First school week!

My first week at school is over, and we seriously went through all of hiragana in that one week, along with some "survival-japanese" phrases (stuff like ordering at a restaurant, asking for directions, and shopping). We even had a test at Friday, which I think went really well. Tomorrow it's the same deal as this week, just with Katakana I bet. They really weren't kidding about it being an intensive course!

Also went to an Izakaya, which was great! Lots of drinks, food and happy people! We ate liver, the small intestine of chicken, shark-sushi and some kind of vegetable that I was told was similar to natto in texture. It all tasted really, really good! Until next post, stay safe and have fun!

Status Update: January

Another post, weeks later than planned. To compensate for this, I got some surprises planned! You can read more about it at the end of this post.

First off, I just want to write about some "recent" events. I celebrated New Years with friends, and was over at my best friend's place afterwards. Saw a couple movies and had a great time. He has since then, gone back to England where he studies Chinese and English, and was kind enough to lend me his PS3 while he's gone! Because of this, I can now play the PS3 games I own physically, because my own PS3's disc drive is dead. I'm planning on getting that repaired after I return from Japan. I've also worked on learning Hiragana and Katakana, and I'm now able to write them from memory.

So, thanks to my best friend, I've been playing Tales of Xillia. I've spent 20 hours in it so far, and I love every second.  If you have played a Tales game before, you know what to expect. Very likeable characters, funny and sad moments, a lot of characterization and an epic tale spun around it all.

As I wrote on my previous post, Valkyria Chronicles 3 got an English translation patch, which is amazing. I've spent about 23 hours in that so far, decided to slow down on it, since I'm going to the US in February for the Daytona 500. That's a NASCAR event, for those of you not in the know about motorsports. Will most likely have a lot of time to play it then on the flight.

Speaking of handheld gaming, I recently got back into Persona 4: Golden. Still got a lot of stuff to do in that game. The "Hardcore Risette Fan" trophy is still eluding me, but I'm feeling confident that I'll be able to get it this time through the game.

When it comes to anime, I recently finished re-watching Clannad and Clannad: After Story (for the 15th time... It still gets me right in the feels,) before moving on to the anime version of Tales of the Abyss. I'm happy to see that they reconstructed the game into an anime so faithfully. If you've played the game, you can easily tell which location they are at, and where they are heading. It is by far the best makeover from game to anime I've seen to this date.

Luke might just be my favourite RPG character, ever.

As I stated earlier, I do have a couple of surprises coming up. One is still a secret between me, Black Ragdoll and a friend of mine, while the other surprise will be out in less than a week as a new post! It will have lots of pictures, and definitely be a post us collectors might appreciate more than others.

Hard times ahead.

Hello again! I'll just cut right to the chase here. Ace Combat Infinity didn't have a release date on September 25th after all. Rumors abound, some say it got delayed, others that it was the date for the Japanese beta-test.  Massively disappointed, and I'm sorry for just adding fuel to that fire... Anyway, at Tokyo Game Show just a few days ago, they put out a new trailer, this one with some length and story elements in it.

I've been studying some more Japanese recently, after a break on two weeks (mostly due to work). I've gotten around to learning て-form (Te-form), and I've started to work on Katakana. I thought Hiragana was bad when it came to characters looking a lot similar, but Katakana is much worse, haha. Seriously, just look at Ke ケand Ku ク. Damn. Well, it's not like you can learn any language in a day anyway, right? Got to put in some work for that reward.

On the anime front, I actually completed WataMote today, which marked my 150th completed anime according to My Anime List. That's a pretty big milestone, but at the same time I've seen a lot of people with tons more completed anime on their lists. I found WataMote to be really, REALLY funny, but I was slightly disappointed in the ending. Definitely worth a watch if you want something short to just laugh to. Ended up giving it an 8/10 (That's the equivalent of "Very Good" as I use the same scores as My Anime List). It's a series I could re-watch at a later time with someone who hasn't, purely for the laughs.

What?! No perfect 10?!

I'm not even halfway done with Azumanga Daioh, so there's still quite a wait time for that mini-review I'm afraid. Sorry! Anyway, that's it for this post. Stay tuned for more, and stay safe!

Day 1...

First off, don't expect daily posts. I'm just trying to give this snowball a bit of speed to get rolling. I thought I'd try to give some more detail as to what is going on around me as of recently. Here goes!

When it comes to life in general, I've finally finished most of the paperwork for my application to a school in Japan, and I'll most likely send it in before the week is over. If all goes well, I'm off to Japan for an entire year! I've also started on studying Japanese, and I've mastered Hiragana thanks to Namasensei on youtube. For those interested, I put part one right under this paragraph. Sure, he uses a lot of foul language, and is mostly drunk on camera, but he actually knows what he is talking about and uses simple and easy to remember learning techniques. In other words, he's a perfect teacher for a simpleton like myself!

Other than that, I've had to take a break from gaming on my PC. Turns out my memory is having issues, so there's a lot of Blue Screens abound when gaming. Going to return the memory, and hopefully get new ones today/this week, which should then allow me to put up more stuff on my Youtube channel (which currently holds the grand sum of two videos from War Thunder...)!

I guess that's another thing to elaborate on. I'm a fan of warbirds, from the symbolic World War 2 planes like the P-51 Mustang and the Spitfire, to the more modern F-15C and the A-10C Warthog. Speaking of the Warthog, I might get some video footage of that on Youtube eventually, as I've been playing Digital Combat Simulator (DCS) A-10C Warthog a lot. Don't worry, I've been flying in DCS for half a year now, along with some friends, so we know what we're doing (at least most of the time...).

                                                 Takes some time to get to know these buttons...

Other than that, there's a birthday party I'm gonna attend this weekend, and I discovered a new teaser-trailer for Ace Combat Infinity (which is at the bottom of this post), so I got that to look forward to. Until next time, stay safe!