Originally they were circular e-mails, sent to a number of friends and family members back in the UK and elsewhere. This mailing list started out as a tool for keeping in touch with more people than I had time to write to individually, but evolved over time into more of a comedy column of weirdness - without the comedy, some would say. There are 25 of these e-mails, spanning my first year in Japan (Jan - Dec 1998). My friends were too polite to tell me how poor the e-mails were, so I quite enjoyed inflicting them on everyone.

Then I decided to archive them on a website. People other than my immediate circle happened upon them, and some even appeared to enjoy them. There's no accounting for taste, I suppose. Hence the SITE was born.

I tried to start writing again in October 1999... and failed. Two editions of the re-launched SITE made it on-line... and then things faltered again. Instead, the newly launched Kanji SITE took priority (not to mention all my energies, my free time, and eventually whatever shreds of sanity I was still vainly clinging to).

I've been wanting to write again for so long - there's just so much happening here which I think would make good journal material. I have this urge to share Tokyo; to share it with people who might otherwise not make it past the commonly held and rarely challenged preconceptions about Japan Inc.

So when I heard about Blogger's technology and the blog phenomenon... I promptly dismissed it out of hand. "Maybe later," I thought.

Later is now. I figured (correctly) that the best way to get myself working on it again was to spend money on it... so I did. Hence the new-look tokyotales.com, in all its slightly-muted-colour-scheme, own-domain, professionally-hosted glory.

So now the Tokyo Tales take the form of a regularly updated blog. I'm hoping that I'll be able to keep it interesting and prevent it from becoming just another dull, badly written and, arbitrarily, punctuated blog!!! (You may have noticed by now what a sarcastic little so-and-so I can be.) One way I hope to achieve that is by inviting comment and even contributions. Live in Tokyo? Lived in Tokyo? Passed through? Have something to say about it? Even if you just want to say hi, drop me a line; our operators are waiting to serve you.

Or, rather, they would be if we had any. Actually it's just me and the roaches and, bold though they may be, they haven't worked up the courage to answer my mail - yet.

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