Journal

Japan 2024

• Journal

I finally went to Japan! It was really nice. I found myself enjoying through both the ups and downs. Many things happened in the planning and execution of the trip. In this post I reflect on what happened, what I enjoyed and not, what I learned, and what I hope to do next.

Ideation

The initial idea was sparked many years ago (maybe it was 2019?), thrown around occassinally when chatting with Leo or with the Unyu group. But that idea stuck at being just an idea as there was no more concrete planning that happened since then. Also the Covid travel restrictions happened so I couldn’t really act on it int the past few years. Then last year around August, after more deliberations and encouragements, I took the risk and booked the flight tickets.

Once I booked the non-refundable tickets, the journey started becomnig real. I even thought of a quote from the anime A Place Further Than The Universe:

If you can still turn back, it’s not really a journey. When you hit the point of no return, that’s the moment it becomes a journey.

Hinata Miyake
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2023 in Review

• Journal

Welp, it’s the time of the year again to review the year.

This year, I definitely didn’t post much. In fact, it was the lowest number of posts per year since I started the blog. It can’t be helped I guess, since I had filled up my free time on many other stuffs.

Last year during 2022 in Review, I picked year of authenticity. However I’m not sure if I achieved that. I felt that without deep trust, it was scary and can be dangerous to do so. At times, I did open up and I was thankful that I did.

There were a lot of things happened in 2023, and most of them are not planned very far ahead. In a way, that’s not a bad thing, as I got to experience things that I normally won’t.

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Five Months Into Learning Japanese

• Journal

Earlier this year, after having gone on a vacation (in February), I found that my habit of listening to podcasts and reading books had been broken. During my commute, I didn’t feel like listening to podcasts or reading books anymore. Most of the time, I spent on just listening to music. However, after a few months, I felt like I could put in something more productive. That’s why on a fine day in April, I decided to learn Japanese.

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Seasons of Anime

• Journal

I haven’t written any post for a while now. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve been keeping a weekly journal of what I did over the week and this has been ongoing for several years now. In the past few months, outside of work, I’ve been quite occupied with watching anime.

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Sunset in KL

2022 in Review

• Journal

When 2021 ended, I picked 2022 as year of exploration: to discover new things, hidden or overlooked, places, food, or even knowledge. Looking back, it was really scary to break out from my shell of following routines. However, this year I learned a lot from such experience. This post will delve into three aspects: work, people, and health.

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2022 in Books

• Journal

Initially I planned to include this into the “year in review” post, but this section felt too long, so I separated it into another post.

This year, as tracked by Goodreads, I read 21 books (hmm, apparently they included 2-3 books that I didn’t finish reading). The number is comparable to the previous 1 or 2 years. When I work from home, there isn’t a set time to read book, so usually I don’t read. However, when working in office, I usually use the time for commuting to either listen to podcast or to read. Even so, this year, I felt less motivated to read books, but I discovered and read some great books.

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