2025 Roundup

It's Christmas Eve, and I've come to the co-working space by the sea, featured in my profile pic, to reflect on the past year, with just a couple of weeks left until the end of the year.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I left my job at the end of 2024, and have been unemployed all year this year. I think a year of downtime, maybe call it a late gap year, is enough, and I've managed to line up a new job for the beginning of January, so it's back working for the Man for 2026. I managed to arrange it that I was unemployed for exactly the length of 2025. The year of NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training). Nevertheless, I've had quite a packed year and have not passed up on the probably once in a lifetime opportunity to have a whole year to myself, in relative (but not perfect...) health, without any financial worries.

Warning: this post contains gratuitous pictures of yours truly.

January

In January, I kicked the year off with a visit to Huis Ten Bosch in Nagasaki prefecture, a reconstruction of various Dutch towns. It's a pretty unique if slightly surreal place, but a nice place to while a day away. Besides the faux cityscape and some somewhat cheesy attractions, they also had an impressive Escher exhibition with plenty of "originals" - if you can call a litograph an original.

Me, looking at the art.

Another highlight in January was a visit from my brother and his wife. Well, they didn't visit me, they announced they were going to Kyoto. So I went up and dragged them around - having lived there for a couple of years, I think I was a pretty good guide, if I do say so myself.

February

February is plum blossom season. The plum trees themselves are a bit scrawny, but the flowers are nice. The best thing about them is the sweet smell that fills the air.

*Photo is actually from 2022, but I didn't get as good a photo this year, and they're the same every year :p *

On a personal note, February was mostly offering emotional and logistical support to the girlfriend, who was aiming to pass an exam to help her further her career. This was take two after just coming in under the bar last year. I rented a car and drove her to the test centre - she was the first one there and this time passed with flying colours. I may have snuck out for a Ruben sandwich at the local Austrian bakery while she was busy being examined...

March

Lots happened in March. First, I'm a regular attendee of Nerd Nite Kyushu, and the event this month was another fun one. I've also done two talks at these events myself, available on Youtube. I believe I went to four or five of these events this year 🤓.

I also had a few nice weekends away to Saga and Nagasaki prefectures. In Saga I visited the small village of Okawachiyama, as well as the nearby Porcelain Park. In Nagasaki, a trip to Hirado, the old Dutch (and English) trading site before Japan closed off its borders and isolated the westerners on an island in Nagasaki city. Another highlight was the best Yakitori I've ever had. It was done like a proper sushi restaurant, except the food was chicken. I won't inline the image, but if you want to see a photo of chicken ovaries with partially developed eggs attached, here it is.

The main event in March was the parents visiting. I met them in Tokyo, we went up the Skytree, went drinking in Shinjuku and Akasaka, took the bus to Mt. Fuji and back, flew down to Fukuoka, hired a car, climed Mt. Yufu, visited Kumamoto, back to Fukuoka, and finished up on Ishigaki island in Okinawa.

Here's me and Dad part way up Mt. Yufu.

And here's Kabira-bay in Ishigaki.

I may have left the parents on the beach while I went to geek out at the VERA blackhole telescope that triangulates with similar facilities across Japan, and the more traditional observatory while I was at it.

April

The biggest lasting achievement of the year, I made this blog! I'm so glad I did, as it's allowed me to share some thoughts throughout the year, mostly soul-searching about AI, but also some technical and other thoughts. The most popular post by far is my guide to setting up Actual Budget on a Synology NAS, thanks to it being linked from their official documentation, which being open-source, I may have put there myself...

I really do enjoy the seasonal flowers in Japan. April is Rhododendron (wtf, English. In Japanese they're called Tsutsuji, much more sensible) season. I also took a trip to the Kyushu National Museum to see the Haniwa exhibition, which was much more interesting than I expected!

May

I turned 40 years old in May. Phew. Hopefully I've got another 40 more to go, at least? I stopped drinking alcohol this month, and have not had a drink since! If I stay this way, I started drinking when I was 25, so that will have been 15 years of drinking. I'll see how it goes - if I can get over some health concerns, I might take it up again, because it is tasty and fun. But I'm a bit of a hypochondriac, so not sure I'll ever not be worried about some health thing or another...

Probably the highlight of the month, except 40 laps of the Sun, was the visit to the Toto toilet museum in Kitakyushu 🚽

June

Nagasaki Bio Park is really great. It's a zoo, but they mostly have less glamorous animals, and usually not caged. You can walk right up to most of them! Look at this bat.

This photo was right before the monkey decided to decorate the back of my shirt with feces...

July

Took the girlfriend for her first trip to the UK. We visited London for 3 days, then I rented a car and drove down to the south coast, saw the white cliffs, then drove up the Cheddar (of the cheese) Gorge, visited Cardiff, the Cotswolds, checked in with the folks in Northampton, had a day-trip up to Alton Towers (where almost everything was closed due to a nearby lightning strike...), and had afternoon tea in an old country manor house. This trip was my biggest expense this year, costing more than even my rent for the year 😱, but it was a great experience and I was in guide mode, so hope I did the country justice.

Corfe Castle

August

Hot. Beach. 'Nuf said.

September

Still Hot. One thing that's really nice about Kyushu is that as well as practical, they have a bunch of leisure trains too. I took the fancy train between Fukoka and Sasebo. It's normally a 2 hour trip, but this one goes slower, serving you up a nice bento, and stops at some quaint villages on the way. It made a very nice staycation, and honestly probably only Japan can provide this level of service on trains, so it was nice to take advantage of the opportunity.

October

In October, despite being in Japan for 11 years, and living in Kyoto for 2 of them, which is practically next door, I made my first ever trip to Universal Studios Japan. I had been to Universal Studios in Florida back in 1999, and Disneyland Tokyo couple of times, but this was my first time to USJ. Specifically, Harry Potter only existed as a book in the 90s, so it was impressive to see how well done the Hogsmede area was. I grew up with Harry Potter, being the same age as Harry and the books coming out during my teens, so this was quite nostalgic. I got to have my first butterbeer, which was actually very tasty. It was Halloween, and after dark death eaters came out and started tormenting people on the streets, with auroras darting about fighting them (elsewhere in the park, zombies were overrunning the place). I was also completely amazed by the Nintendo area. I had absolutely no expectations, so emerging from a green pipe into that zone was like entering a Gameboy. I was geeking out over the Jurassic Park zone too. It was all amazingly well done. I was a 40 year-old kid. The rides, on the other hand, made me feel terrible. Do not ignore the signs warning you not to ride if you experience motion sickness...

I also went back to some old Osaka haunts. The Umeda Sky Building is always a good trip. It was the day after the Osaka Expo ended, so the queue to get inside, normally non-existent, was ridiculous. Took a quick day trip to Kobe too, up the cable car to visit the herb gardens, a look around the foreigner quarter, and a quick meal in China Town before heading back to the hotel in Osaka.

November and December

November and December were quieter months. Not much travelling, as I was mostly trying to sort out a job for next year, and hopefully the foreseeable future! One nice event was a meetup with all my ex-coworkers from Line, where I worked 2014~2019. The company recently merged with Yahoo! and this is just my opinion, but it seems like I got out just in time.

Boardgames

This year I managed to get a few good boardgame sessions in too. I do enjoy boardgames, although I think I'm done with Twilight Imperium. Being strategic, trying to work out how to not die and get as many points as possible. I don't need space escapism for that, I'm constantly doing that in life anyway :P

Onwards!

For 2026, my plan is to focus on the new job for the time being. Once things have stabilised a bit, I've got some ideas for the direction I'd like things to go, but it depends on the job working out. So I plan to focus on going back to work for the Man for the time being, and take things from there after a few months.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, and all the best for 2026!