About

laspina.org is produced by David LaSpina.

About David

I wear a lot of different hats. For many years photography was my main source of income, but these days I also do translation, writing, and teaching. My passion is haiku and Japanese poetry and I have published many articles on this. I enjoy reading about the history of Japan and places I visits within, amazing locals with my bad Japanese[1] and enjoyment of nattō[2], exploring the countryside by bike, and spending entirely too much time trying to level up my matcha-making skills.

Support David

You can support me and help keep my family from starving by pledging at Ko-fi.

Ok, I admit that’s a little dramatic, but any support given does mean directly supporting the writing, photography, and translation here and enabling me to do more of it. So if you enjoy what I do, supporting me is the best way to help ensure I can produce more of it. It also means you are a wonderful and amazing human being who recognizes that the best way to encourage art is to directly support artists.

You can also buy prints[3].

Contact David

You are welcome to try david@laspina.org, but you might have better luck sending a message on Twitter or Mastodon. More details.

Colophon

The site

Laspina.org is relatively new. It was registered in late 2017 but never actually received much attention until 2023, as I focused on writing elsewhere. (That elsewhere was several places, but primarily Hive)

However, the site has gone through several forms before the current one. The most recent was as JapanDave.com[4] which I ran from 2006 to early 2017. If you have heard of me before coming to this site, it’s probably from that one. Before that, it existed as dbooster.net[5] which I began around 1999. If we want to keep going, I had a proto-blog hosted on my university server from 1996 until I switched to dbooster.net[6]. That one may not count, as it wasn’t really Japan focused like my later ones, but it was where I started writing and the process of discovering my writing voice. That means I’ve been blogging for over 25 years! Time flies.

Current content posted here includes photos, haiku, misc articles related to either of these or the broader topics of Japan or poetry. Daily random cultivated links and occasional quotations will also show up when I find something interesting or am just in the mood.

All (or most) old posts from JapanDave.com and dbooster.net do exist, backed-up on an external drive, but haven’t been restored here yet. Maybe one day.

Design

Laspina.org is written on WordPress, using a modified version of the Twenty Nineteen theme which used to come pre-installed. Design is original, but ideas were borrowed from many places[7].

Apps

Most posts are written in either Byword or WriteRoom. I have WriteRoom set up to look very similar to the old DOS WordPerfect 4.1. It’s a fantastic minimalist writing environment. Following the examples of Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and Natalie Goldberg, a lot of my writing begins life at the tip of a fountain pen in a notebook. (I use a Pilot Custom 823, if you were wondering)

All photos are stored in Lightroom. They are primarily edited there too, but occasionally make their way to Photoshop. Favorites on iOS include Snapseed, Hipstamatic, Decim8, and Mextures. Percolator is fun too.

This site has been tested with and should work with most modern browsers. If something looks strange, you probably should update your browser. But if you have done that and the strangeness persists, please let me know.