Tag: New Year

Happy New Year 2025!

On By Kanariya EishiIn Goals, Notice2 Comments

Happy New Year! 新年あけましておめでとうございます！

Hope you had some good breaks during the Christmas and New Year holidays!

As a heavily Kiwi-fied person, I am finally kicking off my work year today after the 3 weeks of summer holidays… Perhaps, it is not appropriate to call it ‘summer holidays’ as I spent the most of it in the icy cold Japan. Anyway, I feel very stagnant, and it’s about time to get on with my creative projects!

During my stay in Japan, I got to perform rakugo in English three times; twice at Asakusa Culture Tourist Information Center and once with my master’s rakugo family. It was especially a huge privilege for me to perform with my rakugo family, who are basically some of the top “English Rakugo” performers in Japan.

The photo above is from the performance with my rakugo family. (From the left, Eishi, Showman, Eiraku, Ichirin, Panda, and Koraku). Eiraku (my master), Ichirin, and Koraku are the founders of the English Rakugo Association.

There are some exciting projects coming in, but one of the biggest news so far is that the rakugo-inspired artwork that was exhibited at Christchurch Art Gallery (New Zealand) and Tampere Art Museum (Finland) will be displayed at an art museum in Hiroshima, Japan! More information to follow. (If you are interested in this art project, you can read my past entry here.)

I will also resume school visits if my funding application is approved. I will probably be able to offer 5-10 free performance-workshops. Keep an eye out for this page and/ or my SNS.

There will be an open performance/ workshop at Epsom Library on Saturday, 5 April 2025 as a part of the World of Cultures celebrations.

Also, I am planning to stay in Japan for a longer period at the end of this year, and I would like to expand my performance opportunities there. Please contact me if you are interested in collaborating with me sometime between November 2025- January 2026 in Japan.

Finally, though I have said this over and over… I really want to make my YouTube work this year! Please follow my channel if you still haven’t and also give me suggestions to make it work.

Have a fantastic year, everybody!

My Rakugo Resolutions 2019!

On By Kanariya EishiIn GoalsLeave a comment
I guess it’s about time to share ’em, eh?

Happy New Year! 明けましておめでとうございます！

Hope you had fantastic Christmas and New Year’s celebrations with your beloved ones! If you are interested, you can check out what I was up to during the holidays on my Twitter.

As the Heisei Period is coming to a close in less than 3 months in Japan, I am feeling this groundless hope for a new beginning! I can already feel that this year will be AMAZING!!!

It’s already been 10 days into 2019, and I guess it’s about time to disclose my Rakugo resolutions for this year!

As I tend to be unrealistic about my goals (& I almost always don’t reach them…), I have decided to set realistic goals that are reachable yet not too easy this year.

Here are my resolutions for 2019!

  • Do 50 performances minimum: As I am traveling most of January, I have 11 months to accomplish this. Due to my health, this might be a bit challenging but doable!
  • Learn 12 new Rakugo stories minimum (1 of which has to be my original story)
  • Learn 30 new Kobanashi (short stories/ one-liners)
  • Finish 1st draft of my Rakugo book: It’s been about 70% done for a very long time…
  • Wellington tour: If you are a Wellingtonian, please host me!
  • Improve “small talk” skills: This is probably the most embarrassing goal to share here, but I really suck at small talks. If you know me well, I am an enthusiastic conversationalist when it comes to “big topics” (ex. politics, philosophy, or even meaning of life), but I am very poor at the initial stage of relationship building. My Rakugo career would probably go further if I mastered this skill, which I really should have learned when I was a teenager.

Now I have shared these publicly. There’s no going back!

Have an AMAZING year, everybody!