2025 Favorites
2025 was pretty good overall!!! I had a great trip to Japan to start the year and it was fun visiting mariah over the summer. I didn’t achieve either goal I set out for myself, but whatever!! Next year I hope to lean a little more creative and less consumptive and spend less time scrolling twitter, but I’m also not going to be too hard on myself about it because whateverrrrrrrrr
Hobbies and things I got into
- Got really into watching movies more this year, with 107 watched!! It’s been fun really keeping up with new releases and also filling in the gaps of stuff I’ve wanted to watch for a long time but haven’t
- Picked up guitar again after encouragement from one of my coworkers. Trying a different approach by following youtube tutorials instead of Rocksmith and honestly I feel much more confident with it already!
- Weeknotes has been really nice, it’s basically entirely replaced Posting to me, even if it’s not 100% the same thing, I still felt the desire to post but bluesky just wasn’t doing it for me, for some reason. Also no better feeling than posting a weeknote post and having one of my friends message me about some part of it!! Much more satisfying than likes
- Ever since we got a ping pong table at work I’ve been really into it, many days after work I’ll play for over an hour with one or a few of my coworkers. It’s surprisingly good exercise!!! Especially since I’m running all over the office to get balls that fly past me lmao. I’m sure part of this interest comes from the Gear aspect of the sport, like there’s so many types of rubbers and things to research, but it helps that it’s very easily accessible and now that I’ve bought a paddle, free to play
Movies
Top 2025 releases list is here, these are favorites I watched for the first time this year!!
I watched a couple of Paul Thomas Anderson movies this year in preparation for One Battle After Another and I had one of those “wow why have I not watched these sooner” moments with both of them. Really excited to dig more into his films next year! I watched In the Mood for Love with Mariah when I was visiting her and I absolutely adored it!!!! Which to my surprise, when I watched Chungking Express, I just could not get into it?? The style felt so different and in a way that I just could not connect with. I’m so curious about other Wong Kar Wai movies now and which of the two they more align to. Got to see Linda Linda Linda in theaters which I had never seen before, really loved it.
- A Better Tomorrow
- Boogie Nights
- Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc
- Cocoon: Aru Natsu no Shoujo-tachi yori
- Collateral
- Hamnet
- In the Mood for Love
- Infernal Affairs
- La Chimera
- Linda Linda Linda
- Love Letter
- Magnolia
- Marty Supreme
- Nemurubaka
- One Battle After Another
- Ping Pong
- Shoplifters
- Strange Days
- Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald
Albums
- Afternoon Bike Ride - Running With Scissors
- Baths - Gut
- caroline - caroline 2
- Ethel Cain - Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You
- F5ve - Sequence 01 + deluxe version
- Frost Children - SISTER
- La Dispute - No One Was Driving the Car
- Ninajirachi - I Love My Computer
- Oklou - choke enough
- Peterparker69 - yo,
- RAY - White
- Skrillex - hit me where it hurts x
- tennyson - aka
Songs
Bandcamp playlist with a bunch of these songs!
- Afternoon Bike Ride - Miss Universe
- Caroline - total euphoria
- Ethel Cain - Dust Bowl
- f5ve - I Choose You
- Frost Children - WHAT IS FOREVER FOR
- ISOxo - FUCK THE SPEAKERZ UP
- Jonah Yano - Homerun 2021
- LanPage - ack!
- Lil Texas & Irradiate - Highs in my Dreams
- NMIXX - Blue Valentine
- Oklou - blade bird
- Overmono - Paradise Runner
- Peterparker69 - Hey phone
- Quadeca - Monday
- Skrillex - voltage (see you again)
- Static Dress - face.
- Tourist - Outside
- 初星学園 - サンフェーデッド
- 高木正勝 - Marginalia #209
Concerts
I went to 22 this year, the most I have in one year! I saw Porter Robinson three times technically, which is really funny to me, and both Maruja and Haru Nemuri twice. Really glad I got to see ExWHYZ while we were in Tokyo with the announcement that they’re disbanding in 2026 :’)
My favs
- Wavedash w/ hirihiri, lilbesh ramko, NUU$HI, Heaven’s Gate Crew @ Circus Tokyo
- Porter Robinson w/ Galileo Galilei @ Tokyo Garden Theater
- ExWHYZ w/ Haru Nemuri @ Shinjuku Loft
- Baths w/ Fashion Club @ The Rockwell
- Ichiko Aoba w/ Hayden Pedigo @ Berklee Performance Center
- Godspeed You! Black Emperor @ Roadrunner
- BLADEE w/ ripsquadd @ Roadrunner
- Lamp @ House of Blues
- Frost Children w/ Peterparker69 @ The Sinclair
- Porter Robinson (DJ Set) @ Big Night Live
Books
I started off the year blasting through a couple of these, but Never Let Me Go and The Housekeeper and the Professor slowed my reading to a halt. Second year in a row of reading 12 books, I hopefully can at least keep pace next year!! Not that the number itself is what matters, but it’s nice being able to read a good amount per year since my taste has been both broadened and solidified. Mariah has been getting me more and more into NYRB published literary fiction, and Stoner is easily one of my favorites I read this year!!!!!
- Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
- The City & The City by China Mieville
- Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
- Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
- Bunny by Mona Awad
- The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
- The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas
- Stoner by John Williams
- The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
Video Games
I barely played any games this year, but I did enjoy the ones I played!
- Animal Well
- a perfect puzzle platformer type game, really fantastic puzzle and level design, great art style, highly recommend
- To a T
- cute and fun!!!!! while i wasn’t fully sold on where the plot ended up going, i really loved this. i hope keita takahashi can keep making games
- Deltarune Chapters 3 & 4
- okay chapter 3 i admit i was not super into, but chapter 4 brought me back into it and i’m very curious where this plot is leading
- Peak
- Peak is peak, a perfect friendslop game, i finally reached the peak in a run and it’s immensely satisfying
- Despelote
- really cool autobiographical game, shocked by how invested i got in the world cup results by the end lol
Art on the internet
I looooooooove illustration I love art yay yay yay