Post zero

Hello. I'm Finlay. At present I am in Edinburgh, making the title of this blog rather misleading. However, on the first of August I shall leave the country for my new job in Japan.

I think it's important to have a clear purpose in mind for this blog. A mission statement, if you like. It is intended as a way for all my friends and family back home to keep up with my news. I don't like social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, so I'm going to try this instead. I've never kept a blog before, so it's a bit of an experiment.

This blog is not going to be an amazing piece of journalism. I hold no ambitions of being a travel writer, or any other kind of writer for that matter. It is not going to be some exposé of Japan, the Japanese educational system, or the JET Programme. I will censor myself so as not to upset my employers. It is not even going to be an unbiased picture of my life as an ALT (assistant language teacher); I've decided that I will make a conscious effort not to write negative things, partly for fear of causing offence, and partly because the last thing the internet needs is another angsty, bitter, self-obsessed blog. If you want to hear the full story, the rough and the smooth, then email or Skype me.