Will

My 2012 was pretty awesome, lot's of things have happened and pretty much none of it bad. January Started the year off in Stourbridge, as I do every year with old friends in the local pub. February Preparation March Bumped into old friends at GDC - got very drunk. Best school friend came to visit, had a road trip from San Francisco down to LA, then across to Vegas and then home. An amazing time. April Went to Iceland for a friends wedding, more old friends and many new ones. A fantastic time. May A big group from my London office visited, we tricked a baseball stadium into showing me propose to a friend on the big screen and got the biggest cheer of the night. Went rafting for the first time in years. The first bad thing happened - I got a WP7. I went back to LA for the launch event of the latest Virtua Fighter game. June Went to E3 for the first time, played great games, worked very hard, had a lot of drinking fun. Went to another friends wedding in Wine country. July Olympics started and I couldn't go. Probably the hardest point in my time over in America so far. My boss also got promoted for work that I'd been doing and I was one internet timeout away from quitting my job and coming back home. August Not a lot happened, watched Olympics and prepared for the final part of the year. September Went to Seattle for PAX. Went to Tokyo for the first time on a 4 week trip. Tokyo Games Show, kick off meeting for SEGA's new company, special projects to get things rolling afterwards. Amazing food, lots of drinking, making many new friends. October After the work part of the trip I had a holiday in Tokyo. Saw many great things, more great food, lots of drinking and meeting new people. Went to my first ever Formula 1 race which involved bullet trains capsule hotels and generally trying to explore with limited Japanese skills. It was amazing. November Ran my first half marathon - broke two hours which considering the course I was amazingly happy with. Went back to Japan for 6 weeks to just work in that office and try to improve our working processes. Made many great friends, gave speeches (simple ones) in Japanese to a company of by then 300. Met an amazing girl, had parties. Pretty much decided that I have to move to Tokyo within 12 months. December Finishing off work bits. Christmas away from home for the first time ever. New Year in San Francisco - first time ever away from my hometown and the usual pub. It's been an utterly amazing year. Here's hoping 2013 can be just as good. Happy New Year everyone!

A few for me: Be more committed to learning Japanese, at least an hour of study a night. Save more money, I'm setting a target of $2,000 a month until the summer. Cut down drinking, helps with both of the above, maximum of 2 nights a week. Cut down on girls, I spend far too much money taking out random women, and haven't really been enjoying it lately. I think that's it for now, as long as I can do 1 and 2 I'll be happy.

Pasta Maker:

Lego Olympic mini figures!

I hope Nintendo pay well!

My Japan trip has been extended for an additional week. It's due to various work disasters (not my fault) so that's not great, but hey, extra week in Tokyo!!

I still don't understand why the student loan company are so bad at telling you what's going on. It can't be that hard to calculate the situation on a monthly basis can it? In good stuff, my Japanese has been coming on amazingly. Although very basic the girl I'm seeing and I are texting a lot in Japanese and I feel pretty comfortable in day to day exchanges. Once I'm back in SF I will for sure be planning around making a move over here full time.

I'd say I sleep 5 or 6 hours a night in general. Maybe 7-8 if I have nothing to do either side. To be honest I don't like sleeping at all, it's such a waste of time. The one thing I really wish I could have would be the ability to never sleep but always feel refreshed and ready to go.

Mostly working your way up from a QA position, I doubt either are something you want to get in to.

Finally Gamestop have the Wii U in stock. Should be delivered by the time I get back from Japan.

Just back from the second date with the girl from Saturday - another great night. I'm now a little upset to be leaving, she's super super awesome, and I think might even manage to die me down were I around much longer. Now I definitely need to move to Japan.

Video game producers. I've never known a more disorganized group of people in my life. Every morning I wake to no end of hassle, and manage to get very little done as I'm sorting out other people issues. I'd just like an easy day where things go right once in a while.

My god this is too much. What a race!

Please don't ban me, I like this place. If you had to deal with some of the idiocy I do then you wouldn't think my life is very awesome.

Really looking forward to the race today. It could go either way but I really hope Alonso finally manages to do it again. It starts at 1am here so it's going to be a late night - totally worth it. Vettel really is in prime position, he doesn't have to do too much to take the title now. Is there still rain expected? If so then it puts Alonso in with a great chance to pull something out of the bag.

I have nothing to complain about. Since I got to Tokyo I've been out with a fair few girls, all of them very nice. Girl I went out with last night was super cute, really nice and not crazy - at least it didn't seem so. Was a little awkward as the first place we went to one of the girls I dated last time I was here was in the same place. Seriously, I have no idea how that manages to happen. Luckily she didn't notice me and nothing came of it. Going to see her again on Monday and rather looking forward to it.

Today we had a big company meeting for all staff in my division so around 200+ people. I had to give my self introduction (in Japanese) and then they made me lead the company slogan reading. Went really well, lots of people now wanting to go out with me, arrange things for me, set me up with things I like. One of the scariest things I've done, but so so worth it and feeling pretty good now!

The majority of the thanks are for you, but there were a few replies that deserve at least a little acknowledgement too.

Thanks everyone!

Sent from Kimi to the team members after the race. I want one!

Heading back to Japan this evening, staying until 10th of December. Going to be crazily busy while there but staying for that length of time should be great.

It's fantastic, went with a few guys from the office at the weekend. I wasn't expecting much as the trailers they'd shown at work were pretty poor, but the film really delivered. Lots of good moments, great characters and awesome little drop ins from video game characters. Can't believe it's not out there for so long, that really sucks!

Wow, great race, so happy that Kimi has got a win this year. I would have preferred Alonso to have won for the title battle but I don't mind seeing as Vettel was behind him. Another great race for this season, super excited for the last two, I'll be in Japan so no idea what times those races are going to be on at.

I went for the black 32gb wifi. I usually go for the top end 3G but I've been putting more and more stuff in the cloud lately so going to see how I get along with it. Seems great so far, probably going to sell on my iPad 3 now.

Played with it for a few minutes and was fine with the screen, iPad mini is mine!