A choice becomes meaningful precisely because it means giving up the alternatives.
Year in Brief
January — New Year trip to Toyama. Played Hearthstone in a study café. Visited the Hello Kitty exhibition.
February — Went to the Monet exhibition with a friend from the mystery book group. Reaffirmed my preference for abstract art. Got a cold.
March — Harbin, barbecue, played Overwatch on the Chinese server in the hotel, bought a phone-sized e-ink reader.
April — Received a bouquet of flowers. Blue Bottle cold brew kettle, homemade cold brew, new bank account & credit card.
May — Golden Week trip to Hokkaido. Bought a new PC.
June — Matsuyama, Ehime, Dogo Onsen.
July — Three-day holiday; went to Mount Fuji with colleagues. Wonder Festival.
August — Weekend trip to Shanghai, met two friends, then lugged an extremely heavy mahjong set all the way back to Japan. Tried night running. Akiu Onsen in Sendai.
September — Finally got a mahjong session together! Total lunar eclipse. Four-day trip to Qingdao.
October — Dahlias, Disneyland, caught my second cold of the year. Decided to get a flu shot next year.
November — Met up in person with book group friends. Nintendo Switch 2. Hatsune Miku × Kitamura Camera Shop collab. Ginkgo avenue, partly turned. Found my all-time favorite coffee bean at the Meguro Starbucks.
December — A decision. After a small-scale mental reckoning — there’s no substitute for the life right in front of you. Dropkick on My Devil!
Reading
Used Bookmeter to track my reading this year.
rulatte’s 2025 Reading Summary — Bookmeter
Read 57 novels & light novels this year. Also reread the Call of the Night manga before the second season aired — an excellent story.
Nisio Isin’s Monogatari Series — read the first 13 volumes (up through Owarimonogatari), then started following the anime instead and put the novels on hold. Just now remembered I haven’t finished the books.
Ukketsu’s Strange House and Strange Picture — the illustrations make them easy to devour in one sitting. Very immersive storytelling.
Shirai Tomoyuki: Drinking Corpse Juice, Elephant’s Head, Nobody Dies. Elephant’s Head was absolutely brilliant — full marks. Looking forward to everything Shirai writes next.
At the end of the year, I started Kitayama Takehito. Read The Clock Castle and The Crystal Castle — subtly off in ways that are hard to pin down, but they connected with me. I’ll keep reading.
Anime, Dramas & Films
Re-subscribed to Netflix, but didn’t watch nearly as much as expected — following the Monogatari anime took up a big chunk of time.
Favorite anime: Summertime Rendering (2022). The Fragrance of Fresh Flowers in Bloom was also excellent. Other “top-tier” entries were mostly sequels — Shomin Sample, My Dress-Up Darling, Call of the Night, Gran Blue Fantasy. The biggest disappointment was the Conan film — who exactly called this one of the best in recent years?
For dramas: watched Squid Game and Wednesday — both feel like they passed through my brain without leaving much behind. The cello-playing scene and the body-swap dance are about all I can recall. Near year’s end, Bushi no Seishi-tō (Samurai’s Life and Death) — incredible fight choreography, and Kiyohara Kaya seems more beautiful here than when she played Shiratsuka Hisui.
As for films, nothing I’d strongly recommend. Watched F1 in theatres — the audio design was extraordinary. Thursday Murder Club earns a “could do worse” from me.
Best & Worst Purchases This Year
Nintendo Switch 2 — reignited my love for video games. Planning to start Danganronpa in the new year.
750ml Cold Brew Kettle — great for both tea and coffee.
Starbucks Whiskey Barrel-Aged Blend — a coffee that absorbed the essence of oak barrels and spirits, perfectly suited for cold brew. My favorite coffee to date.
The Disappointments
Dyson Wash G1 — I thought I needed something with water for mopping, and Dyson’s vacuum cleaners really are excellent, so I bought this. Twice (a whole other sad story). The only thing it can do is lightly dampen your floor. Foamy cleaning solutions are off-limits. Dyson’s own cleaner isn’t sold in Japan, so I lugged one back from China — nice smell, zero improvement in cleaning.
Coffee from a certain headphone brand — before this came along, I’d always told colleagues, “Coffee is coffee — sour or bitter, it all tastes pretty much the same.” This product shattered that floor spectacularly. So this year, I had both the most revelatory coffee I’ve ever tasted and the worst coffee I’ve ever suffered through.
2026 Plans
Looking back at the year’s goals (achieved: 2.5/4):
- Japanese N2, aiming to read light novels and play galge — passed the exam, but listening, reading, and writing are not yet at a functional level
- Keep reading — one of the few habits I’ve maintained since childhood
- Write one line a day in the MUJI diary — completely abandoned; I still like fiddling with note-taking apps
- Learn things useful for my next job — so tell me, what exactly is an Agent?
For 2026:
- Move — change environments, clear my head
- Japanese
- Start a tech blog; keep the current blog for life and personal thoughts; try social media (Bluesky)
- Learn off-camera flash photography
- Explore a “side hustle” — a hobby-adjacent activity explicitly aimed at generating income
- 2026 Reading Plan — currently planning 40 titles, including a philosophy book, an economics book, and some light novels; targeting around 70 total