realized that I’ve made several serious flaws with the character motivations and scene orders. Wow. The things you notice after leaving the story alone for a while. On Monday I want to revisit Carnal Secrets outline and start writing the actual draft on March 1.

It’s not a fiction writing job, but a writing job — a paid one, to boot — nonetheless. Japan Travel Bureau wants to hire me for a couple of days to go to Kurashiki and do some activities, such as Kimono wearing, etc. and write about the experience in English and Korean. They’ll also film me so that they can promote tourism in Japan. The pay’s going to be much more than I expected, so I’m thrilled.

The objective of the trip is to add more contents to the Western Japan Travel website. Chris helped develop it, and it’s really nice, esp. if you’re interested in traveling in Japan.