About me

Hi, I’m Emma! I’m half-Japanese and half-Australian, and was born and raised in Sydney before moving to Japan in 2022. I currently live in Tokyo with my husband, and spend my free time hiking, reading, picking up new hobbies like birding or making pourover coffee - and then putting it all together on this blog for you to enjoy.

Ironically I used to very much be an “indoor” person and it’s only since I moved to Japan that I grew a love for the outdoors. Growing up, I used to be a huge PC gamer - some of my favourites over the years include Assassin’s Creed 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Horizon Zero Dawn and Anno 1800. Spending so much time on my computer is what led me down the path to studying computer science at university, and then becoming a software engineer (so I don’t really regret it!)

I also grew up with a dog named Aka who I loved dearly, so I’d like to think that the 16 years I spent walking him was good practice for getting into hiking once I moved to Japan. My current hiking goal is to complete the hyakumeizan, a list of Japan’s 100 most famous mountains.

Since I like reading reading and programming, I’ve merged those two loves and am helping to build Hardcover, a book-tracking app. I also have an on-and-off gym habit, and am slowly trying to ease into running to improve my hiking fitness as well. I’m also currently learning Mandarin using Pimsleur so I can talk to my partner’s grandparents.

🌱 You can also check out my now page to see what I’ve been up to more recently.

About this blog

I started emgoto.com in 2020 as a programming blog. In that first year, I wrote a post every single week, which helped me get over my fear of blogging and not knowing what to write. I slowed down a bit in 2021, before completely taking a break from the blog in 2022 and 2023 as I settled into Japan and got really into hiking.

In 2024 and 2025, I decided to pivot to writing about hiking, which revitalized my interest in blogging. Writing about the things you enjoy is the most fun! I have written a post with the details of how I built this blog, as well as a post about my writing process.

Since I cover very different topics on this blog, I have different designs and layouts for different sections. You might notice I’ve colour-coded all the different parts of my site as well. Part of the fun of running a blog for me is the design aspect of it, so I spend a lot of time procrastinating on the actual writing by tinkering with the blog’s code.

Contact me

Come say hi! If a post resonated with you, feel free to leave a comment. Otherwise you can message me on Instagram or Bluesky, or email me at hello [at] emgoto.com.