the business card

it was unavoidable, and kind of urgent. a couple of times, I had failed to offer something in return of a skillfully presented business card. even failed to say something.
so, time to make me a company business card, my first one ever. kobayashisan insisted on giving me both a name in japanese characters (purely phonetic), and a set of chinese kanjis, adding meaning to the sounds. finding a phonetic equivalent for alien sounds like the double e, ‘kn’ and ‘gt’ of my unpronouncable last name was only a minor obstacle for the flexible japanese language. “ja nu lin ku ni hu to” might look a little off, yet pronounced by a random japanese it sounds surprisingly close to the original. much closer than any french ever got.




agitation in the office with the selection of ‘my’ chinese characters. multiple chinese characters correspond with each sound, so combinations are endless. everybody in the office took a break to shoot, kobayashisan refereeing professionally. at a certain point, both ‘agony’ and ‘disease’ were in the running (everyone cracking up), but the kanjis that finally made it say ‘arrow’ ‘open sky, peaceful’ ‘wheel’ ‘country’ ‘man’. the guy from the country of the bike shoots an arrow to the open sky.



“yoroshiku onegai shimasu” accompanies business card exchange, equivalent of “nice to meet you”. also acceptable is a simple “jan desu”, “I am jan”. “jan desu” could also be translated as “this is jan”. kind of prefer to think of this last interpretation, while offering my card, with both hands, text rightly directed, bowing.



couple of days ago, antonio from torino joined the firm...