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!

Ok, the title of this post sounds like some dodgy festive hazing ritual, but what I meant really was ‘How am I replacing English with Japanese in my every day life?’ It sounds odd, saying I need to do that process when I’m in the country, but regardless of what people say;

• You can’t pick up a good level of Japanese just by ‘being around’ the language. You have to interact with it.
• It’s possible, in Tokyo, to get away with using basically no Japanese at all.
• You learn more if whatever you’re doing is fun. (This is also my ‘I ain’t readin’ no stinkin’ textbook!’ clause)

I honestly believe all of these things to be true, so as a result I have to fight my urge to buy awesome looking books in English, and stick to Japanese ones. So today’s update is ‘what I’m reading / watching / playing’ in Japanese. So let’s get started!

Battle Royale, Japanese Novel

Oh yes. I’ve read Battle Royale in English and watched the film. It’s safe to say it’s one of my favourite stories of all time. Yes there’s plenty of violence in every version, but there’s also love stories, some really memorable characters and backstabbing aplenty (in some cases, literally!). But today’s not the time to rant about how great it is. I’ve not read too much of the book, but my first thoughts are;

• Japanese names are horrible. There are 42 students, all with different names and thus different Kanji, to remember. I keep forgetting who is who and later on I’m wondering how someone who already got killed is now running away. Unless I accidentally bought ‘Zombie Royale’. Actually, that’s an awesome idea for a book, nobody steal it OK.
• The Japanese version of the book is ‘punchier’ than the translation. It’s told from the perspective of one of the students, and in the Japanese version he comes across as more opinionated. More realistic, I suppose. The English translation is good though, I’m not having a go at it!

It’s a great book though, although I already know what’s going to happen. My Japanese is at the point I can usually go a few sentences understanding everything, and most of the things I don’t know take not much time to ‘get’. (Usually symbols I’ve not come across before).

Liar Game Season 2, Japanese TV Drama

My TV quota is being filled nicely by the second season of Liar Game, a Japanese TV drama which averages 281 twists per episode and 194 cases of overreacting to frankly unsuprising revalations per episode minute. I reviewed the first season here. It’s helpfully boosting my strategic war game vocabularly to heights unknown!

Gyakuten Kenji / Ace Attorney Investigations, A Logic Puzzle Solving Game

Phoenix Wright, for those that don’t know, is a DS game where you solve crimes. I’m playing the new one, in which you play a prosecutor busting criminals left right and center. It’s hard, because they really love throwing legal vocab all over the shop, but it’s fun. After you get accused of murder for the 20th time, the word ’situational evidence’ really starts to stick in your head!

Finally, something I’m buying on Thursday. If you are one of my parents please look away now.

Final Fantasy XIII, A Role Playing Game

Oh YES. It’s nearly here. 100+ hours of beautiful, fully voice acted awesomeness. There’s going to be complex words, fast moving Kanji characters and explosions all over the place. It’s like if Michael Bay got into a fight at the Scrabble world championships. Using grenades. I’m not going to write about it until I get some way into it, but needless to say I’m pretty excited. It’s not really that expensive, which is a bit of a suprise, and the console means I can finally start catching up on my Japanese films too. I got a membership to rent DVDs from a place called Tsutaya but my laptop goes mental at the very idea of a DVD being produced outside of England, so this will finally let me watch some mental films.

Alright so this concludes my ‘write loads to make up for not writing for weeks then hope the feeling of guilt goes away’ project that didn’t work. (I still feel guilty!) I’ll try to do at least one update a week, probably on Sundays, from now on. I’d like to do one per exciting thing I do though, so it should (hopefully!) be more frequent than that. This update was really wordy though, I’ll try to cut down next time. Later!

“Oh yeah, I have a blog!”

I hate writing things like this. I haven’t updated in 3 weeks or so and I apologise. Writing these ‘catch up’ blog posts just remind me how much I have neglected you, my beautiful readers. To make amends, if you send just £5 / ¥1,000 / the deeds to a hectare of land in North America, I will send you a personalized Christmas message! (It will be in the form of a letter that you can’t see or touch and that only I have knowledge of).

Anyway. I’ve been playing a lot of racquetball with my new circle. They’re all lovely people and it’s a great chance to practice totally natural Japanese. It’s especially nice in that none of the members really know how to ‘gear’ their Japanese to a foreign learner. This isn’t easy mode, folks. This is the real, complicated deal. I have also learned that sport vocabulary is surprisingly simple. Things like ナイスショット (naisu shotto!) and ナイスカッチュ (naisu kacchi!) get banded around a lot. I tried saying ‘Nice Shot’ and ‘Nice Catch’ in natural British English and everyone got confused and thought I was summoning a devil or something. Nevermind!

The racquetball circle had their Christmas Party on the 5th of November (only 20 days early!) which was fun, although it was a little on the tame side. Still, next weekend the 3rd year students, who make up the bulk of the circle, are all leaving because they have to focus on job hunting. I’ve heard this upcoming party is going to be massive. They warned me ‘it might get a little crazy’. Frankly, I’d be offended if it didn’t.

The other thing I’ve been doing a lot of, and it feels great to write this, is improving in Japanese. Since I’ve got here I’ve sort of felt I’m on the ‘plateau’ that people talk about a lot – it just feels like it’s all going nowhere. But yesterday I watched most of a whole TV show and understood everything. It surprised me a lot as I couldn’t do that when I got here, and I don’t feel like I’ve been working much. It’s like a Christmas gift come early!

Speaking of Christmas, we have a few weeks off starting December 23rd (yaaay!) I’m going to be spending Christmas day in Tokyo, then soon after I hope to head off somewhere. Possibly to Hakone, I’m not decided just yet.

Other than that, not much to report on. Look forward to a video. I’m going to shoot some material on Thursday for something special, I’m not sure when the video will appear but it will. If it doesn’t you may throw anything you like at me.