Celebrations

Today I have reason to celebrate: I have a new job! I mean, my company has signed a contract for work that – hopefully – will be long term. The whole thing went very fast: after I had received a request on Friday 14th, we had a meeting on Tuesday 18th, and today, at the first meeting with the whole group, I already signed the contract.

This is my first official Japanese contract, all other work I have done so far was either from clients abroad, or with a simple verbal agreement. My contract is a standard, straightforward one for this type of work, but since my Japanese is still lacking, especially in legalese, I asked my lawyer about it – just to be safe I won’t sign away either my soul or my firstborn. A quick online translation revealed a rather peculiar point – something that is very specific Japanese and totally normal here, according to my lawyer:

A whole paragraph of the contract – and not one of the shorter ones – deals with organised crime. My company is not allowed any kind of relationship whatsoever to whichever kind of organised crime – or the contract is void. Bugger. And here I was, dreaming of living a glorious life as gangster bride… But: no dating a yakuza! Well, it’s hard enough to find interested men around here anyway, I don’t think any local gangster would want to be involved with a foreigner who does not quite fit the Japanese beauty ideal, to put it politely.

Anyway, let’s talk about the job: Writing short articles (including photos) for foreigners about living in Kyoto. Well, since this is essentially what I have been doing here for free for the last three years, I guess I can just as well do it for money! Honestly, I am slightly worried that I will be repeating myself with respect to the blog here, but I hope this will not be too big of an issue. In any case, the articles will be much shorter than here, so if there’s a duplicate post, there will be much more detail here in the blog. And posts about shrines, temples, and matsuri will keep appearing here exclusively because work has a different focus.

This is describing daily life in Kyoto (especially the typical Japanese things) for a crowd of American Millennials (18 – 34 years old) in more or less short sound (text?) bites of 50 to 100 words each. I will write 5 articles per week, and they will be published on the brand new facebook page Kyotogram. Yes, I know: facebook… For all of you who know my views on facebook: Feel free to laugh! For all of you who don’t know my views on facebook: Well, they are at least as strong as my views on mobile/smartphones…

Anyway, I am very much looking forward to doing this! The page is brand new and in the beginning the writers (we are three people) are pretty much free to do what we like. The page will be constantly evaluated to see how it is going, and to find a good direction where to take it. The first big review is planned for mid December and the goal is to have 10.000 followers until then. So, if you do care how I pay for my chocolate in the future and want to keep me employed beyond December, please visit the link above, and like and follow away!