Toward the end of the year my batteries are running low, and I crash-land as soon as we're done with the February issue. It’s been a custom for several years now that I spend the New Year’s holidays in my house in Misaki doing just nothing. After getting up I take a walk around the harbor, enjoy the view of Mount Fuji, listen to CDs and vinyl records on end, prepare dinner, and as the evening advances I have a drink or two, watch a movie on DVD, and go to bed without setting my alarm clock. That’s about my routine these days. Well, to tell the truth I just bought a netbook that I'm now taking with me, so I'm connected to the Internet even here in my little retreat. Even though it was originally my own choice to come to this place right because there was no Internet connection here, I eventually wound up browsing through blogs and movie sites… Shame! Like in the previous year, in 2008 I managed again to spend more than 100 nights in Misaki. My next aim is to spend one third of the year here, so I do need an Internet connection, but if this means that I spend all my time here surfing the web, I really wonder why I'm coming here in the first place… I guess I'll have to find the right balance. I'm coming here of course because this is the perfect environment for reading drafts without stress and city noise.
December 27
This is my first day off. I get up early and arrive in Misaki as planned. Writer Ishii Shinji collaborated with Maruichi, the best fish shop in Misaki, to create a special maguro (tuna) set, which I volunteer to help distribute. The set contains next to chutoro (medium fatty tuna) and a block of lean tuna meat a novel by Ishii-san titled "Maguro", along with special instructions on how to unfreeze maguro. Everything is signed by Ishii himself, and the limited 100 sets are reportedly already sold out. I help Mr. and Mrs. Ishii wrap up blocks of fish meat that were frozen at minus 50 degrees Celsius, put them together with one copy each of "Maguro" into styrofoam boxes, and attach the necessary postage documents. Just when it appears to me that this process reminds me of something, I realize that it’s not unlike the final stage of producing an issue of "Shincho". Even though it’s a mechanical type of work, it involves a strangely trippy sensation with a mixture of constant tension and concentration. After doing this for several hours, the Maruichi people serve me maguro-don and Thread-sail filefish cooked in soy sauce.
December 29
I return to Tokyo for one day only, and appear in the "The survival of magazines" part of the "Ex-po Night" event. Host Sasaki Atsushi talks for about 90 minutes with guests including "Faust" editor Ota Katsushi, "Studio Voice" editor Shinagawa Ryo, and "Eureka" editor Yamamoto Mitsuru. Ota Katsushi keeps stimulating me to the extreme with his mad sort of enthusiasm, and "Studio Voice" I've been reading since I was a student. Last year’s "Ambient & Chillout" special was brilliant. "Eureka" is in a way a publication that collides with "Shincho", and the recent "Hatsune Miku" is an extra number solid enough to earn my sincere admiration. Surrounded by such highly respected fellow editors, I point out "the trend of online publications away from print media and how there must be some interesting things emerging from this chaotic situation." I add that I'm highly motivated myself, but what is supposed to be a forward-looking position is based on my "working thesis" rather than on an "awareness of the actual situation". What I can say for sure, however, is that my particular hope as an editor of a literary magazine rests exclusively on the literati of our time. In the moment I stop believing in them, it will all come to a halt.
December 31
Late at night I walk through the deserted local shopping district, and cheer up the folks at Maruichi with a case of canned beer before the shop will finally close down for year-end holidays. Now that the year draws to a close, work at Maruichi calms down as well, and everyone joins for a toast. We enjoy the chef’s maguro sushi while temple bells across town ring out the year.
January 1
I sleep about three hours, get up before daybreak, and totter over to the harbor. There are some clouds over the Boso peninsula, but they don't spoil the dramatic sunrise I witness. I've seen sunsets here before, but while sunsets tend to put people in a rather reflective mood, sunrises make one feel like being just a tiny grain of dust in a dramatically moving astral body. It’s as if sunsets represent the geocentric, and sunrises the heliocentric theory… I walk over to a nearby coffee shop, have a cup of warm sake, go to bed again, and when I wake up the sun is already going down again. What a long, deep sleep!
I start up my computer to check emails, and notice a couple of replies to my New Year’s greetings. This coming April marks my 20th anniversary as a professional editor, and one young writer congratulates me on my "editorial coming-of-age". My actual coming-of-age I celebrated in my first year as a student in Kyoto, where I met the likes of Asada Akira, Ichida Yoshihiko and Mori Yoshitaka. It was a time when I felt how my horizon expanded explosion-like, and I hope it'll still keep expanding this year. Well, there’s already one new door to open right in front of me!