It’s December already! Wow! I can’t believe how fast this year has gone by, and how much has happened in 1 year… but it’s still to early to reminisce.

Thankgiving was wonderful! Taking my wife’s family to the US for the first time was a lot less stressful than I had initially feared, and everyone had a wonderful time. So that’s something to be very thankful for. I think we packed about 2 and a half weeks of activity into 1 week, so it felt like a lot longer than it really was. And I gained a decent amount of weight, not just from gorging on turkey and American food, but also from walking many miles each day and carrying heavy bags all over different cities and airports.

It’s good to be back, even though I’m still unwinding, unpacking, and realizing that I have so much work to do this week… I have an art gallery opening up at a cafe here on Monday and I have to frame the paintings and make sure everything is ready for that. I’ve also got a few commissions to do, and a contest to enter, not to mention Christmas shopping, New Years cards (which are a major deal in Japan), oh yeah, and the Japanese Language Proficiency Test on Sunday, which I have not prepared for at all despite having intended to for months. (But that’s ok right? I mean I never studied once when I was in high school and I got pretty good grades. Either I’m a natural genius or a lucky idiot… either way.)

I’ll post again soon with an update about the art show, and in a few days I should have some artwork to post. For fans of the yokai series, you can look forward to January, when I’ll be picking up that theme again, this time painting some Japanese gods! But for now, I’d better get to work.