Newsletter #10

1 October 2025

We’re onto the final third of the year! I’ll admit I didn’t feel too motivated in writing this edition, but I wanted to commit to writing this newsletter for all of 2025, so let’s round out the year strong. ✌️

What’s new on the blog?

I’ve got a post up of my biggest hike of the year (and biggest to-date) - a 3-day hike through Japan’s Northern Alps. More specifically, Mt Kurobegoro and Mt Yari.

A tough hike, but with some really rewarding views.

This hike was actually done near the end of August. I had a pretty quiet September, only doing 1 hike to Mt Hiuchi and Mt Myoko. I had hoped to do more, but it was quite a rainy September here in Japan.

It was a 2-day hike, and there’s the mountain hut where I spent the night.

My other two posts for September were some book notes:

An Instagram milestone

So at the start of 2025 I decided to start this newsletter. I didn’t have big plans for this, but was hoping to see a small but steady increase in subscribers.

In an unexpected turn of events, my newsletter subscription stats haven’t really gone anywhere (thank you for those of you that have been reading!) but I’ve slowly been amassing an Instagram following, and I hit 300 followers this month! 🎉

I think to properly succeed on Instagram you’d need to get into video content. I’m not so sure I want to do that - I’m not taking Instagram that seriously (yet) - but I’m finding it’s not too much effort to repost photos from my blog into Instagram so I think I’ll continue with that. Hopefully it can drive a little bit more traffic towards my blog.

September in numbers

  • 🏋️‍♀️ 3 visits to the gym
  • 🏃‍♀️ Ran 25km and hiked 23km
  • 🇯🇵 Wanikani Level 44 (no progression)
  • 🇨🇳 Pimsleur Mandarin Lesson 74 (no progression)
  • 🇨🇳 HanziHero Level 2 (no progression)
  • 📚 Read 4 books
  • 📝 Published 4 blog posts
  • 💻 48 hours on Hardcover

So the language learning thing is still not going anywhere - although I kept on telling myself I need to pick things back up again 😅 I think I will stop multi-tasking on the Japanese/Chinese and just focus on Chinese for the last quarter of the year. Time to lock in!

I also spent some decent time spent dev’ing on Hardcover this month. I’d been doing a lot of bug fixes and smaller UI improvements up until this point, but I’m now finally sinking my teeth into a bigger feature. It’s going to be Hardcover’s new dashboard / home page! Super excited to release this one ✨

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