For Fukui’s Sake: Two years in rural Japan was my first book.
In 2004, I quit my job as a lab technician in the UK, and went to work in a mountain-encircled town in the little-known prefecture of Fukui, Japan.
Exploring Japan’s culture and cuisine, as well as its wild places and wildlife, For Fukui’s Sake is an adventurous, humorous, and sometimes poignant insight into the frustrations and fascinations that face an outsider living in backcountry Japan.
Released in 2011, it’s sold over 10,000 copies and holds a 4.3/5 star rating from over 850 reviews on Amazon.
Dormince & Moonshine: Falling for Slovenia (launching: Spring 2024) is a love letter to a country that seduced me and has never let me go.
In 2007, my brother and I discovered a 300-year-old sausage-curing cabin on the side of a Slovenian mountain. It was love at first sight. But 300-year-old cabins come with 300 problems.
A decade later, I found myself living in this hinterland hut as a heartbroken hermit. What was meant as a pit stop became life-changing when I decided to stay.
Struggling with Slovene, a language with grammar so complex it can cause brain damage, and battling bureaucracy, this travel memoir explores the culture and characters of this underappreciated ex-Yugoslavian republic, its wild beauty, and its wild animals.
Meeting dormouse hunters, moonshine makers, beekeepers and bitcoin miners; a man who swam the Amazon, and a hilltop matriarch who teaches me the meaning of being priden, Dormice & Moonshine is a rare, adventurous account of a foreigner trying to build a new life — and rebuild an old house — in a young country still finding its feet in the world.
Inaka: Portraits of Life in Rural Japan (Camphor Press, 2020), is a collection of 18 non-fiction stories written by non-Japanese authors on aspects of Japan outside of the big cities.
In the chapter For the Love of Yuki; a Winter Affair in Japan, I share my experiences of a winter so heavy it derailed trains, crushed houses, and killed over 100 people.