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 I was born in the auspicious Year of the Dragon that saw Japan
wowing the world with shinkansen bullet trains and the Tokyo Olympics.
I grew up in Ireland, at the time a place as provincial and
unambitious as you could find. An unremarkable educational career
culminated in an engineering degree, and I followed thousands
of others across the water to the golden streets of London. After
four years of work and financial independence, I was ready to
spend some time seeing the world. A trip to Beijing on the Trans-Siberian
Railway was scuppered by events at Tianmen Square and
Yokohama became the new destination.
September 25th 1989. I have a terrible head for numbers and dates
but that one is indelibly etched on my brain. The warm, sunny
afternoon we sailed on the Russya cruise ship under the immaculately
clean (how was I to know it was brand new?) Yokohama Bay Bridge
and the feeling that my life was about to change.
Not having planned on working in Japan, I hadn't made preparations
and it took me some time to find a job. I went through a couple
of cash-in-hand places before landing a full-time English teaching
position at the now defunct Bilingual language school. I left them shortly before they went belly up
as I had an offer of a job at a private junior high school, where
I went on to teach for 15 years. My introduction to the Mac and computers
in general came when I did some freelance design work for eigoMedia,
a foreign startup company that made English educational software.
In 1998, they started the ELT News website and I got my feet
wet for the first time in HTML. The company later morphed into eigoTown,
a Japanese language website for things related to English. I ran ELT News
as editor for a few years before deciding to dedicate more time to Japan
Zone and other possibilities. I later bought out the
Teaching English in Japan
website and hope to add more sites in the future.
Like many foreigners in Japan, I've had times when I've been sick
of the place and ready to leave. But I thank my stars that I didn't
because it would have meant not meeting Chiho, my lovely
wife. In fact, since we've been together, the prospect
of being in Japan for good hasn't been so daunting. But, as is
common with a lot of Japanese who have spent some time living
abroad (the US in Chiho's case), she is actually more keen than
I am to get out, so get out we probably will. A big concern is
the prospects of putting our kids through the Japanese
educational system.
Japan Zone started out as an idea in 1999. Myself and a friend had plans
to make it a small commercial venture but our entrepreneurship
ran out pretty quick, as did his enthusiasm. Over the years, it has
been both a labour of love and an interesting learning experience
for me. As a "hobby" site rather than a fully fledged business, it didn't get quite the love
and attention that I wanted to give it. But a lot of work has
gone into it and I try to add or update content whenever I can.
I always appreciate getting feedback, suggestions and even criticism,
and I try to act upon them.
The addition of the Japan Zone Friends service and a growing interest in
advertising on the site led to the realization that, even as a one-man
operation it had real business potential. So the future will see some major
changes - a new look, a more organized and professional design, and more
regular content updates. All in all, Japan Zone is going to get bigger and
much, much better.
Watch this space.
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