Late Afternoon

Ooft, that was a whole month there. Was just updating a user profile and realised I hadn't touched this poor blog for quite some time. Where on earth did all that time go?

Oh, that's right, exams.

So it's all over now. Japanese was, surprisingly, not much of a problem, with all three exams proving strenuous but doable. Advanced Writing was especially lethal, with three hours of kanji and de-aru form rotting my brain out of my skull. Seemed to do alright, though. Linguistics was my bigger worry, being the lesser in terms of how good I am at it, but with so much reciting of old handouts I made myself sick the two days themselves went by with surprising ease. Did well there, too.

And that's it. That's my degree. If you're interested, it's a 2:1 I came out with, which I am thrilled with. I'll save the mushy acceptance speech for graduation proper, but I'll just say a big thanks to everyone, and congratulations to my fellow PPLS and J4 graduands.

So what's been going on since the end of school work? Well, JET's been a big part of life lately. After some truly nerve-wrecking deadlines to be met, everything's in and processed, and now my job is just to wait for placement. With Japan being in the state it is (here's to you, Japan) doing anything administrative is a tricky business, so I may be waiting a little while yet. But with orientation down in London on the 3rd July, time's of the essence. I have no problems with waiting, though, it's like my primary skill. I'm a level 47 waiter. Oh, wait, 'waiter' is already a word...

Relaxation, then, means video games! I've got three more games under the 'games I've completed' belt now: Riviera, a GBA J-RPG remake on the PSP (that was a lot of letters), which was pretty decent and well-made but ultimately without the epic finale that it deserved; Sengoku Basara 2: Heroes, for the J-PS2, for which I mean I did all the campaigns for it; and along with ally of justice Scorpio Dynasty Warriors 6 on the PC is also done. Sima Yi, I salute you. Next in line appears to be Dragonball: Advance Adventure on the GBA, a loaned game, which I should be able to finish off pretty soon. But I still find myself drawn to old uncompletables, namely Pokemon White (training a team to take down my girlfriend) and Elona. Also bought myself the game Terraria a little while back, which is proving to be quite excellent. What distances it from Minecraft, though, is it's sense of logical progression: get your copper tools, then silver, then gold, then kill some bosses until you've killed everything and acquired everything. What lets the game down is that this does feel like all there is to it, and right now I feel close to the end. There's a castle with an old guy who's actually a giant skeleton that one-shots you if you let the sun come up, and I'll be needing some help to get that thing killed. But then it's just strip-mine the castle and I'm done. There's not quite the same level of enthusiasm for just building dumb stuff like there is in Minecraft, which is a shame. That aside, if the staff can get multiplayer a little more stable when playing with people intercontinentally that'll be one MASSIVE point in the game's favour.

I was gonna go read in the Meadows today, but the weather's turned (again) and now I'd rather stay indoors and level up Gennes my elven gun-archer. She's pretty good, but for someone with Incredible Luck she doesn't half get a bum deal of mutations. Broken legs, colour-blindness, 'hasky' voice... Tch. Bring on the Potions of Evolution, I say; seven-league boots can wait.

Looking forward to tomorrow. I'll unfortunately not be able to attend the welcoming of Ps and Gs' three new members of staff at 5 as I'll be doing something far more important: making myself egg-shaped and sane-ifying rampant 1940s misogynists with knives for hands. That's... the misogynists who have knife hands, not me using them to sane-ify them. That'd just be stupid.

I tell you what, I've really been getting into Hatsune Miku lately. I remember first listening to some Vocaloid stuff a few years ago and not being fussed, but these days I'm all about the synthetic voice music! I like that it's a person's voice, but actually an instrument. Supercell's stuff in particular is just ace. I'd love to get my hands on Vocaloid 2 at some point; I'm sure I'd be far too thick to make anything resembling a song, but I'd like to try. Oh, I also listened to Orusuban by Bump of Chicken for the first time in ages yesterday, and found I understood way more of it than last time, and that it's a hilarious song.

Thing that's it. Going out food-shopping now. Let's see... pasta, tomato puree, potatoes, juice, mince, toothpaste, lettuce... I think that's it. Oh, onions and garlic. There we go. Quite a list, bag's gonna be heavy on the return journey.

Thanks for reading.