Well. I haven’t written here in awhile… just because I’ve been keeping my laptop in OSX mode and I could only previously write to my blog via linux on my laptop. I’ve been trying to work more on the iOS app and the easiest way to do that is to make my life easy. So I always leave my laptop with OS X and Xcode open.

Persona 5 is blowing my mind. It’s just… so good. I mean… I’m surprised by how much I’m enjoying it. That said there are some downsides. The classroom questions are… sad for me since my Japanese is lacking. I don’t want to play with a guide so I end up failing all the classroom questions.

I started streaming on youtube but I already got two strikes from atlus. Some guy from the company manually flagged my videos. Then he manually flagged the leftover videos he missed and now I have two strikes on youtube from the same company / person. Ugh. I guess I’m not meant to be a youtube star lol. Anyways… I switched to twitch to stream my video gaming. It’s mostly there for me to rewatch and learn Japanese.

I just had green tea ice cream. It was fucking delicious. That’s going to be my heal memory for the day. Just me enjoying delicious green tea ice cream and listening to beautiful music. I was feeling like I was getting a heart attack… I think I inherited the erratic heart beat from my grandfather. He would always be like… shit I’m getting a heart attack and then ask me to take him to the hospital. Then when he got there his heart would be back to normal. I feel that too.. it’s like my heart is beating really fast / struggling. But then it passes and then I’m alive. I always think I’m gonna die… but then I know that I’ll live. And if I did die from a heart attack - did you know your heart can randomly stop for no reason? It’s statistically possible. You could get a heart attack technically at any age. Anyways… so the weird heart feeling made me think of death. If I died in Tokyo… I think it’d probably be a few weeks / months before someone found my body lol. That’s kinda dark. But at the same time if I died… I don’t think I’d care if anyone / no one found my body.

Back to the greatness of Persona 5. I spoiled myself by looking at some of the guides. Basically you play the game day by day… and I looked up the final day of the game. Spoilers below: I kept thinking the game would end in December. I’m currently in October. I’m like… shit. I won’t have enough time to max my social links. Or my skills… so I’m thinking… how can I just prepare myself for new game+. In reality… the game ends somewhere in March/April. So I have an extra 90 days of amazing gameplay and grinding. But… what I wanted to mention was that the way I approach persona should be the same as real life. You just play it day by day. And each day you try to improve your stats / relationships. You don’t know when you’ll game over or when the game will end. It goes back to death. I mean… if I could know what day I’d die… I think I’d definitely play it differently. But since I don’t. I gotta play it day by day. I guess… I’m disappointed that I spoiled myself and changed my approach to the game. To optimize and whatever. The game is all about having fun… and I was having so much fun. Until I thought the ending was in December and I started rushing towards the ending. Rushing the game made me enjoy it less.

I’ve been struggling with the initial screen on iOS for the longest fucking time. Programming… is a really weird thing I think. Because it’s like.. everything is easy when you figure it out. It’s impossible / retiredly hard because you don’t know. Until you figure it out. Almost every problem is a 0 -> 1 problem. You go from nothing… to knowing it. It’s compounded when you’re working with new technologies. So basically… I was being an idiot. I tried to build an iOS app the fancy way. Fancy being modular, following best practices. When you first start… just build it shitty. The first step should always be keeping it simple and easy. I got stuck… and really sad. Well. Sad isn’t really the word… it’s more like. I put in effort with no visible results. And then I went fuck it. Destruction -> start anew. Then I figured it out when I started anew.

Wow. It’s already December. That’s kinda crazy. I still need to get the iOS app built and shipped for December. Yakuza 6 and Final Fantasy XV are in my backlog. I think I’ll play Yakuza 6 first since FFXV is out worldwide and everyone is already streaming it. Also I have really fond memories of playing Yakuza 5 last December. When I took my 3 weeks off from work just to play Starcraft 2 and Yakuza. That was dope. What’s more dope is that I’m fucking living in Japan. Damn. It still blows my mind.

I had chocolate chip melon bread. Also chocolate melon bread with chocolate chip and chocolate creme. It kinda blows my mind that I’m playing Persona 5… in Japanese. So far I’m understanding like 90% of it. I understand pretty much all of the main story. Well… I fill in the Alan translations of when I don’t understand. But I’m pretty sure my guess is pretty accurate. There’s also a lot of fluff / general dialog that you can just guess.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in manga cafe just reading shounen since… it’s a good way to learn kanji. Learn from the furigana. The furigana is fucking small. Like… I struggle to read it with glasses and with the book like… right next to my face. My uh… manga sense is so strong. That I can predict what will happen with crazy accuracy. I started reading magi and at first the first volume took me like 3 weeks. Then the second volume took me 2. The 3rd volume I finished in one 3 hour sitting. I could probably read it faster if I skimmed… but I make an effort to read each symbol. I could predict the page when a character was gonna die. You know when an old person is like - I want peace and I’ll be a nice person. I gotta trust the other side blah blah blah. My life has been good. I gotta protect the future -> They gonna die. It’s basically their death monologue. Well. All stories basically follow the same archetype. I guess that’s why they call it shounen.

I talked to the NHK guy today. I was really fucking confused. He knocked on my door and was like. I’m from NHK. You have a TV? I’m like yeah. He’s like. You gotta pay. Get your credit card and sign contract. I’m like. DAFAQ?! He hands me a pamphlet in English. I read it over and it says you need to have a receiver with the intent of receiving a signal. So I’m like. It says I don’t have to pay because I’m not receiving shit. He’s like no. You gotta pay. You have TV? You gotta pay. I wasn’t gonna sign shit that I didn’t understand and give him my credit card and I think he knew that so I told him to come back tomorrow.

I looked up the information. Basically it’s like a mandatory tax that’s fucked up. They tax you in a roundabout way. The language is weird. There’s no penalty for not paying. So - fuck it. I ain’t paying shit. The weird thing is… I guess there was a time when I would’ve been pressured into just paying it to get the guy to fuck off. Now I can just tell him to fuck off. I guess I’ve grown into an asshole. He’s only doing his job. I’m not pissed at him or anything… but I’m kinda looking forward to telling him to fuck off.

I finished all 3 seasons of black mirror in one week. It’s so crazy scary and good. I’ve been watching it English with Japanese subtitles. It’s kinda cool that I can read about 60% of the subtitles in Japanese now in the short time that it shows up on the screen. And for characters that I can’t read / pronounce properly I know the meaning / can guess the meaning via Chinese and the character composition. Thanks grandma for teaching me Chinese as a kid.

So I’ve been reading Norwegian Wood by Murakami and I’m currently on Chapter 4. I read the Japanese first and then read the English translation. So in chapter 3… I read penis, vagina and orgasm in Japanese katakana. I was like… what the fuck am I reading. I knew what I was reading… it was the main character describing a sex scene. But it was not what I expected. It feels like I’m reading erotica / harlequin. Basically - it feels like I chose the wrong Murakami novel to start with since it feels very shoujo-esk. My understanding of the Murakami novel is about 40%. I only understand the general plot… but not the finer details.

The thing is… reading the English translation. The English translation of Norwegian Wood. It’s fucking beautiful. It just reads like art. It blew my mind. I read chapter 3 in Japanese… and then I read the English translation. The brilliance of the translation / writing made my eyes water. It was literary genius. My English reading could appreciate the English translation - I can’t wait until my Japanese level can appreciate the true Japanese literary work. I took me 9 hours to read chapter 3. It took me like 30 minutes to read the English translation. So… my English : Japanese speed is 18x. Damn. Plus comprehension and appreciation. Damn. I think the translation of Murakami… it was more of the style as opposed to the substance. The underlying plot isn’t bad.. but it’s plain. He just has a way with words that makes it so eloquent. That’s the word I guess I’m looking for.

I guess that’s it for now. Going to be taking December off to focus on getting my app out the door. I planned it so that the first iOS and android app is more of a warm up. It’s just to put in the quantity. Build my first standalone app and get it on the store. Then 2017 is when I start on real projects that I want to sell. Okay. I guess I’ll just write whatever I feel like in Japanese instead of attempting to translate it.