Last Chance

I’ve formatted half of the book now. The traditional section is actually very long. The movie section is quite short, Most movies are by the two animation greats of Japan. Do you know who they are? If you don’t you should definitely buy our book, and if you do, you should buy our book to check!

There’s only 3 days left on our Indiegogo campaign! We’ve raised less than a quarter of the meager target!

So I don’t know what else to say except PLEASE share this link like crazy: http://www.indiegogo.com/letspopculture

If not for me, who has, by the way, worked so hard for this project I might seriously have depression if it completely fails, then do it for the students who desperately need help but don’t even realise it, and all the disaster victims who need new homes.

Please! Just two seconds of your life can change so many others for the better.

if you don’t help, this cat will hate you forever, and probably die horribly cursing and screaming your name…

Have a nice day!

Like Butter

Hello again!

It’s been a busy week. So busy I took time off yesterday for a minor illness and still did lots of promotion for our IndieGoGo fundraiser. In fact, I scored us a guest blog feature on a publishing blog. It’s called The Masquerade Crew, and while they focus mainly on fiction they cover all sorts of publishing efforts. The Organiser was generous enough to advertise my latest novel a lot on Twitter, so I asked about this project too. You can read the article here.

While I continue to find other ways to advertise our fundraiser, I am a bit worried that we have received no donations in the past week. I think the proverb ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink’ really applies here! I understand other people are not as passionate about this subject as us, but I am genuinely surprised that there has been no small contributions of $1 or so. I mean, what’s $1 dollar really? You’ve probably lost more money down the back of your sofa, and it could really help change people’s lives here.

I just don’t want everyone here to be disappointed.

So, I’m going to make a short video now about the earthquake and the damage done to our school. I’ll post it here and on the IndieGoGo page when it is ready.

Spread the word

I’m not going to ask you to donate money. I’m going to ask you to donate 10 seconds of your time. I’m going to give you the link to our IndieGoGo fundraiser and I want you to share it somewhere: Facebook, twitter, mixi, tumblr, YouTube, … It doesn’t matter. Here it is:

http://www.indiegogo.com/letspopculture

We have until December 1st to raise $1,999 USD or I’ll collapse from stress, my teachers will go back to teaching soul sapping lessons, my students will lose hope in anything they do for school, English education in Japan will continue to fail and earthquake/tsunami victims will still struggle to rebuild their lives. So help, why don’t you?

It’s been one week, that’s 20 % of our time, and we’ve raised $305 USD so far. That’s only 15%, so we are a little behind schedule! That’s to be expected, as word has yet to be spread of our work. As more and more people share, donations will start to come more frequently.

Back at school, I have put up a quick poster to show students how well our fundraiser is doing. So don’t disappoint them, and don’t embarrass me! Share that link!

I’ve also been bugging students to contribute more illustrations for the book. So far I have gotten a few doodles but I’m hoping I’ll have some more drawings worthy of being chapter headings and not just page decoration. Still, they are cute.

That’s it for now. Keep following the Facebook page for more regular updates, and the Indiegogo page for more regular, detailed and fun updates. Videos coming soon!

Covered

Hello again,

Sorry to keep you waiting for almost a week. I have spent the past 3 days at work marking exam papers. It was exhausting. Each day my brain just could not take in any information. Then last night, I went the other way and I got all hyper. My brain was racing! Anyway, I’ve calmed down a bit now.

I posted on our Facebook page that I had received the final image for the book’s cover and promotions. Now, I finally ave time to post it here. So please have a look and let me know what you think.

It was drawn by the talented Chevi. I asked for a group of students cheering on as a crowd, in the iconic Japanese school uniform even though my school doesn’t have a uniform, with the school mascot, the triangle headed guy. She delivered!

Over the next few days, between more marking, lesson planning, book formatting, work training and extra jobs, I’m going to play about with the lettering and get the text for the cover sorted. I’ll post some samples here and I’d like you to tell me which one looks best. So please stick around, visit regularly and help us out with our huge, life changing project.

Cheers, me dears!

Doraemon

Hello again,

I’ve just received word from the Doraemon department of Shopro company in Japan that we can use original images of Doraemon in our book! the downside is that we cannot use him with the reviews. He must be in the introduction and he cannot appear with other characters. Also, we cannot say anything bad about him in the book. So it looks like we will be recommending Doraemon! We were going to anyway, I think. Everybody loves that blue earless cat robot from the future.

Also, regarding pictures, I’ve received a few drawings from students. Some of which may be included in the book.

Later, folks!

Quickie

Hello,

This is just a quick update to let people know how I’m doing. I am marking some of the first drafts and they are looking very good. I’m not making many changes. There are some common mistakes with ‘a’ and ‘the’, prepositions and such, but really the English is very good. It’s surprised me and I teach them regularly.

I want this book to be an honest representation of the English level but I also wanted to be easily read by customers who buy it. It could be hard to find a balance. I’m sure some people will accuse me or the school of being dishonest about the students English. However I do want to do my best to be honest. What I know is that the students work will surprise you. People often give teaching English in Japan a bad image. One of the reasons I want to do this project is to show to people that many students work very hard at English. That there are some faults with the system but like any system this is true.

I’ll continue my work and I’ll be back again with another report soon.

Choices

I spent most of yesterday searching for a replacement illustrator to make the promotional material for our book. It was hard because most of the artists I found, on my old haunt DeviantArt.com, the ones that were really good we’re either super busy or they had been inactive for ages.

Well, I’ve found two that are good and available but I’m not totally sure which one to pick. The first has lovely detail and color, but I think his pictures might be too busy and there is something about the characters I don’t like. I’m not sure what it is. But his work is excellent overall. The second has a very good anime style, but maybe it’s too cute? I’m not sure.

So I’ll let you guys have some input. Who do you think should make the header, banner, icon and poster for our online promotion?

No. 1 here

Or

No. 2 here?

This might not be a final choice as people are still applying as I speak. However, crowd input is always good. So please help out!

Choosing

Hi folks!

I hope summer has been an enjoyable time for you so far. It’s really hit Japan now. Monday saw the temperature rise to 36’C in some places. That wasn’t here in Sendai, but it must have been close.

Well this is just a progress report. After informing all the classes about the project, students are busy thinking about their topics. Here’s a picture of one classes sign up sheet. It was taken just a few hours after the introduction.

There’s a good variety of topics, with some that have even surprised me. If you know what all of them are, I guess you don’t need to buy our book but I hope you will support us anyway, because we want as many people as possible to know about this project. So be kind and share this site on your facebook or twitter. Thanks!

Tomorrow, I’ll return to Mukaiyama and I’ll see how many more topics are written on the sign up sheets. I gave them the deadline of Friday to choose. So hopefully they will be nearly full. The problem is duplicates. I want the book to be interesting with many different topics so I’ve asked the students to all have different topics. I’m guessing I’m going to have to force several students to choose again. We’ll see tomorrow.