It's hard to believe but the time has already come for my year long study term in Japan to begin. It's Saturday 4AM as I type and on Sunday 2:30AM I will be leaving for the airport for the huge flight over.

I actually have an exam on the 27th (so they can sort us by our Japanese ability into groups) almost as soon as I get there (as well as the whole registration run around) and this is after a 17hr+ flight to get to Tokyo and then the bus/train haul up to Akita city. Because I can't see any time for revision for that placement I have been working till the small hours of the morning (3-4am) for almost everyday now for the last week and a half. I feel I have covered just about everything and almost everything very well.

It's odd. A year ago I was dreaming about going to Japan in my 2nd year...heck I was dreaming about just going to univeristy to learn Japanese. Now I am actually going...for a whole year. It's so surreal. I'm not even nervous or excited, it's like the whole thing hasn't hit me properly yet.

I am gonna miss good old Blightey...I mean I am sure I will...just not right away. My family keep asking how on earth I will survive without curry (my family is pakistani so curry is basically all they eat) but tbh that is not very high on my list of things to worry about, right behind thermo-nuclear war and vegetable picking (coincidentally my insurance that I had to take out for this trip covers "vegetable picking" as a hazardous activity, gotta watch out for em man-eating radishes, rah!!).

I won't have steady net access over their either due to no laptop/computer so I think I will give you guys a weekly blog to start with. Maybe monthly. TBH I am hoping I won't need a computer as I want to bask in the presence of people rather than machines as much as possible. Not just for the Japanese but because last year the moments I treasured most were the ones where I was just hanging out with friends; be it helping (or rather making a mess) to make fairy cakes or going to the supermarket at 3AM just for a tin of beans cos a mate felt like it. Maybe that is my main concern; can I make friends as precious as those whilst in Japan? We shall see.

Money is gonna be tight whilst I am there as well, gonna have to arrange something for that as I want to travel, buy a import PS3...maybe get a hi-tech toilet, I dunno.

未来は白い紙

自分で書かなければならない

Long boring sales talks, marketing pitches we've all heard a thousand times and sluggish presentations of games aimed at the casual market that could give less hoots about E3...and that is just Microsoft.

Don't even get me started on Nintendo who totally shafted hardcore gamers; 2 DS games (one of which is another Pokemon spinoff) and a handful on licensed or otherwise unremarkable 3rd party games and more suckage on first party. Don't get me wrong as I am sure Wii Resort and Music will be good (and I was looking forward to Wii Music before the conference) but as the major show pieces? Nintendo HAS games to show from third parties for the Wii and DS but made no mention of them. On top of that they show off a new motion gadget which does indeed make the remote more accurate but wasn't Nintendo extolling the virtues of how accurate and precise the wiimote was?..and now it's not?

Sony fared better overall and the DC Online game showed promise and Resistence 2's epic scale. However they didn't get the blood pumping either. The movie rental thing surprised me only because I thought Sony already had this in place ages ago (not a PS3 owners). It seems that 1/2 of E3 was taken up by the combination of Rockband and Guitar Hero alone!!

The RE5 and GEoW2 playable demos for MS were nice and the FF13 announcement may well revolutionise game distribution (if it does well JRPG's and other Japanese centric games may find a market on the 360 and even the PC) but that is all we get for 1 E3? Jesus Miyamoto Freakin' Christ.

I also saw very little from 3rd parties overall. Where was Bionic Commando? Sonic Unleashed and all the rest? I guess being saved for the company specific showings (I look forward to seeing Sonic on the showfloor).

I was looking for a reason to continue to game and be excited and heck...maybe even buy a Wii...that isn't gonna happen now, at least not for a very long time.

I just can't play games anymore without some problem really bugging me. Whether it be finding a game to hard even on easy or just not being able to feel the magic of a videogame anymore. In spite of this I am very much hooked and can't help but scrounge sites for gaming info for around 2 hours a day. In fact I find info searching more fun than actually playing the damn things. I shouldn't even be getting my ass handed to me playing normal mode in a popular game like Halo 3, but I still do.

OK, FPS aren't my forte. But even in genres where I am quite strong like fighters (SC, GGX, MvC, CvS, SF3/A3, VF4, DOA2U etc; I OWNED at fighters last gen) I find my interest seems to wax and wane (not to mention that I uniformally suck).

I've tried desperately to enjoy something over the last 6 weeks but cannot glue myself to anything. I was very close to enjoying KOTOR but the insurmountable frame issues turned me off entirely. It's not like I am suddenly putting down the controller; I've been disengaged from actually playing games for almost 2 years now, on and off I've tried to boost interest in my dying hobby but very few games have managed it (Ouendan, Twilight Princess...that's about it), in fact I can't think of the last time I was totally riled for a game since Metroid Prime 2 came out.

Just look at my blogs for cripes sake...how many of the ones I've written over the last year or so have actually had anything to do with gaming?

I don't have anything else to do in my spare time tbh, but I think it's about time I put the controller away and did something else. Even if it is only for a little while. All this time I've never really put the controller away...I still kept watching the press and I still kept following everything.

I was going to hold out on doing this until E3 (Which happens to coincide with my birthday) but after over 2 years of cold bitter dissapointment time and time again I simply don't care anymore, one or two more months is simply not going to rejuvenate my interests. I think I may well have someone keep me informed on some of the more spectacular handheld games coming out but that surely will be the extent of it for a few weeks. I will come back to all this then...that is if I care anymore.

I will keep this blog updated on non-gaming relevant articles only unless in the event I stumble upon some holy life-changing piece of software.

Thanks for reading guys.