Hi! Welcome back to my blog. If you’re here from Instagram, or if you happen to know me personally, then, Hello! thanks for your constant support. If you randomly stumbled upon this blog, then I’m very sorry for wasting your time with random nonsense.
As you may have already read on my Instagram post, I have recently moved to Japan. Which is why I haven’t been able to take any baking orders for the past few months (because of the preparations and stuff). Honestly, moving abroad was hard for me because it means I have to abandon QMJFT (by abandoning, I mean not commercializing it) right when it was just starting to grow, get a lot of orders, requests to do workshops and more public acknowledgement. So it’s a hard decision, but if you ask me, if I get a chance to live in a first world country, I’d take it any day. I can start over a business but a chance like this doesn’t come often. lol. (I mean come on, it’s Japan). I’d be stupid not to go. lol.
Me being a clueless tourist in Kakegawa Castle
A lot of you have been asking when I'll be back and when I will start taking orders again, and I gave you a somewhat wishy-washy answer. Well the reason I didn't give a straight answer is mainly because I don't wanna jinx it. I was afraid that if I told everybody that I'm moving abroad, something bad will come up and I ended up not moving. Crazy, I know, but hey, anxieties. It makes you paranoidly overthink sometimes. But worry not, Now I'm here to give you details and answers to some of the Frequently Asked Questions about the continuity of QMJFT.
In order to answer your questions, I will divide this into 4 types of news. Bad News, Very Bad News, Meh News, and Somewhat Good News.
THE BAD NEWS:
I'm very sorry to tell you that I will live in Japan for approximately 2 years. Which means that I won't be able to take any orders until mid 2020. That is, IF, by then y'all are still interested in my products. I Also don't think that I'll be selling cookies here in Japan because... well.. because I straight up don't wanna get deported. Just Kidding. It's because I don't know about the terms and conditions of selling food products here (whether or not I need a special permit from the local health department, and things like that) and finding out about it is just too much hassle, because I don't speak Japanese very well, and don’t get me started on reading kanji. No, just, no. Other reasons are payment, shipping, and marketing platforms (because apparently not a lot of people here use Instagram). I will continue to make and post my creations, of course, which leads us to....
THE VERY BAD NEWS:
Oh how my heart breaks writing this one. You see, I have been saving up photos of my creations on my phone for the past 6 months or so. I haven't posted most of them because they need a few tweaks and lighting adjustments before they're "Instagram-worthy".
And because of the moving preparations, I haven't had time to edit them. So I have been piling them up on my phone.
That is until.... 2 weeks before I move, I bought a new phone. A dual SIMcard phone so that I can keep my old number and use a Japanese phone number in one phone.
Apparently, my old phone caught a virus from my old laptop, which doesn’t effect the phone but when I plugged it in a computer, all the photos and files are corrupted and, yes, GONE. Poof. Months of hard work, gone. Sooooo that is why I haven’t posted in quite a while, because I don’t have any materials to post.
Some of you may ask, “So, why not just make new creations and post them?”. The answer is, I’m still adjusting. I’ve only been here a few weeks, my baking supplies have not arrived yet, and I didn’t bring my oven with me. Why? because of the voltage difference.
In Indonesia, the voltage is 220V whereas in Japan it is 110V. So my oven won’t work here.
And I don’t know whether or not to buy a new oven because first of all, it’s quite expensive and I won’t be able to take it back with me when I move back to Indonesia (again, voltage difference).
I could just rent an oven but the cost will be similar to buying a new one. Therefore i’m still undecided about this and until I got this thing sorted out, I can’t bake. I can post other things such as paintings, hand lettering, and crafts, but for cookies and cakes, it will have to wait a bit.
THE MEH NEWS:
Now onto the Meh News. Which is exciting for me, but maybe meh for some of you. I’m here because my husband got sent here by his Company, So like the good wife that I am, I follow along. Anyway, because I don’t have a working Visa, I will not be able to work here. Therefore, I will have a sh*tload of free time which means, I can blog more often. YAY. I will write about my experiences here to keep those who miss me updated and know I’m alive and doing well. I will let you know if a new post is up via Instagram story or post.
THE SOMEWHAT GOOD NEWS:
I will be coming home once or twice a year (to visit family, attend weddings, renew my drivers liscence, etc, etc) and when I do, I will open up a Pre-order for cookies (limited slots, because I don’t wanna spend all my time home in front of an oven, lol) . So stay tuned for updates on the pre-orders.
Anyway, I don’t think of this as a setback for my page, because to be honest, recently I’ve been so busy and caught up with making the orders, I don’t even have time to edit and post my creations, and baking started to feel less and less a hobby but more like a burden. Maybe this is a chance to take a step back so that I can use my page to create and post the things I really care and are passionate about.
That’s all I wanted to say for now, thank you for reading and thank you for your support. Stay tuned for my Japan blogs because, boy, do I have a lot to write about this place. ‘Til next time.
Kisses,
R