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.

These are all the Vocaloid albums I bought. The moment I walked into the third floor of Tora no Ana and immediately spotted three or four cds I had been desperately wanting, all my plans for trying to keep my spending low shattered. I bought around eight of these at Comiket – the Vocaloid area was like heaven for me.

And these are the non Vocaloid cds. I’m really pleased with the Cowboy Bebop original sound tracks – I got them in recomints in Nakano Broadway for a fraction of the original price (they’re pre-owned but still in perfect condition).

I ended up using an old dvd case and the cover from megami magazine for the Black Rock Shooter dvd. The ARiA DVD was released by Headphone Tokyo at Comiket and contains the video for the song, a few remixed versions with various singers aswell as some wallpapers, ringtones and mp3 files. Try! was also released at Comiket it has 4 disks and songs from a whole range of producers. on-sawmen was a cd released last Comiket and one I really wanted but I had seen it for around 8000yen in various shops in Akihabara but fortunately a re-release was announced for this Comiket so I was able to get it for 1500yen.

Howring is a cd/dvd with various songs sung by Rin – I had never really been into Rin that much but then I heard this song and my opinion changed so when I found out it was on this dvd I knew I had to get. It just so happened to be the first thing I saw when I went to my favourite part of Tora no Ana for the first time. It also came with a couple of plastic files with the same picture as the cover on which is pretty cool. The final dvd is ＊ハロー、終末シネカメラ。 A realease by sasakure.UK which contains the PVs for several of his songs.

This Angel beats T-shirt I got in Akihabara the day before Comiket. Apparently it’s was some event that always happens before Comiket where various companies come out and sell things, but I don’t know the specifics. Anyway, there were lot’s of long queues around the area and I had to wait an hour or so for this T-shirt but it was only 2000yen so not bad.

These are the rest of the things I got at Comiket – from the commercial booths. First is the pixiv Touhou artbook. Next, the geestore Azusa goods set (only the bag pictured) and last the Sega project diva 2 Miku wallscroll.

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.

I got kind of lost in Shinjuku station looking for the place to buy Suica cards and ended up walking around for ages before finding it.

The next problem was finding my hotel. It was supposedly very easy to find being just 300 metres or so from Yotsuya station but theres a kind of crossroads the and I ended up walking for ages in the wrong direction before realising, only to then go back and walk in another wrong direction – this wouldn’t normally be that bad however I had two fairly heavy bags, one of which was very awkward to carry also it was incredibly hot. I almost passed out at one point but fortunately thanks to the many vending machines around I was saved by an ice cold drink.

After eventually finding the hotel I was told I couldn’t check in till 3pm, it was currently 1:30…  It wasn’t so bad though as I could dump my annoying bag there.

Now that I sort of knew my way around and had 1.5 hours to kill what else could I do but go to Akihabara. There were a couple of things I wanted to buy for sure, but I decided beforehand that I wasn’t going to buy anygthing else today – Just get a feel for whats there. I didn’t want to spend ages walking around so decided to just check out Gamers.

Not buying anything turned out to be much harder than I thought as on every floor there were things that I’ve been wanting for ages but have had trouble finding online. My self control prevailed though and I only bought the two things I had been planning on – I might go back to Akihabara again tomorrow to explore more shops although I’m going to try and put of buying anything for as long as possible as I don’t want to blow all my money on the first day – I still have Comiket to think of as well.

So the two things I bought were the latest copy of Hobby Japan magazine and こっち向いて Baby/Yellow. I’ve not really heard of Hobby Japan magazine before but it seems it’s main focus is on Gundam models which not something I’m into. The reason I bought it was for the Black Rock Shooter dvd – it also came with a BRS picture/postcard type thing which is nice. I watched the dvd soon after I got back was definitely as good as I was expecting – I really love the art style.

The cd is one I’ve been looking forward to featuring new songs by supercell and kz – I hadn’t listened to the songs before buying the cd so it’s nice to finally hear them – I have it on loop while writing this post. The cd also comes with some nice artwork cards and a dvd with the videos for the songs. I also got an awesome poster with it which is basically a large version of one of the artwork cards. I’m also wondering whats the best way to bring a poster back with me – it’s rolled up at the moment but would folded be better?

It’s 8pm at the moment  and considering I was ready to sleep at 5 I think I’m doing quite well – Due to the 11 hour flight and time differences I skipped out last night – as in I literally had 24 hours or so of non stop daylight, which is kind of screwing with my system so I’m probably going to go sleep now.

I will make sure I take a lot more photos from now on.

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 wait for this and have been constantly looking for things I want to do while there – my shopping list is already quite long and is mainly filled with CDs and cheap manga – I can already tell I’m going to spend way to much on merchandise. I also fully intend to go to Comiket which wont help towards that.

If anyone has any suggestions for interesting things to do while there or the best shops to visit then let me know. Also if anyone will be in Tokyo at the same time as me and wants to meet up drop me a message or something – I’m going on this trip alone so could get lonely during the time.

I fully intend to write about the trip while I’m there and of course take ton of photos so be sure to check back here.

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.

This now freed up lot’s of time to work on actually learning Japanese. Over the past four months I have been experimenting with a lot of different methods. All of which are various forms of anki decks. Probably my favourite is just working on individual vocab as opposed to sentences. My method involves going through various form of Japanese media (manga, websites, song lyrics, video games etc.) And when I come across a word I want to know I look up the reading and definition in my DS dictionary then stick it into anki. My current anki deck stands at around 500 cards although I have had a couple of other decks which I deleted a long with many individual cards deleted, so those 500 are not the only things I’ve done other the past few months.

I do see several flaws in this method however and think I can understand how sentences might be more beneficial at this stage. When I first started out I tried sentences but they can be fairly intimidating when you barely know anything. Now that I have a bit of vocab down I reckon I can probably manage sentences now.

In terms of an immersion environment music is currently my main interest. My favourite band at the moment is -　     サカナクション I got their new album kikUUiki in the post a couple of day ago and can’t stop listening to it.

This is a track from the album – the video for it is pretty cool. I fully recommend their other albums too. A couple of other bands I’ve been into recently are base ball bear and monobright.

As for gaming I only have one Japanese PS3 game so far which is デモンズソウル. The good/bad thing about this game is all the audio is in English – this means I can fully understand the story and there are a lot of kanji to look up so all is good. I also created a Japanese PSN acount so have downloaded a few demos from there which is pretty good.

よつばと is still my favourite manga in terms of Japanese practice as I’m finding I can understand more and more of it.

Anyway, that should be enough of an update for now. I am going to try to keep up with regular posts from now on but I wont make any promises as I know what I’m like…

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

Although this doesn’t look like much it really covers a huge amount. I started collecting Nendoroids because my interest in anime had really grown, especially between late 2008 to early 2009. It was also through Nendoroids that I discovered Danny Choo – who has been a constant source of inspiration and motivation throughout the year.

Starting Japanese has also been a major thing. I originally started because I wanted to watch anime without subtitles, this probably would of lasted only a couple of weeks had I not found ajatt. Which gave me a greater interest in the language and I am learning for so much more than just anime now.

In terms of my Japanese progress I worked through the whole of “remembering the kanji” – although I still have a large number of failed kanji.  I have started on learning sentences and words while keeping up a moderate level of Japanese input (through music, games and websites etc.) I didn’t feel like I was making much progress but last night I picked up one of my volumes of よつばと　and found I could actually read and understand certain parts. I tried this two months ago and couldn’t get anywhere with it, so that is quite motivating.

This blog is going well – for me at least. I know I have a kind of random posting schedule and some posts are poorly written. Then there is the small matter of the header image. ehem. I kind of consider this a practice blog, just to see how things work and to try and improve my writing skills. I will probably start a proper blog some time in the future – when I feel ready.

And then there is Vocaloid. This is becoming a fairly large part of my life with most of the music I listen to and cds I buy being Vocaloid related – from here I can only see my interest growing.

Now onwards with 2010. I’m going to keep my goals short and simple so I know I can stick to them. They are:

• To continue with RTK doing my reviews every day and to clear my failed pile.
• To try and cut down on the number of English websites I visit.
• Keep up and increase my Japanese immersion.
• Use anki more.

I think that’s all for now so Happy New Year!

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.

I remember when I bought my first albums (supercell and Re:package) I thought they were the only Vocaloid related Cds released because I hadn’t heard anything about others. Of course it didn’t take long after that for me to realise there were more – but I didn’t know quite how many until recently.

So, onto my latest album. I first came across sasakure.UK through this song:

The first time I heard it I ended up looping it for a few hours – this was also the first song by Gumi I properly listened to. Afterwards I felt I had to find out more about it and so came across sasakure.UK. Through this I also discovered the song was on an album – It was kind of hard finding information on this but I eventually found it on this site and decided to use Japan to Door to buy it.

Japan to Door were fairly expensive and it took awhile to come but I am definitely pleased with the service. It arrived a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been listening to it a lot since. It has easily become my favourite of the all the vocaloid related albums I own.

This the disk. I love the whole albums art design – the booklet is especially nice.

It also came with this postcard from the song ＊ハロー、プラネット。(Hello Planet) which is also on the album.

You can see a full track listing and listen to samples here. The main thing to note is that it features songs by Rin, Gumi, Luka and Miku as well as a few remixes by other artists. sasakure.UK has a really nice style and I fully recommend all his songs.

And now something different:

When I was looking for the song Campanella on youtube for this blog post last week (I didn’t get round to write the actual post though last week) I just typed it in and of course no related videos came up but I decided to watch one that did just for the hell of it. This was it:

Now I have always liked piano music but never really listened to much classical before, I really liked this piece – especially the ending. In fact I liked this so much I ended up buying one of Yundi Li’s albums off itunes. But yeah kind of a random thing to happen.

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.

On to the CD. It has seven tracks each around 5 minutes long – you can listen to some samples of the songs here (there are plenty of guides around if you need a niconico account)

The track listing is as follows:

1. みんなみくみくにしてあげる♪
2. ***にできたかな
3. 電気の恋人 -I am Programmer’s Song- /* VL-3901mkll *
4. server error
5. キミは何テラバイト? ~Chorus of 6 Vocaloids~
6. HATSUNEtive
7. Mimic me.

The first track is a long version of Miku Miku Ni Shite Ageru – one of the first Vocaloid songs I heard and I have to say I think this version is a lot better. Most of the tracks feature several Vocaloids which is nice to listen to.

The CD also comes with many extras.

This is the contents of the package – the CD with blank cover, a nice picture of Miku and a sleeve with a booklet and cover jackets.

These are the dress up jackets – you can put them in the Cd case as the cover, you can see which one I went with (Ignore the fact I put it in the wrong way round). I put the rest up on my wall as they are very nice artwork.

The other side of some the cards form this picture when put together. Although it’s a very nice picture I prefer to display the other sides.

This the special 40 page booklet, it contains things like the song lyrics and information about the producers.

This CD is easily worth the cost and I would definitely recommend it to any Vocaloid fan.

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.

So far I’ve narrowed it down to these points.

Xbox 360:

• Better online playing
• Lot’s of my friends have 360s
• Cheaper

PS3:

• Region free games
• Blu-ray
• Free online play

I know  there are a lot more points but I feel these are the main ones. Overall I think I’m heading more towards the Ps3 Mainly because I could play Japanese games so it would help my language practice. The online play doesn’t really influence me as I’m mainly into rpgs anyway.

I haven’t made a full decision yet as I won’t be buying one till after Christmas anyway but I reckon I’ll go for the PS3.

If anybody can give me any advice then I would like to hear it.

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.

Once I had the last kanji added I went around trying varies things to come up with a method that would suit me. This involved things such as Tae Kims grammar guide and KO2001 sentences on smart.fm. I didn’t last very long on these as I found them pretty boring and too much information to take in very quickly. I was lost at this point and wasn’t sure what to do next when I made the decision to buy the QRG and sentence pack from AJATT. This is incredibly useful, the sentence pack especially as the sentences are generally short and not overcomplicated.

I don’t think it would have been so good if I had just used the sentence pack form the beginning though. Things such as basic grammar points and the pronunciation of certain words that I picked up from Tae Kim and smart.fm definitely made it work better.

So my current method involves having as much Japanese input as I can and then looking through the sentence pack and picking out sentences I have heard then putting them into my anki deck. This seems to be going quite well and I can see my reading and listening skills improving already – although I know I’m still a long way off.

Now I’ll show some of my recent loot from yesasia.

The DS game is Kanji Sonomama DS Rakubiki Jiten, it is basically a Japanese-English dictionary – I haven’t used it a huge amount yet but I can tell it’s going to be useful.

Next are the CDs:

• Yui – My Short Stories
• Plastic Tree – Gestalt Hokai
• Polysics – We Ate The Show

I have been listening to them all a lot but my favourite is Polysics – The Cd comes with a DVD of one of their concerts and is incredibly good. These are some of my favourite songs -The videos are taken from the DVD:

These are some other DS games I bought – this time from ebay. I’ve mainly been playing Chrono Trigger as I found a complete script for it here. This means I can work through the game and any sentences I think sound good I can just copy and paste to anki. I’ve also started すばらしきこのせかい　(The World Ends With You), This was one of my favourite DS games in English so I can play the game without having to worry about the story or controls – I’m amazed at how many words I can pick out now. Zelda I’ve not started yet so can’t really say anything on that.

Finally theres this – a monolingual dictionary. It’s a bit too soon for me to start using it just yet but I can see myself using it soon.

That’s all for this post I will try to keep my progress more regularly updated.