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Yearly Review: 2024

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Original language: Chinese . AI translations: English , Japanese .

In the 7th year of this blog, I finally wrote my first annual review

Ever since I built this blog, I’ve wanted to write an annual review. But every year-end when I was about to start, I’d feel my vocabulary was poor, my memory thin, and my real life too barren, as if there was nothing worth summarizing.
So I kept thinking and thinking. The year-end review in my head went from the solar new year all the way to the lunar new year. Always planning. Never writing.

This year things changed. Thanks to 12 Monthly Logs (each delayed by half a month), I actually have plenty of material for this 2024 annual review.
Maybe too much. It feels a bit hard to know where to start (so that’s why the 2024 annual review got dragged into February 2025

After thinking it over, I decided to follow the Monthly Log structure:

  1. Input and Output: what I watched and what I did in 2024
  2. Expenses: summarize my spending in 2024
  3. Finally: some mindset changes

Input

Books

In 2024 I mostly read technical books. I’m a latecomer and my skills are weak, so I need to patch up the fundamentals.

  • Beginner

    • 《网络是怎样连接的》、《计算机是怎样跑起来的》、《程序是怎样跑起来的》
      Three technical books written by Japanese authors. Easy to understand and highly recommended.

      Besides these three Japanese technical books, I also read 《インフラエンジニアの知識と実務がこれ1冊でしっかりわかる教科書》
      But after finishing, it felt like I didn’t read it at all. So-so. Not recommended.

  • Big picture

    • 《人月神话》、《松本行弘的程序世界》、《软件随想录》
      The Mythical Man-Month needs no introduction. A book published in 1975 and still not outdated.
      The author of the second book, Yukihiro Matsumoto, is the father of Ruby. It’s also pretty interesting.
      The third book is by one of the founders of Stack Overflow, with a humorous writing style and very readable.
      I feel these three books help build an overall understanding of what programming is. With a big-picture view, maybe it’s easier to dive deep into individual fields later.

  • Python

    • 《Python 工匠》
      I’ve wanted to learn Python (for years), but for various reasons, this was the only Python book I read this year.
      While browsing Python docs, I read Python Documents - Functional Programming HOWTO, which gives a brief intro to functional programming.
      I’d heard of it before; it was also mentioned in 《松本行弘的程序世界》 and 《软件随想录》. It feels like people are praising it everywhere. It made me curious.

  • JavaScript

    • 《Eloquent JavaScript》
    • 《MDN - JavaScript reference》
      I’ve wanted to learn JavaScript (for years as well). This year I finally took action.
      I did finish Eloquent JavaScript, but the latter half was basically me skimming; I didn’t fully understand it. (To be honest I can’t claim I fully understood the first half either…)
      For example, regex: only after I hit a real problem and came back to the chapter did I understand how to use it and why.
      Also metaprogramming and async: even now, I still don’t really understand how to use them. I need to keep studying.
      Eloquent JavaScript has wide coverage, but it still doesn’t cover a lot of JS knowledge. So I use MDN - JavaScript reference to fill gaps: look up what I don’t know.

  • Regular Expression

    • 《正则表达式30分钟入门教程》
      Regex is yet another thing I’ve wanted to learn for years. This time it was required at work, so it forced me to speedrun the learning.
      I pulled out this beginner regex tutorial that’s been collecting dust in my bookmarks for ages (strictly speaking, it’s an article, not a book). Combined with real needs, the results were significant. I feel like I’m about to take off.
      Aside from balancing groups / recursive matching (looks too complex and I don’t need it now), I fully mastered the other tricks in the tutorial, and can write all kinds of magical regexes to save my life.
      Life is short, learn regex

  • Elixir

  • Others

Anime

I finished 47 anime works in total in 2024 (including TV series and movies).

  • 2024 new anime recommendations (no particular order; just the order I finished them)
    僕の心のヤバイやつ
    ラグナクリムゾン
    デッドデッドデーモンズデデデデデストラクション
    ダンジョン飯
    変人のサラダボウル
    終末トレインどこへ行く？
    負けヒロインが多すぎる！
    きみの色
    化け猫あんずちゃん
    Robot Dreams
    葬送のフリーレン

  • Older works recommendations (same: viewing order)
    天国大魔境
    四叠半神话大系
    千年女優
    劇場版 少女☆歌劇レヴュースタァライト
    秒速5センチメートル
    響け！ユーフォニアム 劇場版
    雲のむこう、約束の場所
    Summer Wars
    楽園追放
    銀河鉄道999
    命运石之门 劇場版 負荷領域のデジャヴ

One nice thing about Japan is that older movies get re-screened often. In the older works recommendations above, besides the first two TV series, all the remaining anime movies were watched in theaters.
In the past I might have wondered why I’d pay to watch works from many years ago in a cinema. But now, on one hand I have a bit more money, and on the other hand, in this era of information explosion where everything competes for your attention, using watching a movie as an excuse to disconnect from the internet helps me focus on the work in front of me and immerse myself in the world the creators built.

Okay, the above is nonsense. The real reason is: watching on a computer really does make it easy to get distracted

Novels

I didn’t read many novels this year. Three that I found interesting: two Japanese light novels and one web novel.

  • 信者ゼロの女神サマと始める異世界攻略
    Not a power fantasy.
  • 黄昏色的咏使 Vol.1
    Only read volume 1. So intense.
  • 干掉男主的我被迫把自己卖给女主
    Does gender-swap yuri count as yuri? (deep thinking for 114514s

Live-Action Movies/TV

I watched 11 live-action movies/TV dramas. Four were quite good.

  • LA LA LAND
  • 東京ラブストーリー 2020ver
  • 青春１８×２ 君へと続く道
  • Civil War

Output

Blog

In 2024 I published 19 blog posts in total, and 12 of them were Monthly Logs.
If you exclude the monthly water posts, I actually produced 7 posts in 2024. (As for quality, it’s really just for myself to read.)
I did want to write some technical posts, but since my JavaScript and Elixir experience is still shallow, when I look back at new knowledge points after a few days, it often feels like “isn’t this just obvious common sense”? Is that common sense really worthy of a blog post…

But maybe it’s fine to write it anyway.

So I’ll just treat my 2024 blog theme as recording myself (

Photography

In 2024 I starred over 3,000 photos in my photo management software. The shutter count exceeded 10,000. The trash rate is as high as 70%.
After shooting this much, I guess my photography skills improved a bit (only for landscapes; portraits would get me beaten).

Here’s a photo I took recently: full moon + airplane. But the focal length is too short, so both the moon and the plane look a bit small.

The settings that feel most natural to me now are aperture priority + spot metering. When I need to control shutter speed, I switch to full manual.
Also, even though my A7C2 is already the lightest full-frame, I still hesitate before going out about whether to carry the camera. Bringing the camera means also bringing the camera bag, so the load+++
Currently eyeing Ricoh GR3 HDF

Since buying a camera, my blog images and desktop wallpapers have become 100% self-produced. No need to search images online, no copyright worries~
This Lunar New Year I had a random idea: I printed photos from trips with friends and made a few small photo albums as gifts.
In this electronic era where you can flip through countless photos by sliding a phone screen, I feel physical albums that you can see and touch, with only a few photos, have become precious instead.

I think this is a more interesting gift 😋 (whether the recipients find it interesting is another matter)

For printing photos, I use the self-service photo printers at Yodobashi or Biccamera. 50 yen per photo, not too expensive.
But even though the printer carries the Fuji brand, the print quality is… well, it prints.
The main issue is inaccurate color. The difference from what you see on a monitor is pretty large. The printer also increases exposure on its own, so a photo with normal exposure on my computer may end up with blown highlights in print.
Not sure if there’s any other more reliable (and affordable) photo printing service.

Expenses

“Where did the money go?” Ever since I developed the habit of bookkeeping, I never have that problem anymore. False. Every month when I review my ledger, I still ask: it doesn’t feel like I spent much, so why is the total so high?
Even if the month-end settlement makes your eyes go black every time, bookkeeping still has some benefits. At least it lets me clearly know where my money went: eat? drink? play? fun? (none of those, it’s rent).

I arrived in Japan in early 2023. My first-year spending fluctuated a lot and isn’t very representative. Now that life has stabilized, 2024 spending is worth analyzing a bit.
On one hand, it’s a review of last year’s spending, using data to understand what my spending patterns actually look like, instead of vague feelings.
On the other hand, it gives me an objective and measurable standard to evaluate future spending.

By the way, everyone’s spending concepts differ, so it’s not directly comparable. But if anyone is curious about cost of living in Japan, this example might offer some reference.

Basic situation: one person + one cat, working in Tokyo, no expensive hobbies, pretty homebody, and no travel last year.
Total spending: about 3 million yen in 2024.

The breakdown:

  • Clothing, less than 4%
    Less than 10,000 yen per month on average. Zero pursuit of clothing. MUJI, Uniqlo, plus BookOff solves everything.

  • Food, about 20%
    About 50,000 yen per month on average, including meals, drinks, snacks (rare).
    Also no pursuit of food. Too lazy to research cooking. If I go to the office, lunch is about 1,000 yen at some random place. Other meals are just “whatever” at home (I prefer semi-finished foods that take less time). I might eat out with friends 1-3 times a week.
    At 50,000 yen/month, it feels pretty normal. I have friends who spend 100,000 yen/month on food delivery, and I’ve also seen cases online where a family of three spends 40,000 yen/month.
    Food spending really depends on the person.

  • Housing, about 50%
    The biggest category, including rent, utilities, internet, and phone plan.
    These fixed costs take up half of annual spending, and they’re also costs you can’t really cut.
    My rent is on the higher side among my friends. The reason is: in Japan, keeping pets in a rental requires landlord approval; plus foreigners renting is hard mode to begin with. Hard on hard. The available listings are very limited.
    In the end I could only choose to pay more… and got this place with relatively convenient commuting: the modern salaryman standard studio (a mini pigeon cage).
    I’ve kept thinking about moving, but the moving cost (moving fee + initial rent fees) is too high. And if luck is bad, I might move and find the new place is even worse than my current pigeon cage. I’d regret it too late.
    So… I’ll just make do.

  • Transportation, about 4%
    In Japan, transportation costs can be recorded in a ledger. The cheapest JR base fare is 148 yen (after a 10-yen increase in 2023). It’s not rare for a round trip to somewhere far to cost over 1,000 yen.
    But salarymen have a benefit (?): the company reimburses commuting costs. If you buy a commuter pass (定期券), you might even be able to “share” it for weekend outings and save a few yen (
    I’m pretty homebody and don’t go out much on weekends, so most of this category should be commuting costs. (Even though it’s reimbursed, splitting it out is annoying, so I just record it all.)

  • Electronics, about 12%
    Looks a bit high (and it is a bit high). The main spending was a Sony GM 50mm F1.4 lens, which took up over 50% of my electronics spending this year.
    I just said I have no expensive hobbies, but photography gear doesn’t seem very friendly to wallets (

    I already have the excuses ready, like buy early, enjoy early; buy late, no discount anyway, photo gear definitely holds value, and the longer you use it, the lower the average cost, this is fixed-asset investment; the cost should be amortized by useful life across the yearly ledger (

  • Entertainment, about 5%
    Includes movies, exhibitions, events, merch, etc.
    I might watch two or three movies a month. I don’t buy big 2D merch (like figures) because my place can’t fit them.
    2D money is so easy to earn, but not that easy to earn from me

  • Other, about 5%
    Includes cat expenses (food, litter), some medical costs like occasional headaches/colds and regular dental clinic, plus other miscellaneous small expenses.

    No major illness this year, thankfully.

3 million yen per year, about 250,000 yen per month on average. Looking back, the spending level feels quite reasonable. I hope the new year (already 1.5 months in) continues like this~

Mindset Changes

Since I came to Japan in early 2023, it’s now been almost two years.

Year 1: Anxiety

Looking back now, in the first year my mindset was impatient. As a newcomer with my mute-level Japanese, daily life was actually quite difficult. Plus I switched industries to do IT, and my programming skill was basically zero…
I was anxious about how to quickly improve both my technical skills and Japanese. Whenever I met someone, I wanted to ask how they got started and whether they had advice for newcomers. Whoever I listened to sounded reasonable.
But neither technical skills nor Japanese can improve overnight. Looking back now, I was like a headless fly: anxious all day about how to do, but actually taking relatively little action…

Year 2: Lying flat Going with the flow

Not until year 2 did I feel a bit more relaxed. I stopped being overly eager for quick results. I allowed myself to slow down and steadily move forward at my own pace.
For Japanese, I feel there’s clear progress (maybe thanks to year-1 accumulation?), especially in listening: I can understand more. Speaking also improved somewhat, though it’s still “assembled Japanese”.
Technically, I started calmly learning JavaScript. I also figured out regex, and discovered Elixir, which looks very interesting.

Looking back now, some seniors who used to look amazing now feel just so-so. Some advice that sounded very reasonable now doesn’t necessarily seem correct.
More importantly, it increasingly feels like the overall level of Japan’s IT industry is kind of low… (or maybe it’s just because I’ve only touched low-level projects?)

Why do humans have to work?.jpg

In the second half of 2024, I joined a very “pure” Japanese-style development project.
Doing a bunch of useless work just to make the process look standardized, Excel-driven programming, striving for perfection on bullshit, etc etc etc…
These common things in Japanese IT projects gave me a hard lesson and made me feel what the emptiness of work is.

From the start of the project to about half a year in, some questions kept circling in my head:
What is the meaning of this job?
What is the meaning of life?
What kind of life do I want for myself?

Meaningless work content pushed me to think about these cliché questions I’d previously ignored. Even if I still can’t get a decent answer after thinking, some things did become clearer during the thinking.

  • For example, brands, luxury goods, fancy cars and mansions, those so-called success in worldly terms don’t seem very attractive to me.
    If 3 million yen can cover a whole year’s basic expenses, spending too much mental energy on work seems pointless.
  • Also: if one day I no longer need to worry about visas, and further, no longer need to worry about money, how would I arrange my time? What would I do?
    For this question, I only have some vague directions right now, no clear answer.
  • Speaking of time: I now feel time that belongs to myself is something I must consciously protect. Compared with spending energy to gain small advantages, or going to boring gatherings to meet a bunch of superficial friends, I’d rather spend that time watching anime, walking by the river, or even sleeping. The latter is truly making time work for myself.

So, the mindset change of 2024 can be summarized as:

  1. Evolving (or devolving?) from an energetic newbie into a corporate wage slave who feels like going to work is going to a grave. Why do humans have to work?.jpg
  2. What kind of life do I want to live? Still thinking.
  3. Being stingy with time that belongs to myself

Closing

Whether regret or satisfaction, or both, 2024 is over anyway.
That’s enough review. Next, let’s look forward a bit to 2025 (already 1.5 months in).

  1. To get one step closer to my ideal life, I hope in 2025 I keep improving my technical skills and Japanese
  2. I hope I and the people around me have no major disasters or illnesses, and stay healthy
  3. World peace

Besides improving technical skills and Japanese, everything else is basically bullshit (

So, one-sentence summary: improve professional ability & take good care of myself (and the cat).
That’s it.

それでは、ちょっと遅いけど、良いお年を〜