Time really does move too fast. Another year is nearly gone.
Post Structure
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Input
Learning: books/novels/good articles, videos/podcasts, any format, anything that feels rewarding after finishing
Anime: new shows / old shows, TV season / movies, notes on what I watched
Others: movies, TV series, etc., put here -
Random Thoughts
Maybe I will write down whatever I’m thinking -
Output
Maybe a blog, but I’m not good enough, so maybe I have no output for a whole month (lol) -
Travel
If I went somewhere, I’ll jot it down. If not, then whatever -
Misc
Small things that don’t fit in the categories above
Input
Learning
Eloquent JavaScript
I’m still picking through it rather than reading straight through, basically using it like a reference book and only opening the parts I need at the moment.
Regex in 30 Minutes
I’ve been using regular expressions a lot lately, and this beginner tutorial has genuinely saved me.
Together with the regex chapter in Eloquent JavaScript, it has gotten me to the point where I can throw things together pretty quickly in the browser console.
Once you actually learn it, it doesn’t even feel that scary, and it is absurdly practical.
つまづきやすい日本語
I occasionally read it, but lately technical books have squeezed out my Japanese-book time.
Learn Functional Programming with Elixir
All the usual selling points of functional programming, compact code, no side effects, easier debugging, have always sounded appealing to me.
I wanted to see how much of that was real, so I asked AI for beginner material and ended up with this short book, which seems to be fairly well regarded.
Elixir, I’m coming
Anime
- Watching
- 青之箱
I’ll definitely watch it later.
- 青之箱
I can’t keep up, I really can’t keep up. I haven’t watched anime for a whole month.
This is what the salaried-worker life does to a person .jpg
Others
Recent TV/movies. I try not to spoil.
Robot Dreams
That sweet stretch at the beginning, especially the roller-skating dance in the park, was beautiful.
The flower-field sequence in the middle feels almost weightless, like leaves riding the wind, and the imagination there is wonderful.
Then the final dance between the two of them comes back to rhyme with that scene in the park, and suddenly the whole film hurts in a very specific way: beautiful time that can never be returned to.
Even the robot’s smile at the end is hard to read. Is it genuine? Is it forced? I still can’t decide.
It stayed with me after the credits. Excellent story, and the music is fantastic too. It has a very strong presence all the way through.
楽園追放
There was a 10th-anniversary re-release recently. I had watched it many years ago, but I had forgotten almost all of the plot details. I had especially lost all memory of the back half, including the heroine’s jailbreak and the part where the machines dive into the atmosphere.
Watching it again, it barely felt like a film that came out ten years ago. It gave me the same feeling as the Summer Wars revival I watched “not long ago”: it still doesn’t feel old at all.
Then I checked my own blog and realized Summer Wars was back in July, which means nearly half a year has already passed. In my head it still counts as “the other day.” Terrifying. Why is time moving this fast.
Some of the film’s lines also hit harder this time. Before the final battle, the leads talk under the stars.
The heroine says the male lead has already done enough to ascend into the virtual world and free himself from the “cage” of the body.
But he questions the premise itself: you say you’ve escaped the limitations of flesh and gained unlimited freedom, but have you really? The virtual world still has finite memory, so everyone ends up fighting over scarce resources anyway. Being useful, doing useful things, becoming the right kind of person, that becomes the core goal of life. Memory is used as both bait and threat. People are violently divided into useful and useless, and the useless are Archived.
That isn’t a utopia. It’s just a more efficient machine.
What is the meaning of life?
Does life really have meaning?
What should I do with my life?
How should I live this life?
Lately, no matter what I do or what I watch, I keep circling back to those questions.
And every time, the answer is the same: I don’t know. The more I think, the less I seem to understand.
But there is one thing I am clear on: I do not want to spend the rest of my life selling my time, eight hours at a stretch, in exchange for a monthly salary.
For now, the short-term goal is simply to reduce how much time I have to sell just to maintain my life.
Back to the film itself: at the end, the robot heads into space, and the male lead tells him that he understands music, has emotions, and is more human than humans. So if that’s true, he might as well regard himself as human.
When both the humans on Earth and the humans in space have already abandoned those “useless” things and reduced life to bare survival, the robot is the one who ends up feeling more human.
Random Thoughts
Work drains people
I honestly don’t know whether I can adapt to this style of work in Japanese IT anymore.
Then again, maybe this isn’t only a Japan problem or an IT problem. Maybe most jobs are just this rotten.
So why exactly are human beings supposed to go to work? (
Output
None.
Travel
Ueno National Museum: Haniwa
The National Museum had a haniwa exhibition. はにわ, written in kanji as 埴輪, is one of those words that still tells me absolutely nothing no matter whether I see it in kana or kanji.
If I had to explain it badly, it’s like the ancestor in The Demon Girl Next Door.
All right, that explains nothing. Better to just look at the pictures.
This is what the poster looks like.
Two little guys at the entrance. They kind of look like the prototype of the ancestor… maybe?
Long sword, belt. Quite delicate, and you can see traces of time.
Poster girl poster brothers: the five clay-figure brothers reunited (one of them is in the US). Behind them is a background like an X-ray projection. The exhibition design is thoughtful.
Two simple face drawings carved out of the wall.
A little deer looking back.
By the time I came out, the rain had gotten much heavier. Before I was even fully out of the museum gate, the cuffs of my trousers were soaked and my shoes had already taken on water.
Just then, two girls hurried past. I guess they hadn’t brought umbrellas, because each of them was holding a tiny hand towel over her head, the sort of thing you would normally use to dry your hands.
It was extremely mean of me, but I almost laughed out loud. (Maybe I actually did.)
The attempt was just so gloriously unconvincing. And with a handkerchief on the head, they really did look a bit like tanuki wearing leaves.
Today’s moral points: minus one.
Japan Self-Defense Forces Marching Festival
I got lucky in the lottery for this event and ended up seeing an absurdly high-quality concert for free. Someone has uploaded the full recording to YouTube: 「令和６年度 自衛隊音楽まつり」 JAPAN SELF-DEFENSE FORCES MARCHING FESTIVAL 2024 【ノーカット版】
I had applied in the first place because I saw footage from previous years on YouTube. They had played plenty of anime tracks before, like Cowboy Bebop’s Tank and music from Suzume last year.
This year the program included The Witch from Mercury. There was also Gundam Unicorn, apparently, but I haven’t watched it so I couldn’t identify it. They also did Godzilla’s execution theme and something from Zelda, which I also failed to recognize because I have never played Zelda.
First time going to the famous Budokan. Photo for the record.
The stagecraft, smoke, lighting, all of it felt top-tier.
The guy on the far right was so delighted that he broke into a full “Houbun jump.” Incredible energy.
At the end, a light spot hit the upper-left of the red circle on the Japanese flag. It looks like a highlight on an egg yolk (
One more shot of the road sign and Budokan before leaving.
Misc
Nothing in particular…
Closing
The November log was delayed by almost another two weeks. Work really does wear a person down.
By the end of November, Christmas trees had already started appearing all over the city. Two weeks later, the atmosphere had only gotten stronger, but it still felt like something happening around me rather than something that had anything to do with me. I don’t really have a habit of celebrating Christmas anyway.
The only thing that actually cheers me up is the fact that I get a full nine days off for New Year. At last, a week of staying home like a proper hermit.
My current plan is to write the December Monthly Log and, once again, the annual review I claim every year that I am going to write.
After stockpiling twelve Monthly Logs this year, I should at least be able to squeeze one annual review out of them, right?
This is my second year in Japan, and I do feel that my mindset has changed quite a bit. I’m still confused, and I still worry about plenty of things, but this life that used to just drift along seems to be acquiring a little direction at last.
じゃあ、良いお年に〜
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