For my entire adult life I've been labouring under the belief that my school's most famous old student was England's second most successful name javelin thrower, Mick Hill. Turns out, A) there are way more famous people and B) he didn't go to my school.

This is the sort of monomaniacal focus that you just have to step back and respect. Also, he makes compelling points.

Review article from Marcus Colla, 'Back to Babel: New Studies on Esperanto, Internationalism and Global Languages in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries' academic.oup.com/ehr/advance-...

Esperanto and Languages of Internationalism in Revolutionary Russia, by Brigid O’Keeffe from @bloomsburyacademic.bsky.social Green Star Japan: Esperanto and the International Language Question, 1880–1945, by Ian Rapley @irapley.bsky.social from University of Hawai’i Press @aupresses.bsky.social.

The joke's on you ChatGPT. University management are going to have killed off the historians long before you get the chance.

Keep coming back to this thought: we don't know exactly... but we know enough.

It turns out that I'm a hopscotch traditionalist. What on earth is this layout?

5 classes I took in college: Foundations of mathematics - so hard we all had to do it twice Galois theory - perfect merger of theory and application Bayesian modelling - when I left pure maths Japanese law - only 3 of us, perfect tutorial feel MA history methods course: all sources all the time

There's a Sondheim musical about the opening of Japan? And it features Manjiro, one of the significant castaways, as a key character? And and it's on YouTube? If anyone wants me, I'll be "conducting research" for the next, ~2 hours 20 minutes. youtu.be/g-R2w9dIK2A?...

Massive jugs all the way up, impossible to lose your grip, but up above the clip with all that exposure it suddenly feels very different.

Check out Simon Partner's "Life Stories from Japan" simonpartner.substack.com

There's a truly excellent list of things I confirmed I am not, to extricate myself from a self assessment tax return. I am not: A fisherman A Lloyds name An absentee landlord A globally mobile employee (or something) A diver in the north sea In receipt of £££ in capital gains Etc.

An old friend from Korea is in the UK, so we showed them round Oxford yesterday. It's interesting to see it as a tourist, the porters were uniformly really charming and generous, and omg Christ Church is an amazing tourist production line. Not sure I'd like being a student there.

Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out. As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class. Here's what happened:

The Japanese bear sightings maps are really the opposite of reassuring

Calm yet powerful, the Seto Inland Sea shows a quieter side of Japan. From Kirosan Observatory Park, the view over the Kurushima Strait is simply breathtaking—tidal currents, islands, and the iconic bridge all in one frame. A place to slow down and let the sea speak.

Aged 49, I had my first actual cricket coaching last night. The coach was great, loved the session, but I laughed when he said "well you can bat, that's clear. We just need to fix your balance, your shot selection and your timing."

I'm revising/writing my lectures for a course on the Meiji Revolution. 1) it's a real distraction, err delight, picking which woodblock prints to use. 2) also omg the Meiji Revolution is really complicated and hard to narrate.

Lots of fun bits in this chat between @questingvole.bsky.social and @add-hawk.bsky.social pca.st/episode/1c6d... Boardgames and climbing obviously hit a couple of sweet spots, and it really made me think about what I it is enjoy about playing cricket.

Of all the bits of 'two countries separated by one language', one word I just cannot reconcile myself to is 'ouster'.

Third Thursday Lecture - Samurai, Knights, and Nationalisms: The Middle Ages in Modern Japan Thu 15 Jan 2026 with @olegb.bsky.social (@york.ac.uk) 6:00pm GMT, In-person in Norwich (venue TBC) & online via Zoom 🎟 Free and open to all – booking essential us06web.zoom.us/webi...

Last night, geese flying overhead, and the moon light glinting off the solar farm up the hill.

Your last saved meme is your moral philosophy.

Amusing Things A priest's friend The sound of a koto played by a boy in the summer A singing starling in the winter #JAPAN

"Just write the bloody thing"

People may have concluded over recent weeks that I was skeptical about the current England team's approach. Comments such as "Baz must go" and "play proper cricket FFS" were taken out of context: I have always been firmly behind the team. I am happy to correct this misunderstanding. #ashes #goharder

On the 11th day of fossils, my true love gave to me... 11 Cambrian fossils from the Great Basin. The Great Basin is a large area of Utah and Nevada that was under water 500 million years ago. Life was experimenting and there's lots of strange creatures found here. 1/x #12DaysofFossils

It's a great night for looking at the moon! Saturn is supposedly near the moon, but I'm having trouble finding it.

Where would you stand to see this view? That is the puzzle at the heart of Drawing from the Crowd—a citizen science project exploring how Edo-period Japanese prints depicted landscapes. We'd love your help solving it 🧵

I guess I'm hopelessly naive, because I cannot fathom why people would even dream of doing this.

@aab1871.bsky.social Hiya, a friend just linked me to your work, love it. May I ask about your post on drift? Am I understanding it right that you found a ball with a straightish seam drifts with the spin (normal swing?) but one angled more across the wicket/direction of travel drifts the other way?

The Japanese embassy had an event yesterday to celebrate the work of the British Association For Japanese Studies. It was a nice way to close out the semester, and a chance to catch up with colleagues. x.com/JAPANinUK/st...

100% worth your time. Excellent read.

I stayed for a while at another villa. When I left, I wrote my hosts the following lines: If I had slept this night When should I have heard the noise of the angry sea that batters the shore at Nara

Looking to test cricket as an antidote to everything in current affairs and UK higher education seems to have been short sighted.

I hope that England go down playing (a better version of their) plan a. If they try to play much more cautiously, then they're just going to guarantee a miserable 5-0.

I find so much to admire about the way in which Joe Root goes about his business. He manages here to remain optimistic, accept the criticism, and still not throw his team mates under the bus. #theashes www.skysports.com/cricket/news...

Quick bump for this. It's my first piece on a new project on the game of go in modern Japanese history. In the article I use a mix of textual and database analysis to consider Shinfuseki - a moment of strategic change in how go was played. #digitalhumanities #boardgamestudies #mjha

I wrote a new article: it’s on the Fallout franchise, & it’s just been published in Games&Culture I’m currently trying to wrap my head around a bigger project on historical video game promotion and branding & this article is a slice (in progress) of that + it’s open access! doi.org/10.1177/1555...

Here he is taking the photo.

I'm not really sure the best way to promote research these days, but here's my first article from a new project, on the game of go (& it's open access!): reference-global.com/article/10.2...

I've started watching the latest season of The Witcher, and my goodness I have no idea what on earth is going on.

If I have one complaint about the current England test side, it's making me agree with Michael Vaughan. Shambolic tactical awareness I can handle; repeatedly raising my hopes only to dash them, no real change there; batting like they're double parked: no problem. But this, this is the limit.

Nearly time to start feeding hay, I think. It's been quite a mild autumn so I think this is later in the year then usual.

Today in the ARB: Ian Rapley reviews “Fuji: A Mountain in the Making” by Andrew Bernstein asianreviewofbooks.com/fuji-a-mount...

Strongly agree Engage in an extravagant fire ritual, then dump the pudding in the bin.

There's something quite elegant about the fact that these two routes are almost perfectly matched. Less so that I have to drive there tonight for the AGM of a junior district cricket association.

If it can decode whatever that is that I wrote on the calendar for next Thursday, then we're really talking.

The boy turned 16 today. He's off to choose his own GP, buy some liqueur chocolates, and get a job cleaning a bookies (after closing time).

As disappointing as day two of the Perth test was, and it was really really disappointing, I think I'm not ready to throw in the towel on the #ashes just yet. If any England team has the self belief to not capitulate 1 down in Australia, it's surely this one.