Smiles all around ... There is nobody who doesn't have fun doing this!

As I said though, it is now late in the evening of December 31st, and that means that my work for the next few hours is cut out for me. The year-end bookkeeping is turning out to be a massive job this year, as should be expected, what with all the new activities we've gotten tangled up with over the past 12 months.

I've been keeping up with it fairly well during the year - I'm not sitting here looking at a massive shoebox full of receipts that need to be sorted out - but the situation is so complicated (remember, there are now 14 people working for me!) that when I sat down this evening to make the final data inputs and to begin totalling up all the expenses, I myself was still not able to answer the 'big question' ... How did we do this year?

As I write, I've now basically finished one half of the final spreadsheet, the expense ledger. I can't close it off completely, because there will likely be a few more payments coming in over the next few hours before midnight, and that will mean some 'commissions' due to payment processing companies that will need to be included, but anyway, the basic total of how much we spent is now there on the table for me.

During the previous year (2013) we had a total of 13,597,568 yen of general expenses: labour, facilities, materials, publicity, you name it ...

The total for 2014? 24,118,017 yen ... up 77% over last year.

It seems that I personally - because this is a proprietorship - have spent more than 24 million yen over the past 12 months. And I was nervous last year when it climbed well past 10 million!

Now the expense figure by itself means nothing, of course. It has to be paired with another important number - our income. Working that out is going to take me another couple of hours, and as it's now approaching midnight, I think I'm going to take a break and go for a walk.

The large temple just around the corner from here - Sensoji - is one of Tokyo's major places for Hatsu Mode, the first temple/shrine visit of a new year, and all evening long I have seen from my window a stream of people heading in that direction. I doubt that I'll be able to get very close, but I think a stroll over there might be interesting ...

(I'll be back in the morning)

That was quite a 'stroll' last night! It's going to be interesting to look in the newspaper tomorrow and see what the estimate of the crowd was. It must have been in six figures, easily "¦

I found myself a vantage point at one side of the stairs leading up into the temple, and watched as the police let go of the ropes and allowed the waiting crowd to surge forward up the stairs.

The stream then flowed continuously, with the police letting the river up into the temple in batches of a thousand people at a time, holding the rest back with their ropes. When I tried to get back home, I found my way back to Roku-Dori blocked by that river of people waiting, but the police had set up various 'crossings', where they held it back for a minute or so while people could get across "¦

Anyway, back to work on the books this morning, finishing up by downloading the year-long transaction reports from Paypal and Square, our two credit card processors. What did I say last night? 'Some' commissions will need to be included "¦ Hah! It turns out that I have paid a total of 882,088 in credit card commissions during the year. Adding them in pushes the overall total of our expenses to 25,000,105 "¦ not 77% up over the previous year, but 83%!

(I wrote about this high commission situation in a previous post here on the Conversations. I think the situation will be changing rapidly during this coming year, with the entry of Apple into the payments field. I don't know if the amounts I pay in commissions will be decreasing or not, but I suspect they will no longer all be going to Paypal "¦)

So "¦ with the final transactions now all into the various accounts, it's time to look at the other side of the ledger - the income! I've got that broken down into various sources:

Dave's personal printmaking: 1,716,378 This is now a shadow of what it used to be. My personal collectors have probably all now pretty much given up on waiting for my next print, although I myself certainly haven't. The 'Arts of Japan' will indeed get completed, although it is clear to all of us that it will take 'a while'.

Mokuhankan online sales (single prints): 1,936,507 This is revenue from our online catalogue of prints, mostly blocks that I carved for my Surimono Albums sets, and which our young printers are re-issuing one by one.

Ukiyoe Heroes (single prints through Jed): 4,711,990 The main Ukiyoe Heroes series is actually published by Jed Henry himself. He 'orders' them from us - the manufacturer - in batches during the course of the year, at a wholesale price, and sells them from his own website.

Ukiyoe Heroes (subscription prints): 14,036,585 The Chibi Heroes and Portraits prints are our single largest revenue item. This is 'backwards' from the main Heroes series; I am the publisher of these, handling all manufacture, sales and shipping, and pay Jed a royalty on sales.

Kickstarter sales (the September campaign): 3,811,870 This is the gross amount subscribed to the campaign; from this I will have to deduct the part that will be retained by my son-in-law as payment for his two months of construction work, and the amounts that will go to Canadian taxes, accounting, Kickstarter fees, and credit card processing fees.

Asakusa shop sales: 844,298 The shop burst out of the gate in the first couple of weeks, but things settled down after that into a quieter mood. It's of course still running in the red, but we're not in the slightest bit worried about that. It's only been open two months, and will not see any major growth until we get covered in guidebooks and online reviews, both of which are looking very probable "¦

Adding it all up puts our gross income at 27,057,628 "¦ or 77% up from the previous year, and leaving us with a nominal profit of 2,057,523 for 2014.

I say 'nominal' because there are a couple of rather major things not accounted for in the totals I just gave you. I booked the income from the Kickstarter, but have yet to deliver the 200+ copies of the Great Wave print. I have yet to make them! If the expenses for that were included, the 'profit' would be slimmer indeed "¦

And of course there still remains the fact that although my expense breakdown shows something on the order of 13 million yen going out for labour - to the 14 people I pay on the 1st of every month, there is actually a 15th person here, who doesn't get one of those pay slips.

My reward comes via email, blog posts, and even YouTube comments: "Mr. Bull, I'm in love with your process and the soothing manner with which you work. You are a legendary hero, at least to me. You are living the dream life as an artist and historian."

It's been an absolutely incredible year, and if you had told me a year ago that I would be sitting here on January 1st in my own Asakusa shop writing this I would have called the men in white coats to come and take you away.

I went back over to Sensoji in the afternoon of the 1st "¦ they were still at it "¦ the same groups of policemen letting people up the stairs in large batches. The Nakamise was still 'one way', and all the surrounding access was blocked off, to allow the river of people to stream from the subway station up into the temple uninterrupted "¦

Hundreds of thousands of people "¦ all visiting Asakusa to pray for good fortune in the coming year "¦ What do you think? Do I need to join them?