@JapanesePrintmaking Twitch replay 2026 04 25

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:23]Ohio gozaimasu. Good morning. Good morning. Nothing like a sudden crash the moment you press the start button.

[00:00:30]>> [laughter] >> Good morning. Good morning.

[00:00:36]I hit the button that says start streaming and it went okay, okay and then boom.

[00:00:41]Blue screen of death.

[00:00:44]Black actually.

[00:00:45]Sorry about that. I don't know.

[00:00:47]It could be and I was been quite a while since I restarted the computer and I should be doing that. I'm sorry.

[00:00:54]Sorry, sorry, sorry. Are we all up? Are we okay? I really don't know what to say. It looks like comments are in the chat. Looks like we're up. Sorry.

[00:01:02]I've been here early today. I was here about a half an hour early getting all set up and ready and I thought everything was good to go.

[00:01:09]Always something.

[00:01:11]We're up. We're okay, she says. All right.

[00:01:14]You're worried when Dave is more than a minute late.

[00:01:17]>> [laughter] >> Well, 1 minute late there's been a computer problem. 2 minutes late I'm perhaps in the bathroom. 3 minutes late I'm probably dead.

[00:01:26]>> [laughter] [gasps] >> Someone says is there paper out? Oh my god, I don't know.

[00:01:34]I didn't actually check this morning.

[00:01:35]It's Saturday. Surely nobody's coming.

[00:01:40]Do I have to go upstairs and check? I'd better go upstairs.

[00:01:42]>> [laughter] >> I'd better go up there and check. Okay, this is obviously now going to be one of those days. Okay, if you can hang on for just 1 second.

[00:01:55]I'll go upstairs and check.

[00:01:57]I was supposed to be sizing up there so I didn't give it too much thought.

[00:02:01]Back in a minute.

[00:02:04]>> [laughter] >> Away we go.

[00:02:11]10 9 8 7 6 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Okay, there were two packages that needed to come out. So, double chocolate egg. Whoever wants that that reminded me.

[00:03:40]Double chocolate egg. Thank you.

[00:03:48]Nanda.

[00:03:50]>> [laughter] >> It really is Dave is not buying any lottery tickets today. That really is my day.

[00:03:56]Nanda.

[00:04:03]Left, right. Okay.

[00:04:04]>> [snorts] >> It really is one of those days.

[00:04:08]>> [laughter] >> Whoever it was that reminded me about the paper, thank you very much. I was up there twice. I had a shower up there this morning. I went up there and got the cameras. I was supposed to do sizing. I started to get the sizing ready. Looked in the fridge. Nope, there's not enough mix. Plan B, what shall we do? There's perhaps work down here to do.

[00:04:27]I had such a peaceful couple of days in home. May, Thursday and Friday I I got lots of work done but I also relaxed.

[00:04:44]Okay, let's relax starting now.

[00:04:49]Ome was fun. Yeah, I enjoyed it. The whole thing. The stream was nothing much happened but I peaceful time chatting with my friends.

[00:04:58]That's what those ome streams have become, isn't it? There was no work done. She just gave me a token work to keep me keep my hands moving for the couple of minutes there.

[00:05:08]I'd love to go back to ome more often the last couple of months because of this shop. It's sakura season, you know.

[00:05:15]Now with the customers reducing a bit, people are busy with their print packing and stuff. It's okay. They don't need me hanging around.

[00:05:23]Get back to ome more. Get back to ome.

[00:05:27]I have to do the problem there. So, I missed the pool. I missed the pool Thursday and Friday.

[00:05:33]I missed the pool Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. I went to Edges and so I only did two out of five days uh last week.

[00:05:40]40% that is a fail.

[00:05:44]If that river was deep enough, you know.

[00:05:47]Back when I used to live there all the time we were thinking about that. If if if we don't put a bit of you know concrete on the one end of that weir, we could deepen that section of the pool just enough that I could but you don't fool around with stuff like that. This is Tokyo. You can't put concrete in a river and it's part of the water supply for Tokyo.

[00:06:08]The idea that an individual could you know do some engineering on the river.

[00:06:14]I mean I'm not in any country could you do that but in Japan absolutely not.

[00:06:20]Yeah, you would get in trouble.

[00:06:21]Absolutely, absolutely.

[00:06:23]Okay, it's Sunday. What are we going to do? We've got a few different jobs to do. Maybe one of them you might never seen before. It's the tariff edition signing. Have you seen that? I don't know.

[00:06:34]Okay, couple of updates. The sumo game Nokotta Nokotta is still here waiting.

[00:06:41]Sadako's coming today. Hopefully maybe today we might get a bit of chance. If the shop's quiet, we'll get our scissors busy. We'll set it up, take some video.

[00:06:50]It's going to take about half an hour to do all the cutting and trimming and getting it ready. So So, that's still waiting and Uncle Ernie, if you're here we're on this. We're on this. Thank you very much.

[00:07:01]Nokotta Nokotta with added Nikishi.

[00:07:04]Nikishi with added Nikishi.

[00:07:07]>> [laughter] >> We might need this today.

[00:07:12]Nokotta Nokotta.

[00:07:17]Japan Times. Not Japan Times, the New York Times for April the 26th Sunday.

[00:07:22]You know, people are saying I say is this real or is it live? Show me a newspaper. Well, here's your newspaper.

[00:07:28]Here's your proof. This is Sunday April 26th proving what day it is.

[00:07:37]Huh?

[00:07:41]>> [snorts] >> Lebanon. US costs near arsenal. Prison poetry and love.

[00:07:47]Sentenced to death.

[00:07:50]Yes, clearly the stream is from the future. Okay, that's uh going to go over here.

[00:07:58]Okay, there's some prints. Ayumi-san has handed in some prints.

[00:08:03]These are on the desk here when I got back last night. I didn't look at them last night. I haven't looked at them this morning.

[00:08:09]Ayumi-san upstairs, one of our printers.

[00:08:11]She has turned in a batch of Look at this, she puts okay with a question mark. Nanda.

[00:08:18]Oh, this is not looking not good news.

[00:08:21]Okay with a question mark on about five prints.

[00:08:24]Question marks on the whole main batch of prints. And then no good on about half of them. This is not looking good and maybe we should not perhaps talk about this in public.

[00:08:38]I don't know.

[00:08:40]We have a bit of a thing going on with with Ayumi-san. She's getting really choosy about the work she wants to do.

[00:08:48]And this is a thing here with this printer. Uh Kubota-san a shocking and craftsman type. Nothing. He just does the work that's put on his desk. There's no choosing whatever.

[00:08:58]Yeah, Ayumi-san's getting choosy. I don't know what it is. I'd like to do this one. I don't want to do that one.

[00:09:02]And on the one she doesn't want to do Andy Capp.

[00:09:07]Andy Capp. Does it mean anything to you?

[00:09:09]It was this comic strip in Britain when I was a kid.

[00:09:13]We're talking 50, 60, 70, 80 years ago.

[00:09:15]Andy Capp, it's a comic strip. It's about this working class guy in Britain who just doesn't do anything. He just goes to the pub every day. Doesn't work.

[00:09:23]Doesn't do anything. Gets unemployment insurance.

[00:09:25]He's not a good character at all.

[00:09:28]He's not a good character at all.

[00:09:30]There's a strip I remember. There's a wedding happening in the community, whatever. Andy, the old guy who knows it all, he takes aside the bridegroom before the service and whispers in his ear something.

[00:09:42]Bridegroom gets this. We move ahead a few days. It's after the wedding. The bridegroom, the bride and whatever they're in their home now and the bride tells the bridegroom in in the kitchen washing the dishes.

[00:09:54]We next see the bridegroom, he's standing at the dish dishes and he actually drops one of the cups clear. He just drops it, boom, crash.

[00:10:02]She comes running in, "I want you stupid. You can't do this. Get out of this kitchen." Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. In the final frame we see the bridegroom guy in a handicap in the pub happily drinking.

[00:10:12]The point being he screwed up on purpose so he wouldn't have to do that anymore.

[00:10:23]I don't know. We'll see what this We'll see. We'll see. We'll see.

[00:10:27]Okay, moving right along.

[00:10:29]Moving right along. It's an in Ome the other day.

[00:10:32]You see Omi-san, the the person who's in charge of all of our packing there.

[00:10:37]In charge of all our packing, she gave me a problem.

[00:10:39]And I have to solve this. Do you know what this is?

[00:10:43]It's a woodblock print. It's a group of woodblock prints. This is the Mokuhankan Mokuhankan Haru 2011 Senshafuda collection. It was one of the first publications of Mokuhankan.

[00:10:58]I had the idea we would do four sets of Senshafuda, the decorative small label type prints. We would do spring, summer, autumn, winter that year, three of each and then see how it went for the future.

[00:11:10]We got spring done somewhere around June or July. We got summer done somewhere around November or December or January and at that point I pulled the plug because like it wasn't happening. The young people I'd worked with, it was a designer Cowdy Seki, carver was Satokun, printer was Tetsui-kun.

[00:11:29]They weren't as enthusiastic as I was.

[00:11:32]So anyway, it got later and later and later. Okay, long story short. The way we laid them out in Princeton, you don't print like one print at a time. You gang them up and print them together.

[00:11:40]So from the printer's point of view, this is really just one woodblock print you put your color on. Some of the colors overlap. The blue is all over the place here. The orange is all over the place.

[00:11:50]So you don't even care that it's more than one print. Then later on the packing staff chops it up and packages it.

[00:11:57]Anyway, the deal is we made 200 copies of each one. About 100 of them got chopped up and packaged and now we've sold those bit by bit by bit. And Ishida-san in Ome now has to do two things. These have to be cut apart.

[00:12:12]That's no big deal. Chop, chop, chop, chop. You line it up, you cut them apart. But they then have to go into the packaging.

[00:12:20]And the packaging is a complex folded little strip of thing and we've lost our institutional knowledge of how to make them.

[00:12:31]We don't even have the PDF files. She She doesn't have the PDF files. We don't have the jig.

[00:12:36]So I went upstairs in Ome, looked through the stockroom and tried to find what I could find.

[00:12:41]And I found what looks like a jig to to fold and and prepare and trim the packing paper for this.

[00:12:50]But we don't know how to use it.

[00:12:53]This is 2011 and clever Dave built a little jig to do something, turned it over to the staff lady Asai-san who was there at that time.

[00:13:04]She happily made 100, put the jig on the shelf and here we are now 15, 16, I don't know, 17 years later, 16 years later and none of us know how to do this.

[00:13:17]>> [laughter] >> I was kind of too clever.

[00:13:24]So she sent them back with me and the jig is there and I've got to figure out how to make this happen.

[00:13:30]>> [snorts] >> Short production runs. You know, if you're making a million of something, that's no problem. You build a factory and you make a million of something. If you're just going to make a hundred of something, it's a bit of a different story. You make your jig and and uh next time you make it 15 years later.

[00:13:48]Well, someone's got this jig. Jones got it. Limited edition uncut sheets.

[00:13:54]It would be a fun way out of the problem, I guess. I don't know.

[00:14:01]Drawings from the construction guy. The ball is back in my court. He sent drawings. I approved them. The new printer's bench, they're all ready to go.

[00:14:11]But just before I left for Ome, he came over. He wants exact measurements of the new sets of shelves that are going to be ready for the collection.

[00:14:21]I was supposed to do that in Ome the last couple of days. I was supposed to do it on the train on the way to Edo-ya.

[00:14:28]Didn't quite happen.

[00:14:35]>> [snorts] >> Okay.

[00:14:40]There's a few different jobs, casual jobs to do. One of them. Have you Have you seen this before?

[00:14:45]I don't [clears throat] have a before and after comparison. The Ukiyo-e Heroes prints.

[00:14:50]In the old days, going back uh before the current president was elected in America. In the old days, we used to make the Ukiyo-e Heroes prints here. Of course, Jed sent the designs over. I carved. I print. Our staff prints. We make the prints here.

[00:15:09]We didn't used to sell them here at all.

[00:15:11]We sent them over a group at a time, all 100 or whatever we made to Jed and he put on the date 2026 or whatever it was, 2022. He signed them Jed Henry and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:15:24]And we bought some of those back from him. We used to buy them. So the prints were made, sent to America, they came back here, we bought some, put them in the shop.

[00:15:33]The American tariff situation put an end to all that very easily.

[00:15:38]We can no longer send a batch of 60 or 100 prints over to Jed for signing, back to Japan. So pay tariff one way into America, pay tariff back coming back into Japan and away we go.

[00:15:50]So the tariffs killed that. So what we do now is this. We make the prints as we did before.

[00:15:55]But instead of sending them over to Jed for signing, we emboss his name. We have an embossing plate which I'm going to use right now.

[00:16:07]Have we done this? Have we seen this? I don't really know.

[00:16:11]Really we're just repeating ourselves here. I don't know.

[00:16:15]We have a juicy bun, a polymer plate with Jed's signature on it. He has signed it in plastic for me.

[00:16:30]And we do it like this. Each print gets the embossing.

[00:16:41]And then it's going to get the date 2026, the year that this is going out into the market. And then instead of Jed signing it, I'm going to sign. I'm the one who carved this. I'm the master of this series. I'm the publisher of this series. So I'm going to sign it. And then Jed for his requirements over there needs identifying number. He sells them in galleries.

[00:17:01]We don't, but in galleries they want numbers.

[00:17:04]Now Mokuhankan doesn't make limited editions whatsoever. But we have a numbering system for these, the T number.

[00:17:12]It's the T for tariff. Tariff edition.

[00:17:16]And we just number them. It's got a T and we are now up to I've got a note.

[00:17:20]We're up to number 548. So we will number these 549.

[00:17:25]T549, T550. Up we go.

[00:17:29]So let's do this. Let's do this. Yeah, the woodblock auto pan here. Right.

[00:17:35]Is that what this is?

[00:17:37]>> [laughter] >> We need a rewa seal 6 mm in size and exactly 1 cm from the left margin.

[00:17:47]Right? Is that how it goes?

[00:17:49]And later we'll change it from one that's 7 mm in size.

[00:17:53]Confuse everybody.

[00:17:59]The prints are beautiful. This batch is from Chiharu-san.

[00:18:02]Came in a month or so ago. You must have seen them. I must have opened them on stream.

[00:18:08]We are very much struggling to keep the Ukiyo-e Heroes prints in stock. There's supposed to be 17 designs. We have at the moment I think only nine designs.

[00:18:30]>> [snorts] >> I don't know if you read it or not, but whatever it's no more or less readable than his signature, it says Jed Henry.

[00:18:51]His name actually is Jared, I guess, but he never uses Jared. It's just Jed.

[00:19:16]>> [snorts] >> We're going to do 10 foxes and five turtles here. That's all. This isn't going to go on for long. Just relax.

[00:19:33]>> [snorts] >> Someone said Dave, you mean David? For me, David or Dave? I don't have any any negative feeling whatsoever.

[00:20:02]I'm David. I'm Dave.

[00:20:05]What what would I Hi, I'm Dave.

[00:20:09]I don't know. I don't have any sense that Dave is a nickname. I don't think it is. And my legal name is David, of course.

[00:20:19]In the shop here, but the staff the when we're speaking either English or Japanese, they refer to me as Dave.

[00:20:28]If it's Japanese, it's Dave-san. They of course say they can't just say a name without an an honorific in Japanese.

[00:20:34]So, in Japanese, I'm Dave-san.

[00:20:37]And when they speak to me in English, I'm Dave. I'm not I'm not boss or Mr. Bull or anything like that. My god.

[00:20:45]So, around the around the company here, I'm Dave. I'm totally okay with that. I don't even notice it.

[00:20:55]I don't even feel that it's a shorthand.

[00:21:00]My mother had that situation all her life. And her name, her birth certificate name was Betty.

[00:21:08]That's what was on the birth certificate. She had a teenage mother and whatever. They did She didn't wasn't very well educated or whatever. And the mother probably didn't even know that Betty was traditionally short for Elizabeth in in Britain at that time.

[00:21:20]So, on my mom's birth certificate, went her name as Betty, b e t t y.

[00:21:26]That's okay. Things are what they are.

[00:21:27]Her name was Betty Bull. And it got shortened to Bet. We knew her here sometimes as Bet, b e t t, or Auntie Bet, or something like that. But she had endless trouble all her life. She'd be doing something Department of Motor Vehicle Registration or whatever that kind of stuff, you know. They'd say, "What's your name?" And she'd say, "Betty Bull." And they would write Elizabeth. And she's like, "That's not my name. Tear it up. Start all over again."

[00:21:52]>> [laughter] >> So.

[00:21:55]So, if my legal name were Dave, I'm sure it would be endless headaches, you know.

[00:22:02]Okay, be careful. I've got to make sure I get these numbers right.

[00:22:09]10 fox moons starting at 549 going to 558. This is really carefully documented. We don't fool around with this.

[00:22:24]Charlie and Charles.

[00:22:26]>> [laughter] [gasps] >> The stories the stories. Okay, we're going to get 2026.

[00:22:35]And this gets signed D Bull. No Dave or David here. And this is number T549.

[00:22:47]Double check. 549.

[00:22:49]There's documentation now where Dave says, "I will never uh number prints.

[00:22:52]Never number prints." We don't limited edition number prints.

[00:22:56]These are being numbered for Jed's requirements. They simply the number goes up and up and up and up and up and never stops.

[00:23:03]So, to just to make sure there's no confusion, these are not limited editions.

[00:23:08]These are open editions, but there's a quantity number. 549, next one is T550.

[00:23:19]>> [snorts] >> Shop's closed Tuesdays, yes. So, I'm sometimes here Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, sometimes not. If you really want to make sure you check in and say hi, I'm always here Saturday, Sunday.

[00:23:35]Monday, usually. Tuesday, never.

[00:23:38]Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, sometimes.

[00:23:40]That's your bets. Place your bets.

[00:23:43]When you get closer, if you write to us or write to the to the website, you know, write and ask, "Is Dave going to be in next Wednesday?" As it gets closer, I can tell you.

[00:23:57]T551.

[00:24:07]These also will be trimmed. They won't be going out with the selvage. They will be trimmed to a nice shape before they go.

[00:24:21]T552, check.

[00:24:32]>> [snorts] >> I think the crows are busy out there today.

[00:24:35]It's not a garbage day.

[00:24:41]Someone's talking about clipped corners.

[00:24:51]I don't see any clipped corners here.

[00:24:53]What what what what what what what?

[00:24:57]What are we talking about clipped corners?

[00:24:59]We do cut the corners sometimes on prints that are that are being uh What do we see What do you see that I don't see?

[00:25:14]I don't see what I'm seeing. I don't see what what No, clean and clean.

[00:25:32]Don't see it on the desk still.

[00:25:37]I don't see what you are seeing. I'm sorry.

[00:25:53]Bottom right hand corner of the bottommost stack.

[00:26:16]I'm sorry. Somebody's saying, "Oh, somebody's like How is it even And it's not me.

[00:26:31]T553.

[00:26:50]T554.

[00:27:01]>> [snorts] >> Will these prints be sold online? They are theoretically they're sold online from Jed's website. Jed orders When Jed Jed keeps stock over there in his his side and he oh sells on his website.

[00:27:15]When he gets low, he orders from us. We ship over a batch to him. Terrace non-accepted, you know. The ones we ship to Jed, if he does order from us, we ship them like this without signatures.

[00:27:27]That's why we don't sign after we print them. We keep them in stock blank. The ones we're going to sell in the shop here, we sign, pay him a royalty. The ones he wants to sell, we sell them to Jed blank like this.

[00:27:40]But it's been more than a year and a half since he's ordered from us. And I really don't think he wants to be in the woodblock print business.

[00:27:47]He's happy to have designed them. He's happy to get royalties from us. I don't think he wants to stock them and sell them at his end. I really don't know.

[00:27:55]That's out of my control completely. He used to order them all the time.

[00:28:00]It's been nearly 2 years since he's ordered any. T555.

[00:28:10]So, I don't know. You have to write to him.

[00:28:15]T556.

[00:28:28]T557.

[00:28:33]And the last one of this group T558.

[00:28:45]Someone's asking about the sumo.

[00:28:49]Excuse me.

[00:28:50]The sumo match with Sadako, it hasn't happened yet. I've been in Ome. She took a trip this week. She went out to the Kurobe Tateyama line. She's going to come back today. She's going to have some pictures of snow and Kurobe Dam and all that kind of stuff.

[00:29:03]>> [snorts] >> So, the sumo, just hang tight. It will be done. We will take video or we will do it online, one or the other.

[00:29:12]I'm not procrastinating. It has been busy. There's lots of stuff going on.

[00:29:20]All good things.

[00:29:28]This is not procrastination. Repeat after me.

[00:29:32]>> [snorts] >> Sadako should be here in about a half an hour or so, 40 minutes or so.

[00:29:41]No, Jed's shop, it's open intermittently because that's the way he wants to sell stuff. F O M O. He only opens his shop for inkjet prints, too. He only opens it every couple of days, couple of days every couple of months.

[00:29:54]>> [snorts] >> Okay, now that I'm writing on this, we pick up where that was. That was T558.

[00:30:10]This is going to be T559.

[00:30:13]For those who who are curious about this, we don't number them per design.

[00:30:17]All the Ukiyo-e Heroes prints get a single number.

[00:30:27]Date 2026, sign Dave Bull. This is now T559.

[00:30:36]>> [snorts] >> Wonderful, the shelves in Urumi are finished it. Oh my God, yes, that was that that's is that a year ago? I don't even know.

[00:30:50]The shelves in Urumi are fabulous. I was up there yesterday. I was looking for stuff in some boxes and they were there.

[00:30:57]They were exactly where Oh, that reminds me, too. John John John Next time we're in Urumi, I found it. I found the old naval camera yesterday 2 days ago when I was looking for those grandma tapes, I found also the old naval camera. It's there. It's there. I didn't bring it back to Asakusa, but it's there in Urumi.

[00:31:19]>> [snorts] >> It looks to be in great condition.

[00:31:24]T560 You know, you're not into antique cameras and stuff. I get it, but uh whatever, it's there.

[00:31:40]It's a 4x5.

[00:31:42]T561 I should have taken some pictures to show you.

[00:32:00]T562 And today's last one for this work, 2026, sign Dave Bull. T563.

[00:32:15]And we update our list, 563.

[00:32:18]Okay.

[00:32:20]Next one will be 564, whatever design it is. Okay, that part of our job today is done.

[00:32:29]It's all ready. We've got each of these prints goes out. There's labeling, packaging for it, of course.

[00:32:36]It gets packed like this and there's a a story sheet that goes in explaining what the tariff editions are all about and how it works. You can read it later.

[00:32:46]Click.

[00:32:48]Click.

[00:32:57]Okay, that goes for packing. It'll be in the shop later today.

[00:33:02]>> [snorts] >> Okay, floppy [clears throat] disks.

[00:33:15]There's an update on the floppy disks.

[00:33:18]Thank you.

[00:33:19]>> [snorts] >> There was a ton of people copy gave me information on this.

[00:33:23]Some of the information that you put in, just get in get a floppy drive from Akihabara, put it in, you'll be okay, read the disks. No no no. I did a bunch of research. The format is completely totally different from MS-DOS format.

[00:33:37]These disks are unreadable in a normal floppy drive reader. Period. But I found I found I found a guy in an office somewhere. It It turned out to be about the 10th page of Google search results.

[00:33:52]ChatGPT couldn't find it. Google found it on about the 10th, ninth, or 10th page of search results. There's a guy with a desk and a couple of old drives and his job is converting old WAP Pro files to modern formats.

[00:34:09]I got in touch with him. He says, "I can do this." And yesterday we bundled off the seven disks and sent them off to him. He says service turnaround is maybe 2 weeks. This is in Japan, not overseas, in Japan.

[00:34:23]>> [snorts] >> And he knows what this is. He knows what these Sharp machines are and he offers different format conversions. He will burn them onto a CD-ROM for you or he'll put them on another floppy drive or put them on a whatever or he will also send them over just as text files, which is what I want. The fee is 3,000 yen per drive, a per per per disk for conversion. And if he can't read it, his fee drops to 1,000. So, inserting converting 3,000 per disk, if he takes all the trouble inserting, trying to figure out nothing nothing nothing nothing comes out, it's a charge of 1,000.

[00:35:02]There's seven disks here. So, this is going to be 150 bucks, but my God, there's 5 years worth of files on those things.

[00:35:10]And if they can get recovered, that's going to save me a bunch of stuff. Cuz another option, somebody it did some good research on this. Somebody pointed out that at the end of the Sharp era, they published those machines. They made those machines for about 10 years.

[00:35:25]And the last few machines that they made did have an option for exporting as MS-DOS format. They could see the handwriting on the wall. They knew the computer era was coming and they added that option. So, that would be another option. Go to Yahoo auctions, find an old machine of that model, put the files in, read them, export them as MS-DOS.

[00:35:48]That would have been plan B. We'll see how it goes.

[00:35:51]Now, we're talking about 3.5 disks.

[00:35:53]We're not This These are not the 5-in whatever they were disks. These are 3.5s.

[00:35:59]They look to be in good condition.

[00:36:00]There's seven of them. They've been in a drawer. They're dry. I popped the on a slide to look at some of them. They don't seem to be moldy.

[00:36:10]Collectively, 700 people, cross your fingers and we can see this.

[00:36:20]Okay, for the rest of today's stream, we're going to be making up work here.

[00:36:23]You know what these are. You've seen these before. It's going to be shaving time.

[00:36:29]Dave shaves on on stream.

[00:36:32]>> [snorts] >> This is quite the channel we have here.

[00:36:36]I take a hot bath sometimes, a hot tub.

[00:36:39]I shave on stream.

[00:36:41]We show our feet.

[00:36:47]I'm still surprised about that one. When I was It was one of the streams last week. I was packing the mulberry and people were kept talking about my feet.

[00:36:55]I'm like, "What?"

[00:36:59]>> [snorts] >> Okay, what is it? 8:38. Let's do this.

[00:37:06]Let's do this. Let's do this.

[00:37:12]I have no pool news for you cuz I haven't been for the past few days, but there is town news. And in fact, maybe maybe you can see what's happening here.

[00:37:22]There has been and it's ongoing. It started a couple of weeks ago. Major major major drama on the bicycle front.

[00:37:37]Across the street in front of the Blue Whale restaurant, you see one lone bicycle.

[00:37:44]And to the right of it, nestled to get nestled against the storefront there, the bar Kawai Young, you can see another bicycle.

[00:37:52]The family that lives in that bar, the one next to the Blue restaurant, it's a mother and her two sons. Each of the sons has a little putt-putt motorbike, not a motorcycle, but a What do you call it? A scooter motor scooter. And the three of them have bicycles. So, normally there's five vehicles parked in front of their house. Now, that's parking is no not permitted. Not for cars, not for trucks, not for bicycles, not for motorcycles, not for anything.

[00:38:19]There's no parking anywhere on this street. And these people have been living here since the year dot. They put their bicycles out front. There's no backyard. They can't bring the bicycles.

[00:38:28]The whole building is a six-mat room, about a 12-mat room with room upstairs.

[00:38:33]There's no He can't bring your bicycles indoors.

[00:38:36]>> [laughter] >> And the city has got to crack down on bicycles, which generally I'm really really really really in favor of. If you've been around this district or any district in Tokyo, you will know sometimes there's a scour of bicycle parking around a shopping center, around a train station. You can't fight your way through the bicycles.

[00:38:57]Near here, there are two or three bicycle parking lots have been established. One's at the square express train station. One is on top of the rocks the Seiyu department store.

[00:39:07]One is on top of the Eagle Pachinko. And one is below the Don Quijote store. Some are free. Some charge 100 yen per day.

[00:39:16]Two of our staff members come by bicycle. Do we leave the bikes in front of the shop? No. Dave is a good boy. I'm a good boy. And we park our bicycles under the Don Quijote store.

[00:39:28]Do I force the staff to pay for this themselves? No. I'm a good boy.

[00:39:33]>> [laughter] >> The company pays their transportation expenses. The company pays the train fee for everybody who comes by train. That's culture in Japan. So, of course we pay the bicycle parking, but other companies don't. The uh what do you call it? Oyster Shack next door, there's three bicycles parked out front of their place during the afternoon.

[00:39:53]They're not open yet this morning. And the company won't pay the fee. So, the girls leave the bikes out front and the crackdown, which started April 1st, beginning of this month, there's teams from city hall with jackets and badges and all that stuff.

[00:40:08]They come, they they tag the bike, "This is illegally parked. Please remove it."

[00:40:12]They then take a picture.

[00:40:14]They drive off. The girl comes out of the Oyster Shack, tears the tag off and throws it away. Couple of hours later, the team comes back. They see this, they tag it, they take a picture. And they have now, this has been going on since April 1st. So, we're now in the third or fourth week. They have now started passing out flyers.

[00:40:33]So far, we've been cool about this, but very soon, any minute now, we are going to get serious and we will be followed by a truck, which will pick up any bicycle that is parked illegally. And they are getting serious. And something must have happened yesterday because in front of the restaurant across the street, there is a poster stuck to one of the light posts that says, "Illegal bicycles have been removed.

[00:41:00]For further information, contact the bicycle storage yard." And there's a map and a phone number and stuff like that.

[00:41:07]So, finally, finally, after all these years, they have started to get serious about this.

[00:41:15]I'm really happy about this. Most of the people around here, the workers and the merchants, are not.

[00:41:22]The merchants want it easy. The restaurant next door, they want customers. So, if there's a no parking here, customers come along with their bike, "I want to have lunch. Where can I have lunch?" Oops, can't park there, they go somewhere else.

[00:41:34]So, the restaurants want it easy for customers to come in. Dump your bike and come in and have lunch and dinner.

[00:41:41]Too many makes it impossible. Too many bikes and nobody can get near the restaurant. They want allowed, but don't let too much.

[00:41:49]Dave wants zero. Dave's a no tolerance guy.

[00:41:52]>> [laughter] >> And the war has begun.

[00:41:57]Someone says, "Sounds like Big Brother."

[00:41:58]It's a public street. If there's a forest of bicycles in front of my shop, customers can't get in. This is not Big Brother. This is organization.

[00:42:10]You Wherever you live, there are no parking rules, right? For cars and stuff. Why should bicycles be any different?

[00:42:17]There's a reason for no parking rules.

[00:42:20]So, the fire truck can get by, so the traffic can get by.

[00:42:34]Wouldn't bike racks Well, again, bike racks, okay. Who What property are you going to put the bike racks on?

[00:42:39]Remember, this is very, very tight area, very, very high rent. Streets are narrow. Where are you going to put the bicycle parking facility? And who's going to pay for it?

[00:42:52]Underneath the Donkey Hotay store, the full floor is bike parking.

[00:42:57]This area, this region is very low-lying property and it gets damp.

[00:43:03]So, you can't really build in the basements here. So, that basement space became bike parking.

[00:43:18]Thinking about dropping a store Saturday, 18th. Not going to cause any issues with Sanja Sanja Matsuri. Other than the 2 million people in the district? No, not at all.

[00:43:31]The shop is quiet during the couple of days of the Sanja Matsuri because many, many sensible people stay away from the district. People who want to drink and carouse and dance and sing, they come over, but they're not interested in woodblock prints.

[00:43:45]So, the district will be hugely busy and chaotic. This shop will not be, but we will be here.

[00:43:53]>> [snorts] >> And if you come at the right time, you can help us serve beer to the people who are running the festival floats because that's one of our jobs during the Sanja Matsuri.

[00:44:02]We supply beer to the community members carrying the floats, not just Mokuhankan, the merchants association.

[00:44:12]We buy it, we pour it.

[00:44:14]You can come and help us if you want.

[00:44:19]Come to Mokuhankan's. Come for woodblock prints, stay for pouring beer.

[00:44:33]Yeah, bicycle wars. Bicycle wars. I'm so happy.

[00:44:37]>> [snorts] >> You can't drink the beer. The beer is for the festival workers only.

[00:44:58]Festival workers, I mean festival participants.

[00:45:14]>> [snorts] >> About 18th, festival is 15th to 17th.

[00:45:18]Forget them. Thanks for the update. I don't know the dates.

[00:45:21]>> [cough] [clears throat] >> How is Japanese beer? How different is it from Western beer? It's lager. Most Japanese beer, most, not all. Most Japanese beer is lager. There's a stout.

[00:45:30]Close your eyes and you have no idea.

[00:45:32]It's beer. It's beer. It's beer. It's beer.

[00:45:37]>> [snorts] >> The original Japanese beer making, they They're really, to my knowledge, there was no beer making per se back in the Edo time.

[00:46:03]Sake was the drink, of course. Maybe shochu, of course, whatever. Distilled stuff.

[00:46:09]Beer making came along in a big way in the Meiji era and they imported Germans to to do the teaching, whatever. So, German technology was taken over by the Japanese or imported by the Japanese. Hokkaido was one area because the hops grew up there.

[00:46:28]And Japanese beer companies, they're now, of course, they're known worldwide.

[00:46:31]Sapporo, Asahi, Kirin.

[00:46:35]Beer is beer.

[00:46:37]You won't find a huge variety of different kinds of beers here in Japan.

[00:46:42]There's a craft beer movement, so there's a lot of variety there. The restaurant across the street has a bunch of craft beer cans.

[00:46:48]Maybe a hundred different little craft breweries represented there. But that's just one-off. It's the same as anywhere.

[00:46:55]The main beer business here is lager from the three main companies, Sapporo, Asahi, and Kirin.

[00:47:03]>> [snorts] >> That's got to be 90X% of the beer consumption in Japan. I don't know.

[00:47:08]I don't know the numbers, of course.

[00:47:15]Boobies.

[00:47:20]>> [snorts] >> I'm not a teetotaler. I'm a one drink maximum person. I Whatever. One beer with dinner or or recently, I don't know, I've been having a What do you call it? A lemon sour.

[00:47:36]I'll eat I'll drink one of those at dinner time or I'll have one beer.

[00:47:41]A one beer means like a 330 mm can or something like that. Rare, rare, rare that I have two beers.

[00:47:50]And not every day, you know.

[00:47:52]So, how many days a week?

[00:47:54]When I'm at home having dinner with 7-Eleven stuff, there's no drinking. If I'm in a restaurant, I'll get a beer or a lemon sour.

[00:48:01]So, my consumption per week will be What is it? Four drinks? Four units? I don't know how they count them these days. I don't know.

[00:48:09]>> [snorts] >> No, I'm not much of a drinker.

[00:48:23]My brother, on the other hand, can you hear me now?

[00:48:32]He lives for the stuff.

[00:48:35]And he looks it.

[00:48:39]>> [snorts] >> I feel obliged to drink in Japan because it's a quarter of that price [laughter] in Australia.

[00:48:53]>> [gasps] [snorts] >> The low yen, someone's talking about that, the price of drinks here in Japan, you know.

[00:49:07]There's a new shop. I say new, it's about a year ago, two years ago, year and a half ago, I don't know. Around the corner, there's two There's one street behind the theater here, behind the what used to be the theater.

[00:49:19]Behind the Kokura.

[00:49:22]And they've got two specialty stores and they're almost side by side. And one is called Japan Blue Jeans. And there's a guy in there, they're making blue jeans.

[00:49:31]It's sort of cool. I bought a pair from him a couple of years ago. They're they're nice jeans. I bought They're nice jeans. There's a guy sitting there and they're using denim that's made on some special machine from 500 years ago.

[00:49:42]I >> [laughter] >> don't know how it works.

[00:49:45]So this specialty shop, Japan Blue Jeans, and then one or two shops down from there and it's all in the window, these bottles. It's special whiskeys.

[00:49:54]It's a Japanese specialty whiskey shop.

[00:49:59]And the prices are I think the prices on both of these shops you have to you have trouble counting the zeros, but uh So one of those shops, yeah, I'm wearing their I'm using their product. I'm wearing their jeans. But the other the other shop there I'm not going to be using their product.

[00:50:23]Now you're all talking about drinks.

[00:50:39]>> [snorts] >> 8:50 home, we're okay.

[00:50:50]>> [clears throat] [cough] >> Actually, we nearly we nearly didn't have a stream today because of a bizarre reason. You know, like the dog ate my homework is the kid comes to school, you know.

[00:51:04]What's the reason he hasn't got his homework? The dog ate my homework. I almost had similar reason today for the stream.

[00:51:10]I've been in Ome for the past few days and of course I take my computer out there, of course.

[00:51:17]But because I'm going for a few days, I of course I take also my battery.

[00:51:22]If it's a one-day there and back trip, I don't need to worry about that.

[00:51:26]>> [clears throat] >> But uh because I was staying for a couple of days, I took my my battery for my laptop, of course.

[00:51:33]And I forgot to bring it home last night. I stayed late last night there. I had dinner in my house there at Ome.

[00:51:40]And I had to get back to Asakusa last night in order to do the stream this morning.

[00:51:45]And I forgot to pack my computer battery.

[00:51:49]I had enough juice to get home.

[00:51:51]Went to bed, tossed and turned. What am I going to do? So this morning, the computer is nearly out of power.

[00:51:59]So I think no problem. There's enough workstations here. I mean, every every uh body working in this company has has Mac machines.

[00:52:08]We've got desktops. They don't have a battery.

[00:52:11]Everything else is a Mac Air or a newer MacBook or the new what's it called? The Neo. We've got a Neo here.

[00:52:19]And I hadn't realized it, but all those batteries are different connector.

[00:52:25]I have the MagSafe for my MacBook Pro [music] from 2021 and it doesn't fit the battery connector for all of the Mac Airs and all the Neos.

[00:52:37]It into USBC if that was the way to do it.

[00:52:43]>> [snorts] >> But the MagSafe connector is different.

[00:52:48]So I had to hunt around. I grabbed this computer. Oops, that doesn't fit. Grab this one, doesn't fit. Oops, grab this one, doesn't fit.

[00:52:56]>> [snorts] >> I found one in a drawer there. There must have been somebody had a different computer. The computer's long gone. The the the wall wall wart is here.

[00:53:08]And bingo, into MagSafe.

[00:53:13]Classic Apple, whatever. I don't care. I The product works fine for me and has worked very very well.

[00:53:19]>> [snorts] >> Uh you mean it's like Windows doesn't ever go through technology shifts? Come on, of course they do.

[00:53:26]>> [snorts] >> Anyway, we did it. I found one, so But actually, that's interesting, too.

[00:53:44]Someone just now mentions USB.

[00:53:47]Is this you you may laugh at me when you say this, but I of course I realize now, of course of course of course. I don't need the MagSafe power connector. This thing will accept power via the USB ports, doesn't it? Of course. I've never actually done that. I've never charged my machine through USB.

[00:54:05]But now that I think about it, I guess it does that. So if I hadn't been able to find a MagSafe that fit, I still would have been able to charge it through USB. Interesting.

[00:54:19]>> [snorts] >> Yeah, I I've never done that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:54:37]>> [snorts] >> It's power out on USBC on Mac if it's not a power connect through USBC.

[00:54:48]Well, I think I can charge via USB, can't I?

[00:54:56]Okay, don't quote me. I don't know.

[00:55:00]>> [snorts] >> The the Mac Neo that we just bought, it's just across the across the desk from me there. It's got no MagSafe connector. It only has a USBC and it's taking power in through there.

[00:55:20]>> [snorts] >> What I've got is a MacBook Pro 2021 model, 16-in. And I guess USBC charging works on Macs. I never use MagSafe to keep one cable for phone and MacBook charging. There you okay.

[00:55:41]Okay.

[00:55:42]I hadn't even realized that.

[00:55:53]Today's stream canceled cuz Dave forgot his power adapter in Ome.

[00:55:59]That was the option facing me.

[00:56:22]Oh oh oh, there is news, too.

[00:56:25]News important to me, not important to you. Last night in Ome, I was thinking should I come home one day? Should I stay an extra day? What should I do? For me, Friday It's Saturday morning for me now here, but Friday I stayed an extra day in Ome.

[00:56:41]And I wasted the day completely in terms of work from Mokuhankan. I didn't do video editing. I didn't do anything from Mokuhankan.

[00:56:51]I spent the entire day going through a box full of magazines and newspapers, old magazines and newspapers.

[00:57:02]And I There's a scanner out there and I spent the entire day scanning magazine and newspaper stories about our work.

[00:57:14]There's a massive update last night and this morning on the woodblock.com/timeline website.

[00:57:22]If you go to the new Somebody will get the link. Go to the table of contents.

[00:57:31]And it's been massively updated with a lot of English stories, English news reports, English magazine stories, all kinds of stuff in English. There are now more than two dozen If you go to woodblock.com/timeline, look in the bottom left corner for the table of contents.

[00:57:50]Find the media section and look for the print, not TV. Look for the print section. It's not print as in woodblock print, it's print as in print media.

[00:57:59]They are now encoded. You can see instantly which ones are English, which ones are not.

[00:58:11]And there's all kinds of fun stuff. So I had great fun scanning I didn't have fun scanning it, but I had fun scanning it, flipping it upside down, putting it up on the website, and reading some of these old stories.

[00:58:23]Cuz some of this stuff goes back 35 years.

[00:58:29]>> [snorts] >> And you can now see at a glance which ones are in English and which ones are in Japanese.

[00:58:47]Any construction news? No, we have our It's the ball's in their court.

[00:58:51]They are [clears throat] off now building stuff. They've got all their instructions. They've got all their measurements. They are away building.

[00:58:59]Just when exactly they are going to bring stuff, I don't know, but they are building.

[00:59:08]>> [snorts] [snorts] >> Every day >> The chat will now go real quiet while people go off and uh watch those read some of those stories.

[00:59:50]I still haven't done much about preparing a style sheet for mobile. So, I'm sorry that website is for the most part working on desktop.

[01:00:01]I'll get to the mobile style sheets later.

[01:00:04]I've got to get enough content in there first, so.

[01:00:08]>> [snorts] >> Okay. Show and tell, I should mention too. We do have a show and tell today.

[01:00:38]It's kind of a bit different.

[01:00:43]Will I update the wanted book page on woodblock.com?

[01:00:47]I have no idea what you're talking about.

[01:00:51]Will I update the wanted book page on woodblock.com?

[01:00:56]>> [snorts] >> I'm sorry to be dense. I don't know what you mean.

[01:01:05]Is there still a hot dog shop next door?

[01:01:06]The hot dog Korean hot dogs is three or four doors down. They're very successful. They're busy busy busy. One of the busiest businesses on the street.

[01:01:14]Yeah.

[01:01:18]Have I stopped carving wood blocks? No.

[01:01:20]We have two carvers, three carvers on staff including me.

[01:01:24]Carving new blocks is not a priority for me. I will be doing that job somewhere in the next month because I have to carve a new set of uh designs, a new design for our share certificates.

[01:01:36]So, yes, I will be doing some carving.

[01:01:38]It is no longer a main job for me for two reasons.

[01:01:43]We have too many carvers and not enough printers.

[01:01:46]We don't need more blocks right now.

[01:01:49]And two, my glaucoma is is what it is. I have quite I have glaucoma in my right eye and it's moving along and it's getting more and more difficult to actually focus and see to the extent that you know, I could actually do carving.

[01:02:09]I was there in the hospital at the hospital Wednesday. It was my 3-month checkup for my eyes. I went Wednesday morning before going up to Ome.

[01:02:18]And there's nothing he can do. There's you know, I'm doing the eye drops and the What is it? The intraocular pressure? Is it the pressure? I was 19 on the right, 16 on the left. This is not dramatic that oh my god, rush to surgery straight away.

[01:02:34]The thing is ever ever so slowly progressing across my retina.

[01:02:39]It doesn't seem to be because of heavy pressure. The guy just said, "Mr. Bull, you just hang in there."

[01:02:46]He doesn't think there's much to do. I'm not really worried about it.

[01:02:54]Well, today I have too many questions, too many questions.

[01:02:58]You have a page where you list Oh, yeah, I remember. I remember. The books we were going to put up on the library section.

[01:03:06]Oh my god, there's a page in there somewhere that says we're looking for these books.

[01:03:12]I will have to have a look at it cuz it's not something I'm actively doing right now. Okay.

[01:03:16]Thanks, Mark. You drop me an email. Oh, well, I'll see it later. Okay.

[01:03:23]I haven't looked at that page in in in a while.

[01:03:30]>> [snorts] >> What's the early signs of glaucoma? You don't see any early signs. Your vision starts to disappear, but your brain is wonderful at filling in.

[01:03:44]And I had lost about a quarter of my sight in one eye before I even noticed.

[01:03:49]That's how good your brain is at filling in stuff around it.

[01:03:54]So, I don't know. I I'm not This is not medical advice. There's no early signs of glaucoma.

[01:04:00]It's like the blind spot. You know, we all have these two blind spots where our optic nerve comes up into the retina.

[01:04:06]So, every one of you watching this has two blind spots and one eye has a spot here and the other eye has a spot there and you can't see. But you can't see those blind spots cuz your brain fills in. Even if you look at a blank wall, you don't see two black dots. You see nothing. But you actually have blind spots. And glaucoma is the same. It starts very slowly and your brain fills it in.

[01:04:37]Yeah, most of the time you don't notice it till it's gone quite a bit. Bingo, that was me. It was nearly 1/4 gone in one eye and I had not even noticed it.

[01:04:46]It was astonishing.

[01:04:48]I understand now how that works, but boy oh boy.

[01:04:53]After the diagnosis, after you see what's going on, it's really fun to play with. I can sit here and if I cover my left eye and hold my right hand out here, I can't see my right hand. It's gone. It's in the no zone. I can see my hand there.

[01:05:08]Now I can't see. My fingers are wiggling out there somewhere, but I can't see them.

[01:05:12]Left eye, yes, I can see fine.

[01:05:14]But your brain fills it in. It's really really really crazy.

[01:05:21]>> [snorts] >> It's moving, but very slowly. I'm 75 this year.

[01:05:39]I've got lots of other jobs to do instead of carving. Boy oh boy, do I have lots of other jobs. You know, I had nearly 30 years of making prints.

[01:05:47]But it turns out I can still make prints, but if it turns out that I wouldn't be able to do it anymore, it doesn't matter. There's so much more value that I can bring to the world and to this organization.

[01:05:58]It's no big deal.

[01:06:08]There's no panic. I will not be needing a white cane not for a very very very very very long time.

[01:06:30]How's our time? 9:07. Any minute now the door should open, of course. And Sadako should be here returning from Kurobe Tateyama. Hey, look at this.

[01:06:40]We pinned your time. We said any minute when she opens the door.

[01:06:44]How was your trip?

[01:06:46]It was good. Lots of snow or is it mostly melted?

[01:06:50]The first picture you sent me, there was no snow and I'm like, well, I thought she was going on a snow trip.

[01:06:55]>> It was snow and rain. Ah.

[01:07:00]And the dam area. Mhm.

[01:07:04]There's a famous tourist spot in Japan, Kurobe Dam. It's one of Japan's earliest dams. It's a massive huge hydroelectric project and it's it's a dam, whatever.

[01:07:13]But nearby it, it's a Tateyama Tateyama Tateyama Mhm. area. And it's famous for what they do is there's so much snow up there.

[01:07:21]It's of course the the highway there's a there's a highway that goes through the mountain range. It's closed during the winter. But what they do is as it comes up to each spring, they send through snow plows and they dig dig dig dig dig and you get this famous place where there's a two-lane road going through and 10 12 m high or some 12 m high. So, you get this canyon effect. You can see it if you see It's called the Kurobe Tateyama Snow Route. If you Google this, you'll see the pictures. I sent the a few pictures. No, you sent a picture of the dam.

[01:07:51]>> Yeah, I I sent another pictures. Well, I didn't get any >> trip.

[01:07:56]On my way here.

[01:07:58]>> Oh, so do you mean my mailbox now? I That's not okay.

[01:08:01]How was your home? So, so.

[01:08:03]So, anyway, so you'll see the pictures and you they they always name us park the bus, nobody gets out and you stand in this canyon with the So, it was Yes, bus goes through. Mhm.

[01:08:13]And all the stations it actually there is a high mountain in between Japan Sea and Mhm. Mhm. Mhm.

[01:08:22]>> And in old days, there was no way to cross the border. The height is mountains are Mhm. 3,000 [laughter] m Mhm. And always have to go through. Mhm.

[01:08:34]Around the mountain range, yeah. Okay.

[01:08:36]So, that in the 1930s or so, they decided >> They put a road through. Yes, make a dam and send electricity to Osaka and Kyoto area. Mhm. And they had to go through the mountains.

[01:08:51]>> to build a road to get in there. Yes.

[01:08:53]And it took several years.

[01:08:56]And 170 around those people died.

[01:08:59]Really? Oh, they were from pre-war? This is long long long long.

[01:09:03]And it's a big big decision.

[01:09:06]And we were allowed to go through those route.

[01:09:10]And mostly tunnels and cable cars and tunnels. But at each stations crowded as crowded as As as as as as as These are Japanese Japanese tourists or foreign tourists? Foreigners. Really?

[01:09:26]They're heading up there, too?

[01:09:28]>> China, And I saw a few a few westerners. But we heard this year that it wasn't so much snow, but still there was what you said 12 m of snow on this thing. Okay. They both sides. So you got some pictures. Do you show me later?

[01:09:42]I can show you, but it was raining and cold and raining and snowing and Someone says your Swedish is very good.

[01:09:55]>> [laughter] >> Those of you don't know this is Sadako san who works for us here. We've been hanging out together for 30 years or so.

[01:10:02]Whatever. So so so so so so.

[01:10:05]Last week I went to Ome and she went playing up in Kurume area.

[01:10:09]>> With a nice onsen and nice food.

[01:10:12]>> [laughter] >> And lots of rain it seems. So so so so.

[01:10:16]People are asking about the sumo. It's still waiting here somewhere. It's in the back here. So so if it if the shop's quiet today maybe whatever. Well, we're going to do this. So don't panic. We will do it when we get a chance to do it. We will cut it out, set it up, and who Who will win? [applause] Who will win?

[01:10:32]>> [laughter] >> People are asking what does this say? I have no idea. Whatever. No idea.

[01:10:40]It's some it's advertising. So some of them.

[01:10:43]I think it's a no I know I don't quote me on this cuz I'm not quite sure, but I believe the text in the back of this picture here of here. It's from a Joruri which was a uh old type of theater. I know classical chanting to show so so.

[01:11:08]That's kind of too busy for me.

[01:11:09]Whatever.

[01:11:13]Excuse me. I'm going to get a print here. Excuse me.

[01:11:19]A show and tell. I have a a couple of them. Let me do a couple more [snorts] of these. Then we'll do a show and tell.

[01:11:23]It's something they have never seen before.

[01:11:26]And it's it's kind of like what? What?

[01:11:29]What? Just relax. Couple more minutes.

[01:11:32]We have a fun show and tell.

[01:11:35]But what it is it's ballad drama.

[01:11:36]Joruri. I was correct. Yes. Good good good.

[01:11:42]Look at this.

[01:11:54]This one's going to go in the clearance box I guess. We've we've figured out a way that [snorts] the ladies in the staff here figured out a way. Prints like this They they've built a clearance box for them up there. That's going to be like a a $1 print or something like that. We don't want to throw them away. Nobody would want such a thing displayed in their house. But there are people like David 40 years ago or so who was studying prints, wanted to look at prints, couldn't afford them. And I would have been happy just to study this print and I wouldn't have cared anything about the foxing.

[01:12:26]So so we don't throw them away. We've got a clearance box here. It'll be 10 bucks, 20 bucks, 25 bucks. Whatever. I don't know.

[01:12:35]>> [snorts] [snorts] >> Well, we could trim the edges, but at what point do you start to you know it's it's even it's foxed right inside the image, you know. So And we don't want to be sort of fake about this. Trim away the dirty part leaving just the clean part because even though the foxing is only in that area not here, the whole thing really is now uh questionable print.

[01:13:23]>> [snorts] [snorts] >> Okay. Let's do one more and then switch over to our special show and tell.

[01:13:51]Today for show and tell we have one print design.

[01:14:29]>> [snorts] >> Another drop from the truck guy. No. No.

[01:14:47]Today's show and tell has nothing to do with the truck man.

[01:14:52]He'll probably be back pretty soon I think actually.

[01:15:09]Okay.

[01:15:12]Today's show and tell is this folder full of prints.

[01:15:18]>> [clears throat] >> But I just told you a minute ago today's show and tell is one print design.

[01:15:25]But I have a folder full of prints.

[01:15:27]Maybe there's 40 prints to show. I don't know.

[01:15:31]All of one design.

[01:15:41]Descending geese if only.

[01:15:45]>> [laughter] >> Okay.

[01:15:49]It's not a folder of shame. It's one print design.

[01:15:54]Happy you.

[01:15:56]Take your egg.

[01:15:59]When we get a we buy and sell used prints. We sometimes get a set of prints. Hokusai's 36 Views of Mount Fuji. We get the old Takamizawa set.

[01:16:09]We open it up, look at it, check it, make sure there's no foxing. Good.

[01:16:12]Perfect case. There's no foxing. Out they go into the shop and away it goes to a new owner.

[01:16:18]Very very very frequent frequently we get broken sets. The one I'm cleaning up right now is a broken set. It's a set of 46 beauties. A half a dozen of them are gone and some are foxed. So we don't keep that as a set.

[01:16:32]We break it up in the shop.

[01:16:34]When we get a set of Hokusai's 36 Views of Fuji and it's a broken set, we have to break it up and put it in the shop.

[01:16:41]What do we do with the Great Wave?

[01:16:48]Now Mokuhankan makes its own Great Wave.

[01:16:50]We've carved and printed our own Great Wave. 8,000 freaking people are waiting for the Great Wave. If I get a broken set of Takamizawa prints or U Yudo prints or Adachi or something else and they've got a Great Wave in there. If I put that Great Wave in the shop, people are going to buy it and they're going to go home I got Mokuhankan's Great Wave. The famous Mokuhankan Great Wave. But it's not. It's a junk copy from U Yudo.

[01:17:15]So we don't put them in the shop.

[01:17:18]Uh people would buy these. We're we're cutting revenue here because people would would happily buy these. But we don't put them in the shop.

[01:17:26]We just put them in a file.

[01:17:30]Wow. And these are all a mix. It's Oedo [snorts] Mokuhansha. It's Adachi. It's U Yudo. It's Takamizawa. It's unknown.

[01:17:38]It's large size. It's small size. It's all over the place. It's foxed. It's unfoxed. It's medium size. It's postcard size. It's good and it's bad.

[01:17:49]Morning morning.

[01:17:50]We have absolutely the world's biggest collection.

[01:17:55]>> [laughter] >> Nobody else in the world has this. I can I can't guarantee it, but nobody else in the world has this. We have two collections of Great Waves.

[01:18:04]Upstairs [clears throat] in a in my bench under the bench where I sit, we've got the fuel him. Well, every time we make a batch of 60 waves, one or two are no good. There's a crease on it or there's pigment or something went wrong.

[01:18:15]We can't sell it. And that pile is now over 400 prints high. We showed it at one of the earlier videos. And at that time I said that's the world's biggest collection in one place of actual woodblock Great Wave prints. But we also have this.

[01:18:32]And I didn't think about it at the time.

[01:18:34]I just thought look we can't sell these in the shop. Just what now we said just put them in a folder. Let's think about what to do later.

[01:18:39]And here we are later now. 10 years later. And I didn't really think about it. It's actually a research collection to be able to compare. There's the Oedo Mokuhansha version. This is the U Yudo version. The Takamizawa version. All the other versions. Unnamed publishers. And level one, level two, level three. We can compare.

[01:19:00]And they're all labeled with what they are. This is actually This is actually an interesting research tool.

[01:19:11]I have the comparison here. Let me just grab for comparison. I have the Mokuhankan version.

[01:19:17]We keep one here cuz we show people in the the People ask us about it all the time.

[01:19:24]So, we've got Dave's version here of which I am very, very, very proud, and we could compare. Now, I haven't got it organized for you. Let's see you who's the best carver. Is Dave the best carver or is this unnamed person?

[01:19:41]>> Quite different.

[01:19:43]Different in which way?

[01:19:44]>> Just the shape of the Mount Fuji tip area. Actually, that one's quite similar to what I thought I thought compared to some of the Your lines are completely different.

[01:19:56]Well, it's the question here, too, is each one of these reproductions, what did they use as a master copy when they made it? Actually, even this one here, I don't even know who this is. Let's take it out of the plastic.

[01:20:09]It might not say. Oh, here's much. This is Adachi. Okay, but when we say the Adachi Great Wave, there's no such thing because they've been publishing it for over 100 years. So, the blocks wore out, they recut, the blocks wore out, they recut. So, there's no single thing that this is the Adachi version.

[01:20:26]Now, Adachi is nice. They're reasonable in doing this. Actually, here's an example. Adachi has carved this the proper way. They've put, I don't know, what do you call it?

[01:20:37]When you when you carve Ita-mokashi. They've carved straight smooth lines on one side of the wave and rough on the other side. Of course, Mokuhankan, we've done the same thing.

[01:20:48]Straight and then rough on the other side. But a lot of these versions here, this is an unnamed version. Let's grab this one.

[01:20:57]Am I on camera? A lot of these versions, they don't even do that. They've carved it straight on both sides. They didn't take the trouble to do the rough carving on one side. Look at the gradation behind the mountain.

[01:21:11]There's so many, so many variations.

[01:21:15]One major difference between mine and all of these versions is that Adachi follows the old plan in that the matting on the boats, there's three boats, the matting on boat number one and two is gray, but the matting on boat number three is black because it was on the same block as the sky block. So, when they put a gradation on the sky, the gradation comes onto the matting as well.

[01:21:42]And Dave, pre-planning this, I did separate block for the sky and I kept the matting blank.

[01:21:53]So, this is an incredible, incredible resource. I mean, I I say it's an incredible resource. What use is it to anybody? I don't really know, but it's so cool and so much fun to be able to share these back and forth. Some of them are just I didn't organize this before doing the show and tell today, but some of them are awful.

[01:22:13]They just don't care. Here's an example of when I say some of them are awful, here's the sort of thing that I mean.

[01:22:19]Okay, let's take a decent one. This is the Here's the Adachi one. This is a decent copy. Look at the Adachi foam.

[01:22:28]Foam are quite different. The foam is is like So, I could say this is different.

[01:22:31]They've done the shapes of the foam.

[01:22:33]Where's the Mokuhankan copy? We've done the same thing. We've tried to make the foam look like one of the original copies, British Museum or Metropolitan, whatever. This is David's foam.

[01:22:44]This is the Adachi foam.

[01:22:46]And then this next one, this unnamed person, they've just made circles. It's all round. It's all bubbles.

[01:22:54]It's all just round and round foam. This is, okay, stand up and take your blame.

[01:22:59]This is the Oedo Mokuhansha. This going to be published in about 1950 or so. And the horishi was Ito Susumu. The carver, you Have you seen the Remembering a Carver video?

[01:23:17]This is Ito-san, one of the best carvers of his day carving dorky round foam.

[01:23:25]Does this make sense? It wasn't his call. It's the publisher. The publisher prepares the tracing or at least prepares the instructions and says, "Here's what I want you to do."

[01:23:39]Or maybe, I don't know, maybe the publisher gave him a copy of British Museum and said, "Here, trace this and carve it and away you go." I don't know.

[01:23:47]I don't know. Look at this. I'm so on Look at this. Look at the the straw here.

[01:23:55]Our copy is here. It looks like straw. You can see the brush stroke for each one.

[01:24:02]Where's the Adachi copy? Here's the Adachi one. It looks decent. It's not very good, but it looks decent. And the Oedo Mokuhansha version, it's just nothing. There's They've made no attempt to catch brush strokes whatsoever.

[01:24:17]They've just slapped it on top.

[01:24:24]Then there's the printing, the registration, etc., etc., the color choice, what blue they choose. Adachi added extra bubble here. Well, again, remember, that's maybe from a different Okay, so let's let's see what Sadako's talking about, okay? Where are you?

[01:24:38]Well, again, that's They chose a different original. Remember, there's so many different {quote} unquote originals. The Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum has five. There's originals everywhere.

[01:24:48]What Sadako was saying is here's the Was Was this the Adachi version? Yes.

[01:24:52]So, let me double-check. Yeah, that's the Adachi version. There's They've got some foam just above the mountain.

[01:24:58]Dave's version No. doesn't have anything there. The other one, it's no sense to compare, there's nothing there. Why would Adachi have put in foam there?

[01:25:08]How about the rest of it? How does it compare? Under the famous foam under the tip of the wave there.

[01:25:14]How about that?

[01:25:17]Quite different. Quite different, yeah.

[01:25:22]What they thought was important and what wasn't important to them.

[01:25:29]>> [snorts] >> Look at the the color here, the blue.

[01:25:39]They've used a completely different pigment now.

[01:25:43]Totally different pigment.

[01:25:46]They've used a happy blue, a happy blue.

[01:25:49]This is the original Prussian blue. This was the big deal when Prussian blue first came into Japan at that time, they went nuts. Oh my god, what a wonderful pigment. It's cold. It's cool. This sea is deadly. People are going to die. And these guys, it's it's it's I don't know.

[01:26:07]It's what's-his-name. It's I don't know, Bob Ross. Let's have a happy sea. Let's Whatever, I'm not taking his name in vain, whatever. It's not the actual pigment that was used back in the old days. Not even close to it.

[01:26:21]Look at the blue line here.

[01:26:26]Whatever, I I didn't intend to do this show and tell just to shoot it to a whole bunch of other people because, whatever, it's possible to take my copy and find something better.

[01:26:38]The print can change so much.

[01:26:41]Look at this. This is another difference. We see this difference, too, in British Museum copies, old copies.

[01:26:46]Sometimes there's just black behind the mountain, and sometimes they bring it right up into the sky.

[01:26:55]This is the classic approach, just behind the mountain.

[01:27:01]This was Adachi.

[01:27:03]This was ours. I think Adachi's I think actually that's too strict, too strong.

[01:27:08]It doesn't look like a nice gradation.

[01:27:10]It looks like a something, just black block.

[01:27:15]I prefer the way we did it, gradated it.

[01:27:17]That is actually one of the original copies.

[01:27:20]And these guys, I've found a different one. They've taken the black right up into the sky.

[01:27:25]That's kind of out against the sky. The wave is white and the sky is white. And doing it this way, surrounding this with darker, it does make this look much more dramatic.

[01:27:43]And if I had been Hokusai thinking about these different test printings, it may have been go for something like this because, oh my god, it makes that wave looks like a a dragon about to eat these people. It really is much more dramatic.

[01:27:59]There's no a canonical single master copy.

[01:28:04]It really makes things pop, huh, Sadako?

[01:28:05]Dave's the shape of this cloud is quite different. Yeah, I think I think they've got the basic cloud there. Uh Dave is a little bit against most modern people.

[01:28:15]Dave tries to hide the cloud. Most versions, this is the Oedo, they do it as an obvious cloud. The reason I just I don't like that cloud.

[01:28:26]Yeah. [snorts] Here's Adachi's. This is the way most modern people do it.

[01:28:30]They make that cloud stand up, and I It's okay. There are many old ones like this, but to me, I think this It looks like it Hokusai's put a cloud like a ghost. Woo! There's a ghost hovering above the picture. There's the head and the arms. And I can't get that out of my head.

[01:28:48]And I think it really detracts from the wave. The wave is there, the white ghost is there. I wish he hadn't done that.

[01:28:57]They used quite a strong color for the sky. Well, again, that's modern versions all do this. Adachi, Takamizawa, they all do this. Very few of the old ones show such a strong sky, but the argument is that that kind of light pink color has faded.

[01:29:12]So, there's really lots of discussion back and forth on this. I admit, Dave has called it probably too light.

[01:29:20]I admit, there's not many people All the printers we ask say, "Dave, let me put a bit more of the sky in." And I resist. I resist. I resist.

[01:29:31]So, my call is probably too much. I'm erring too much on the side of make it lighter, and I think other people are doing it the other way around.

[01:29:40]Here's Chiharu San. This is ours also.

[01:29:43]This is a bit better. Chiharu San wants to put some sky in there.

[01:29:48]There's no end to the calls the publisher has to make on this, and there's no canonical example from the old days. This is Hokusai's master image. There's no such thing.

[01:30:04]You could go on all day, all night. It's just so much fun.

[01:30:12]Once they get smaller, they get so bad.

[01:30:15]And do we do do we want to show some of these? I don't think so.

[01:30:19]They just get so Look at this.

[01:30:22]Looks like a sewing machine.

[01:30:25]>> [laughter] [gasps] >> This is nice.

[01:30:42]Dirty, dirty, dirty. I guess it's a dirty thing. It's a storm. Okay. Okay.

[01:30:46]Okay.

[01:30:51]There we have it. A little glimpse into the world's largest collection. I should write to Guinness and ask for certification. The world's largest collection of variants of the Great Wave by Hokusai.

[01:31:04]>> [laughter] >> There's about 40 in this book, and upstairs we have 400 plus of our own prints. So.

[01:31:12]>> [laughter] >> That's not a bad one. This is uh Ishii San. He's one of the carvers who helped me at first. He's dead now. He had a He had a little apartment. I don't even know When he was younger, he probably had a wife and kids. I have no idea about his history. By the time I met him, he was in his 70s, and he was living alone in a little apartment above a little public uh room, the Kaikan. He lived upstairs from the Kaikan. I don't know how he got permission to use that room, but that's where he was living. And outside his window, his carving bench, and outside his window, he looked down into a graveyard.

[01:31:48]And then maybe somebody would really not view it quite place. Yeah, we're in the middle of Tokyo. There's busy streets all over the place, but outside his window. And I was up there visiting him one day. He was so proud. He opened the window, and he said, "Look down there."

[01:32:01]And I knew what it was, cuz I knew the district. It's Hokusai's grave.

[01:32:06]He was a woodblock carver, Ishii Torazo Torauzo To To Torau Torau Torau.

[01:32:13]And his carving bench overlooked, literally overlooked, Hokusai's grave.

[01:32:19]And he was so so so proud of this. He wasn't actually the best carver in town, but >> [laughter] >> we don't need to go there right now.

[01:32:28]Okay, it's Saturday. I have a ton of work to do. People were thinking this was going to be a sizing stream. Monday has to be a sizing stream. I've got work to do for Leichan. I got to do paper for her and paper for Chiharu San. So, next Monday we will be upstairs throwing glue all over some paper. After that, I cannot see that far into the future.

[01:32:50]We're going to have a ton of fun here on Saturday here today. Maybe we'll play some sumo if we have time. I don't know.

[01:32:58]Let's pop this up.

[01:33:02]It was sunny early in the morning, but cloudy now. I don't know what the weather forecast is. Rain today or sunny today? I don't know.

[01:33:09]They're not letting me know. Sunny.

[01:33:10]Sunny. Supposed to be sunny, but it's got a little cloud now.

[01:33:13]We have a beautiful floater coming in for a landing.

[01:33:20]Okay. Thanks, guys. I'll see you in a couple of days, Monday morning upstairs for the sizing.

[01:33:25]Signing off now. 3 2 1. Thanks for watching. Bye for now.