Year in Brief
January
- New Year trip to Osaka & Kyoto. Got sick on the second day in Osaka, so I spent most of the time holed up in the hotel and a Starbucks reading Nisio Isin. The setting of Koshujiroman-ha happens to be Kyoto, so reading it there was incredibly immersive.
- First time snowboarding (on a board). Great fun. Helmets are important.
February
- Lunar New Year — Yokohama Chinatown, outdoor ice skating at the Red Brick Warehouse. Skating under the winter sun was genuinely delightful.
- Izu Kawazu cherry blossoms
- Sendai — still snowing
March
- Mori Art Museum — interesting exhibitions, plus a sky deck with a view of Tokyo Tower
- National Art Center, Tokyo — the hotel from John Wick: Chapter 4
- Hatsune Miku Art Exhibition — not that large; bought a T-shirt and some snacks
- Detective Conan 30th Anniversary Exhibition — wall-to-wall people
April
- Peak cherry blossom season
- teamLab — a few areas were genuinely stunning
May: Back to China for Golden Week
- Shenzhen’s trendy bookstore — verdict: the décor is nice, but there wasn’t much I actually wanted to read
- Hangzhou: walked around West Lake in the rain, saw the Spy × Family movie, caught up with a college roommate and former colleague
- Harbin: met up with light novel forum friends from school, a gaming friend, had barbecue and hot pot, and somehow ended up at an anime convention — social anxiety fully activated
- Back in Tokyo, finally visited the Meguro Starbucks I’d missed during cherry blossom season
June
- Ginza goldfish exhibition
- Tokyo & Kamakura hydrangeas. Last year’s Kamakura trip was brutal in the heat; this year it was overcast and drizzly, and the rain-drenched hydrangeas were breathtaking.
July
- Musashi-no-za Reiwa Shrine in Saitama, Kadokawa Musashino Museum
- And of course, my beloved Wonder Festival 2024
August
- Choshi — a tiny, tiny city at the far eastern tip of Chiba. Did a “pilgrimage” for the anime Christmas Kiss (which I haven’t actually seen). Rode the Choshi Electric Railway, which runs once an hour.
- Realized I’ve been working for five years now.
September
- A stretch of consecutive days off happened to fall around Mid-Autumn Festival, so I dashed off to Shanghai and Guangzhou — and got caught in a typhoon
- A junior from school was visiting Japan, so we braved TGS together. Probably skipping it next year.
October
- A surprise alumni gathering, with a side trip to Nikko (leaves not yet turning, but quite cold)
November
- New iPad mini and Apple Watch
- Got into Hearthstone, which marked the start of full hermit mode. Climbed to Legend rank at the end of the season — a dream I’d had since my broke student days, finally fulfilled.
December
- Ginkgo avenue — the yellow leaves were stunning
- The Christmas tree downstairs went pink this year. Excellent decision.
Reading
Finished 48 novels — mainly completing Nisio Isin’s Kubikiri Cycle series and Nishizawa Yasuhiko’s Takumi Sencho series.
Also 84 manga volumes. Favorites include Dropkick on My Devil! and Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You.
Films, Anime & More
Splurged on a sofa and TV with my year-end bonus — finally not living in a bare room — and watched all sorts of things, mostly revisiting older favorites.
The live-action drama adaptation of The Decagonal Room was a great experience even without having read the source material. The official announcement that other entries in Ayatsuji Yukito’s Yakata series will also be adapted has me excited.
Unnatural — a drama that was huge a few years back; I finally caught up with it. Solid overall, but I wished the ending had a bit more punch.
On the anime front, I didn’t watch much this year, but Makeine (Too Many Losing Heroines!) was genuinely great.
Games: Got into Zenless Zone Zero, then dropped it after two months. Got into Hearthstone, which seems like it’ll stick.
Work
Abstractly speaking: too abstract — as abstract as the math I used to play with in Siberia (lol). Work has been frustrating.
More concretely: working on machine learning and RAG applications.
- Gained some experience in data engineering and backend development (FastAPI)
Hoping to settle into a calmer mindset in the new year and become someone who actually solves problems.
Things I Bought That Were Worth It
- iPad mini — my previous one was a 10-inch Air 4; the next might be a 13-inch Pro
- Pitaka phone case
- Alienware monitor — silky 4K 160Hz. Overwatch, let’s go!
2025 Plans
First, looking back at last year’s goals: 2023 Year-End Review
- Japanese N2: Still a long way off. Working adults just want to sleep. But I did pass N3 at the end of the year.
- Personal knowledge management: Notion isn’t amazing, but as long as it works, I’ll keep using it. Better to actually learn something than to fiddle with tools — “If something works well enough and gets the job done, just stick with it. Don’t fixate on the tool; fixate on the work you need to do.”
- Reading: Finished the Kubikiri Cycle and Takumi Sencho series, but Shirai Tomoyuki and Nozaki Waku are still on hold.
- Photography & travel: more active in the first half; then Hearthstone pulled me back inside.
- Use GPT more: average.
This year’s goals:
- Pass N2 for real this time
- Keep reading
- Write at least one line a day in the MUJI diary I bought
- Learn things that will actually help with my next job