Starting out

This post will be a sort of self introduction, tied in with a basic mission statement.

I am a British citizen who has been living in Japan for the last four years. I have seen some of what I feel are the best and worst elements life in this country has to offer for a foreigner through my previous job working in the 英会話(eikaiwa) industry and my new job at a small start up IT firm. The 英会話 industry is the Japanese attempt at mass English education. I say attempt because, despite many of the big players having been around for almost a quarter of a century, Japan still has the lowest English literacy rate in Asia. I hope to avoid ranting in this blog if possible so I'll drop this topic here, I suspect however that it will be picked up again in the near future.

This blog is my first attempt at said effort. My intention is to write about the things I see around me every day in Japan and comment on my views about Japanese culture and how it has evolved into what it is today over the four years I have been here. My start out aim is one post per day, however I could end up being more or less prolific. While I don't pretend to have mastered the language here by any stretch of the imagination, I will try to include one Japanese word in each post for a little bit of added educational value.