It might be a bit premature, but as it looks like I’m moving into the year-end holidays a little early, I think this is as good a time as any to look back on my work life during 2022
Despite the ongoing pandemic, this was one of my most productive and exciting years as a translator and writer.
The biggest individual developments were two books. I signed a contract with Stone Bridge Press to publish my book Discovering Yamaguchi Sake in February, and signed with Pushkin to translate Akuma ga kitarite fue wo fuku/The Devil’s Flute Murders in June. Both books are coming out in 2023, and do feel free to buy as many as you want!
Read more about those here: Discovering Yamaguchi Sake and Coming Soon: The Devil’s Flute Murders
I also had a big year on other fronts that might break down a little more numerically.
I translated 285 pages worth of articles for Nippon.com, which is over 100,000 characters by their count.
As for other random website and article translations, it looks like I did over 450,000 characters worth.
I also wrote seven articles for outlets like Sake Today (upcoming), Sake Times, Nippon.Com, and AllAbout Japan.
I hosted online events, made connections, and generally made good use of my time. I also took some photography classes and started getting serious about learning to take proper pictures for my stories.
I plan to make use of all this experience in 2023 with a new book (I’m thinking pottery, this time), and hopefully another book translation.
Despite lots of chaos on the global scale, personally, 2022 was pretty good. I hope you can find a way to say the same.
Happy Holidays, and peace be on you all.
Jim Rion - Translator & Writer 