Monday 23rd April 2007
We had a restful two whole days to ourselves before our next visitor descended upon us! This time, it's a business meeting for me.
A bit of background for you. Before moving to Tokyo I published a local, community magazine in the Northampton area as an independent publisher. And I was very independent as I created the entire magazine myself. I researched all the local businesses, cold called potential advertisers, designed 99% of the adverts, chased payments, visited customers, enjoyed and wrote nice restaurant reviews, interviewed business owners, went to meetings, wrote editorials and other articles I thought would help my customers and finally pulled all this together via desk top publishing into a magazine ready to send to the printers. Once printed - every month - I would then traipse around nearly 3,000 homes delivering them in all weathers, usually rain.
I sold my business just before we moved over here. As far as I can tell, the lady who bought it didn't continue publishing "my" magazine but someone else (an ex-customer of mine) set up in "my" old area and is running something similar. Good luck to her! It's hard work.
Anyone who works from home, as I do, needs some sort of support system to prevent total insanity from creeping in. And the one I used for this business was an online forum run by a very focussed business woman. This forum was made up of a collection of similarly self-employed people and we used it to bounce ideas around, gain extra knowledge, chit-chat and generally to support each other in any way we could.
As well as a virtual 'coffee-machine chatting area', this site produced articles and other items such as puzzles and crosswords for us to download and include in our magazines in order to present a more professional and readable product. I'd written and shared a number of recipe articles which were very well received nationwide and, I believe, included in most of the magazines produced around the country.
Once my business was sold, I was at a loss as to what to do next. But the site owner, 'T', offered me "enough work to keep me very busy if I was interested". Naturally, I agreed. So I ended up doing a lot of web-mastering stuff. Editing, formatting and sourcing photos for various articles written by others, uploading the finished products onto the system and getting them all ready for the other members to download. At this point, I also started writing "Tokyo Tales" for these local magazines, some of which I've posted here. So I was kept very busy and getting paid a little too.
As an addition to this forum and article site, 'T' sells a start-up pack for other potential publishers. She is doing very well indeed. And now wants to expand into other countries. She's on her way to Australia to set up the business over there. [NB: This venture didn't pay off in the end, however, for various reasons I'm not privy to]. She's making a stop-over in Tokyo to tell me about some extra work she wants me to take on.
I sent 'T' detailed instructions on how to catch the Narita Express to Shinjuku Station, told her which of the numerous exits to take and even included a photo of where to find me (see below).
Shinjuku Station is, apparently, the busiest train station in the world and is certainly one of the most confusing. There's an entire town hidden in its depths, full of little restaurants and shops. I'm sure people have been lost down there for days, perhaps weeks! But my instructions are clear as are the signs.
At the appointed time I waited, and waited… 'T' took the EAST exit instead of the clearly marked WEST exit. But we found each other eventually.
