Hello everyone! Welcome to the first edition of my newsletter for 2026. Hope you’ve all been doing well.
If you’re reading this in your email inbox, things may be looking a little bit different, and that’s because I’ve switched to a new newsletter provider called Buttondown. I hope this edition has landed in your inbox safely.
Previously I was using Substack, which is free, but the downside is you are essentially publishing your newsletter content on their website. Buttondown gives you ownership over your content - so I can now host my newsletter on emgoto.com. In exchange I am now paying $9 a month.
📬 If you are reading this on the blog, you can come subscribe to the newsletter over on Buttondown.
I also did a tiny rebrand, and am calling this new iteration of the newsletter “Field Notes” (is it cringe, or is it cute?)
2025 in Review
At the beginning of the year I posted my yearly wrap-up for 2025. In summary, I can say that 2025 was a pretty good year. I got about 200k page views on the blog, wrote 46 hiking posts, and a bunch of other content like book reviews and photos.
New hikes on the blog
For those interested in my hiking adventures, I posted three new hikes.
In December I hiked:
- Mt Kintoki in Hakone, a really pretty trail with some (cloudy) Fuji views
- Mt Nabewari in Kanagawa’s Tanzawa region, home to a mountain hut that serves really tasty udon
And my first hike in 2026 was to Tokyo’s Mt Jinba, home to a very suspicious-looking horse statue.
Adding notes and map sections to my blog
In December and January I did a bit of blog re-organising, and added two new sections to my blog.
The notes section is where I can dump random shorter-form content - I’ve been putting up some about ski resorts, coffee beans, and so on.
And then I also added a map, which is pretty neat if I do say so myself. It renders certain posts that have locations attached to them.
Basically, my blog is getting very big. I can categorise it with tags or different sections to make it easier to navigate, but a lot of my posts (i.e. hikes) are location-based as well, so I figure the map could be another cool way to explore my blog.
Now I will admit the map as it stands isn’t that useful. My aim is to build up a good number of location posts, and then figure out some sort of filtering or search system from there (think like “where can I buy coffee beans in Tokyo” or “hikes in Fukushima”).
I’ve already been internally tracking all the mountain locations in my hiking posts, so it would actually be quite easy to show my hikes on this map - but I think that would overwhelm things, so I’m leaving that off until I can get the filtering in place.
I’m keen to see where I can take this in 2026!
Spending winter down in Shimane
I had a nice time relaxing over the new years break in Shimane with my in-laws, and did a bunch of little write-ups of the places I visited. These now show up on the aforementioned map.
With my new notes section, it almost felt like I now had the “permission” to write these posts. Which sounds weird - it’s my blog, I’ve always had the permission? But for some reason I always get quite hung up on my posts belonging in the right places, and so it’s nice to have the notes section as a dumping ground for that.
Having the map is also a cool motivator. It feels fun to collect places to put on my map.
Writing a life list at 30
Although I turned 30 some months ago, I never really sat down to think about it - it kind of just passed me by. But as I started 2026, I started reflecting and figuring out what exactly the rest of my life might look like, and I settled on this life list post. On the list is language learning (that’s not going too well) and I would also love to get a bit more into arts and crafts. I’ve bought some yarn and knitting needles, and I suppose I will start with a scarf. Stay tuned to see if that goes anywhere.
I’ll admit I actually felt quite vulnerable when I published this list - I felt like I was revealing a lot more of myself than I usually would on my blog. But it actually got quite a good response over on Bluesky with people chiming in with their own life goals, so I’m glad that it resonated.
What’s new on Hardcover
And of course, I’ve still been plugging away at Hardcover, the book tracking app that I work part-time on. Recently we released the Series Tracker feature to early access - it lets you track your completion rate on book series, plus you can also see upcoming releases from series you’ve got in-progress.
Come say hi 👋
Two months was a lot of stuff to summarise, thanks for sticking through to the end!
I’ll admit I had been wavering a bit on whether I wanted to restart this newsletter this year, but I’ve decided to give it another go for 2026. I don’t know if it’s just me, but sometimes I get a bit of an existential crisis from blogging and activities I do related to it (like this newsletter). To what extent should I be spending time writing about my life?
Anyway, I would love to hear from you - even if it’s just to say hi, or to share your own blog. And let me know if you have any suggestions for what I should write about in 2026, whether on this newsletter or on the blog more generally.
Until next time!
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