99(+) posts on Qiita as an English-only poster: Reflections

Technically, this is not my 99th post on Qiita, as I have deleted some 3-5 of my "most popular" but very inconsequential articles. Regardless, with this post I will have 99 posts on my Qiita profile, and I think it'd be nice to just write a few words about what I like about using Qiita as an English-speaking user who seldom skims Japanese-language articles. *In all reality, this post will be just some stupid rambling, but hopefully this makes my usage of Qiita less mysterious*

![](https://i.imgur.com/baBeTei.png)

## なしてqiita

Back in 2014, I decided that I should start writing things down so I would 1) better remember what it was that I was wrote about 2) be able to refer to my notes later instead of digging through old repositories on GitHub/Google Drive/etc. 3) hopefully be a little less bored. I started looking for some solutions, but most everything was 1) very slow to load/hard to use, 2) didn't support syntax highlighting, 3) didn't have any sense of real "community", only some kind of focus on "personal/professional branding". I thought about doing some Github pages-driven crap, but found I didn't want to manage any of the shit myself, and I wasn't about to start using Jekyll or something.

I looked around for a Markdown-driven solution, and the only one I found that was actually usable was Qiita. On top of being the only site I could find that would work, since I was a weaboo who had lived in Hokkaido for a couple of months the year before, I decided joining an "obscure" Japanese site would be fun. And it really has been!

## "オフ会"：2回

During the year I traveled after leaving DC, I spent some months in Japan, in Summer 2015 and Winter 2016. I hadn't been outside of Hokkaido before (other than Narita), so both times I took the terrible trip that is Tokyo - Nagoya (Shinkansen) -> Osaka (Shinkansen) -> Kyoto (local) -> Nagoya (Shinkansen) -> Tokyo (Shinkansen) -> Aomori (Shinkansen) -> Hakodate ("Shinkansen") -> Sapporo (regional), which, you know, costs like $900 (spread over three months each). It was during the first trip to Nagoya that I took my profile picture with Hachimaru at Nagoya Castle, and I'm not sure if I'll find a better picture to use anytime soon.

During these times I wasn't known much at all other than for writing about React/Cycle.js/RxJS, but I actually did meet someone in person (twice!) as a result of using Qiita - an Australian guy who was living in Nagoya (transitively, I've also met another Japanese person through him). Hopefully, I can meet more people who have seen some of my posts (or know me through Twitter/my memes) in the future, in Europe or in Japan.

## 記事は英語のみ

Since my Japanese is pretty terrible (especially written), I basically only write in English and don't read very many other articles. My actual Japanese language usage nowadays is to watch some rips of really horrible variety shows (e.g. 生物にサンキュー, ケンミンショー, etc.), watch some typical anime, and sometimes (poorly) read some Japanese-language tweets. At some point I'd like to try writing an actual post in Japanese, but this would probably take quite a lot someone else's time to have to go through my crap. And well, as for any Japanese-related goals stated by a foreigner, 言うは易く行うは難し.

## 現在

I've just spent more and more time writing about PureScript in the last two years, and probably will continue to do more of it in the future. If you ask me a question (technical, general, random, etc.) either in English or Japanese, I'll try to answer -- though, I will probably reply in English. I'm not entirely sure when I will be able to improve my Japanese though.

## 謝々

Thanks to everyone who has read any of my posts at some point. And a big thanks to [@oreshinya](https://qiita.com/oreshinya) for translating [a whole blog post](https://qiita.com/oreshinya/items/6bb8ef2639f2f739b7e7) for me for last year's Advent of PureScript.

The next couple of posts out of my feed will be more type-level programming in PureScript as usual.

## *無関係*

Yes, there is basically nothing in Finland other than for Marimekko *stores and Muumimaailma.*

*I have once gone to a coin laundry in Kyoto and asked, "センタッキの使い方教えてもらえますか？俺、日本語読めないんで", which was basically true at the time.*