Early in the month, when I visited a mall and saw stores like Tokyo Hands and MUJI already putting out 2025 planners, I could clearly feel that 2024 was nearing its end.
Post Structure
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Input
Learning: books, novels, essays, videos, podcasts. Any format is fine as long as it feels worthwhile after finishing
Anime: new shows, older shows, TV anime, movies, just a running log of what I watched
Others: films, dramas, and everything else that doesn’t fit the first two categories -
Random Thoughts
Maybe I’ll write down whatever has been circling around in my head -
Output
Maybe a blog post, though at my current level it’s still entirely possible to go a whole month with no output at all ( -
Travel
If I went somewhere, I’ll write it down. If not, then there is nothing to report -
Misc
Small things that don’t fit anywhere else
Input
Learning
Eloquent JavaScript
Welp. I didn’t study JavaScript at all this month (
はみだしの人類学 ともに生きる方法
I started this little book last year, read the opening, and then completely forgot about it.
Recently I picked it up again and resumed, half as actual reading and half as Japanese study.
Some of the perspectives in it are genuinely interesting. Once I finish, I’ll整理 it into a short note and post that too.
Dug a new pit again (
Anime
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Watching
- 败犬女主太多了
Finished airing, cue the applause. The production quality stayed high the whole way through.
It isn’t flawless, but it is more than good enough to recommend.
I still didn’t fully understand Komari’s emotional turn in episode 11, and to be honest I also never completely clicked with the conversation between the protagonist, Yanami, and Sosuke back in episode 4.
Episode 12 is an anime-original installment that basically turns into a Toyohashi tourism video. The animation is lavish, Yanami’s little expressions are adorable, and Komari’s total line count for the episode is one immortal 「し…死ね」 🤣
- 败犬女主太多了
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Paused for now
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恶魔的破坏 (DEAD DEAD DEMON’S DEDEDEDE DESTRUCTION)
Abbreviated asデデデデ. The TV version is CR exclusive, started airing in May, and I almost forgot about it.
I’ve already watched the movies, so I don’t really want to follow the TV version, even if it has quite a bit of new content (
I’ll catch up after the TV plot surpasses the movies (catch-up list +1I saw comments on bgm saying the ending of the movie’s second part is original, and the TV version might follow the original manga plot.
No wonder I felt the movie’s ending was so warm…If I’m not satisfied with the TV ending, I’ll just treat the movies as the true ending -
义妹生活
Higher than expected. An art film. -
魔法少女与恶曾是敌人
Getting a bit tired of it.
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Dropped
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鹿乃子大摇大摆虎视眈眈
No motivation to continue. -
靠废柴技能【状态异常】成为最强的我将蹂躏一切
I’ve read the novel. The anime production is okay, but I’m not that interested anymore. -
這是妳與我的最後戰場，或是開創世界的聖戰 第二季
production-collapse special。 -
學姊是男孩
Watched two or three episodes. After the novelty wore off, I didn’t want to keep following ( -
杖与剑的魔剑谭
The plot is too dumb. Is this really by the same author as Danmachi? -
我要【招架】一切～反误解的世界最强想成为冒险家
Not interesting.
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Added to catch-up list, maybe I’ll watch later (copium
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物语系列
Too many previous works. -
小市民系列
Same author as Hyouka. Heard it’s pretty quiet. -
擅長逃跑的殿下
Heard Umehara team production is strong.
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Dropped after 1 episode
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疑似后宫
No plot. Boring. -
不时用俄语说真心话的邻桌艾莉同学
Well-made industrial sugar. The OP visuals are carefully produced, the ED is half-assed, and the plot is too boring. Can’t keep watching.Turns out the ED isn’t half-assed: it changes each episode. Still boring though, not watching.
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异世界自杀小队
Cheesy. Dropped after 1 episode.
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In the July season I only finished one show (败犬女主). Not sure how the October season will go.
Others
Recent TV/movies. I try not to spoil.
機動警察パトレイバー 劇場版
A 1999 animated film directed by Mamoru Oshii.
The dialogue is fairly dense, and there were a lot of places where I simply couldn’t follow it.
On top of that, I haven’t watched the Patlabor TV series, so I didn’t recognize a single character on screen.
The result was that I spent most of the runtime in a state of complete confusion. Utterly cooked.
Random Thoughts
Time
Recently I’ve felt a small shift in my mindset, especially in how I think about time. I’ve become more “selfish” in the sense that I want to protect time that belongs to me.
I wandered around in that feeling for a while, struggled with it for a while, and eventually squeezed out a few cliché sentences. I had originally intended to put them here, but unfortunately the margin was too small to contain them.
So instead I opened another new draft, tentatively titled What kind of life do I want to live (at 2024), riffing on Miyazaki’s film title.
This particular pit probably won’t be filled anytime soon (
A Japanese student in Shenzhen was killed by a Chinese man
2024-09-18: A ten-year-old student at Shenzhen Japanese School was killed.
It’s heartbreaking. A life of only ten years ended like this.
By the way, 2022-09-18: during COVID in Guizhou, a transfer bus rolled over, killing 27 people.
I saw news on Twitter saying the boy was attacked in front of his mother, and the attacker only targeted the child and didn’t attack others.
I recall a harsh line: “People often bully the weak and fear the strong.”
The attacker’s motive? For any normal person who has lived in mainland China for a while with eyes open, it’s hard not to see it as the product of years of hate education by the Party-state.
An isolated case? Like I said above, we’re all Chinese, no need to pretend to be an outsider: whether it’s one rat turd or a pot of rat turds, everyone knows.
Impact? Imperialists ran away with their tails between their legs (taking foreign capital with them), while the Party-state marched from one great victory to the next.
After the anger comes helplessness and sadness. I don’t really want to say much.
After Dr. Li Wenliang died in 2020, I wrote a sentence: “No one is innocent.”
At the time it felt like an emotional outburst, condemning everyone with one stick, perhaps too extreme.
But I never deleted it. It’s still on the Kassadin’s Blog - About page.
This time I can repeat it again: “No one is innocent.”
The title of this section was originally
深圳日本人学生遇害, but it didn’t feel quite right.
After thinking, the short phrase遇害makes theperpetratordisappear from view and become invisible.
So I changed遇害to被中国男子杀害. It looks a bit wordy, but I think it’s more precise.
Output
Opened several new pits, but haven’t filled any of them (
Travel
Tokyo Photographic Art Museum
Went to an exhibition. The name was:
いわいとしお×東京都写真美術館
光と動きの100かいだてのいえ
―19世紀の映像装置とメディアアートをつなぐ
https://topmuseum.jp/contents/exhibition/index-4818.html
The name is as long as a Japanese light novel title
What I liked most was how many small things there were that you could actually touch and play with. It made the whole exhibition feel very participatory.
Seeing this kind of thing in person is completely different from looking at it through a screen.
The most impressive exhibit was 岩井俊雄 《時間層Ⅱ》 1985年.
When it’s still, it feels slightly sanity-damaging. Once it starts moving, though, it becomes weirdly, idiotically cute.
Chemicals for developing film. The packaging is so interesting.
I also checked out another one: 今森光彦 にっぽんの里山.
Just a landscape photography show, split into four areas by spring/summer/autumn/winter.
Some photos were truly great. Some others made me think, “that’s it? I could do that too” (
Riverside Walk
The temperature finally dropped enough that I could occasionally go for walks again.
Evening light is really good.
Misc
Planner
I bought a 2025 planner, so this seems like a good chance to write down why I bother keeping one in the first place.
What do I record in the planner?
Simply: what I did each day.
For example: watch anime, zone out, kill time, scroll videos, read, walk, eat, sleep, be a wage slave.
Why keep a planner?
I started keeping a planner because my memory felt too unreliable. I can usually drag a few details back from two or three days ago.
But once you get to last week, last month, last year, the blur sets in fast. No matter how hard I try, I can usually only recover a few broken fragments.
Sometimes something feels like it happened just recently, and then I realize it was actually weeks ago.
Sometimes I’m not even completely sure whether something happened at all.
So I write it down. Otherwise those tiny memories will probably just vanish forever, and it feels as if part of that past time goes missing with them.
Once I actually started recording things, it really did create a certain sense of security. I know I can always open the planner and check where I went, what happened, and what I was doing.
That said, the truth over these past few years is that I have looked back at old planners only a handful of times. Most of the time I am too lazy to revisit them (
Which planner do I use?
For 2024 I bought MUJI’s planner. When I first bought it, it felt pretty good and basically met my needs.
But unfortunately I later visited Tokyo Hands and found a new world: so many different kinds of planners. I regretted buying the MUJI one.
But it’s already bought, so I just used it.
After waiting a whole year, it’s finally planner-buying season again.
This time I carefully selected and finally bought the NOLTY 「エクリ Plus B6」 series, product number 2313.
Pros of this notebook:
- Vertical timeline
I’m already used to a vertical timeline.
I saw products with a horizontal timeline, but they feel inconvenient. I don’t want to write vertically. - Latest time goes to 24:00
A timeline from 7:00 in the morning to 24:00 at night.
The MUJI one I use now only goes to 22:00, not enough for a night owl. Sure I could write below it myself, but it’s still extra trouble. - Minimal design, looks okay
The cover only has the recessed word2025. Simple and low-key.
The MUJI notebook is even more low-key: you can only see2024on the cover with reflected light.
The inner layout and formatting are also simple. Some other products are too flashy. - Nice cover texture
The cover is thin, light, and soft. Feels good.
The only downside so far: the pink cover is a bit hard for me to hold (
Personally I prefer the blue cover color in the same series, but the blue notebook’s inner pages use a horizontal timeline, which doesn’t meet my needs.
I looked left and right at the counter and realized the cover color and inner format are completely bound together. You can’t freely mix-and-match.
When I have money in the future, I’ll buy both: take the blue cover and the pink inner pages and combine them
Another seemingly famous brand is 「手帳は高橋」. I touched a few and felt the cover was too hard. Not only did it feel bad, but twice when I reached for a notebook on the shelf, I thought my fingers got cut.
Keeping my distance.
Cat Spay
I finally got the cat spayed after putting it off for an absurdly long time.
I had hesitated over whether to let her have one litter first and only then do the surgery, but realistically I don’t have the time or energy for that anytime soon, so in the end I just went ahead with it.
The pre-op checks plus the surgery itself came out to a little over 50,000 yen, which seems to be fairly standard for a female cat. Male cats apparently only need around 10,000 yen for the much simpler version.
I deliberately chose a clinic where she wouldn’t need to wear an Elizabeth collar afterward, because not being able to groom would have been miserable for her.
Not long after the operation she was already bouncing around like usual again. Once it’s done, it’s done. She has now become an eternally seventeen-year-old beautiful girl.
Closing
I read a pile of web novels, didn’t study any JavaScript, and more or less coasted through the entire month (
Happy time is almost over.
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