I got this insanely beautiful laser-cut Christmas card from Mikio Asakura who runs a coffee shop in Japan, which happens to be listed as one of the Yakuza cover businesses, in issue #10 of Fairest: The Hidden Kingdom, the Fables spin-off comic written by me with art by Inaki Miranda.

The reason the coffee shop is listed? (HINT: It’s not actually a Yakuza front). Because Mikio helped me authentically construct the accounts page that Tomoko, the ambivalent kitsune obodan, is looking at in that scene.

I got to Mikio via my friend Jayson Lorenzon in San Francisco, who I met via Twitter, and who took me to see the albino aligator at the California Academy of Sciences. 

This is why I love Twitter and awesome friendly peoples of the Interwebs.