Hi there,

It‘s been a while since I wrote anything on this blog, and since we seem to be entering that season of balmy promise making and lofty goal setting, I thought I should maybe at least make an attempt at getting into the season spirit by updating this blog. Also, Martin insisted that I did it, as part of his equally balmy ‘self-improvement‘ psychobabble. I suppose it’s worked in a way; I‘m here, typing at least.

A lot has happened in the last few months. Essentially, I now live and work in Japan, and spend pretty much 100% of my time divided between the tasks of learning Japanese, searching (or perhaps hustling is a better verb) for work, and actually working. Oh and not writing blog posts. I can‘t claim exactly that I work *in* the Japanese industry, but I certainly reside on it‘s peripherals, both literally and figuratively. I am working in the Hobgoblin Pub slap bang in the middle of Shibuya, with what must be dozens of games companies within walking distance (I know; I‘ve interviewed for a couple of them). I also did some localisation testing on an as yet unreleased but huge franchise game about to hit America and Europe in the next couple of months. In typical NDA‘ed If I Told You I‘d Have To Kill You fashion I can‘t really talk about it, but I‘ll certainly update once the games released. This month brings more freelance game proofreading work and audio checking for an as yet unknown game. I‘m also semi regularly doing translation training at a localisation company based in Shibuya’s trendy Daikanyama-cho called Windward.  So, yes, in the Japanese games industry, almost.

I‘m also an international spy. No, really. I‘d be stupid to talk about it here, but certainly PM or email me for details. It’s quite amusing, I trust you.

I recently wrote a series of blog posts for someone on a freelance site on the topic of Japanese learning tools and techniques. Unfortunately communications between us broke down somewhat towards the end, and I haven‘t been provided addresses to link to the articles. Instead, I am going to post up the articles here in full until I receive said information from the man in question. So, keep tuned in to read a series of articles on different ways you too can attempt to not suck too much at Japanese!

Happy New Year

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 9:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.