[Manager’s Diary] We’re Finally Open!
By Manager
Our T-shirt shop, MAENORA, is officially open!
Hello, and nice to meet you. I’m the Manager at Kero Way LLC. I normally spend my days in our translation division, but I’ve now taken on the additional task of running MAENORA.
MAENORA is the sister shop of UKIKI Store, operated by yumiimamura (Yumi Imamura) of UKIKI & Co., another division of our company. My job is to handpick some of Imamura’s wittiest illustrations and turn them into T-shirts. We’re planning to add new designs roughly every other week.
In The Cat Archive, you can browse plenty of photos and stories about the cats who inspired our shirts. Through nearly twenty years of Imamura’s cat rescue work, including her years at Labco, I’ve also had the chance to cross paths with a great many cats. We’ll gradually be adding more stories and memories from those years, so I hope you’ll drop by whenever you have a spare moment between work, chores, or whatever else life happens to be throwing at you.
Over at MAENORA Weekly, we regularly publish my diary entries, cat stories, essays, short fiction, and other things to read. Someday, I’d also like to invite a few guest writers to contribute. Cats will generally remain at the heart of it all, though we may wander off-topic from time to time. The idea is simply to keep it going at an easy, unhurried pace.
MAENORA is also closely connected to the cat rescue work that has long been a central part of Imamura’s life. As with UKIKI Store, a portion of our sales goes toward the Cat Rescue Project, which supports the rescue efforts of the proprietress of Shioi-no-Yu, the oldest public bathhouse in Matsumoto, Nagano.
We’ll share updates on new T-shirts, stories, sales, and other news through our email newsletter. If MAENORA has caught your interest even a little, we’d be delighted if you signed up using the form below. We’re also on Instagram—that’s our main social account—and X, so feel free to follow us there as well.
We’re only a small shop, and we’ve just begun, but we hope to make MAENORA a place you’ll enjoy visiting for many years to come.
Thank you for joining us at the start.
The Manager