Welcome to My Web Log!

Hi! Josh here from the cold and snowy lands of Nagaoka, in the Niigata Prefecture, Japan. It has been a colder winter this season 2009-2010 as compared to the last one. In 2008-2009 it was the first time for me to see the snow and it was such a great show. I've been living in the University Dormitories for over a year, and sometime this year I'll have to move to an apartment. In the meanwhile, I've experienced a great deal of things concerning Japan, its people and its culture.

In this case, and the main purpose for creation of this blog, I would like to share some experiences concerning Japan's Scale Modeling Culture. At the same time, as I get more immersed in the various types of techniques they use here, I would like to feel the commitment to continue developing my art and show it to whoever might be interested.

At the same time I would like to take the opportunity to express myself and give my appreciation of art as I see it in my works and the works of others; that is why I chose the name MetaRealia for the Title of this blog. "MetaRealia" is a portmanteau that I thought of from the term "Metarealism", a type of art direction created in Russia, which stands for "Metaphorical" realism. I personally don't follow exactly this direction in particular, but metaphors have been used since ancient times to transmit a message. And I believe that you can teach others through the use of objects as an aid to transmit your message. "Realia" is a term used to describe such objects and, thus, I came up with such a term.

It might be a slow beginning as I put some oil into the old gears, but I hope to have this running as soon as possible. So thank you for taking the time to come and please keep tuned for more to come in the future.