It’s been rather quiet around here, but for good reason. For 16 days starting mid August, I had been away on an extended vacation in Japan and only now have finally found time between unpacking and catching up at work to write things.

It was the first time I was in the country, so many first experiences… like for example, the full day was … Comike, day #3… going straight into 8am lineup, hunting down circles on the map and other crazy things.

Then later that day, I joined in on the Stage-nana Off Meet, where I met a number of fans of Stage Nana, as well as Kataoka Tomo himself. Whee! Since I couldn’t make day #2, I had asked for him to hold one of the Setsumi glasses for me, which he gladly did. Two of them in fact!

Later in the trip, I met him again for a small dinner, and we had time to discuss projects and a bit of shop, that certainly made the whole trip worth it. I was also supposedly thiiiiiis close to meeting Ayakawa Rino too! Doh!

I got to hear all sorts of stories about what goes on behind Cotton-soft, Nekonekosoft, and all sorts of other eroge things at those meetings.Too bad they’re all secrets that really can’t be let out into the world. Some of the industry stuff mentioned was quite fascinating from an outsider’s point of view.

Other than that, spent about 5 days in Kyoto romping around visiting temples and museums. Another bunch of days in Tokyo getting rained out, eating good food, visiting this or that, but mostly Akiba…

As you can see, my collection of printed items has grown significantly. Treasures picked up include my complete set of Bungaku Shoujo! Woo! The final book came out! I read through almost all of it on the flight back! There had been a few doujin surprises along the way, in addition to old groups I liked.

My crazy collection of CDs has grown, including the Touhou M-1 grand prix series, the latest edition of the Maki Izumi special voice CDs, and all sorts of utter chaos in between.

But now I’m back, and now it’s time to crank up the productivity!

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Just as soon as my jet lag clears…