Busting your ass CAN pay off

April 8, 2005 2:28 AM

Becoming a '??' (tradesman) in Japan. A 'gaijin' entrepreneur has been detailing his woodblock printing craft and business in a self-published quarterly journal over the past 15+ years. I found his series of autobiographical essays to be a very worthwhile read, reminiscent of Pirsig's first novel for some reason.
posted by Heywood Mogroot (13 comments total)

'??' is 'shoku-nin'. s'pose if you know the readings you don't need to see the pretty kanji characters themselves ☹
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:41 AM on April 8, 2005

I see pretty question marks and squares instead.
posted by TwelveTwo at 3:29 AM on April 8, 2005

if you send the character codes to Matt, he may be able to change things for you.
posted by NinjaPirate at 3:42 AM on April 8, 2005

The question mark characters (??) just indicate where I was trying to be cute with kanji. It's not critical to the story. (I doubt this will work either).
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 4:12 AM on April 8, 2005

i had the same problem one time, but dorian provided a fix :D

cheers!
posted by kliuless at 4:17 AM on April 8, 2005

職人
posted by armage at 4:44 AM on April 8, 2005

Here goes... 職人

raw = 職人

(In the post I used raw decimal & codings, the fix you linked says the db can't handle 5-digit entities)
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 4:47 AM on April 8, 2005

Aside from all that, truly excellent links, Heywood Mogroot - great find - thank you!
posted by madamjujujive at 6:24 AM on April 8, 2005

Also see Clifton Karhu who has been making beautiful ukiyo-e here in Kyoto since the sixties.
posted by planetkyoto at 6:25 AM on April 8, 2005 [1 favorite]

Woodblocks, hmmmmmm.....

thanks for the post. I am home sick with the flu and you just made my day.
posted by fluffycreature at 6:26 AM on April 8, 2005

Domo arigato gozaimasu!
posted by shoepal at 8:03 AM on April 8, 2005

Here's another who's been at it a while.
posted by ahimsakid at 5:59 PM on April 8, 2005

(ahimsakid: woodblock.com is maintained by the same guy, David Bull)
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 6:55 PM on April 8, 2005