I was recently recruited to a new company and will be starting a new job on Monday. I won't go into the details here on ShootTokyo. You are welcome to guess but my answer/confirmation will be on my LinkedIn on Monday when I update it. I've had the past 4 weeks off which has given me a lot of time to work on a bunch of projects I haven't had time to get around it.

It is typical when someone leaves a company in Japan to have a Sayonara-kai (goodbye party) to send them off but my new job is pretty cool so the team threw me a Gambatte-kai (work hard/do well party)! The team I have been working with is fantastic but my new opportunity was too good to pass up. I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves...

Today's Configuration: Leica M Monochrom with a Summicron 28mm lens and Leica SF-58 Flash

One of the embarrassing things about these are the speeches about you. Suzuki-san gave me a very kind send off...

My team knows me well and gave me the best farewell cones...and a very nice Montblanc pen. I didn't realize it but I have built a nice pen collection by already having 3 Montblanc and 1 Cartier pen. The one they gave me is different than the styles I have but I really like it.

I've been watching a lot of YouTube lately. One channel that is very good is by actor and comedian David Ury called HelpMeFindMyParents. He plays Ken Tanaka on the channel. Ken was adopted as an infant by Japanese parents and raised in Shimane Prefecture of Japan. He returns to Los Angeles to find his birth parents. Ken Tanaka speaks Japanese and English with a heavy Japanese accent. He is absolutely hysterical. If you read the comments some viewers are convinced that Tanaka's life is real making it even funnier.

One video he posted recently got a lot of attention in the foreign community in Japan. I think every foreigner that has been here a while has had the experience of speaking understandable Japanese and getting a response where the Japanese listener just cannot comprehend your Japanese no matter how correct your pronunciation.

I finished my Kickstarter Project this morning at 7:03Am with more success than I ever could have expected. I raised $39,304.01 which is 786% of goal. Someone was still processing their pledge when Kickstarter send me this mail so the actual amount is a little higher than the mail. This money is going to allow me to produce an amazingly beautiful book for everyone to enjoy. I am making some extra copies which are now available in my ShootTokyo Shop for pre-order. Books will be shipping in August. I will also be adding the Image Packs and the eBook to the shop when they are ready.

I learned so much doing this project. This was a super interesting exercise. There was a lot of up front planning to figure out how to set up the project, price the tiers, and model out a profit and loss to ensure the goal setting was correct. There was a lot of think about to get exposure and marketing the project successfully. Once the project got a lot of momentum I needed to figure out logistics. I have had a lot of people contact me for tips on running a project. Rather than keeping answering one off mails I'll write up a blog post with my lessons learned once I deliver the project.