I thought I’d go for an ‘arty’ title with this one. Today at around lunch time, snow came to Nagano in a big way. If you didn’t see it, take a look at my post from yesterday, because these pictures honestly look like they came from a different season.

As usual I will put my favourites up here and write captions, the rest are in the photo archive.

This is the view from my window. It sure beats the skyscrapers and roads I usually see. The snow came really fast – I remember looking out the window and there being no snow, then I took this photo about ten minutes later. Since I didn’t get a white Christmas this year (or much of a Christmas at all. Santa doesn’t work in Asia, apparently) a white New Year’s was extra nice.

This is the line that runs through the area. The trains only come once an hour, so they’re not quite as handy as the ones in Tokyo, but at least people here can actually hear themselves think rather than just get told to stand behind the yellow line the whole time.

This is Kaizujyou (Matsushirojyou) castle. Inside is a really wide and open courtyard. It was quite a surprise really that there was no building inside, but it added to the ‘wide’ feeling of Nagano. I like the feeling of being able to swing my arms without hitting three people, eight buildings and then getting arrested.

Ducks of the moat around Kaizujyou castle. They were too busy swimming around to pose for any photos, though.

So yeah! Snow! Awesome! Also tonight I’ll be sitting down with Mako’s family to eat traditional Japanese New Year’s food. Everyone keeps telling me it’s ‘unique’, I choose to understand that to be a good thing.

Anyway, thanks for reading! As I mentioned all the photos are in the photo archive.

So I’ve been in Nagano (not Nagoya [blog 1, 2] as I keep calling it!) for two days now. Since I got here my friend Mako and his family have just been so kind – I’ve eaten really delicious food and slept in literally the most comfortable futon in the universe. My back will be thanking me for months for this one.

This place is so calm and quiet, unlike Tokyo. It makes me really doubt if I want to end up in Tokyo – living in such a bustling mess of pollution knowing that places like this exist is going to be a challenge.

Today we headed to a small shrine which is hidden away on one of the mountains that surround the area. I saw two other people on the mountain the whole time, and I’m pretty confident I’m the first foreigner to be there. I don’t think I can do justice to the place any way but through photos. Here are a few of my favorites, the rest are available in the photo archive.

I think this photo sums this place up very well. It’s a town – people live here. But it’s a town that has been populated for a long time without destroying everything around it. I know I sound a bit like a hippy right now but just look at that mountain. That sky. Nature rules, I’m going to chuck my laptop away and fashion a new computer out of snow and wood.

Mako and I went a little way up a mountain near his house to see what I think is called Shirotori Shrine. It’s a well hidden but beautiful place, this is just one of the buildings. Based on the expressions of the people we saw on the way (not many!) I may well be the first foreigner ever to go there. For some time, anyway. Makes me feel special.

Oh yeah, it’s really cold here. But it’s nice and bright, too, so I can take pretty photos, breathe in the nice air and try to forget I have to head back to the Carbon Dioxide party zone that is Tokyo in a few days.

Finally, this was the view that greeted us from the mountain. How awesome is that? It sure beats huge skyscrapers and an overwhelming sense of dread and profit margins.

Anyway I hope I’ve gone some of the way to expressing how lovely this place is here. If you’re interested, the rest of the photos I took today are available in the archive here.

More to follow!

Wow. What a year’s it’s been. A lot has changed since I did my review of 2008. We’ve seen the financial world explode, virtually every celebrity on the planet die, and Rage Against The Machine take Christmas Number One. Quite an eventful year, to say the least.  Today I’m going to take a month by month look back, with links to old blog posts. If you’re relatively new to reading this blog, this might well be a good place to start. Also I really should go back and do 2006 and 2007 at some point. But first I need to complete work on my time machine.

If you want a more thorough list of blog posts, hit the archive.

January 2009

Exams in Sheffield. Feels strange, writing this sitting in Japan. Just 11 months ago this seems like an impossible dream. How time has flown, I suppose. I wrote a handful of blog posts, my favourite of which was A Japanese Guide To Skipping Work. I chose this one not so much for it’s topic, but because I think of the ‘comedy’ articles I’ve written it’s one of the best. I had a lot of fun writing it, and it serves as a reminder not to be so damn boring all the time!

February 2009

The hardest month to spell was also the hardest month to write in apparently – just two blog posts make Feb 2009 my laziest month of the year. Apologies if you wasted this month just sitting at home refreshing my blog waiting for a post. You need new hobbies. Anyway, post of the month was the Sheffield Japan Day 2009 – Photoshoot. I had great fun taking those shots and it is a reminder of the work that went into that event – not only mine, but the entire team’s. (Actually, they did a lot more work than I did)

March 2009

I suppose it would be lazy to pick my birthday as the best day, but that’s only because I’m sure you all would too… right? It’s going to have to be Jobs For Kenji The Stalker Robot I think, simply because the post got linked to from a lot of other blogs, and it’s always nice to be part of something, rather than the sheer cold isolation I usually feel.

April 2009

I lied! February was not the only month with 2 posts – April also saw a dive in my writing rate. Apologies again. At least it’s easy to spell. This month was spent back at uni, working away at probably the hardest content we ever studied. (Statistics and other horrors). Most memorable post is Japanese Blog Launched, mainly because I still use it now, and it is nice to go back and read once in a while. Makes me all happy inside to see all those squiggles actually mean something once in a while.

May 2009

Lots of posts this month, I suppose the rest in April did work. I wrote quite a few reviews this month (including D’EspairsRay and Densha Otoko) but post of the month is obviously Japan Day 2009. Watching all that work come together at the last moment was an awesome feeling, as was performing Soran again (video here) and having some fun performing the quiz on stage. (For which I used really old blog content for jokes. They call me ‘unoriginal Mike’, you know).

June 2009

It’s summer! Not that you can tell in freezing England. Anyway, at some point in the haze of complex grammar combination and alcohol, I started thinking about my year abroad. Study Year Targets & Goals is a nice list of stuff I want to do. The fact I haven’t done any of them yet is somewhat scary, but in the new year I’m going to have a lot more opportunity to travel, so I should be able to get some, if not all, of them done.

July 2009

The end of the academic year (I think!) It also marked the end of me studying Japanese daily, which I still regret now, but whatever. It gave me more time to chill out, spend a lot of time with the exchange students and have a nice time before flying to Japan. How Not To Stay At A Love Hotel could possibly be my favourite ‘comedy’ post of the year. It’s sharp and snappy, and I love it when I go back to one of my old posts and smile at a joke. Yes. I’m that sad.

August 2009

A tough month. The countdown to Japan is definitely on. Yet I remember this month really dragging by. I was going to choose my trip to London to get my visa as the post of the month, but I think Sunny Scenes At Stanage, Sheffield is a nicer post – it reminds me of my family, and back home in a nice way. Also it proves once and for all that England does get good weather. I’d also like to thank the special effects team for removing all the driving rain and hail in those photos.

September 2009

Japan! Wooo! I wrote 10 posts this month, the most of any of the year, for obvious reasons. I’m back! It’s hardly changed at all! Hurr..err…yeah! It’s very hard to choose a blog post, but it’s fun looking over them – I think the day after I arrived in Tokyo my writing style really shifted – it’s more ‘upbeat’. Lots of exclamation marks. Like this! I suppose Safe And Sound In Tokyo, despite being a bit of a boring post (no pictures!) is the most memorable. Finally back!

October 2009

Settling in can take a long time, but I remember waking up one day in early October and feeling like I was at ‘home’. Not just the dormitory, but the area I live in. So my photos of Warabi City act now as a nice memento, and no matter where I end up I can remember what it felt like living here. Awww.

November 2009

There’s no way I can’t choose Exploring Like It’s ’06 this month. The new volunteers joined me on a trip to Meiji Shrine. I did honestly feel like I was back, all wide-eyed at the novelty of everything, despite three years having passed. It was really refreshing, and even though they weren’t there, it reminds me of Matt, Nate, Rolf (the volunteers of my year) and everyone else I knew ‘back then’.

December 2009

So here we are. A pretty slow month blog wise, mainly because the amount of time and energy I spent at Sophia was so much. I think Festive Radio Silence is a nice summary post, though. I didn’t really update for a while but it’s nice to be able to read just one article and get a load of information at once.

By my count, I just summed up 12 months in just over a thousand words. That is a scary feat, when you think about it. But it’s done. I hope you enjoyed this post, and I hope you enjoy whatever I write in the future. I also hope Christmas was great for everyone, and that 2010 is another exciting and fun year.

Here’s To A Great 2010! Thanks For Reading!

From Mike @ JapanIsDoomed.com

Wow! Another Christmas, the fourth I’ve celebrated since Japan Is Doomed started way back in 2006. I hope everyone gets what they want for Christmas, and has a wonderful and memorable time!

I’m here in Japan, away from family for the second time. It still feels lonely but thanks to Skype and the like, maybe a few thousand miles won’t feel like that far for a while.

I will do a big end of year post like I did last year in the near future, as well as New Year’s resolutions for 2010.

But until then, have a wonderful day, and thanks for reading!

The alternative title for this update is ‘Mike’s inner geek runs wild!’ Don’t worry, I won’t put a single spoiler on this update so please feel free to read it even if you’re saving the story for yourself. I know you want the pretty pictures so here they are!

I also put huge versions of these photos here on Flickr if you really want to get a good look at it.

OK, here come my thoughts on the game. I’ve played it for about two hours so far, so these are very preliminary ideas, but they might help you decide if you want to import it or wait for the translation. (Which I think is coming in around March).

• The game, even on the old TV I’m running it on, looks unbelievable. My friend is playing it on his HDTV and the level of detail you can see in things that are miles away from any action is crazy. If you blew a load of cash on a fancy TV you will get your money’s worth here. However, speaking of TVs:
• The Japanese writing used in the tutorial sections of the game (white on blue) are illegible on old TVs. At least in my experience – apparently everyone in Japan has a super TV so people like me stuck in the past get lumped with a series of white blurry boxes to read. I would imagine in the next few days a guide on what is going on will appear, and subtitles in the actual game are fine, but this game is complicated and it’s making it hard for me to play. If you can, I would advise hooking it up to a PC/laptop monitor as they are usually better than old TVs.
• The soundtrack is jaw dropping. It’s a shame it didn’t come with the lightning edition, more than once I’ve found myself pausing the game and just listening.
• The Japanese in the game is pretty tough. This game was aimed at teenagers plus, so it’s all pretty deep. Lots of odd words and colloquial stuff. Very useful for language learners, but I’d steer clear if you’re a beginner. The tutorials in particular are just huge paragraphs of complicated terminology.
• But despite all this, I’m having a hell of a lot of fun. I’m actually going to try to restrain myself over the next few days until I can borrow a friend’s monitor to play it on, but it’s going to be tough. It’s just such a pleasure to play.

I hope I haven’t sent too many die hard fans into a white hot rage! Thanks for reading!