July kicked off with some relatively cool weather here in Tokyo, which feels absurd considering how hot Japan’s summers usually get, but it was a welcome start to the month. By mid-July we had some pretty darn hot days, but the plus side is that the snow on mountains has all melted and we’ve truly entered the summer season for hiking.
Over the weekend I was hiking in the Southern Alps with a friend, which is why this newsletter is a little delayed compared to the usual. It’s our third year in a row of doing a 3-day hike in the Alps together (in previous years we went to Mt Washiba and Mt Yari) so it’s been a really nice yearly tradition to continue.
July was also the month where it felt like my consistent exercise routine has finally started to show results. I did my first 10km run in a year or so (after slowly building my way up from 4km). I also got up to 40kg on barbell squats at the gym. Last year I derailed my gym routine mid-way through after I hurt my back, so this year I’ve been taking it slow and steady with no injuries so far. I hope that can continue for the rest of the year.
I've published 20 editions of my monthly newsletter - if you'd like to receive the next one straight to your email inbox, you can subscribe below.
New hikes on the blog
This month I put up 3 new hikes.
Mt Takatsuma, my 69th hyakumeizan - which I climbed towards the end of June.
Mt Naeba, which I climbed quite a long time ago back in 2023, but what an absolutely gorgeous hike.
Mt Haku - my 70th hyakumeizan! Only 30 more to go. I was absolutely amazed by the variety of alpine flowers blooming here.
I also did a hiking round up post covering some early summer hikes. It’s a bit late now since we are already in full summer, but I was asked this question a number of times earlier this year (“I’m coming in May, can I go to the Alps?”) so hopefully this post can come in handy for 2027.
Coffee round-up: buying beans in Tokyo
I mentioned in last month’s newsletter that I had been eyeing up doing some roundup-style posts for my coffee blog, and this month I published a post on where to buy coffee beans in Tokyo.
I’m still trying to find my favourite roaster in Tokyo, so it’s a bit of a work-in-progress but I’m pleased that I’ve already managed to visit quite a few so that I could write this post. I’ve had some successes drawing in readers for this blog on hiking in Japan, so it’ll be interesting to see if it’s possible for me to start to replicate some of that success with coffee in Japan. I’ll have to wait and see how things turn out, but it should be a fun little challenge.
My cherry tomato plants are dying
So I mentioned last month that my cherry tomato plants weren’t doing so well, and that the leaves were getting all droopy and dying. Luckily it persevered and all the green cherry tomatoes that it had grown in May/June ripened this month, and so we got to harvest quite a few.
However it seems like it has just about exerted its lifeforce in doing so, and I don’t think it’s going to produce for much longer. It seems like in Japan, August is when you need to say bye-bye to your plant (July is just really rough on them) so although ours struggled a bit, it’s partially to be expected. Maybe next year I can make it a personal challenge to try and keep it properly alive through July.
Continuing my adventures in baking, I made focaccia for a second time, this time using the cherry tomatoes and basil plant from our balcony garden (woo).
And while scrolling Instagram I was lured into making sweet potato brownies (a combination of flour, cocoa, eggs, honey and a sweet potato).
Weird combination, but it actually tasted pretty good! It’s not decadent like a true brownie would be, but more like a nice, not-too-sweet snack. 10/10 would make again.
Books I read this month
I had a great month for reading in July. Here were some of my favourites:
- The Pathless Path: Rather than walking the “default path” (i.e. a 9 - 5 job) the book recommends giving yourself the space to explore alternative paths. It felt very topical for me at this stage in my life, although it doesn’t really give you a neat answer on what your path might look like.
- Empire of Silence: I haven’t been reading much sci-fi lately, so this was a fun one. It’s the origin story of a guy from a noble family who seems rather nice, but is going to do terrible things in the future and become known as the Star-killer (Why would he do such terrible things? You’ll have to read books 2 through 7 to find out!) It’s slightly Dune-esque, and I’m not sure I’m convinced yet to continue going on the series but I might have to come back to it sometime.
- The Wager: A non-fiction book about a shipwreck and mutiny of an English warship in 1741. The story is based off of historical accounts and ship logbooks, but reads like a fiction in how absurd the plot points are. Basically both sides of the mutiny end up shipwrecked on an island but then manage to make it all the way back to England so they can point fingers at each other.
- Taiwan Travelogue: A fictional travel memoir of a Japanese lady who visits Taiwan in 1939. On the surface it’s a love letter to Taiwanese food, but more so about the relationship dynamics between the Japanese lady and her Taiwanese interpreter / personal assistant. I’m really glad I read this one!
Trying to make more friends, and finding my path
Back in my April newsletter I mentioned I went to a couple of tech meetups. I ended up going to 4 or 5 in total, but in the end I wasn’t really vibing with it. I’ll admit I’m not super passionate about coding right now, nor am I trying to find a new programming job, so it didn’t turn out to be a good fit for me.
Lately though I’ve been feeling a bit under-socialised and in want of some new friends. And more specifically, female ones - which tech meetups aren’t really the place for anyway as they are very dude-heavy (especially in Japan). In previous years I used Meetup quite regularly, but this time I decided to try something new and trawled some subreddits for making new friends in Tokyo. Surprisingly there’s a bunch of decent people on there.
I do find meeting new people a little awkward (fun! but awkward) but I suppose it’s a matter of sucking it up and getting through that awkward first meeting, repeatedly meeting up and then seeing if a friendship can form out of it. Sort of like using dating apps, except it’s ethical to keep on seeing multiple people at once.
The question I inevitably get after I tell a new friend about being laid off is “What do you want to do next?” And I really don’t have the answer for that. I find a lot of joy in writing this little blog, I like hiking and lately I’ve been really getting hooked on specialty coffee too. But none of those things I make any money off of. And if I were to try and make money off of it, I’m sure that would suck some of the joy out of it as well so it’s a bit of a hard thing to figure out.
I do think though that I don’t really want to go back to a 9 - 5 software engineering job if I can help it. I work part-time on a book tracking app called Hardcover, but it’s not quite profitable yet so I do it for fun rather than for money. One day if it did get big enough, getting a small salary from that could be a nice solution to all of my problems. Or if I could somehow turn my blog-writing skills into a book (but what sort of book? Something hiking-related, I suppose).
I also see monthly mail clubs (where you send postcards and small prints/stickers in the mail) are having a boom at the moment so that could be a fun thing to start. I also got an offer to do the occasional hiking tour, which I turned down since I’m not sure that that’s where I want to go, but that could be another avenue to explore in the future.
Anyway, I don’t really have an answer to this question. But from reading the The Pathless Path, the best thing I can do is to give myself time to explore new paths, so that’s what I’m planning on doing for the rest of 2026.
Hitting hobby overload
After getting my sleep and exercise routine under control over the past couple of months (which I consider to be the two base pillars of my life) I’m finding that I’m starting to be able to stack a lot of little things on top.
Firstly, it was some Mandarin study, which I’ve been slowly plugging away at most days. I also got back into knitting, and have just about finished these gloves.
I first started knitting back in February, but I found it hard to figure out where to put it in my day, since it’s the sort of thing you multitask with something else. Knitting while watching TV is probably the default option, but I only watch TV with my husband while we squeeze ourselves onto our tiny couch so it’s not really the optimal position for it. But lately I found that it goes really well with doing Pimsleur Mandarin (a language-learning podcast). Pimsleur is super boring on its own, but tolerable enough with knitting ✨
Last month I mentioned I wanted to start drawing, and I found perspective to be hard so I started this free DrawABox course which basically has you freehand drawing 250 cubes to really get a grip on perspective.
I’ve also started reading The Artist’s Way, which is a classic book for wannabe artists looking to unlock their creativity. One of its main recommendations is a practice known as Morning Pages, where you write 3 pages of absolutely anything that comes to mind each morning, which I’ve been doing pretty consistently.
I am finding though that although I am doing the Morning Pages and drawing cubes, in a sense that is letting me procrastinate on actually drawing which is scary because I don’t want to face how bad of a drawer I am. So I suppose I need to figure out a way to make myself actually draw things.
I got a shoutout on YouTube
In other news, my blog got a shoutout on YouTube from a fellow Australian and YouTuber CurrentlyHannah. She did a video on some hikes around Japan, and she scrolled through my blog when discussing the public transport options for Mt Ishiwari. I almost felt famous for a second.
What’s next in August
In August, I’m doing a 10-day road trip around Hokkaido. I last did one of these back in 2024 with my husband, where we took the Jimny up on a ferry and then drove around Hokkaido for a week, ticking off 4/9 of Hokkaido’s hyakumeizans along the way. I was a bit nervous about camping for so many days in a row, but it ended up being a really, really fun trip so I’m super excited we get to do another round of it.
We’re hoping to check off another 3 or 4 hyakumeizans this trip weather-permitting. Hokkaido is a great place to escape the summer heat, not to mention the Tokyo crowds. Even if you drive 3 - 4 hours out of Tokyo to go hiking it can feel like the rest of Tokyo has come along with you. But Hokkaido is far away enough that it’s pretty quiet no matter where you go. Camping is way cheaper up there too!
I might end up with enough posts in the backlog that I can set them to auto-publish on the blog while I’m gone, otherwise expect a bit of radio silence towards the end of August. Hope y’all have a fun month!
Leave a comment