Hello Again, Old Friends

It's been a while since we've had an update. Years, actually. Of course, it didn't really have much content to begin with. With its hosting has been broken for quite some time, it was effectively abandoned. But it's been revived, as you can see, so if you'll indulge me, I'd like to talk about it's death and rebirth.

Five Yen Coin was originally a personal blog where I could post thoughts and images about my life in Japan. I had (and have) an interest in visiting shrines and temples and so named the blog on the wordplay of goen, a phrase which has spiritual and romantic connotations of fated connections between people... but can also mean "five yen coin" depending on the kanji and context.

I posted a couple times, and had written and researched extensively for some long-form articles that I unfortunately never completed. But for the most part the blog and its URL were dormant.

Then, I had an idea. On the r/shinto subreddit, where I was once relatively active, people were having conversations about how they could obtain items such as omamori. The answer is, outside of the handful of shrines outside of Japan, there isn't really a way to get one without. The idea that struck me was simple: why not re-sell omamori and possibly other goods to those who otherwise can't visit? The shrine/temple gets money, people on the other side of the world get the items they want, and I get a good excuse to do more omairi.

I set up an online shop and recycling the URL for the storefront. This blog was reworked to support the shop and relegated to a subdomain. I photographed each omamori, translated the text and provided background information on the item and its place of origin.

And... things never took off. I never expected to make any money off the project, but I hoped to at least recoup my initial costs and maybe a little extra to cover travel expenses. After a handful of initial orders, the site has sat unchanged for the last two years or so. We've received two orders in the last 12 months.

In that time, the blog went offline due to the hosting provider upgrading the PHP version which was not compatible with the backend. I never noticed because, as I said, the site was basically abandoned.

Recently, however, there's been a bit of a resurgence of interest in this project. One of the reasons is related to a business opportunity that I've recently been offered, which I will talk about sometime in the other.

The main reason, however, is that I've found myself wanting a place to muse about topics that aren't covered by my other more specific web sites. I have SUDDEN DESU for my retro video game research work, and Bubblism for my interest in Japanese bubble era pop culture. I plan to keep this blog a big more general, but it will certainly skew towards Japanese cultural, historical, and everyday life topics. I'd like to finish those long-form articles I mentioned previously, as well.

The main site (the storefront) is in need of a fresh coat of paint and some new items too. I'll address that in the latter half of this year.

Stay tuned!