You might want to skip this one haha (it’s not very uplifting)
Post Update 1
Hellooooo everyone, I hope everyones been doing well at this challenge this year.
Unfortunately I cannot say that for myself, as I haven’t done a single day of speaking/writing.
The only time I’ve ever outputted was when I talked to myself in the shower for like 2 minutes extremely poorly, which I am unproud of.
I have started going to the gym for the first time ever in the last week, and that has taken up a lot of my free time, as well as my driving test that I am to do later today (and hopefully pass )
I can however say that the reading and listening challenges I’ve also entered have been much more of a success for myself. Reading has never been a challenge to do daily, but listening is quite a new habit I’ve been trying to hammer into myself.
Despite all this, there truly is no excuse to be skipping out on output, and I will try be more consistent with the days to come.
TL:DR I haven’t done a single day lol, but I plan to be more consistent
Sorry for the gloomy update, but I guess it hasn’t been going too well for me. Either way, any tips or motivation (from like the 1 person reading this haha) would be super appreciated.
I hope you all keep persisting at this challenge, and I will do my best to do so aswell.
Have a wonderful rest of your day
Next friday, there will be strong wind. During the day, the wind is expected to to be 80 km/hr, but the strongest winds will be 160 km/hr. Possibly, the power will go out. If that happens, because I live in a town, by Saturday, the power will be back. However, compared to usual wind here, Friday’s wind is expected to be stronger. Possibly for a long time, there will be no power. I hope that kind of thing doesn’t happen.
Today, Sony said they will stop making Blu-rays. After that, only one company will make Blu-rays. In the future, you’ll only be able to buy games as downloads. For movies too, you’ll have to watch on Netflix etc. Downloads and Netflix are convenient but, if other options aren’t there, I think it isn’t good.
Last year, the shops where you could buy games and movies shut down. If you want to buy a new Blu-ray, you need to buy it on UK Amazon. Furthermore, there are still stores to buy old movies, but because there aren’t new Blurays, in those stores you can only buy really old things. For example, last year, in those shops, there used to be 4 PS5 shelves, and 4 Blu-ray shelves. Now there’s one shelf for Blu-rays, and two shelves for PS4 and PS5 games. On the other shelves, ther are PS2, Xbox 360 and Wii games. In the future, these shops will close, I think.
Fell off on posting this week for sure… Not all that much interesting from me, though - a few sentences each day written both in Japanese and Spanish, as usual. I did get some speaking practice in for once, over the last weekend, though - I went to visit my parents and ended up reading some of my older entries out loud to them. And then got to listen to them be impressed about me learning another language. Every once in a while I enjoy showing off a bit, even if they don’t know Japanese, and I’m well aware of how much farther I have to go!
Here is today’s entry, for the sake of sharing something.
私の一番好きな食べ物はビーフシチュー。家族が子供の頃からずっと同じレシピを作った。材料はジャガイモや人参やグリーンピースやグリーンビーンズや牛肉です。料理するのは長くの時間がかかるけど、とても美味しい！
I ate pork at the restaurant.
I also ate beef at the restaurant.
Ms Yamaguchi did not eat.
Ms Yamaguchi drank tea.
I did not drink tea.
I drank draft beer.
I also drank water.
Last night, a strong storm came. Here there were 28 m/s winds, in other areas there were 38 m/s winds. As for the fastest speeds, they were 36 m/s here, and [the highest] anywhere in Ireland was 50 m/s. It was very scary! We rarely get winds that strong here. They were the fastest winds ever.
２０２５年１月２５日
Today I was really drawing a blank on what to write about, so I just wrote about the book I was reading.
Today, I was reading Ascendance of the Bookwarm. Four years ago, I watched the anime. It was really enjoyable. That time, I watched with English subtitles. Since then, I also watched the English dub. The anime only has parts 1 and 2. The novel has 5 parts. There is an English translation, but because I’ve been studying Japanese, I’m reading in Japanese. Two years ago, that was impossible. I’m reading the furigana edition, but because I can read it, I’m feeling kind of proud. This time, I started with part one. Today I was reading part 1 volume 5. For the furigana edition, each original volume becomes two volumes.
What!!?? I hadn’t heard about this - we’re seriously going to be stuck with streaming-only soon? Streaming is fine, but what about when you don’t have internet, or if there’s a series you like to keep watching over and over and the streaming service decides to drop it!?
For the moment, there are still other manufacturers, and movie studios haven’t announced they’re going to stop selling physical media in any extra markets (but, they already have stopped in Australia, much of Europe, etc., so the writing is on the wall I think). But Sony was the largest manufacturer of discs, as well as the biggest contributor to developing the format and they’ve announced they’re stopping all work on physical media.
I’m sure the companies are quite happy that they can charge you for continued access, unfortunately.
For me, the morning is very difficult. On days with work, I wake up around 8:45. That’s because work starts around 9. On days without work, I wake up around 11. Nowadays, I work from home. Because of that, commuting isn’t required. Until 2022, I worked in an office, but it was the Irish office of an American company. Because of that, on a normal day, there were many meetings at 18:00 or 19:00. Because of that, it wasn’t important to start at 9:00. The first meeting started at 11 or 12.
In 2022, I started working at a new company. The new company is a German company. Compared to Ireland’s timezone, Germany’s timezone is early. So the German people start early. Because of that, the first meeting is now 9. For me, this is difficult. However, work is finished at 17:00.
When I was a student, I used to wake up very early. School started at 9am, but the school was in another town. The bus time was 7:30. For the sake of being ready for the bus time, I used to wake up at 6:30. That was difficult then too. I would be sleeping on the bus. The time I arrived at the school was also very early. Sometimes, the school would still be shut. Generally, my friends would arrive an hour later.
Recently, Nvidia announced a new graphics card. It’s extremely expensive. 10 years ago, an expensive card was around €600. The new one is over €2000. I think there’s two reasons. Because of AI, Nvidia can sell cards targeted at businesses. Compared to customers, businesses have more money. Furthermore, customers also bought the previous expensive graphics cards. Because of that, high prices have become normal. For normal people who want to play games, this is difficult. Maybe PC gamers will start playing PS5 or Xbox games.
Still writing just a couple random sentences each day… Though I also did grammar lessons on Marumori each of the last 3 days, and read all the examples out loud. So I got a little bit of speaking practice…
My attempt to use one of the grammar points, ~わけじゃない, in writing:
私の弟は電車がすごく興味がある。私にとっては、興味じゃないわけじゃないけど、やっぱり別のことほど興味がある。例えば、龍やアニメや外国語の勉強することです。
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Every once in a while I enjoy showing off a bit, even if they don’t know Japanese, and I’m well aware of how much farther I have to go! 
