My job at the music store gave me no reason to complain: I was extremely busy, had plenty of responsibility, and also plenty of opportunity to expand and explore new ideas for the business, had I been so inclined. The owner treated me very well, and all in all, I should have been completely happy there.

It seems though, that I just wasn't suited to being an employee. Part of the problem was the daily routine of the work, and having to deal with mindless paperwork such as quotations and tender offers, but perhaps more important was just a desire to be 'out of there' ... anywhere but there at that desk. Just a few months after that large Kaigetsudo print was finished though, our second daughter was born, and there I was, breadwinner for a family of four ...

The owner of the company knew what I had been doing with the printmaking, and that I was toying with the idea of trying to become a printmaker. He had even given me that previous three month leave, knowing full well that I was using part of it to 'scout out' the scene in Japan, and learn what I could. His tolerance was really stretched though during 1985, because I thought I had figured out how I could make the printmaking thing work - I would set up as a 'craftsman', build a display booth, and start making the rounds of the numerous craft fairs held in the area.

And so I began. I prepared a knock-down display unit on which I could display prints and explanatory materials, set up a bank account and sales tax account, collected all the information on fairs that I could get my hands on, and started a side-career as a woodblock printmaker craftsman.

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This was early 1985. By the end of the first year of it, I had done a dozen or so craft fairs, and had sold 19 prints (8 of them to friends who were trying to give me a 'boost' ...). I had learned a lot of things, but mostly I learned that as much as I liked making woodblock prints, travelling around the country and trying to sell them was nowhere near as much fun. It was time for 'Plan B'.

'Plan A' hadn't been much of a gamble, because of course I kept my job at the music store through the entire experiment, but 'Plan B' was different. It was a simple series of steps:

  • quit the job at the music shop
  • take the wife and kids and hop on a plane headed for Japan
  • somehow get accepted into the country by the immigration people
  • find a place to live
  • open an English language 'school' in our home
  • gather together enough students to make a living
  • work in my spare time at improving my printmaking skills, and then ...

I could see these steps clearly ... all except the final one; looking that far into the future was just a bit too difficult ...

So we did it. In the spring of '86 I gave my notice at the music shop, and by the end of that year, had worked my way through all those steps, one by one.

But I can see that I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, because even with everything else that was going on that year, I did manage to get in a bit of printmaking ...