About Me

Thanks for visiting my space in the virtual world! My name is Doni (aka donikantoku) and I’m an ABC from Perth, Australia now living in Tokyo, Japan. Read on to learn a little about me and why I started this blog.

The long version

I have lived in three different regions (Kansai, Kyushu, Kanto) in Japan on and off over the past 16 years+, which has given me the chance to explore Japan deeply. I have travelled to all 47 prefectures. The first was Osaka in 2006. The last to make #47 was Fukushima in 2017.

I also spent 4 years as a CIR on the JET Programme in Kagoshima, which were quite frankly some of the best years of my life. Much of my heart still remains in that beautiful southwestern Japan city, and I consider it my second home.

I mentioned I lived in Japan on and off. Well, as part of that “off” bit there was a period where I was just wandering around, quite lost. Not so much geographically, but in terms of the direction of my life. I spent 3 months backpacking around Europe, went to live in China for a year and a half (this is where some of my China stories come from), and even headed back to Australia (albeit not my hometown) to do some study. Being lost gives you a lot of time to think.

Finally in 2016, I could keep away no longer and found the perfect opportunity to return to Japan, this time to the capital. It being the first time I have lived in such a big city, there was both novelty and irritation. Even after being here for over 6 years, there’s still so many hidden corners, and now in a post-COVID-19 world, it seems many rules of the game have changed.

Yotsuya Station, Tokyo at night
Tokyo: colder, busier and more salarymen than any other part of Japan.

Working in fields which require me to be especially familiar with the country, tourist sites on the beaten track don’t really do it for me anymore. Instead, I prefer to look for unusual experiences and sights; things that are a bit different from what everyone else is doing. (Of course, the irony is that once that particular thing garners enough attention, it starts to gravitate towards being ON the beaten track.)

The tl;dr version

I started this blog to:

  • Chronicle some of my living abroad/travel adventures
  • Offer tips to others, like yourself, who may also be interested in going off the beaten path. This is not limited to Japan, although it will be a central focus, for obvious reasons.
  • Own a piece of land, even if it is virtual. Because at this rate, it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to afford real property any time soon.

Hope you enjoy your stay, and feel free to follow this blog on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube too! Let’s all live an unbordered life!