Christmas? I am so happy about this information
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Christmas is in 19 days! Woohoo! I am so happy about this information! 🤨
As I approach the golden age of around thirty , I find this weekly blog thing to be quite useful in reminding myself of what I have achieved over the past month and also what I had for dinner last night. Storing highlights of my life in RAM might have been feasible when I was in my late teens, but even moments that I want to be burnt into the retina of my eye will start to slip away as I gain a new tree ring (they probably show on my waist as fat deposits).
With that, I'd like to tell you about the non-IIDX, non-idle time of my life in November:
MIKU EXPO 2024 Melbourne
I don't think I've wish for anything more than a Miku concert in Australia when I was 12. Although I haven't been following VOCALOID and just anime stuff in recent years, I'm very happy that things have been getting more and more accessible to the English speaking world, to the point that we're starting to see artists plan their visit to Australia in their world tours. I knew I had to go to this one in particular, even if it's just to fulfill my childhood dream.
I actually really enjoyed the concert! It had a good mix of old and new songs, and it felt very inclusive to old farts like me. I was really surprised to learn that Kokoro and Fire◎Flower made it on the set list. Kokoro is a personal favourite of mine, and I got a little too excited hearing the jingle at the start. Luka Luka★Night Fever was another highlight of the concert - the energy is really strong for a live setting haha!
I cried a little inside when I heard the Unhappy Refrain-esque intro, leading into Unknown Mother Goose. I think I screamed a little too hard. That was probably one of the highlights in my entire life. I really love wowaka...Can they play it one more time please 🥺
Overall, I did not regret going at all. I would really like to experience the hologram concert another time though. If she comes to Australia again, I think I might go again!
JLPT N1
This was very overdue but I finally registered in time to take the N1 this year. I barely prepared other than 6 years of browsing on Twitter since I got the N2, but still felt very comfortable with the grammar, reading and listening sections.
Funny story because this was a bit after the MIKU EXPO, I managed to figure out two of the vocab "read this word" questions through VOCALOID songs, namely Vampire (okay I knew the word way before the song) and Senbonzakura (from the yoji jukugo).
I haven't really decided what to do with this certification though. My spoken Japanese is nowhere good enough for work purposes, although I suspect it might not matter as much for tech jobs.
Game Off 2024
For this year's yearly game jam, I did a game jam for the latter half of November. This will be getting its own blog post when I got the time, so I won't go into details here.
Conclusion
I managed to do a lot of things outside IIDX this month, and I'm glad to take some time off from the game to focus on other parts of my life. There will be a small IIDX update soon, but again I don't think it will be my focus this month, other than going back to a regular operating schedule.
Hopefully generating more content for this blog will be enough reason for me to go out there and do more stuff with my life, even though I don't have much plans for this month and I'm already almost in holiday mode. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas break. Til next time!