I always figured that to write genki music you have to be in a sunny place! CD4 was written on a beach in Thailand, and people always ask “Where would you like to live?” and I say “Tahiti or the Caribbean!”. It sounds like an expensive dream, but the thing is that when you live in Japan ( or two months of the year in the UK) then living absolutely anywhere else on the planet is bound to work out cheaper!! So it’s madness not to head off somewhere sunny really. For the moment it’s not quite as exotic as the Bahamas or the Pacific, but I’ve headed off to Spain for three weeks to record the new CD.

The only slight problem is that although it is indeed Sunny, it’s also flipping freezing!!! The first day was just like being in Japan! But luckily things have now warmed up.

And being here is great for work, whereas until now I’ve been struggling to make any of the backings of the songs sound decent, I’ve just sat down every morning this week, played things straight into the computer and they sound great first time! Cool. Just being able to take a glance up from the screen and look out onto the sea makes all the difference. The graphics and software are also coming along well. On Wednesday, after a request on the Forum, I was thinking about an Easter song, wrote it in the car on the way back, then sat down, recorded it and designed the graphics and webpage all on Thursday morning! Now if only all the other songs would happen that quick! ( One theme usually takes over a week to do)

My Spanish is also coming along really well and I just can’t recommend the Pimsleur series enough. I put the CDs on my iPod and do two half hour lessons a day. And it really works well, with a brilliant approach. If any of you teach in a foreign country then I would definitely recommend their courses. It’s expensive but with an hour a day, a few weeks is all you need to get really quite good, and many of the languages have advanced courses to take you even further. Now if they only had one for Japanese people to learn English then we could all retire!

I’ve also put up a new RSS feed on the website, which is a really great way of seeing what’s new on the site without having to visit the page all the time!

Now let’s try and finish this CD before I leave so I can maybe have a day or so holiday!!