Will

The poster thing is fairly common. A lot of Japanese games don't come to the west as they just can't get the materials to look right with the PEGI or ESRB logos.

Sounds like you have all of the good stuff with none of the crap, I'd keep at it if I were you.

I think the S8 looks great, but if you're not desperate I'd wait to see the next iPhone before you make the switch. This years is meant to be a huge update if the rumours are to be believed, so I'd say it's worth holding out for that announcement at least.

Achievements may not be the key factor but I think it's a missing feature that does play into the (potential) lack of sales for Switch titles, which ultimately leads to less 3rd party titles coming to the system. In classification of gamers there is a whole group dedicated to people that love achievements, Achievers: accumulate status tokens by beating the rules-based challenges of the game world. So I don't think you can write it off as something that won't play a part. For me adding achievements would just be the icing on the cake, but I can see why others might buy stuff on other platforms because of it.

There is a difference, but it's much less extreme than London to other areas of the UK, though my experience is very limited outside of Tokyo. Potentially there would be less options outside of big cities which may mean the savings are somewhat limited, it's tough to get a regular place in Japan as they don't like renting to foreigners. As long as you get a job relatively quickly I wouldn't worry about the rent/living expensed side of things though. The were underpaid quite significantly in comparison to a 'normal' job there. It seems like you have your expectations set correctly though so I don't think this will cause you any issues. On the other stuff it seems like all the normal apprehensions of going off and doing something new. I always think the best way to make decisions like this is picture yourself in 10 years time and see what you think about having gone either way. Ultimately things balance out over that period of time so for me it always comes down to do I regret not doing the new thing? Usually I do, so I've ended up taking every opportunity that's come out of nowhere.

I would want more than $2k to get going. If you want somewhere half decent to live you're going to need 2 months rent deposit + the first months rent in advance just to move in somewhere, that will eat up the majority of your money. I was in Tokyo so maybe it's more doable if you're outside of the city somewhere. I had a good amount of friends who were teachers in Japan and even the best paid were earning very little. For a year I'd say it's fine but if you change your mind and want to stay longer then do your best to learn Japanese as much as possible so you can move on to something better paid as soon as you can. The tourist visa is fine and will work as you plan, but you have a limited time to get it all sorted out and need to change visa before working. Are you under 31? If so get a working holiday visa instead as that will allow you to work as you please for a year which fits exactly what you want to do. This is what I did and allowed me to do whatever I wanted with no stress or time limit during that first year. If you have any specific questions about living in Japan I'm happy to answer them for you. It's a great place and you will have an awesome time, I'd thoroughly recommend doing it!

The Switch version seems much easier to me. I've been going through 200cc just to unlock Gold Mario and has mostly been plain sailing. I've been unlucky in a few races but certainly nothing like as difficult as the Wii U original.

It's shaping up to be a cracker. The way the cars seem to be matched we could end up with a 4-way title fight - that would be awesome. Likewise I'm happy for Bottas, glad to see him finally getting the win.

Seems like I have the left joy-con issue on all of my joy-cons, which is annoying but not awful as the right ones seem fine and generally I'm playing with my pro-controller. The biggest issue I have is apparently a known Samsung TVs and certain devices whereby the switch will randomly send signals to auto-change the channel while I'm doing something else. Super annoying when watching TV but especially so when playing something else on the PS4. Hopefully one of the devices sorts this out soon.

It's a shame this came out at the same time as Mario Kart and not a few weeks before. I think it's great basically getting both games in one package and the mixture is a nice twist on the formula, I just don't have time to play it.

Finally got a sofa for my apartment

I'd imagine they would wave the notice period if something comes up. Three months is an insane amount of time for a notice period, unless she's super senior in the company. I guess they could want people there for all three months to cover the transition though. With no money at stake I'd say just tell her to have a chat with the manager and see what they can work out.

Been really enjoying it so far, and agree it looks like it will shape up to be a great season. Vettel was unlucky with the safety car but I don't think it would have changed the result, in those kind of conditions I think Hamilton would have had it under control. I think Hamilton will more than likely take the title, and I don't think it will be as close as people think right now. I do think we'll have a great battle though. I hope Alonso gets the hell away from McLaren at the end of the year. I want to see him in the Mercedes and just give us three years of the two best drivers in the best car and let's see what happens. He's been my favourite driver since 1999 when I was watching basically all motorsport available (wish I could be a teenager again), and I just want to see him where he should be again. Can't believe he's 8 points off being a 5 time world champion.

I quite want to learn Portuguese now. My Japanese is really suffering, I haven't properly been speaking for the last 4 months and I'm having trouble speaking to people. Need to find a school here, but time is pretty lacking. Wish I could take another year off work to focus on it properly.

Finally managed to get hold of a PSVR.

Finally got myself a TV, a Samsung UA55KS7500 Also got a soundbar to go with it

Definitely think it should have been bundled, would have been a great thing to show off the system to people. I'm really enjoying it though, obviously there's a time and a place those games are suited for, but when it fits it's a great deal of fun.

I LOVE my new job. OK, so Singapore is not the most interesting of places in the world but the move from Tokyo has been well worth it. The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of getting to grips with everything going on here and the many many different business units we have. There is so much opportunity and learning about the South East Asia market is totally new for me so very interesting. I'm currently heading up a number of initiatives, our outsourcing services, some huge publishing projects and our advertising SDK. I'm fairly sure things are only going to get busier but that's the way I like it. Really could not have wished for a better place to work. Just need to get my living situation sorted out and all will be well.

This. I was hoping they would at least keep an industry only day as they do with TGS. TGS is awful on the public days but great to attend when it's just industry. I think this move, if they don't change anything, will make E3 absolute hell. Have been wondering if I should bother going this year, this news makes me less likely to, but will depend on what the exhibitor attendance is like I think.

I'd love to be called up for Jury service. Of course it would be nice to be doing the right thing for society but the reality is I just want to do it for the sake of doing it, I think it would be tremendously interesting. If I do get called up I'd do everything I could to be able to take part in it. @ReZourceman- with your final case where the guy got the long sentence, do you know what happened later? Did it get cut down or did he end up having to serve it?

In recent years I've really tried to move away from buying Physical stuff. All of the games I really want on PS4 are downloaded, the others I bought cheap when I got the machine. Ideally I won't buy any more physical releases for it. Same will go for Switch and any other consoles from now on. As a kid I would constantly trade in old games to get the next big thing, I'd usually keep everything through the generation and then take a ton of stuff to EB/Game and get myself whatever the next system was. No doubt lost a ton of money on all of that but more than made up for it when working there and taking advantage of the system to get anything good that came in for a fraction of the value. When I left San Francisco I sold/gave away everything I had. Just too much hassle to bother moving it half way round the world and I wasn't really attached to any of it. I think the only thing I kept was a Dreamcast Modem as they seem to be fairly valuable. Nowadays I have a lot of old stuff at my parents place and Japanese Saturn and Gamecube collection that I've pulled together over the last few years. Don't think I would ever sell those. So I guess as of right now I'm in the keeper group.

I'd say sell them. From the reasons you give you're not really looking at this as any sort of savings plan, it's more a maybe you'll hit the jackpot on some money that doesn't matter so why not take the risk. I don't really see that happening anytime soon with RBS so I'd pull the money out and get something you enjoy with it.

I love my 2011 macbook air, as a casual content consuming device I really don't think there is anything better. If I need to do anything more taxing than I prefer a windows machine. I'm waiting on delivery but my new work computer will be a Surface Pro 4 and once the next cycle of MacBooks launch I intend to finally upgrade my home computer to one of those. I think as long as it fits what you want to do with it then go for it.

Actually your current total is probably correct. It seems like they did a reverse stock split in 2012 where they replaced 10 old shares with 1 new one, upping the value of an individual share but leaving owners holding less shares.

I've always been good at saving, but I've also always had a target for the money and spent it all after a few years. In London I saved up and then made some lucky investments when the banking crisis hit and ended up with a decent amount of money. I spent it all on buying a car. In San Francisco I saved up so I could move to Japan to study Japanese and not need to worry about work. I'm not 100% sure how much life is going to cost here but I do like to set a budget across Rent, Savings and then spending. My current plan is Rent - 36%, Savings 29% and the rest I'm free to spend as I like. Ideally I'd like the rent and savings to be the other way around but I'm not sure how practical that will be. Hopefully I spend less and can top up the savings each month. I'd like to buy a house/apartment at some point this year. Something I can rent out back home just to have my foot on the ladder and start building up from there. I had been trying to buy in Tokyo before moving here but just wasn't feasible at the time. Had I of stayed another year or two it would have been pretty easy to do.