100 Substack Posts Later, I'm Writing a Book!
Important announcements and a thank you to all those who made Foreign Perspectives possible.
Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.
Foreign Perspectives has finally hit 100 posts with this column!
My Substack newsletter began in 2023 to serve as an assemblage of writing which was too esoteric or niche for most of the outlets I submitted freelance pieces to. It has provided me with a space to wax on long-form about the topics which matter the most to me and deliver those thoughts to the inboxes of likeminded readers. I wanted to escape the noise of social media where nuance goes to die and contribute some clarity in a sea of chaos. It was more for myself than anyone else, but I’m pleased to see that over 1200 subscribers are still interested in what I have to say three years later.
Before I get into the meat and potatoes of this piece which contains several major life updates, I would be remiss if I didn’t state the most important point first: Foreign Perspectives continues to exist entirely because of my readership. Whether you are a free or paid subscriber, your support has given me the motivation to keep this operation going. As someone who has done social media management before, I can assure you that many of the pieces here do better numbers than some articles on professional outlets with far larger audiences.
Most of my readers are free subscribers, but some of you are generous VIP founding members, some of you have gone for a yearly subscription, and some of you pay for the monthly tier whenever your personal situation permits. I can’t describe myself as being anything other than profoundly grateful for all of the patronage thrown my way, whether it’s financial or simply just opening your email when my updates hit your inbox. So once again, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
This column commemorating 100 posts on Foreign Perspectives has a lot to cover, so I’ve divided it into three sections: one announcing my upcoming book, one providing updates around what’s currently happening to me behind the scenes, and one giving a retrospective on how this Substack has changed over time. 2026 is shaping up to be the most transformative year of my life so far, and there is admittedly more uncertainty than I’m usually comfortable with, but I fully intend to keep Foreign Perspectives around for the foreseeable future.
Foreign Perspectives is being turned into a book!
I can now finally announce something that has been in the works for quite some time: a self-published book! It will be a compilation of writing from this Substack covering my time living in Japan for nearly a decade. So please look forward to Foreign Perspectives: Esoteric Essays on Life and Travel in Japan, which will hopefully hit Amazon Kindle worldwide by Christmas of this year.
A lot has changed for both me and Japan since I first arrived on its shores in 2017. Part-travelogue, part-memoir, Esoteric Essays covers underrated travel destinations off the beaten path, moments of tragedy during the pandemic, common challenges long-term foreign residents learn to overcome, a bit of romance, and much more. This book, however, is no mere collection of old stuff you’ve already read on this Substack. Across roughly 20 essays, half are significantly updated reprints and half are completely brand new. Given that Esoteric Essays is basically telling the story of my first decade in Japan, everything will be carefully edited for flow and to be in general chronological order.
Plenty of foreigners have written books about their experiences living in Japan, but everyone always contributes a new perspective. This one follows a similar tradition from authors like Ian Buruma, Edwin O. Reischauer, and Donald Keene who entwined their own personal journeys with the changing Japan around them. In fact, one of the included essays will be an edited piece I wrote about Dr. Keene many years ago with an interview I conducted with him over email before he passed away. I’m certainly looking forward to sharing this material and other anecdotes with all of you.
Foreign Perspectives: Esoteric Essays on Life and Travel in Japan will technically be my first book, though I personally consider it more of an exercise to see if I can actually complete and sell one to begin with. I have plans to write more books which will take considerably more planning and research by comparison. Esoteric Essays is already about 60% done since it draws upon existing pieces, but the process of drafting a reasonably coherent narrative and the extensive editing involved are important skills I need to practice. It’s essentially training wheels for future literature to come.
Amazon KDP will allow me to quickly self-publish Esoteric Essays in eBook and paperback formats, but I will also look into seeing if hardcover and color images are possible depending on final costs. Be on the look out for more precise details on cover art, content, purchasing links, and more later this year.
From failed academic to failing upwards businessman
Next comes a few important updates. You’ve probably noticed that 2026 has been a less active year for Foreign Perspectives compared to previous ones, and that’s sadly been unavoidable to a series of big changes going on in my life. Those who follow me on Twitter are probably aware of most of these developments, but I’ll bring my readers here up to speed.
I’ve dropped out of my international relations doctoral program. After nearly five years of being a Ph.D candidate, I decided in April to suspend my studies at Ritsumeikan University. I’m currently writing a two-part column detailing everything that led to me quitting academia, but long story short, I wasn’t going to meet the graduation requirements anytime soon.
While the doctoral dissertation was progressing decently enough, my department mandates that you have at least three academic publications at the time of submission. Without them, they won’t even look at your thesis. I only had one publication and the second kept getting rejected by my university’s student journal despite multiple revisions. Submitting to another journal, writing a third academic article from scratch, and finishing my dissertation on top of that would have taken me another 1-2 years at minimum.
That’s time I simply don’t have to burn, especially when I already decided last summer that I would be giving up my plan of becoming a professor. I’m a competent enough freelance journalist, but I’ve realized that I’m not suited for the world of academic writing and dedicating decades of my life toward producing largely thankless research only a select few people will ever read. I was a graduate student for far too long and with me turning 30 next year, it is long past time I had a real career.
I’m effectively retired from geopolitical commentary. With me leaving international relations as an academic discipline, it makes little sense to continue writing about global affairs and politics when it no longer aligns with my long-term plans. While I do have a master’s in IR and bylines in widely-read outlets like The Spectator, neither are going to pay the bills. Even if I had trudged through my Ph.D., trying to find an academic position related to geopolitics in Japan is already slim pickings. Outside of The Japan Times, you have a snowball’s chance in hell of being a full-time journalist who gets paid to write in English.
The other reason is that it quickly becomes difficult to find a “normal” job if you’re constantly in the world of contentious political subjects. I’m far from the most controversial talking head out there, but my opinions tied to my real name and face have been easily searchable for years. There was recently a potential opportunity for me running the Japanese branch of a foreign friend’s company, so being an outspoken political commentator is the last thing you want when representing a public-facing commentary.
For various reasons unrelated to politics, this position ended up being shelved indefinitely and I’m instead pursuing my own self-run business venture. That technically gives me more intellectual freedom than most, but as someone who is hoping to sell products and services to the public, being embroiled in any form of online controversy is the last thing I want. I should be clear, however, that I don’t regret any article I’ve published. I’m only moving on to the next chapter of my life because career paths and priorities change.
Of course, this doesn’t mean I’ll never touch upon anything political in my writing ever again. I now primarily write about cultural and big picture topics, but politics are always around the corner to some degree. I’d just rather write about subjects like being an advocate for physical media and consumer digital rights, which I assume most across the political spectrum would be in broad agreement on. The books and novels I hope to eventually write will almost certainly cover heavy subject matter as well. No matter what, I’ll be a writer until my dying day.
I’ve decided to leave personal social media behind. This is a major lifestyle change coming from a Twitter user who was active every day for over 13 years with 50,000 followers, but it had to be done. My reasons range from disliking the overall direction of the site to wanting to reduce all negative distractions. Last month I finally deleted the app from my phone, and it’s already boosted my productivity, attention span, and overall happiness. I’ll dive more into this subject in a future column once enough time has passed for the positive effects to fully sink in. From this point forward, I’m only using my main account on desktop to post updates related to this Substack and my company. Speaking of which…
I’ve started a business. This is easily the most important new development. With an academic career no longer in the cards, I’ve spent the last year planning the next stage of my life. In March, I officially established a holdings company registered in Kyoto with a Canadian partner who I’ve known as a good friend for years. We’re still in the early stages of getting our business plans off the ground, but I can now formally introduce myself as the CEO of Smith & Jia Holdings.
Our first venture will be selling vinyl records, retro video games, toys, figures, and other nostalgic items domestically in Japan and to foreign customers abroad. Instead of starting completely from scratch, we have been scouting businesses run by owners of retirement age who have no immediate successor. By continuing where they left off through a full M&A purchase, the intention is to maintain their existing connections to the local community while expanding overseas. We have already narrowed the search down to a few candidates for a physical retail location and will be launching an international e-commerce site in tandem.
After a lengthy application process, we finally received our permit to sell used goods last month. There is still a ton of work to do in acquiring inventory, securing loans, establishing retail space, and building the website, but things are progressing reasonably well. Since a secondhand goods store on the independent mom and pop business model in Japan can only generate so much revenue, especially when split between the two of us and at least one part-time employee, we will be aggressively pursuing foreign sales and already have an export partner lined up. I’ve even gotten some DMs about individual custom orders, so I have some optimism that we have a good idea on our hands.
This store is just the beginning of what we hope to do with our company. Once we have one successful location going, we will look into setting up others. Our holdings company is additionally poised to help other foreign clients set up their own business ventures in Japan as the language and bureaucracy are notoriously difficult for outsiders to navigate through. Much of this is new to me as someone freshly removed from the world of academia, but my partner and other friends with more experience are thankfully here to show me the ropes of business.
Look forward to future announcements once we have our retail location decided and our e-commerce site launched.
A (reasonably) brief history of this Substack
Still with me? Well, thanks for reading this far. To close things off and to celebrate 100 posts, I thought I’d take a trip down memory lane in showing how much Foreign Perspectives has evolved over time. Just as my career path has taken many twists and turns, so has the overall format and direction of this Substack.
My debut post for Foreign Perspectives was published on May 3, 2023. It’s a piece recounting my visit to Nagasaki’s Dejima Island the previous year and represents my lifelong affinity for travelogues. In addition to whatever fascinating historical context exists, I do my best to put readers in my shoes with detailed recollections of what I felt when I visit particular locations that mean something to me. I’m also someone who constantly photographs everything, so I like for the images I include to do most of the talking. Though the article itself is rather brief, it’ll always hold a special place as my Substack’s maiden voyage and you can expect an expanded version in Esoteric Essays.
The rest of 2023 set the tone for most of what Foreign Perspectives would typically cover. I wrote about Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva being my favorite film adaptation of a video game, provided a lengthy deep-dive into the criminally underrated The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series, and gave my thoughts on the ups and downs of life in Japan. My most popular piece from this year was the one on Yasuke, which explored the controversy around a 16th century African who may or may not have been a samurai in the service of Oda Nobunaga.
The piece from 2023 I wish had gotten more attention was about Abel Gance’s 1927 silent film Napoleon, but that’s the trade-off when you choose more obscure topics. Regardless of what subject I write about, I aim to explore as many nuances as I can and try to get to the bottom of why something turned out the way it did. An event is controversial or a film is underrated for some reason, so I task myself with trying to recreate the chronology of events. Most of my articles usually end up telling a story, which is a skill I imagine will come in handy when I eventually expand into fiction.
In 2024, I introduced two columns to Foreign Perspectives: Bonus Perspectives and A Bit of Film and War. The former was intended to cover one piece of international news, one piece of Japanese news, and my thoughts on whatever media I was consuming that week. The latter was intended to be a review and breakdown of war movies, my favorite cinema genre. I did my best to keep up with both in addition to the regular columns, but it ended up being too much trying to keep up with. While Bonus Perspectives is retired, A Bit of Film and War will likely come back on an infrequent basis because there are still plenty of war pictures I want to write about.
2025, particularly the latter half, is when I felt that Foreign Perspectives finally hit its stride as a more focused newsletter. Despite still being under the impression that I would be finishing my doctoral thesis, I continued to put aside time to write detailed columns on topics that I felt deserved more coverage. I gushed about Andor, went semi-viral on Substack writing about why Japanese people don’t speak English, and wrote an obituary for Tatsuya Nakadai.
2026 has been quieter by comparison and I no longer write about geopolitics for the reasons previously detailed, but I’m still here. Probably the most important piece I’ve written so far this year is my lament about Sony’s plan to end production of physical PlayStation discs in 2028. This will no doubt provide material for future columns as we’re entering some very concerning territory for long-term consumer ownership of media. Through my writing and business ventures, I’ll do my best to extol the virtues of physical media and media preservation for as long as I can.
Thank you for being a part of Foreign Perspectives. Our journey into foreign places continues.
Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!