Well, shadowy is a bit of an overstatement, really. This isn't some huge conspiracy or anything - I'm just a bit shy of plastering my mugshot all over my sites. I don't photograph well. You can pretend I'm speaking to you from a shadow, if you like. Or under a tree. Or in a cupboard - it's your call.

My name is Chris. I'm 25 - no, 26 - years old, British, and I live and work in Tokyo, doing geeky things for a large EFL corporation. This page is to provide a bit of background info for those of you who feel you would benefit from it. Sitting comfortably?

I was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1975. My parents are British but just happened to be living abroad when I was born. We moved back to the UK (not really "back" in my case, though, I suppose) shortly after my brother was born, in 1979. Apparently I was developing a North American accent, and my mother wanted to nip this in the bud. I'm told that I used to sing along to Sesame Street:

Chris: "...double-you, x, y and zee."
Mum: "Zed."
Chris: "Zee?"
Mum: "No. Zed."
Chris (pointing): "But Big Bird says zee..."
Mum: "It's zed."

...etc etc. So back to the UK it was. The upshot is that I'm pretty much the only person I know who's ever heard of Aquaman, much less seen an episode.

We settled in Bushey, which is a nice enough village / town about 20km north-north-west of London. It's near Watford, if that means anything to you. I went to school. I learned all the usual stuff - girls are yucky; Battle of Hastings: 1066; don't eat playdoh; and so on. I read a lot. I got my first computer. (a ZX Spectrum - why can't you buy rubber keyboards for PCs, will someone please tell me?) I enjoyed (brace yourselves)... mathematics. Yeah - I was pretty screwed up.

I moved to a bigger school, and made a bunch of friends who I'm still in touch with today. It was a rugby school - not actually Rugby College itself, you understand, but one of those advocating-rugby-as-a-means-of-character-building schools. It quickly built in me the kind of character that knew it didn't want to play rugby, so perhaps it was good for something after all.

Thankfully, I discovered fencing. Feel free to get all the jokes about reselling stolen items / picket fences out of the way now - it'll save time later.

Finished? Good. It was a real joy to find a sport that I not only enjoyed, but which I seemed to be not-too-shit at. And, best of all, it didn't involve mud. Trust me, it was a big deal. So since 1989, my main sport has been fencing. I still wouldn't say I was any good, but I have had a few good results. The fact that I haven't been able to keep it going in Japan is one of my biggest regrets. The humid summers play havoc with your lame jacket, I can tell you. Sheesh.

Anyway, GCSEs came and went, followed by A-Levels. My choice of subjects (Maths, English, French) probably says a lot about my personality - I like to leave my options open. A science, an arts subject and a modern language - could I have been any more non-committal? (*shrug* "Dunno. Maybe.")

I went to Durham University, in the north of England, and spent three years fencing and worrying about my southern accent. I barely passed my degree (Mathematics and Economics) but at least I had a nice collection of swords, the odd fencing trophy, some ace friends, and two student loans to pay off.

And then... Japan. I know, I have difficulty explaining it myself, sometimes. I couldn't get the job I wanted straight from uni, so thought I'd go to Japan, teach English for a year or so, study Japanese and then apply to British banks in Tokyo / Japanese banks in London. I thought I might enjoy Tokyo; I didn't know how right I was.

So I graduated on a Friday, gave myself the weekend off, and started a full-time TEFL course that Monday. After the course I got a job with a private language school in Tokyo, waited for a few months to build up some cash, and then... left.

I arrived in Japan on January 3rd 1998, and I'm still here. I taught English for two years and, although I enjoyed a lot of it, I knew full well that I wasn't in it for the long run. Over the course of those two years, I started dabbling with HTML and started to realise some of the possibilities it held. The original Tokyo Tales were born - and died.

I also started a Web site for helping students of Japanese to learn kanji, which are those complex pictograms that make up most of the Japanese language - the ones you see on t-shirts and baseball caps worn by westerners who can't read them. The site is still going strong today, but just maintaining it takes up a lot of my free time. It was relaunched in August 2001 and I've already started work on v3.0, which should be ready by August 2002 - certainly before December 2002, anyway. Unless I don't finish it in time, of course, in which case it'll have to be later.

I was about to leave the company in December 1999, to pursue banking or god knows what now, when I was offered a new position: writing content for a client Web site, an English-language-community-portal for Japanese speakers. I was the most tech-literate person that anyone could think of, apparently. So although it was a writing job, (content may be king, but what if that king is a dull, ineffectual monarch who is out of touch with his subjects?) it was a step in the right direction.

So now I find myself employed with the holding company that owns the English school I used to work for, as an Information Architecture Consultant. I like my job, because it pays the bills, it involves lots of interesting technology, I work with good people, it requires me to learn new stuff and it means I get to live in Tokyo. An unexpected bonus is that my job title acronym can be pronounced "yak".

These days my hobbies include studying Japanese, studying web technologies, snowboarding, clubbing, listening to electronic music (techno, drum and bass, ambient, trance [classic early 90's rather than more recent cyber-dross]) and marvelling at the modern wonder that is Tokyo.

I don't know how much longer I'm going to be here (no, not in a Julia Roberts / Steel Magnolias kind of way) but I will definitely move back to the UK at some point in the nearish future. Another year? Two years? Tokyo's got me, and it isn't going to let go for a while. Why not come along for the ride?

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