I’ve been back from Japan for nearly a month now so thought it was about time I did a few blog posts on it. Overall I had an amazing time in Japan, it far exceeded my expectations and I am definitely planning to go back next summer.

I have a whole load of photos which I will post at some point (next year if I go by my current pace) – but I figured it would be best to start with my loot. I ended up spending way more than I was planning on but  I had underestimated how much I would be spending on food and trains so thats part of the reason. That said I definitely wasn’t planning on buying this many cds, but I just kept seeing ones I had wanted for ages, and it is much cheaper buying in Japan without having to pay for proxies to get certain cds.

I am finally in Japan!!!

The past day was pretty much spent travelling here and I didn’t bother taking any photos – mainly because I had buried my camera at the bottom of my bag. The journey wasn’t too bad. The flight was 11 hours but the entertainment system was very good – there was a choice of around 60 films. I ended up watching live action Kaiji, Rinco’s Restaurant and Wheat.

After arriving at Narita airport I took the Skyliner to Nippori then on to Shinjuku and Yotsuya. One cool thing about the Skyliner is when it was being cleaned before we boarded all of the seats suddenly started moving around – this kind of took me by surprise but then I realised it meant the seats are always facing the way the train is moving.

Yes, I am finally going to Japan after wanting to for so long now. I actually finished booking it a few weeks ago but I’ve been pretty useless about updating this blog.

Anyway, I will be there for 3 weeks between July 25th – August 17th staying in Shinjuku  the whole time.

I really can’t believe it’s been 4 and a half months since my last post, time has been going way to quick for me recently. Anyway, I thought a good way to get myself back into blogging would be to do a progress update on my Japanese.

In my last post I mentioned how I wanted to continue reviewing rtk and making sure I cleared all the ones I failed – around 600 at that point. I managed to reduce this to 400 left but then made the decision to stop altogether. The purpose of rtk is to learn to recognise individual kanji and how to differentiate them so you don’t have to worry when learning readings. At this point I kind of felt I had benefited as much as I could have from it and going any further would just waste time – so I stopped.

With only a few hours left till the new year I thought it would be a good idea to look back at 2009 as well as set some goals for 2010. I’ve seen this done on many other blogs and it seems like a good idea.

So 2009, this was a fairly big year for me. Here is a small list of some of the things that happened:

• Started collecting Nendoroids
• Started learning Japanese
• Started this blog
• Discovered Vocaloid

There has been quite a lot of snow here in the UK over the past few days. I decided to go out yesterday and see if I could get some good photos of it.

I took a lot and I don’t think there is a need for a long description, so enjoy.

(If you don’t want to scroll through you can view thumbnails here)

I’ve definitely been getting more and more into Vocaloid recently. I mean, I’ve been listening to songs for awhile now but it’s only the past month or so that I have started to take an interest in the producers and knowing who actually makes the different songs.

Yet another Vocaloid related album in my collection. This album was released last month though I only noticed it a couple of weeks ago. I ordered it from a site called otaku.com, I bought something from them around January but hadn’t been on the site since – but the service was very good last time so I didn’t have a problem ordering there. Sure enough it only took a few days to arrive.

I’ve been thinking of getting a new console recently but can’t decide between the PS3 and Xbox 360. My main motivation for this is to play Final Fantasy Xiii when it comes out next year. Which console to get is a pretty tough choice and there seems to be lots of people for and against each one.

I haven’t done an update on my Japanese progress for awhile, so I thought it would be a good idea to do a post on where I’m currently at and things I’ve been up to.

I guess the first thing to say is that I finally worked through the whole of RTK. The 30 day goal I posted about awhile ago was both successful and unsuccessful. The whole thing kind of went wrong after a last minute planned trip to Paris which messed up my schedule and it was hard continuing straight away after that. However the momentum I had built up still kept me going and although it took a lot longer than 30 days I eventually finished. Where I am now with RTK is keeping up reviews and slowly breaking down my (rather large) failed pile.