C - The Art Issue #115

The Art Issue

C - The Art Issue

This issue was conceptualized as a means to display the varied talents of Japan’s international community. They come from many different creative backgrounds and develop many others still while in Japan. Enjoy their work, and check out each contributor’s links for more.

Issue Concept and Design

Lloyd Cruickshank

Emily Griffith

Editors

Rachel Fagundes, Monica Hand, Jessica Craven, Sierra Nelson-Liner, Marco Oliveros, Fergus Gregg, Sarah Baughn, Samantha Stauch, Kayla Francis, Dahlia Lemelin, Kimberly Matsuno, Ryon Morrin, Samantha Marks, Rhema Baquero, Senie Calalang, Natalie Andrews, Day Bulger, Dianne Yett, Jon Salmundson

Disclaimer

Neither National AJET nor AJET CONNECT magazine owns any of the work displayed here. Everything in this issue was published with the permission of each contributor and should not be used for any other purposes outside of the issue.

Contact information for each contributor has been provided at the beginning of their spread, so please address each contributor individually with inquiries.

Letter from the Arts Editor

Oscar Wilde once wrote, “If an artist falls in love with you, you can never die.” If that is true, I’d like to think that this phenomenon applies to anything meaningful in life, rather than just a romantic interest. This year, a frequently recurring theme that has arisen within the arts section of CONNECT has been the role of art in healing from personal loss or as a means of spiritual or mental self-improvement.

Over the last year, CONNECT’s art section has covered a wide range of art forms—including urban sketching across Japan, snow sculpture in Hokkaido, and drag makeup artistry in Tokyo. Although we have continued to see arts events adapt to online formats in response to the pandemic, we have fortunately seen a widespread return of in-person arts events.

We’ve also been very privileged to feature many talented and creative members of the expat community—from sculptors and photographers to makeup artists and museum-goers. They’ve shared with us how art has enriched their lives and have given their best advice on how to try out different art forms as a beginner.

The first article I want to highlight is “Yeux Nouveaux: Seeing with New Eyes after Kyotographie.” I really enjoyed working with Daniel Mulcahy and helping him polish his already extremely well-written and emotionally-evocative narrative,

recounting his impressions of the art exhibits that make up the Kyotographie festival. The article allows readers to get a glimpse of several of the artworks on display, and also serves as a personal memoir that enables the reader to feel the emotional impact that the exhibit had on the author and his girlfriend following the sudden death of his girlfriend’s father. The piece was boldly vulnerable and serves to remind us all of how art can help us heal and make sense of the unfathomable.

The second piece I’d like to highlight is “Kintsugi: The Art of Repairing Broken Pottery with Gold Lacquer.” I really enjoyed talking to Ms. Moriuchi and learning about how she teaches the traditional art of kintsugi as a way for students to view themselves or their lives from a different perspective. In our turbulent and rapidly changing world, it seems that more and more people are turning back to traditional art forms and adapting them to serve a healing or meditative purpose in contemporary life.

I hope the arts section of CONNECT has offered as much insight or inspiration to our readers as it has to me. It’s been a pleasure working with and interviewing so many impressive and dedicated creatives over the past year.

Cheers,

Jessica Craven

Kenneth Claudio

Osaka

Sakura Street - Minoh -

Grand Bloom - Osaka Castle -

Welcome to Full Bloom - Osaka-Jo -

Monkey Spotted - Minoh Falls -

A Day in the Canal - Kurashiki -

Growth - Katsuoji -

Power in Friendship - Katsuoji -

Golden Fragments - Tokyu Plaza -

Goodnight Sun - Dotonbori -

City Alive - Shibuya -

Ken Claudio, originally from Wellington, New Zealand, made the move to northern Osaka and is currently working as an ALT. His passions for travel, volleyball and photography fuelled his drive to move to a country that fulfils all these desires. Flick him a message on Instagram (@kenchans.lens or @bigmankenchan) if you share the same passions too! Instagram | Photography Instagram

[ Grand Bloom - Osaka Castle - ]

[ Welcome to Full Bloom - Osaka-Jo - ]

[ Monkey Spotted - Minoh Falls - ]

Jessica Craven

Saitama

Hydrangea Teacup

Hydrangea Teapot

Sakura Sake Bottle

Jessica Craven is a visual artist who has been living in Japan for the last five years. She has a degree in visual arts from Lyon College in America, studied painting in Rome for one summer, and has been creating Japanese ceramics for the last three years. Her ceramics are inspired by the naturalistic floral patterns of both Japan and ancient Rome.

You can find her on Instagram @jessica_craven_art and on Facebook .

Chloe Holm

Ehime

Where Hiromi and Cuyahoga Meet Rooted

It would be easy

Chloe Holm is a first year ALT residing in the small village of Matsuno in Ehime prefecture. Originally from Ohio, she seeks inspiration from wherever she is, from the Great Lakes area to Japan’s rural countryside. In addition to writing poetry, she is also an artist in theater performance, spoken word, and dance.

Where Hiromi and Cuyahoga Meet

The currents form on half seeded dirt and I soak it in: Probe first with a finger, and when flesh touches earth, surround myself with blissful muck and paint over closed eyelids. Sit in sludge for 20 minutes, and when my form erupts, terracotta lungs gasp for harsh oxygen, and squeeze against sun rays, too piercing, too harsh, too real. If river roots protrude upward, let them enclose on my legs, throat, heart; I can stand fictile encasements better than free-ranged growth. Once my fingertips prune with sodden wood chips and leeches, My circulation mimicking birthing weeds and river washed stone, only then can I allow myself the freedom to authenticate. Mutated stirrings clogged with toadstool shavings yearn for growth, or attention, in the deep fissures of my stomach. Form, face, and size do not matter; only retainment and eruption into something grander, truer, than myself.

I pretend these vestiges are real, believe backwash over hardened straights. Sometimes a hard-stone needs to scream against gravity; vibrate, collision, entropy. I watch the forms of solids unravel into art; conscious, breathing, living reflection. Roots, words, water, breath, earthed snares dare to ask, “What happens to us when we become so much?”

Questions come too late as every particle, strand of mineral buried deep in solidified, molded clay, cracks outwards, reaching towards attainable, steeled whispers on wind, and I cannot predict in which way, how, or why the earth explodes from my fingertips.

Image by: Andrew Ridley | Unsplash

It would be easy

It would be easy if the ground was made of sand, if water washed away the days and left behind nothing but the echo of an imprint.

It would be easy if air was made of dandelion fuzz, so I could blow the dust and grit to another place that wouldn’t hurt my lungs.

It would be easy if people were molded from dirt, and I could pour boiling water onto cracked skin that would give way to realized truth and clear aura.

It would be easy if I had a way to see past coffined silence and shake the earth to split open in a gargantuan of rage and carelessness.

Image by: Michael Gaida | Pixabay

Mark Christensen

Fukuoka

Fushimi-Inari Kitsune

Himeji Blossoms

Tottori Sunset

Nagasu Gulls

Chestnut Tiger Butterfly

Nagasaki Sunset

Rengein Tanjoji Okunoin

Domengawa River

Uminonakamichi Nemophila

Miyajidake Shrine Owl

Mark Christensen is a third-year ALT from Snohomish, Washington, USA. An avid photographer, he has a strong passion for mountaineering and capturing the beauty of Japan’s natural sites. His other hobby is volunteering as a Stormtrooper with the 501st Legion. He currently resides in Omuta, Fukuoka. Instagram

Nagasu Gulls

[ Nagasaki Sunset ]

[ Chestnut Tiger Butterfly ]

Nemophila

[ Miyajidake Shrine Owl ]

Loretta Heenan

Shizuoka

Goddess of Dreams

Hiking in the Clouds

The Chronicler

The Engineer

Goddess of Mountain Lions

Loretta is a concept artist and illustrator currently living in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka. Originally from Arizona, she started her first year as a JET this past September shortly after graduating from university with a BFA in Drawing. She has a passion for everything related to video games, digital art, and design.

You can find more of her work on Instagram @Unimoonii, Artstation @ooni, and Twitter @Unimoonii or reach out to her at unimooniiart@gmail.com.

Goddess of Mountain Lions

Tokyo

Solace

Natalie Andrews is a third-year JET skulking about in Tokyo, Japan. Fantasy and SF are her preferred genres, but cosmic-esque horror is just plain fun to write, because who wouldn’t want to meet their end at the hands of an inexpressible otherworldly entity?

You can check out her other writing on her blog (which is in dire need of an update) or get in touch with her here!

Solace

The string of the cat’s cradle is red, and it stands out starkly against the pale lines it digs around her fingers. Viola knots it tighter, looping and twisting the threads, as if she could bind them around her very mind to keep it from spiralling. As if the knots could keep the world from breaking apart.

The sky is red, and the world is ending.

For four days now, cracks like shattering ice have been slowly splitting the sky from apex to horizon, dirty red light spilling through to stain the atmosphere. And with the light is a creeping, heavy dread that nobody, no matter how they bluster or lash out, can deny. It lays a deathly weight on their necks. Viola only has to look into someone’s eyes to see that they, too, know it spells the end.

She ducks her head against the sky, clenching the cat’s cradle, but it’s barely a reprieve from the agitation rising within her. Since the cracks appeared, her emotions have hung on a pendulum, vacillating between a blankly accepting calm and mindless, devouring panic. She twists the cradle into a new formation, trying to wrench herself away from her current trajectory toward the latter, and her gaze flicks upward again.

Photgraph by: Sabine Lower | Pixabay

The cracks have . . . lengthened. The light leaves imprints in her vision, like ugly red Lichtenberg figures branded over her eyes. She shudders, the threads of the cat’s cradle so taut they’re on the verge of cutting into her flesh. She hardly notices the pain any longer, because her heart is racing faster and faster, her breath catching audibly in her throat, as the cracks in the sky unfurl, as they widen, as they stare back

“Viola?”

She starts, shaken out of the terror that had clawed into her. Mari has come up to where Viola stands on the flat rooftop, which overlooks their desolate neighbourhood. Her hair is in a lank ponytail and her face is haggard, yet her smile, when she looks at Viola, is as sweet as it’s ever been. “Vi, why are you up here?”

Her voice is small yet clear, soothing away Viola’s frenetics. But—the tears that welled up when she heard Mari’s voice are now spilling hotly down her cheeks before she realises. Half-formed words stick in her throat. She’d scrub away her tears if she could but her fingers are entangled.

“Vi . . .” The other girl’s voice hitches. She touches the side of Viola’s face; wipes a cheek clean.

“I couldn’t—I couldn’t just sit inside,” Viola chokes out. “Even though here is . . . I just . . . Why?”

She stares up again at the horrible cracks— and at the same time, their light pulses like a heartbeat.

The ground heaves beneath their feet. They gasp, the cat’s cradle ripping into Viola’s skin, Mari’s hands flying to clutch her shoulders. But she’s fixated on the sky, the whorls of emerging light simultaneously darker and brighter than anything she’s ever known. It sees them. It sees them.

“Don’t look, Vi, don’t look at it,” Mari begs. She takes Viola’s face in her hands, tilting it down, away from the sky. “Vi.”

She subconsciously resists, but then Mari’s eyes are there instead of the bleeding sky, wide and desperate, and again her presence breaks Viola from her stupefaction. Her fingers twitch, relax. The cat’s cradle slips into the grass as she curls her blood-smeared hands around Mari’s wrists. Both of them are trembling.

She hears the sky tear and crack and yawn, and something that isn’t wind gusts through it, rippling its red hue thick into the air. The back of her neck is prickling wildly, the hairs on her arms standing on end. Mari’s plea fights with Viola’s sudden, terrifying urge to LOOK UP.

But Mari’s fingers are warm, so warm, against her cheeks.

And her smile is shaky, yet it is still sweet, a beautiful constant as the world breaks open around them.

Cameron Peagler

Yamaguchi

Cheeky Artistry

Canary Orange

DJ Wassyoi

Hope

Red Riot

Listful Longing

J’aime

Yakimo

Sun Seeker

Uncomfortably Cute

Originally a seasoned registered nurse specializing in surgery and psychology, Cameron now works towards serving others with photography. Through the power of visual images, his goal is to reveal social disparities, create inspiration, and illuminate individuals’ truths to do the maximum good in an ever-changing world.

Samuel Howard

Mie

Milk Won’t Be Going to the Tokyo Olympics

Samuel notes, “I composed this piece, and worked remotely with Tokyo-based pianist Taku Yabuki (whose work with the mighty Koenjihyakkei I found especially impressive) to realise the recording. The title of the piece stems from an incident in which a person nicknamed ‘Milk’ was barred from ever entering the country of Japan again.”

Samuel is a composer and bassist from Wakefield, West Yorkshire, now residing in Mie. His main interests are jazz fusion and classical music, and his compositions focus on rhythm, often heavily borrowing from Balkan folk music. Having moved to Japan, he now enjoys assisting the local junior high’s music club and taking part in taiko sessions.

Cindy Tat

Kochi

Sunrise Under a Bridge

Dusk Tones

Persimmon Tree

Cherry Blossom Sparkles

Can You Feel the Wind

Between Vegetation

Highlands of Peace

Castle in the Sky

Lotus Garden

Akou Tree

Cindy Tat is an MA Student in Anthropology living in Kochi Prefecture and working on photography. These images from her personal archive of Japan are what inspired her current research topic.

[ Cherry Blossom Sparkles

Lotus Garden

J Whitaker

Mie

More Than You Could Chew Cheeky Grown

J Whitaker is a mixed-media artist with a focus in digital art and character illustration. Besides art, they enjoy gaming, the color green, screaming Rina Sawayama songs in the car, and lazing around the house all weekend.

Nathaniel Hazel Miyagi

Daruma

Fields of Wishes

Fallen Ginko

Cosmos Flower

Anamnesis

Main Torii, Shiogama Shrine

Mt. Kurikoma

Grasses

Jizo Row

Departures

Nathaniel is an assistant language teacher living in a seaside town in Miyagi. Part-photographer and partcamera repairman, when not fixing the latest new-oldstock Soviet-era camera he’s gotten his hands on, he’s out photographing landscapes or still life with the occasional portrait mixed in.

[ Fallen Ginko ]

[ Cosmos Flower ]

[ Main Torii, Shiogama Shrine

Mt. Kurikoma

[ Jizo Row ]

Dianne Yett

Gunma

Cool Jay and Rowdy Jay (Front)

Horned Owl and Gray Wolf

Tiger and Raven

Four Jays and a Mockingbird (Front)

Floopy Crest Jay and Scrub Jay (Front)

Mockingbird (Front)

Mockingbird (Back)

Dianne Yett is a third-year JET ALT from Southern California who is diehard passionate about writing, art, and birds. Her favorite past-times involve writing stories or creating art relating to her fantasy romance series about animal people. She happily takes craft commissions, and the base patterns used are from www.cholyknight.com.

You can find her on Instagram @CraftiYetti, on Nanowrimo.org as CraftiYetti, and reach her at Craftiyetti@gmail.com.

[ Cool Jay and Rowdy Jay (Front)

[ Tiger and Raven ]

[ Horned Owl and Gray Wolf ]

[ Four Jays and a Mockingbird (Front) ]

[ Floopy Crest Jay and Scrub Jay ]

Mockingbird (Front)

Mockingbird (Back)

Saphira Yukino

Wabi-Sabi Through My Eyes

Saphira Yukino is an artist, writer, and teacher. Having her feet planted in both the Eastern and the Western world, she continues to explore what it is that we all have in common. Her loved ones tend to call her “citizen of the earth.” Her first collection of poems was published in 2021.

Wabi-Sabi Through My Eyes

Leaving Europe was a bittersweet choice. The bitterness of saying goodbye to what’s familiar—the sweetness of starting a new life on the other side of the world. Since I moved to Japan, I’ve had many moments that helped me deepen my relationship with life.

Before my departure, a friend in Germany asked me about the word wabi-sabi, and at that time, I had no clue. Although always busy, there is a profoundness that the Japanese seem to live by. “You’ll need to stay to understand wabi-sabi”, the people here kept telling me. So I stayed. And ten months have passed.

In a Japanese tea ceremony, the guest receives a traditional sweet that is so sugary it tickles your taste buds. However, the tea that is served afterward is very bitter. One wouldn’t taste as good without the other. You could say, “why not find something that doesn’t taste as bitter or as sweet? Why not find a middle ground?” But maybe we are here to experience this contrast.

Life is like a pendulum that is swinging all the time. Sometimes it swings higher; other times, it swings lower. But if it stayed in the middle, we would be dead. And though it is all about balance, I guess sometimes balance also means experiencing both sides of the extremes. We need a little bit of both, the bitterness and sweetness of life. Only through knowing one side can we appreciate the other.

There is a German saying, “Schönheit liegt im Auge des Betrachters” (Beauty is in the eye of the beholder). And the more I opened myself up to life and allowed myself to experience it all—joy and sorrow, love and longing, bitterness and sweetness—the more beauty I started to see in all that surrounds me.

I’m not a wabi-sabi expert, but one thing I got to understand is that wabi-sabi is nothing tangible. It is a feeling. It looks like withered skin, a home where people actually lived, loved, and grieved in. Wabi-sabi is perfect in its messiness. It is stillness in chaos. It’s seeing the heart and soul of something. Wabi-sabi asks us to let go of our perfectionism and embrace the ever-changing nature of all things.

Everything is a work of art in progress. Life isn’t perfect. People aren’t perfect. Knowing this takes the pressure off our shoulders, allowing us to embrace our potential whilst also falling in love with the present moment just as it is. And although the fact that nothing lasts forever can be heartbreaking, it is also comforting in a way. It makes us appreciate life more. Wabi-sabi shows that there is beauty in the highs and lows of life, things to learn in easy and hard times.

Nobody knows how long a life will last. So why not fall in love with a mundane Monday or a boring Sunday afternoon? Wabi-sabi has taught me that everything is meaningful if we give meaning to it.

Charlie Owen

Tokyo

Everything Loves an Onsen

Be at Peace

Traditions

The Rising Sun

Japanese Venice

Tranquility

Ghosts of Matsue

Frozen Power

Charlie Owen is an English teacher currently living in Sumida-ku, Tokyo. He enjoys photography both as relaxation and technical exercises. All photos are taken using manual equipment with no autofocusing or computer aids.

Yoma Enku Wilson

Fukushima

Tengu Trio

Winter Rebirth

Northern Flow

Koi Nobori

Mugen

Fukushima no Tanuki

Nanko Kannon

Hindsight’s 2022

Yoma Wilson is an ALT living in Fukushima Prefecture. In his free time, Yoma often travels to find inspiration in the Tohoku region of Japan that is abundant in nature and traditional Japanese culture. These travels include skiing, hiking, visiting mountain shrines, and onsen.

RJ Eddystone Japan Amateur

Bags

RJ Eddystone lives in Japan and teaches English by day so she can afford to write with it by night.

Amateur

I have never much taken to studying art: The technique in the subtlety of brush strokes, the pallet and texture, were all lost on me. Barbarian that I am, I feel I’m nevertheless waxing poetic and sensitive, watching for the finer things in you like a treasure hunter, not to spend but to save, in love with your mystery and the artistry of you. But am I not the curator then of the highest of the arts, like a judge at a festival of ice sculptures or sand? The sun shines, the wind blows, time passes.

Surely the art that we are will melt away.

How can I dally in my studies, fail to make note, to preserve?

We are the rarest of art forms, too soon a memory.

Image by Steve Johnson on unsplash.com

Bags

I leave my mind in bed most days. She’ll catch up to me around noon.

(Why must school begin in the morning when the mind is still asleep? Better not to question the source of wages.)

I have become a lady of luggage, a bearer of bags. Like my mothers before me. An inordinate number of tote bags are mine—inordinate if there were anything not ordinary about owning so many tote bags in one’s thirties that the closet has it’s own space for them. In that space is another bag, a bag for all the bags.

You, dear reader, might not be there yet, but you can see it coming, tote by tote, can’t you? The bags, they mean you’re settling.

Settling can be unsettling. Settling too—you can feel yourself filling the corners at last, putting the suitcase away. The space in the closet for the suitcase is just behind the bags.

But I have become a lady of luggage in other ways, me with my totes and my backpacks and all my other bags.

For one thing, it’s never one thing. Never one bag, that is.

Sometimes it seems so, but in that one bag? Another bag. And in that bag a small pouch for coins (a pouch is another bag). Folded with it is a bag to save the sea after grocery shopping, a bag to hold the notes for work, a bag for the pictures, and the cards, and the CDs—these last ones for work. Each night before a workday, when my mind’s finally awake, I arrange the bags, bag by bag, thought by thought.

My work is running. In place sometimes. My work is clowning. Without the nose. I teach smaller versions of the rest of the world, but only the good things. Only what’s in the bag I’ve brought for them: the world in bite-

size pieces, all of them sweet and candy-colored and fun to sing and say. It’s important at that age.

The bag for lunch break stays in the office. There is food and money and money for food. The bag for after work stays in the office. Sometimes it sits at home in the stairwell instead, just inside the door, because there must be a shower first (my work is calisthenics some days).

On foot, by bike, by train, by car—the wheels especially help carry so many bags. So many necessary things, all kept separate but together, all with me.

The candy-colored songs and stories for the small ones are good for me too. I can’t carry the bags of burdens all the time. I have to put something down to make room. And when I come home, I leave the bags at the door and clean up before I look at them. Then I get back to them, unpack them, one by one.

With this age and this new epithet, I’ve started to place my problems in bags. It’s part of my puzzle-piece self. “This goes here,” so it can fit. At home everything has its place. It’s allowed to move, even leave with me, but only with me.

And what if I leave it somewhere—somewhere out there especially? It happened this week. A CD left in the player I had to go back to. I’d lost a piece of myself. I could feel the weight missing.

Necessity calls for it, the risk of losing a bit of the self to keep the self going, because we all have to go out sometimes. We can’t leave everything locked behind a door.

Read more

Joshua Hodgson

Osaka

Sand Dunes of Tottori

Ukai on the Nagaragawa, Gifu

Biwako Sunsets, Shiga

Rainbow Road, Osaka

Dawn Redwoods in Autumn, Shiga

Monet’s Pond, Gifu

Tunnels of Tomogashima, Wakayama

Macaques Onsen, Nagano

Ballet in Kyoto Autumn

Rainy Night in Asakusa, Tokyo

Joshua is a photographer/videographer who first lived in Shiga, Japan while on JET and is now based in Osaka. Joshua has a great love for travel, the outdoors and especially wildlife, and recently produced a short documentary on saving the habitat of the Japanese Giant Salamander in Tottori Prefecture.

Youtube | Twitter | Instagram

[ Ukai on the Nagaragawa, Gifu ]

[ Biwako Sunsets, Shiga ]

[ Rainbow Road, Osaka ]

[ Dawn Redwoods in Autumn, Shiga ]

[ Monet’s Pond, Gifu ]

[

Tunnels

of Tomogashima, Wakayama ] [ Macaques Onsen, Nagano ]

Ballet in Kyoto Autumn ]

Kat Joplin

Tokyo

Die Schwarze Frau

Belgium Solanas

Stefani St. Slut

Kat Joplin (also known as Le Horla) is a journalist, drag queen, and visual artist based in Tokyo. Drawing from, pop art, classical paintings, and vintage era Madison Avenue ad campaigns, Joplin juxtaposes celebrity and consumerism with the grotesque as a way of exploring queer identity.

You can find Kat on Instagram @kat_dearu and Behance , and you can check out the Haus of Schwarz on Instagram @hausvonschwarz.

Behance

Haus of Schwarz

Frau

Deborah Ruth Trotter

Japan

Tohoku Sakura

Deborah Ruth Trotter was a JET in Ehime-ken back in 19’99-20’02 and has since returned to Japan in another capacity as of 2008. The 2011 triple disaster inspired a poem of hope for the people of Tohoku that was then translated into Japanese by a Japanese woman, who has also lived in Canada, and eventually put to music by another Japanese friend.

Tohoku Sakura 東北・桜

As winter turns to spring

Abundant cherry blossoms

Fill Japan with beauty

Thoughts of new life

Enter people’s minds

Joy fills their hearts

At the sight of these flowers they hold dear

May the devastation of great disaster

Be replaced by the hope and love of Jesus

Blooming in the hearts of the people

And may this New Life

Abundantly flow through the nation

So that hearts are refreshed and encouraged

And the hearts of the people will bloom abundantly

Like sakura.

冬が過ぎ春になる

満開の桜は 美しく日本を彩る

新しい命の意味が 人々の心に入り込む

喜びで彼らの心を満たす いとおしい花々の景色

大きな災害の廃墟は 希望とイエス様の愛で満たされ

人々の心を育むでしょう

そしてこの新しい命が 国に満ち溢れ

心は癒され勇気づけられる そして人々の心に咲き乱れる 桜のように

Author’s note: The English poem was only the first step of art that happened here. The next was taking that art and letting it be the first domino in giving some talents and creativity of some Japanese people and a current JET a chance to bloom and be expressed in the realms of translation, music, and videography.

Special thanks to Keiko Tanaka for the Japanese translation that was later turned into a song. You can listen to the full song here.

Megan Luedtke

Fukui

A Simple Life in Snapshots

Meg is a third-year JET living in the countryside of Fukui. She likes to spend her time playing games, painting, reading, talking with friends and family, and doing a lot of photography.

Quinlan Fletcher

Kumamoto

Strong Zero Cross Section

Eye of the Daruma

Flower Oni

Just Happy to be Here

Salamandance

Quinlan Fletcher is a third-year JET, who started doing art in a serious way in early 2020, to pass time while his schools were closed for the pandemic. He experiments a lot with traditional and digital forms, mostly creating colourful, surreal art! He hopes you enjoy a peek into his imagination!

Just Happy to be Here ]

Judith Portelance

Hyogo Coppélia

Judith is a first-year JET with a passion for writing. She is older than she cares to admit, and a bit of a Jack of All Trades, having dabbled in musical theatre and cosplay before. Writing full time is her ultimate goal, although she is still just working on short stories off writing prompts.

Coppélia

The audition hadn’t gone Alice’s way at all. Well, that’s not entirely right. In truth, her audition was almost perfect. Her arms were long, her fingers were graceful, her turns were tight, and her entire body felt as fluid as water. But then she had to dance.

Melissa.

Always the star. Always perfect. The directors never had anything bad to say about her. Never a word about her posture, nor about her turn out, nor about the length of her jeté. If Melissa auditioned at the same time as Alice, then the latter was left out to dry while the former scooped up compliments and parts.

And yet Melissa was always so cold. Blocks of ice probably radiated more heat than that girl. There was just no passion there. Just pure, unadulterated perfection. Almost scientifically programmed perfection—distilled to the finest detail.

It probably explained why she had so few friends as well—not that friends were a big thing when auditioning for ballets. “Frenemies” was probably the most appropriate term for how Alice felt towards most girls in the audition room. She was on friendly terms with all of them—they often went out together too—but they never fully trusted each other. There was always a chance someone would screw you over to get that part.

The same could not be said for Melissa. Frenemies or not, Melissa was too dainty to be around. Everyone thought she was a prissy diva— and her beautiful doll-like features did nothing to help that matter. The pristine perfection she exuded always led to her being left alone, like a porcelain figurine on a shelf.

Well, that’s all she deserves, Alice thought viciously as she pressed the button for the lobby. Just as the doors to the elevator were sliding shut, however, a hand slid in between. By the beautiful nails alone, Alice knew who it was. Not only did she not get the part, but now she would have to share the elevator with Melissa, who did get the part. It just wasn’t fair— Alice had practised so hard! She and Melissa had gone to the same ballet school and had had the same mentor—a mentor who had told Alice that the part of Swanhilda in the City Ballet’s production of Coppélia was definitely hers. A lie to keep her money, Alice supposed with creeping envy.

But she took a deep breath. In a few seconds, they would be on the ground floor, and she would never have to look at the back of stupid Melissa’s head again—at least, not until the following month, when they would start rehearsals and she would dance in the Coppélia chorus. Anything to make Melissa shine, Alice had to suppress a disappointed chortle.

A sudden jolt of the elevator and a strange rattle knocked Alice out of her thoughts, and right into Melissa. Alice lurched back with horror as Melissa’s wide brown eyes stared daggers into her.

“I—I’m so sorry, Melissa . . . I didn’t mean to . . .

But before she could finish her sentence, a crackling voice came on over the tannoy, “We are terribly sorry about the disturbance, please rest assured that you are safe and help is on the way. The elevator should be repaired in about half an hour.”

Link to the rest of the piece

JP Wojciechowski

Gunma

Winter Light

Explorer

Falling Sakura

Abandoned Mountain Tea Room

Hatoya Hotel

JP was an ALT in Gunma Prefecture from 2018-2021. While in Japan, he discovered an interest in photography to document his time there. Using a Nikon D5600 and a Nikon FE film camera, he shot photos of both the natural beauty and urban sides of Japan.

The Break Room

Tokyo

City and Sound Something Special

We are a Tokyo-based indie rock music band! We all met in Tokyo, but our background is international, with band members from Japan, the U.S., and Taiwan. We hope our music can create a place for you to “take a break” from reality and positively impact your life.

Yasu Cub

Tokyo

To say your peace Waiting (for change)

We are a new wave, dream pop, shoegaze band formed in Tokyo.

Jón Solmundson

Sorachi

First Colours of Springtime at Nanporo

An Onsen for Oni at Noboribetsu

Cabbage Angles at Ecorin Park

Night Streets at Hakodate

A Home for Obake at Yubari

After the Rain at Hakodate

Goryokaku in Bloom at Hakodate

Deep Winter at Lake Akan

Illumination at Tomamu

One Road In, One Road Out at Yubari

Jón Solmundson is a second-year JET working in the vast cabbage patch (and relative teensy town) of Nanporo, Sorachi. He enjoys photographing the vibrant Hokkaido landscape as it undergoes deep changes through all four seasons—a far cry from the persistent Australian evergreens which dominate the landscape of his hometown, Perth.

[

Night Streets at Hakodate

[ Goryokaku in Bloom at Hakodate ]

[ Deep Winter at Lake Akan ]

[ Illumination at Tomamu ]

[ One Road In, One Road Out at Yubari ]

Kate O’Callaghan

Okinawa

Go Green

Colorblast Shisas

Rise Up

The Depths of Winter

Hypnagogia

Wild Blue

Masked Up

Carmen

Kate reconnected to her art 10 years ago and has been on an adventurous artistic journey of discovery since. Drawn both to eclectic color mixes and serene watery blues, she is currently experimenting with the acrylic medium. Her piece titled “The Depths of Winter - Okinawa” will be included in an exhibit in The National Art Center Tokyo, in June 2022.

[ Go Green ]

David Ramgobin

Japan

Window Reflection

Hanging by a Single Leaf

Tunnel Stroll

Alone in the River

Industry

Train at the Cape

Kasa to ame

View over the Village

Pruning for the Sparrow

Sprout

David is a travel photographer from Trinidad and Tobago. He started this hobby with a Sony Alpha 6000 camera in early 2020 on his second year in the JET Program. He later committed to traveling around more and found that Japan offered more than just sightseeing. His style of visual storytelling aspires to illustrate Japan as art itself.

Train at the Cape ]

[ Kasa to ame ]

[ View over the Village ]

Tristan Phelps

Hyogo

Cherry Blossom

And me

Swig

Spins

The Fox

Tristan Phelps lives in Kawanishi, Hyogo. He likes good books, noisy music, and sweets (maybe too much).

Cherry Blossom

Cherry blossom blizzards your call disconnected everything ends

And me

There is the patter of rain, the crunch of leaves, the fall of snow, and me.

Vector by Firdani Danang Prakoso | Vecteezy

Swig

Somewhere, someone works harder than me. I sigh, take another swig, quick.

Spins

Free, my shell of lonely shatters. Unaware, that pretty marble spins.

The Fox

The fox slithers through the bog. Undeterred by friend nor foe, wind nor rain.