We had planned a girlie weekend of just going somewhere nice and very exciting. The only place we could think of in our area was Kobe. About 3 hours by train from Gifu, and very very convenient.
Kobe is famous for its Kobe beef. Naturally we had to try it.
We had our own personal chef to cook it on our table. It was a very reasonable lunch too!
The steak tastes heavenly. It’s expensive for beef here so usually I never buy it. Steak tastes great here. But expensive.. Just for the odd occasion.
Next stop was Chinatown. I’ve been to Nagasaki and Yokohama to see their Chinatown but I think Kobe has the best. Just have a look at the wonderful scenery. I’d go back any day.
After we took these photos.. We noticed a big sign saying not to ride the stone animals.. Oops..
The street food was so delicious and the street was very beautiful. A must if anyone visits Kobe! Highly recommended!
More Kobe pictures to come (unfortunately I think my Kyushu pictures have been wiped from my hard drive… Gutted!)
Today I had a look around our apartment and it was full of all the magazines I’ve worked on in the last three years. It was alot of fun checking out all of the kimono collections I’ve worked on. I think that the kimono trends are very interesting to look at each year as alot of them revolve around what the current celebrities are doing. The bottom the AmiAya page especially, wow, so colourful!
Theses Kimono’s can be worn to events, weddings, and parties but mainly these are rentals for the coming of age ceremony in Japan. “Seijinshiki”. Its every January and all the young ones turning 20 that year come out to the city seijinshiki event wearing kimono, in this case “furisode”. Very good opportunity to see Japanese girls in kimono.
It’s always very fun to work on the Kimono pages of the magazine!
Over new year we went to Kyushu to visit that one place we’ve never stepped foot in. Kyushu is really far from Gifu, so this was a bit of a luxury for us. The train alone costs a fair bit so we’d never really had the chance to go.
I have loads of pictures to work through and upload. But for now I’ll just give the highlights.
Beppu had some serious hot spring problems. Crocodile hot spring anyone?
It was like walking through Jurassic park. These were alive!
The hot spring hells were so much fun. Seeing seeing hot water coming from the ground in different colours was great.
Nagasaki had a funky Chinatown, with some really good tasting Chinese food.
Nagasaki was pretty cool 🙂 highly recommend it! Although the streets looked older than what I expected. The drive down into Nagasaki was great, such steep roads. It’s not often that you get cities that have hills here. It’s generally very flat is large cities here.
For our New Years project we had a little bit of a makeover in Photoshop. Very industrial look! For the past three years somehow I’ve had to change my image for the New Years project (which I am fine with! More than willing!). However, this time I’m a bit worried about potential employers looking at me in a weird way! I shouldn’t think about it or be really concerned but I think it brought out my tough side this year. It does help that I shaved half my head in a crazy act of individualism and looking at too many Pinterest pictures whilst drinking beer. I have to say Natalie Dormer had a huge influence on my hair choice. Love it now but at the start it was really difficult to get used to.
With the 2015 project we went with this look :
We look pretty good when we are all lined up together. Worker Designers and Programers!
I look very tough in this photo! I don’t mind it, red is our corporate colour, so I’m very glad my hair fitted in well with the style of it. Although I can speak Japanese, I went for English instead of Japanese on our site. I’m not hired there because I am from another country, but I thought it would be nice to put a little bit of my culture and me up there.
I gotta say I do look a bit scary! But I’m not actually.. (well heres hoping I’m not!)
2014 was such a huge year for me and my family. Two weddings and a name change! But with what I’ve got lined up in 2015, I think this year is going to be much more exciting.
For our annual New Years Project we attempted to do a cineprint for our recruitment material. Mainly as one of the employees found this on the internet and our boss thought it would be cool to do one here too.
The concept is really cool, and although noone is really going to download and pay for the magazine and buy the magazine to then see the advertisment in its full glory, it is still very cool.
We decided to produce a cineprint that would allow the user to see the effects without having to purchase a magazine or anything like that. We used our printer to produce a print out of our different team status and information to correlate with the ipad and create a new digital experience.
The lexus ad had alot of members working on it, however in our company there was only one member who could use after effects and video editing, me. I had the lovely task of creating, directing and making this project become a reality. The most challenging task I have had at work so far. I had only really just taken a look at after effects and made a few videos, but for this project I really had to brush up my skills and get on it. With only two weeks to create a concept, site, motion graphs and print material, this has got to be the busiest Christmas of my life.
I didn’t make it home for a few days and ended up working on Christmas and Boxing day but it was worth giving it my all. I’ve learned so much from this experience and hopefully next year I can have a normal Christmas and a break, but whilst you can, better give it your all.
This was our attempt at the cineprint.
We have another 4 pages yet to film and print out, but the basic concept is that the potential recruitments would take the leaflet home with them and look at the site to experience this digital experience. We would give the potential recruits the leaflet for free and they can see the creativity of the company this way.
We could also use the leaflet to show students at explanation and recruitment meetings.
Company PR project really. But in a very cool way!
Here are some of the visuals we developed for the project.
Jennifer Hayashi 