Daily Sports Column in Japanese here / デイリースポーツのコラムはこちら
Nothing happens by accident. At least that’s how life can feel at times. I trace the fateful encounter I had with my future wife on an airplane in Vancouver back in 2010 to a young 12-year-old boy in Okinawa who told me I should apply to work at his school. (Long story. Ask me about it next time we meet.)
Today I want to tell you about how I became a columnist for Daily Sports. Nope, this is not a story of pure talent or sheer determination. This is about an American man living in the UK who does wonderful business all around the world, including Japan.
You see, in H-TEN’s infancy, I put out a contest to design a logo so that I could brand the product a little. I got surprisingly few responses. In fact, only one person entered, and it was not the subject of this story. Anyways, one Stephen Greene sent me a cryptic email that set off a chain of events beyond my control.
“My man, this is the moment I’ve been waiting for.”
Huh? I thought it was a joke, or even spam mail. His signature (not to mention his email address) included the word “RockCorps” so out of curiosity, I googled it, expecting to find sites telling me not to open messages from his address because of viruses or malware. That’s not what I found, though.
Rockcorps is a truly unique company that sets up music concerts all around the world. Now in 10 countries nearly every year, including Japan, the company has but one condition on obtaining tickets to said concert (which will be in Fukushima again after two years in Kanto): all you have to do is four hours of volunteer community service, as defined by Rockcorps and their sponsors. That is all. Then you attend the concert for free and celebrate the contribution you and several thousand others have made to bettering the community. Not bad eh?
Well, Mr. Greene is the CEO of Rockcorps, and a pretty serious Hanshin fan. Turns out the PR company he uses in Japan also happens to be the PR company used by the Yokohama DeNA BayStars. Long story short, Mr. Greene asked his people to find a way to make my talents better known. They contacted a PR company that has strong connections with Daily, and then in December 2017, I was interviewed and featured in the paper.
The man who conducted the interview, a freelance writer, became a pretty serious T-Ray fan, and has been lobbying for me to go viral. Ultimately, through his power of persuasion, Daily Sports asked me to write a column for them, and the rest is history.
So now do you see how an innocent logo design contest has turned me into a writer for a Japanese newspaper? Told you nothing happens by accident!