An Intro of Sorts
I'm not very good at starting these things. If you're one of the (probably) few people who don't already know me personally reading this, my name's Josh, and I'm a musician, photographer and writer from England. Over the past 5 years since graduating I've worked in music retail that fortuitously transitioned into a job writing music criticism, outside of which I spend my time making photos (usually the cosy landscapes of my local Warwickshire countryside) and writing music; I release guitar-led dark ambient music as Pale Star, influenced by acts like Sunn O))), Earth, and Boris. I've also released a small handful of electronic music collections under my own name, including a few video game soundtracks for game jams.
In less than 48 hours I'll be sat in the cabin of a plane bound for Hong Kong with a one-way ticket. About 130 hours after that, I'll be on another headed for Narita, about an hour away from Tokyo. I'll be staying in Japan for hopefully a full year, working odd jobs and travelling around the country. It's something I've had on the back-burner for 3 years now - I originally planned to get out there in mid-2020 but naturally, a global health emergency stood in my way.
I plan on using this blog as both a travel diary* and to document my creative outlets, as well as somewhere to write for leisure - something I've neglected since my student days; I recently came across some absolutely dreadful music and games criticism I wrote for my personal blog, a nice bit of perspective. If that's something you'd feel like reading, consider following me on my socials linked at the front page of this site, and I'll post new entries on there as they come.
This post was originally written in late March 2023 and published on the previous incarnation of this website. It has been reposted here for archival purposes.