“We watched in silence, our hands held tightly together. Drifting between dream, and dream…”
Client: Myself, Peter Chordas—freelance writer and web designer by day, post-apocalyptic superhero by night.
Project Description: Achira Iko! (meaning “Let’s Go There!” in Japanese) was a travelogue I wrote for friends and family during my first visit to Japan. The project bloomed into an account of various experiences and reflections about Japan, Japanese culture, and life in general. All 57 posts of Achira Iko! are now hosted on my Japan blog, Ten Thousand Shrines.
A Quote
“We watched in silence, our hands held tightly together. Drifting between dream, and dream…”
The Inside Scoop
When I started Achira Iko!, I knew nothing about blogs or blogging.
However, I was determined to write a travelogue that my friends and family back in the States could read, so I started a free blog on Blogger.com.
Big mistake.
If you want a blog that people can actually interact with, and which you have full control over—you need to setup an independent installation of WordPress.
After returning to the States and completing Achira Iko!, I did exactly that, and setup a cloud server at DigitalOcean, porting all my posts over from blogger.
Achira Iko! now lives at Ten Thousand Shrines, the blog I designed to house all my Japanese travel writing, past and future. (Checkout my project page for Ten Thousand Shrines here.)
The content of Achira Iko! is often humorous and vulgar, and yet somehow still manages an air of sophistication and heartfelt sincerity. It’s certainly not for everyone, but then again—it was never supposed to be.
As for the mostly horrendous photography of the series—all I had with me was an iPhone 4s, so I did what I could with what I had.
My Favorite Part
Though remarkably crass in many ways, I will always have a soft spot for Achira Iko! Should you deign to read it, I hope you will enjoy it as well.
See the results:
Read Achira Iko! at Ten Thousand Shrines
