Newsletter #12

Happy December, everybody!

What’s new on the blog?

I’ve got plenty of new hiking posts up on the blog:

• Mt Senjo and Mt Kaikoma: these are a pair of peaks in the Southern Alps of Japan, and were my 65th and 66th hyakumeizan that I climbed with a mountain hut stay in between. I’ve now climbed 2 thirds of the hyakumeizan ✨

With it getting colder, I then switched focuses to some local mountains in Tokyo. I was pretty productive hiking-wise and hiked 3 weekends in a row, climbing Mt Mitake, Mt Oyama and Mt Takao. In my mind these are sort of like the “big three” of beginner-friendly mountains you can hike from Tokyo. They all have cablecar access, a shrine or temple near the peak, and good public transport access.

For me writing a hiking blog, it should be kind of a given that I would have posts up about these because they will probably get the most views. But I had hiked them all before I started my hiking blog, and then I never went back to them, since they are all quite crowded and full of people, so I had never written a post about it. I am a bit of a completionist though so it feels good to go back for a re-hike and then write the blog post about it.

In that sense it’s also pretty amazing the amount of hiking Japan has - I’ve hiked about 150 mountains in Japan at this point and I still haven’t run out.

Releasing Hardcover's new Dashboard

Gaining more followers on Bluesky

I think I must have started November with about 130 or so followers on Bluesky (an alternative to Twitter/X). But I got added to this “Developers Who Write” starter pack on Bluesky (a big shoutout to Brittany Ellich for adding me 💙). And Bluesky starter packs have a button you can click to “Follow all” in the pack, and the list trended for a bit so now I’ve somehow ended up up with 370 followers - a big boost.

Some or most of these people probably follow tons of accounts on Bluesky anyway, and they didn’t set out to follow me specifically so they might not be interested in my content - so I’m not too sure how much impact it would really have on people seeing my posts, but cool nonetheless.

November in numbers

• 🏋️‍♀️ 0 visits to the gym
• 🏃‍♀️ Ran 12.3km and hiked 37.6km
• 🇯🇵 Wanikani Level 44 (no progression)
• 🇨🇳 Pimsleur Mandarin Lesson 74 (no progression)
• 🇨🇳 HanziHero Level 2 (no progression)
• 📚 Read 3 books
• 📝 Published 5 blog posts
• 💻 31 hours on HardcoverKind of embarrassing at this point to show how I am doing no progress towards my language-learning goals (oops).

But November felt like such a good month for me! Some good hikes, and I moved apartments as well and it’s been really nice living in a slightly bigger space with more sunlight too.

We’re coming up on the end of the year, and I’ll need to have a little think about whether I keep going with the newsletter in 2026. I did think about canning it altogether, but I think maybe I will keep it around, but go for a more ad-hoc “when I feel like it” vibe of newsletter rather than waiting for the first day of the month.

I’ll definitely say hi at the beginning of January to share my 2025 blog stats, so stay tuned for that.

See you next year! 👋 Thanks for reading!