Well, there goes another one! Last year was pretty huge for me for both good and bad reasons, here’s my recap.
Moved to Lancashire
I started the year by heading across the Pennines to take up a senior role in the digital team at my old company. It was a great move for me and I really enjoyed working at the lively Manchester office. Shortly after I left later in 2012, the company was sold, and my team have mostly moved on to new things.
Richard’s Stag do
A lads weekend up in Masham. Aerial assault course, clay pigeon shooting and a brewery tour capped off with a barbecue around a huge campfire. Not too much grief for the stag, although the guys at the clay pigeon shoot did insist he remove his jeans so we could all shoot them, repeatedly!
Richard and Alice’s wedding!
A lovely, lovely day at Oulton Hall, I was very honoured to be Richard’s best man, even if I was terrified during my speech!
Moved to Japan
June arrived, and Emma and I jetted off to Japan! With Working Holiday Visa’s in hand, we were finally making a long-held dream come true. There are far too many moments to list here, between all the beautiful sights and amazing festivals I have years of things to write about here!
Climbed Mt Fuji
Ok, I said there were too many things to mention them all, but this has to be fitted in. What an experience, physically and mentally gruelling, but I’m happy to say I managed it in the end!
Went to Tokyo Game Show
As a nerd, I’ve always looked forward to October as that signals it’s time for Tokyo Game Show. I’ve enjoyed reading coverage of the show in magazines and on the internet for years so visiting for myself this year was awesome, not to mention I won tickets 🙂
Settled in Osaka
Travelling around Japan was one thing, but the hope was always to stay for longer and be more than a tourist. Luckily we achieved this in September, finding a nice apartment in Osaka and both getting jobs.
Lost Dad.
If you’d told me when I saw my Dad in June that’d be the last time, I would’ve never believed you. Early October Dad was admitted to hospital with what turned out to be advanced stage cancer, by November he was gone. Things didn’t seem as bad as they were so I never made it back in time which I’ll always regret. I like to think he’d be proud of the sendoff we gave him, and he’s back where he belongs now.
Christmas in Japan
Celebrating Christmas in the Japanese style was bizarre and great at the same time 🙂
New year with friends
The year was capped off with a visit from Rich and Alice! We had a great time showing them the sights and enjoying lots of great food and drink. The highlight has to be our horrendous G-Gundam karaoke!
Finally, here are the top ten posts of 2012! Compiling this was a real pain as I changed the site structure during the 2012 redesign, sending analytics crazy.
10. Asahi Super Dry Extra Cold bar, Ginza
My visit to one of the (literally) super cool Asahi concept bars this summer.
9. Gyrozetter, arcade gaming at its finest
A writeup of a crazy arcade game Square Enix released in 2012
8. MG MBF-P02KAI Gundam Astray Red Frame – Tactical Arms IIL
MG Red Frame’s huge weapon proved to be popular this year!
7. NG 1/100 GAT-X105 Aile Strike Gundam – Review
An oldie but a goodie. A revised MG of Strike is due out this year, maybe I’ll bite.
6. Hyper Japan 2011 – Roundup
My thoughts from my first Hyper Japan, the 2012 event blew this one out of the water.
5. Spare Gunpla Parts store in Akihabara
A great shop in Akihabara with gunpla bits galore.
4. HG 1/144 MBF-P02 Astray Red Frame – Review
Good old HG Red Frame, hopefully the new version I’m working on will be well received.
3. Happy Minecraft Day!
Inside mine and Rik’s Minecraft server!
2. Minecraft – A peek into My World
My Minecraft world, back in the single player days.
1. GN Arms Type E HG Kit Reveals Something Interesting
No comment. One day I’ll understand why this post always draws in ridiculous hits!
It’s been another good year for Tubbygaijin.co.uk, and despite over a month of downtime last year’s total pageview tally of 17k was beaten, just – 17,466 pageviews coming from 100 different countries all over the world, wow!
The year ahead
This year, expect plenty of posts about my life in Japan, Gunpla and my continued quest to sample amazing burgers!
So that was 2012. As always, thanks so much for visiting my site, all the best for 2013!
Thanks for reading! Here are some of my other posts you might like
Comments
4 Responses to 2012, a year in review
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Congratz on conquering Mt. fuji. It was harder than you thought wasn’t it?
Sorry about losing your love one. It must have been painful. One can only imagine.
Celebrating Christmas in Japan the Japanese tradition way with KFC. That is bizarre. But hey, at least you got your order in. We didn’t pre-order ours and there was no walk-in when we wanted to eat chicken that day. No KFC for us this year.
Hey Ducsu, thanks for the comment!
Mt Fuji was incredibly tough, I definitely should’ve trained harder before doing it, my poor wife had to wait around as I took lots of breaks!
Losing Dad still doesn’t seem real, I sure miss him alot.
Sorry to hear you didn’t get any KFC 🙁 such a bizarre thing to have as Christmas Dinner! I missed out on getting KFC in 2009, and conbini chicken was just as nice I thought 🙂
Happy new year!
Hi,
Looking forward to reading your posts.
Can I ask what jobs you got?
After growing up in the UK, I’ve often wondered about moving there but can’t figure out what I’d actually do.
Thanks H! My wife and I are both teaching English out here, it’s pretty fun! The language barrier obviously makes getting a job tough because most require native Japanese :S