The Secret Life of Heather

It all started innocently enough when Heather found a post on the expat’s in Japan Facebook page. There was a guy named Angus that was looking for foreigners in Japan that were interested in writing blogs about the Tochigi prefecture. He has a tourism promotion company that is funded partly by the government.

So Heather decided to submit some examples of a few posts she wrote on the BrewLifeJapan website. Unfortunately, Angus didn’t really think her writing style fit with what he was looking for. But he thought she was pretty so he asked her to be in some promotional photo shoots. They started off doing some local Utsunomiya jazz clubs and gyoza bars. It was for a brochure that showcases our city of Utsunomiya. And it was basically going to end at that. But, I think because of Heather’s bubbly personality and ability to offer suggestions to enhance the “product” that Angus was creating, she kept getting called back for more work.

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Then, because of all the places we had experienced as foreigners around Tochigi, Angus asked her to write a blog about the hot springs town of Kusatsu, which we had recently visited. After that, he realized she was a good writer too and continued to ask for more articles. They aren’t live as of today because they are still building the website. But here is the link. They will slowly populate the articles by Heather.

NearbyTokyo Website – Heather’s Page

Heather’s first big job was doing a photo shoot for a sake brewery in a nearby town called Mashiko. She was published in a magazine called Sake Today, which has over 5000 copies sold world wide. Woohoo!

Now as we get closer and closer to coming out of the pandemic, their promotion company is ramping up for increased exposure. And because Heather is pretty, can write, and has a unique outsider’s perspective on Japan, Angus knew that she would be valuable to his company overall and decided to hire her officially! The pay is crap, but its not for the money, its for the fame! Just kidding, its mostly just for the fun and the experience! Now Heather gets to do awesome stuff that she would never have been able to do or discover without this job.