まあまあです。Been letting distractions get in the way this week. I talk in Japanese on Discord a bit, which is good! But then I also end up down rabbit holes from there in the same app, which is bad.

On the plus side, now that I’ve settled into a new routine–mixed things up halfway through–I’m proceeding at a faster-than-expected pace in my textbook. I should be finished with it a few weeks, maybe even a month ahead of schedule. Feeling good about having enough runway for dedicated study after that with my December deadline, but don’t know if it’ll be enough in the end until I get there. Fingers crossed!

Tokyo Story is really cool from a film-making perspective. After seeing its cinematography, I never looked at The Silence of the Lambs the same way.

Not gonna lie, if they get Ashly Burch I’m gonna pick it up.

Definitely Trails Beyond the Horizon and Ys X: Proud Nordics. I’m not a “must play day 1” fan for Ys like I am with Trails, so it was pretty easy to wait for the new version considering how quickly they announced it after it finally came out in English. I also just started the Dragon Quest III remake in Japanese and already am having a good time with it. Plan to continue nibbling at that for a while.

The currently announced games in the genre are honestly kinda lean for me. Leanest in recent memory. The only ones I know for sure I’ll play are the last of the FF7 remake and the Persona 4 remake, and if I remember right they already said P4R isn’t coming out this year. So that means I might try catching up a little bit on some other series. I’ve got the following on my playlist:

• Atelier Escha & Logy
• Breath of Fire IV
• NEO The World Ends With You
• Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven
• Rune Factory 5
• Tenchi wo Kurau 2
• Yakuza 0 (probably will jump straight to LAD7 from there)

Yeah, Fantasian’s on my shortlist too. Keep hearing good things about it and there’s enough potential nostalgia triggers in it for me to give it that extra bump.

Well, something to consider is that engaging on Reddit isn’t even on the level of limited individual action like voting is. You’re having a cascading effect on the viability of the site by engaging with other people. It’s what makes the site function. You’re the product for advertisers in more ways than one.

Besides, clearly you believe in the power of collective action making a difference, given you’re promoting firearms training with others. Same energy applies to withdrawing from the site.

Fire Emblem and Disgaea would like a word

We saw very different responses to DioField.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see FFTA2 with a fast-forward, but unfortunately Square and Enix peaked in this genre all the way back in the 90’s between FFT and Tactics Ogre.

My biggest problem with traditional banking is how much paper is still used.

It’s also going to get more efficient, like Amazon’s data centers have been over time. By the way, where was this zeal over water usage from people back when AWS and other data centers started popping up all over the place?

The water issue will end up being more in how local water tables are affected, not overall consumption.

あけおめ！ There’s also a customary response, ことよろ, short for 今年もよろしくお願いします, with the classic impossible-to-translate Japanese word, yoroshiku. Here I see it as a “looking forward to our continued friendship/relationship/partnership this year.”

I’m back on the textbook trail this week. Still spending more time on listening and it’s…okay. Just trusting the process that it’ll get smoother. I guess I do have a focus issue with listening, so gonna do my best to work with it.

Also started the Dragon Quest III Remake. It doesn’t have full furigana support, which is a little annoying, but it’s workable. Already feeling pretty good about it after my first session.

Yes, if literal, it’s something like “[a new year] has dawned, congratulations.” The first one’s a lot like how we’d say “wishing you a happy new year” in December.

And of course, since the Japanese love shortening things to four mora when speaking casually, there’s also あけおめ.

Having nails in Cyberpunk was huge for me.

I wish more of mine had the self-checkouts. The ones that don’t, it’s a minimum 10 minute wait in line to check out. Never more than one cashier during the hours I go.

I run 11 LTSC on a local account with tweaks from privacy.sexy. Zero issues.

Ultimately not worth the hassle of an upgrade until it’s required for an important app, though. I only did it because I had a congested 10 install and wanted to wipe anyway.

Yeah, in my personal life it’s not a problem but I gotta do it during work hours. The problem I have is getting a notification and then next thing I know it’s two hours later and I’m still off-task.

NSFW stuff is conspicuously absent.

Although for #3, turning off my email notifications and switching to scheduled check-ins was a game changer for me. Wish I could do it with texting.

By our powers combined… lol

I’m actually not a huge fan of anime/manga, I consume a little here and there. I’m more into visual novels and games. Although most of the native reading I’m doing right now is on Bluesky, or news articles.

I’m still focused on the N2 (upper intermediate) Japanese proficiency exam, early December.

Still not entirely sure how attainable a passing score is just yet. I’m on track to finish my current intermediate textbook (Tobira) sometime in March, which gives me 8-9 months with Shinkanzen Master, a book that targets the JLPT specifically. My kanji will be fine, and going off my current vocab list and pace, I’ll have enough vocab in my SRS cycle but not a ton of time with the last of it. My listening comp’s going to be behind, just have to do the best I can there and make up for it in other areas.

The timeline feels tight, so I’m putting production skill on the backburner. Really not ideal, but the proficiency exam doesn’t test for it, and I only get to take the exam once a year. I’ll switch to focusing on production either way after the exam.

Yeah, that’s part of why it was so disappointing! Hah. I had a really good time with Kingmaker, really the only big complaint I had about it was the encounter density. Just far, far too many fights. The kingdom management fell off the rails at the end, too, but at least that was a pretty small part of the game. So I figured I’d love WotR. Most of my complaints are with the story (especially since I loved Kingmaker’s villain, so that’s a tough bar to clear), not the gameplay, but yeah, so much of it didn’t land for me.