Age 29 - July 2023 - pencil and white goache paint

I made this a few weeks after turning 29 at Kopan - a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal - while referring to two pictures of myself from the beginning and end of the course I took part in at the same monastery, six months prior. Many significant events happened for me while I was 28. It started off with a long road trip from Nara to the northernmost tip of Honshu, Japan, to see many famous ‘obon’ summer festivals. I visited the Awa Odori festival in Tokushima city, an ancestral celebration in the place where many of my Japanese ancestors are from. Then in early fall, my mother and I visited the very remote seaside grave of my great great grandfather, along with the still-standing house of my great grandmother, on Goto Island in southwest Japan. After that, I went to Korea to meet my step-grandmother for the first time. Then, I finally got to take the famous month-long November Course at Kopan Monastery, which culminated with taking personal vows in a Tibetan Buddhist Refuge ceremony with Lama Zopa Rinpoche. This felt like the most significant experience of the year - or maybe a culmination of all those experiences prior. After the course, I had the opportunity to travel to India for the first time to see the Dalai Lama teach in Bodhgaya, and to climb Vulture Peak Mountain where the Heart Sutra was born - both very special experiences. Back in Japan in the spring, I got the news of Lama Zopa very suddenly passing away. In July, I returned to Kopan Monastery for two months after being asked to volunteer in their office for the summer, which is where I drew this.

Age 27 - June 2021 - calligraphy brush pen, highlighter, micron pen

I scribbled this quickly on the couch, and didn’t really think about it too hard. That year I went hiking on Odaigahara mountain to see the sunrise on the morning of my birthday, and experienced a pretty magical event of witnessing Mt. Fuji from its peak. It’s said that you can only see Mt. Fuji from Odaigahara maybe once a year, when the weather conditions happen to be perfect, for just a few minutes at sunrise before the clouds cover it back up.

Age 26 - June 2020 - procreate

I drew this on an iPad in a small cafe in the Japanese countryside that serves coffee and American style hotdogs. I think this was the year I decided to start the birthday portrait tradition. I had spent almost a year living in rural Japan at this point, and about half of it was in pandemic times.

Age 25 - February 2020 - watercolor

I made this at the very start of the pandemic, when I was just beginning to settle into life in rural Japan. I guess at this point, I wouldn’t have known the gravity of what was coming, but somehow it feels a bit prophetic to me. I was living in a house where the closest convenience store was a forty minute drive away, and already feeling incredibly isolated from the adjustment of moving there from New York City - before this isolation became mandatory. The bathtub became maybe the only place in the house where I felt relaxed.

Age 24 - April 2019 - watercolor

I painted this in Japan, in a Tokyo airbnb hosted by a couple that I had stayed with six years prior when I was 18. I had turned 19 in that same house, on a very lonely birthday for which I have no self portrait. The hosts completely gut renovated their entire house in the time since, and that very tiny room where I had turned 19 no longer existed. This portrait is in watercolor because I was in the middle of making Mizuko, a very personal project for which I had to do a lot of watercolor painting. We were very close to finishing the film at this point. This painting was originally going to be included towards the end of the film, but we ended up taking it out. I guess this also represents a big turning point in my life, when I was leaving New York City and moving to Japan.

Age 22 - August 2016 - graphite on paper

I drew this in a beautiful and stuffy little summer sublet with no air conditioning in Bedford Park in the Bronx, during a probably once-in-a-lifetime chance to have my own studio apartment all to myself in New York, for an entire summer. I spent a lot of time alone, jet lagged from a trip to Japan, pretty much becoming nocturnal, and cooking all my meals on a portable camping stove. I made the best bolognese that I’ve ever tasted, slowly simmered for hours on that tiny stove, which I’ve never been able to recreate with a regular stove.

Age 20 - March 2015 - acrylic on canvas

I painted this in the first apartment I ever rented, in Alphabet City in NYC, during my sophomore year of college for my self portrait assignment in a Life Drawing course. I put it off until the last day (as usual) and stayed up very late painting it. That apartment was an unusual square shape with very high ceilings. My roommate and I nailed up all kinds of ridiculous pictures, paintings, animal skulls, toboggan, and a horrifying talking Pee-wee Herman doll (the majority of which we found on the street) all over the walls, and they all stared down at me while I made this.