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I’m sorry for the long hiatus since my last podcast episode. If you were wondering where I’ve been, well, after completing my third Japan winter tour of the season, I have spent most of my time buying a house and now preparing to move into that new house on April 22 and 23. I’ll share more details about that in a moment. First though, during the few hours of time I could make here and there, I have completed the background music and a little more editing of the video I made in January to share with you our Hokkaido Landscape Photography Adventure. You can check out the video below or on my Vimeo page.
I hope you enjoy the video. If it compels you to join us in a future year, you can check out details of future tours on our Tours & Workshops page. A fun thing to note as you watch the video is that drones don’t capture audio, but you’ll notice the wave sounds in a number of scenes. I created those sounds with a synthesizer and timed them to look relatively natural. I hope it fools you sufficiently.
So, on my move, I have basically saved the money for our house via an investment policy that I started 23 years ago and have been paying into every month since. The policy was due to run for another two years, but we were ready to move. The weak Japanese yen at the moment meant that we would get back around 1.5X the amount we would have received when the yen was stronger, so although the yen may continue to weaken, I decided to get out of the investment. The funds, along with another investment that I bailed from last year, were enough for us to buy a house.
Our first and major decision, though, was where we would live. We considered staying in Tokyo, but my investments didn’t provide enough money to buy something that we’d really enjoy living in, so we looked elsewhere and found what is, for the most part, our dream house in the Gunma Prefecture, which is about two hours north of where we currently live. It’s on the North-Western tip of the Kanto Plane, in a city called Maebashi. We’re surrounded on three sides by beautiful mountains, and it’s not a long drive through those mountains to the Snow Monkeys. There is lots of beautiful scenery to explore, so I’m really looking forward to getting out into nature more once we move and my upcoming Namibia Tour is all completed.
The new house isn’t huge, but it has three bedrooms, one of which I’m going to use as my studio, a Japanese tatami mat room next to our living room, which I’m going to use as a second workroom, and the rest is our own living space. I’ve got a large new music workstation desk arriving this week, and on the same day I’m having some electrical work done and hoping to use my 4K projector as my main display when working at that desk. Behind that desk, I’m going to have my iMac Pro and second display against the wall on my adjustable height desk, so I’ll be able to either spin my chair around or simply stand up and turn around to work at my computer. Of course, because my keyboard and mouse are wireless, if I want to, I’ll be able to take them to my larger music workstation and work using the projected display.
I’m going to put an 80″ screen on the wall, and that means that when working at my music workstation, I’ll be looking a few meters away from the desk rather than looking at a computer screen around 40 to 50 centimeters, which I’m sure will be better for my eyes. And that reminds me, for those of you who were concerned about the eyesight in my right eye after my cataract surgery, the lens has actually settled a little further forward than it originally was, so although I’m still very slightly short-sighted in my right eye, the difference is now so small that it no longer drives me crazy. My brain has also adjusted more, so I am able to do my archery again as well, so all is now good on that front.
With our move next week and the Namibia tour for three weeks in May, I honestly don’t know when I’ll be able to release my next episode. However, I wanted to let those of you supporting my efforts on Patreon know that although I will be continuing the monthly question time and my mentorship programs, I am removing my commitment to making three episodes per month. If your support is strongly linked to future content, please feel free to cancel your payments. I am not stopping doing the podcast, but I’m realigning a number of things, including winding down on overseas tours, at least for the foreseeable future. I have also canceled the second of my two Japan Winter Wildlife tours from next year.
It’s simply too crowded now on that tour. The conditions on our first tour are still great, so I’m just doing my landscape trip at the being of January and what has been until now, the first to two Wildlife trips after a week at home to catch up, starting at the end of January to early February. We only have three spaces left on my wildlife tour now too, so if you want to join us, please get signed up. I have another Japan tour that I have worked on the plans for, but Japan, in most of the areas I want to visit, is seriously suffering from over-tourism and a lack of infrastructure staff after the pandemic. We need to strengthen the tourism industry a deal more before I will feel comfortable taking guests to the new locations I have in mind.
So, in the meantime, now that I have no rent or mortgage to pay, I have a little less pressure on me work-wise, so my wife and I have decided that we will spend more time doing fun things together from our new base before we’re both too old to enjoy what time we have left. My Dad was five years older than I am now when he retired, and he died within six months from cancer. None of us know what lies ahead, but it won’t hurt to make these changes now. I am going to rechannel some of the energy and time I used to work on my Namibia tours and third winter tour in the past to create new software, either photography or music-centric, as this is selling pretty well and a good source of relatively passive income once the development and maintenance is done.
Photography remains my main passion, and I’m hoping to make enough money to continue traveling, but as a paying guest along with my wife. I will continue to share details of my photography-related life in probably more sporadically released Podcasts. You’ll hear from me when I have something to share, and I’ll go quiet again while I’m down-periscope of a project or simply enjoying life. I hope you’ll stay subscribed and continue to enjoy the content I will be sharing. At least it should be fresher as I move into a new area and have more to share.
I will, of course, also share some of the work from my two Japan Winter Wildlife tours from this year as the dust settles. I worked with two amazing groups, and also the crowds at some locations on the second tour got a bit unbearable; it was still a great tour, and we all came home with many wonderful photos, so a travelogue is in the pipeline. For now, I am about to pack away my mic and computer as we prepare to move. My apartment is upside down right now, and over the next few days, we’re going to turn it completely inside out, so I’ll see you on the flip side.
Show Notes
Watch our Hokkaido Landscape Photography Adventure video on Vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/932714551
Visit our tours page for details of future tours: https://mbp.ac/tours
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Wow … beautiful video Martin! It was so cool to see all the locations we visited in 2023 from the drone perspective. And so much snow! Music sounded great too … was that you singing the whole time? 😉