A year in my life

Happy New Year 2018

First of all, Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a great time, whether they were alone at home or out celebrating with friends and family. I spent the last day of 2017 doing a little cleaning around my apartment, playing Ensemble Stars while watching stages and then talking to my mum for a while.

When I wrote about my 2017 I really realised how many things I had done, how many people I had encountered, and how all of those people made it an amazing year. I really want to thank all of my family (for putting up with me talking about nothing but all the events and stages and actors), friends old and new for sharing those events and stages with me, and for all the fun chats about them, and all of those amazing actors who worked hard to put on great performances that I was able to watch.

Personally, in 2017 I felt a lot more comfortable in my job with a new boss who I respect a lot more than the previous one, and who gave me the chance to have more responsibility as a teacher who has been there a long time (but I’ll mention that again later). With that responsibility I got an easier time of things, and also the chance to do things that I hadn’t done before. I got to take part in two English Camps this year which were tiring but a lot of fun. Although I had some hard times, bad classes, bad decisions on other people’s part, and had something terrible happen to one of my former students, in general I felt like this year was good work-wise.

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A look back at 2017

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2017 comes to an end tomorrow, and as usual I looked back on everything I did this year to write a review of the year. In 2017, I saw lots of stages, had some amazing experiences with my oshi, and fell head over heels in love with a new group. When I looked back on everything I did, I realised that I did so many things and spent so much money, but I have absolutely no regrets. I really hope in 2018 that I can do just as many things and have just as many amazing experiences as I did this year.

If there was one thing I regret from this year is that there were some things I didn’t take many photos from, and many things I didn’t report back on. I hope in 2018 I can do more of this so I have more reports to link to when I make this kind of post at the end of the year.

I chose the above picture as the header image because of how much these boys influenced my year (even though they’re not all there in that picture), but that was definitely not all I did. Here is my 2017…

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A look back at the first half of 2016

Wow, the year is halfway over already. I was looking back over my list of events from the past six months, and while in the past I’ve chosen to do a “review of my year” at the end of each year, I decided to change this to every six months, meaning I remember more of what actually happened. And wow, a lot happened in only six months.

January

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My main memory of January was being in Tokyo ALL THE TIME. It happened that three different things ended up happening there and none of them were in the same weekend, meaning I spent far too much time on buses going back and forth. But each time was definitely worth it, even if I felt like I never wanted to see another bus in my life by the end of it.

However, before all of that. My actual New Year’s Day was spent in Osaka watching Tenimyu’s Seigaku vs Yamabuki for the third time (the first and second being during Christmas in Tokyo). The special for this show was that we receieved a random omikuji sticker on our way out. Miraculously I managed to go from a Trio sticker to an Akazawa with only one trade in between. My luck was good that day.

And speaking of New Years, we got to celebrate the New Year with Magic Prince on January 4th, during which we played karuta with the boys and then went to the shrine with Shuhei.That was a pretty surreal day. I’ve never experienced anything like that with idols and I probably won’t ever again, and I’m thankful to have been able to take part in it.

My first time in Tokyo that month was to watch Comic Jack. Although my third show seeing Izaki on stage, it was my first with him as a main character. My seat for one of the shows was on the front row, and I was so close that I barely knew where to look. Izaki spent a whole lot of time lying down on the part of the stage I was looking at too, and he was so close I could see all the clips in his hair to keep it all together. It was such a funny stage play and I laughed a lot, especially watching Izaki’s character trying to fight while drunk.

My second trip to Tokyo of the month was for the high touch event for the Tenimyu Team Live DVD release. Honestly, at the time that event was the single most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. Fourteen cast members in a line, and a chance to high touch and talk to each one of them, without any time to prepare in between. There was a moment after I finished my first time round that I genuinely didn’t think I could do it again and considered just throwing away my second ticket. But, I managed it and I had a great time talking to each one of them, whether I was a fan of theirs or not.

Finally, I went again at the end of the month to go to Izaki Ryujiro’s birthday event. I have nothing but amazing memories of that day. The highlight for me was Izaki remembering my name (and job), and also having him answer my reauest of giving a self-introduction in English, despite that I was a harsh teacher and told him to try harder next time. Him and Soramu made a very amusing pair on stage, and they thoroughly entertained us for the whole time.

Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, I also saw Seigaku vs Yamabuki in Nagoya five times too. How did I even have time for all this stuff?! This was the time when I got two handshake tickets and worked myself up to terror at the prospect of shaking hands with Akutsu Jin. In the end, he smiled, so it was okay. And all the guys I handshaked with were so nice. I even managed to get Kazuki the second time, which made it super nice for me.

Yeah, I had a pretty busy January.

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