Important: My mindset

I have written this in advance of my departure not for any profound reason, or, in fact, for any reason whatsoever.

I think the previous sentence surmises the mood and all future moods that this Blog will inadvertently project.

I suppose I better do what any conscientious graphic designery person with an inch of a modicum of self value/worth/respect would do: write an anti-succintful, supremely optimistic (but filled with ‘buts’ to make it more firmly rooted in reality), highly hypocritical manifesto.

The world is full of geniuses, I don’t mean full like a packet of crisps pretends to be full. Neither do I mean full as in a glass of water just filled to the brim. The nearest I can possibly analogise this concept of ‘full’ is: Absolute fullness is achieved when you blow up a balloon and it reaches the point where it bursts, except that the balloon doesn’t blow up in your face, it, somehow, stays intact.

I completely subscribe to this belief; the world is indeed completely packed out with genii. So why aren’t we a united race, living in harmony if, indeed, everyone is so clever? Well the main problem (possibly the only problem) is that:

One persons’ genius is another persons idiot.

Basically, this journal will be celebrating this Idiots’ four and a half month romp around Japan.


I will:

• Try, and then proceed to fail, to understand their culture.

• Make all sorts of stupid assumptions that only an idiot who’s read teeny bits from the Lonely Planet, Everyday Japanese, and The Japanese Mind could do.

• Write with the authority that only a true Idiot can have on subjects that I can never possibly hope to comprehend.

• Squeeze in really small, pretentious sound-bytes from myself, philosophers, artists, my dad, and all other ‘creatives’. And I promise you this – all will be misquoted and misinterpreted.

• Use flourishy and made up language at most times, for no reason at all.

• Bombard you with an extremely uncomfortable amount of pictures that mean nothing e.g. me at the airport, me in my apartment, a really personal and exclusive joke involving a cat and a dog etc

• Contradict everything that I have said previously but whilst also contradicting everything I will say in the future.

• Complain a lot, partly due to certain conventions of humour that make it far easier to be amusing when you are scathing and miserable, and partly due to being English.

• Be completely, 100%, genuinely unoriginal.

I won’t:

• Not do any of the above

So fellow idiots come join me in my needlessly public documented journey through a country that has been already written about countless times already and enjoy the superfluous ride.