Starting up the writing engines again

Hi there. If you still follow this site but you aren't following me on Facebook or Twitter, you may have been surprised to see that I'm still alive! Well, yes I am, and I am am revving up my writing engines again.I'm feeling a lot better than I have felt in some time mentallly as well as physically;, I was told a couple of weeks ago that my cancer is in remission, and although I have to use a cane to walk because my left foot is numb due to some nerve damage after hernia surgery back in late January, I feel pretty good. Most importantly, I am ready to work again! Whee!

I have doing quite a lot of writing about Japan on non-food related topics for the past few years. Since I didn't really have a good home to put those writings, I've been posting them here and there - first on Quora for a while, and then on my Facebook page. (My Quora posts are all gone now though. I may explain why at some point.) I thought about putting them on Medium perhaps, or some other place. But eventually I decided that I'd rather have my own, dedicated home for them. So last week, I started up yet another site, Just My Japan. If you enjoy my writing here, I hope you'll enjoy that site too!

I have fixed some slightly broken things in the background on this site too, and plan to post rather more regular than once every few months. ^_^ Actually, my goal is to post something new at least once a week. The first one is the recipe+ I have just posted, about a very special banana cake.

Just Bento will be back very soon too! A revamped site that works properly on mobile devices is almost done, and I hope to have the site up within a week or so. Again, I hope to be posting new articles there at least once a week too. For Just Bento, I am considering the possibility of guest posts, is but the first thing is to get the site up and running again. ust

I have someone managed to keep writing at least once a month for The Japan Times for more than 9 years, mostly for my Japanese Kitchen column. And of course, the Just Bento Cookbooks 1 and 2 are still alive and kicking hard - both are now available as Kindle ebooks, besides the print versions! (The thing with books though is, unless you have a humongous bestseller or a big list of books out, they only bring the author a very modest, although much appreciated income on an semi-annual or annual basis or so. I still need to hustle to make a living. ^_^;)

Last but not least, I have started a Patreon page. As you can see, this site runs banner ads, plus a popup video ad. They help to to pay for the server bill (despite the fact that I have not updated Just Hungry and Just Bento much for some time, they still get a fair amount of traffic). I started a Patreon partly with the hope that some day, I can afford to run sites without relying on random ads. Ads for products or companies I really love are one thing, but random ones...well. But the main reason I started a Patreon is so that I could dedicate more time to writing about all aspects of Japan that interest me, including but not limited to its food. I do make money in other ways (I have been doing quite a lot of translation work lately) but I do love writing about Japanese things, and if I can afford to spend more time doing that, I will do so! If you have enjoyed my writing over the years and want to see more, I hope you will consider becoming a patron. (Link above, or at the bottom of this post.)

So...that's it for now! It has been a long time for many of you since you heard from me, but I think, knock wood, I am back for real this time.