Mike's Blender, born in May 2003 has gone through many revisions. This is the 4th major revision so far.

In the beginning it was just a way to showcase my (at the time) recently acquired web designer skills, which weren't much to speak of really. The web was a very different place back in the early 2000s however, full of flash animation, rollovers and ugly animated gifs, all of which, for the most part have (thankfully) disappeared.

I revised it about a year later and made it into the site where it gained a modicum of popularity, a blog about food, life and adventures in Japan. I left it in this form (though changing the design a few times) for the next six years.

I've since left Japan though, so a change was needed. My choices were either to consign mikesblender to the netherword of forgotten and shunned websites, or reinvent it somehow. Shunning would certainly be easier, but I still wanted someplace (other than facebook, etc.) to showcase my art on the web. So reinvent it was.

For those of you who get no interest out of art or design, I've left my old site up in a legacy format. Just click the legacy button to be whisked back to the good old days of dried squid, chocolate beer and crazy Tokyo life.

I'm a Canadian guy who has recently returned from a ten year holiday in Japan. I spent most of my time there making a lot of money for doing very little work (teaching English as a second language), pursuing my hobbies, perfecting the fine art of procrastination, and slowly being driven mad by the city of Tokyo.

Now that I'm back in Canada studying something that I truly enjoy (art and design), I'm happier than I've been in a long time.

If you need to contact me outside of the site's commenting system or twitter, you can send me an 'emergency' email at mike[at]beddall[dot]net. Those that comment or email and never get a response don't feel bad, replying to comments quickly is not my strong suit. I get a number of emails from people who want me to help them with their Japan travel itineraries, etc, so let me say it here that I don't believe in itineraries. When I travel I leave everything to chance, even hotels. I sincerely believe that traveling is much more fun if you don't plan it. Of course this drives my wife nuts so I have to do a bit of organizing these days, but I digress. Anyway I'll try to answer questions on Japan life or other specifics to people who ask for advice, though generally my response time might be a wee bit slow.

Oil painting is my passion. It's the one activity/hobby of many I took up that I've consistently stuck with, and haven't gotten tired of. Painting is the reason why I'm currently studying Graphic Design. It gave me (a much needed) direction and made me realize that instead of studying Linguistics in University so many years ago I should've been studying art and design. Of course I wouldn't trade in all those great years of living in Japan for anything, but it does make me wonder... Where would I be today if I'd had this sense of purpose coming out of highschool?

Exhibitions:
2007 December
Group Show
The Pink Cow (Tokyo)

2009 November
Solo Exhibition
The Pink Cow (Tokyo)

2010 May
Group Show
Gamuso (Tokyo)

2010 June
Group Show
Design Festa Gallery (Tokyo)

2011 February/March
Solo Exhibition
Starbucks (Glebe, Ottawa)

Graphic design is the reason I came back to Canada from Japan, the reason why I'm updating this site and is the main thing you'll see on these pages for the forseeable future. Oh, and it's also my hope for the future. No pressure!

For the time being I'll mainly be uploading the projects and assignments I'm working on at school. As things progress and I improve (my fingers are crossed), it'll probably evolve into an online design portfolio or sorts, the best stuff will be in the forground and the weaker, earlier stuff will get shunted to the back, or just disappear.

Some of the new categories you'll see are illustrations done in pencil, pastel and ink, vector art done in Adobe Illustrator, and typographical artwork.

Perhaps it won't be as fun as Cucumber Pepsi or carrot flavoured Kit Kats, but hopefully it'll be interesting to some people.

Sometimes on my voyages through the internet, I'll come across strange and bizarre things, like photographs that I took being used on someone else's website, without permission or even a linkback! I'm not a professional photographer, nor do I do things like watermark my images, but please, at the least, link back to me. Is that so hard? For all of you who have emailed me over the years for permission to use my images (even CNN one time!) thank you very much. For those of you who steal, for shame. Get your own camera.

I currently shoot with a Nikon D300s plus a growing pile of lenses and equipment, and love it all dearly.