So many things to do and so few time.
One of the main events of this year is coming closer very very fast.

We will head for Tokyo (and the rest of Japan) around the 20th of July. About two and a half weeks will give us enough space to discover the still very unkown culture. Looking forward to get to know my wife’s dynasty and to experience new customs and rites. Our route is well planned (but of course leaves some gaps for spontaneous decisions) and it will bring us to locations (apart from Tokyo) ranging from Iwate in the north to Miyajima in the south of Japan. Sadly I am not going to see Witvogel and The telephones at the motion livehouse in shinjuku at the 6th of August as that is the day of our return. Nevertheless this journey should be the best thing ever. No matter what we are doing… Walking through the big cities and getting to know the country and the people is pleasure enough.

But I have to be patient. As I said there are some things to occur first and there are some events which might even arise to the same level of excitement than this year’s trip to Japan (which is very very hard to achieve). Starting with one minor but very amusing event this weekend - the annual reunion with my colleagues from university at a lake in the mid-distance neighbourhood.

Some minutes ago I published an article at japaninfo.at which focuses on japanese asian Smileys. What are your favourite Smileys/Emoticons/Kaomoji and what are they called in your country?
Personally I really like emoticons which feature kanji
Meet my weird friend (`益´) or my cat ミ^・.・^彡 and dog u・ェ・u
Sometimes I feel just so indifferent（　´_ゝ`）
But anyway… who cares? 凸(｀∇´)凸

Today my generous wife surprised me with a really cool gift. She gave me a book with the title “Japanese Graphics Now”. It’s a book full of photographs and with hardly any text in it (very good feature for lazy people like me). It gives a very good overview of the current product and marketing designs in Japan. You see tons of posters, products, logos and much much more which are presented in over 350 pages. This version of the book is brandnew and sold at a special price (€ 9.99). You might want to click on the image to buy it online from amazon directly.