About me

Hi, I'm Emma! I've been blogging on emgoto.com for 5 years now, and use it as a place to share the things I've learned and experienced. I'm half-Japanese and half-Australian, and was born and raised in Sydney before deciding to move to Tokyo in 2022.

Although I do a lot of hiking now, ironically I never spent much time outdoors growing up in Australia. Instead I used to be a huge PC gamer - some of my favourites include Asassin's Creed 2, Anno 1800 and and Left 4 Dead 2. Spending so much time on my computer is what led me down the path to studying computer science at university, and then getting a software engineering job. I quite enjoy it! I work remotely for an Australian software company, and do a 4 day work week, which gives me a bit more time to hike and write on this blog.

When I moved to Japan, I started looking for a new hobby. I'm not naturally fit but something just clicked with hiking and I was immediately hooked on mountains. Growing up in Australia I'd owned a dog named Aka, so I'd like to think 16 years of dog walking made hiking the natural next thing for me. My current goal is to complete the hyakumeizan, a list of Japan's 100 most famous mountains.

My other hobbies include reading and on the rare occassion some airsoft. I also have an on-and-off gym habit, and am slowly trying to ease into running to improve my hiking fitness as well. I can speak Japanese at a conversational level, but am not totally proficient in reading, so I self-study using kanji flashcards. I'm also currently learning Mandarin using Pimsleur so I can talk to my partner's grandparents.

🌱 You can also check out my now page to see what I've been up to more recently.