2026 July Retro

Games

After yet another fitful FromSoft playthrough my journey finally came to an end with Dark Souls 3. Maybe not the best game in the series (that might still be the original for me) but definitely the best possible ending to it. Friede & Gael can stand alongside Malenia/Rellana/Messmer as peers and there's plenty of fanservice (not that kind) to bring on the nostalgia. I'll likely take a nice long break before Bloodborne/Sekiro since there's so much other great stuff to play; but I'm really glad covid forced me back into Elden Ring & then onto my journey through the trilogy which started it all.

Another big one from this month was Moomintroll: Winter's Warmth; the first game ever voluntarily, even eagerly, finished by The Wife. Except GTA3 of course, which I still can't believe she nonchalantly mentioned playing through in its entirety when she was a kid. Moomintroll is considerably more wholesome of course (until he goes after Too-Ticki with an axe near the end); with beautiful art and interesting/funny characters. It's written pretty similarly to something like Bluey where it's ostensibly for kids but they sneak enough in there for the adults to get their laughs as well.

The Hex is certainly a Daniel Mullins game; though it definitely lacks the polished presentation of Inscryption there was still plenty of meta-narrative, fourth wall breaks and some pretty creative gameplay to enjoy.

of The Devil: Episode 0 did its job as a free demo by making me intrigued enough to pick up the DLCs for later episodes next time they're on sale; even without the "lawyer protagonist defends client against murder she committed" twist the writing, visuals and world were interesting enough that I wanted more.

Donut County was a fun lil' distraction for a while but I feel like it could've done more with its core concept than 'hole eats progressively bigger things lol'. The light puzzle solving is a bit too light to provide any variety and thought the sole boss-fight was fun that might've mostly been because it was the sole point of novelty.

Forged In Shadow Torch is certainly a game which exists. High end visuals and some cool designs, but the gameplay was so utterly painful that I dropped it. Weighty combat !== clunky controls.

Books

The Director was another good recommendation from our Russian friends along the lines of Infinite Jest, though certainly much easier to follow. The Wife and I now know more about the name we say so often because of its similarity to another word.

I also read another Mark Twain book in The Prince & the Pauper; which continues his enjoyable theme of plucky boys getting themselves into shenanigans but with added (real) royalty.

General Life Stuff

Not too many weekend excursions this month as The Wife was busy studying for her final written driving test (and it was absurdly hot). On the bright side she passed first try, and as such is finally free of a major source of stress she's been dealing with for the past 9 months or so. Good thing there are no other looming sources of stress which might occupy the same rough timeframe (then at least another 18 years).

We did manage a few excursions despite all the studying. One was very long walk to Nakano in a too-tight long skirt (for The Wife, mine was plenty loose :P) where we saw an incredibly long line at a summer festival and also Captain Jack Sparrow complaining about Japanese tax law. The other was a return to Tama Plaza for the legendary chicken salad! As with most things you're initially surprised by then build up into a legend over time it didn't quite live up to expectations, but was still delicious. I was also a fan of the extremely healthy 4 cheese pizza which came with a jar of honey to drizzle.

We had quite a few social calls as well (i.e. two); the lady half of our Russian friends came to hang out while her husband was back in Russia and two of The Wife's old uni friends came to our place for the first time (and caught up with The Wife for the first time in 3 years). The living room aircon struggled hard with the heat so we ended up sprawled across the floor of the Japanese room to play Ticket to Ride in a very uni-like fashion. Just missing copious quantities of alcohol.

Finally, technically on August 1st, we watched the Avatar Aang movie. Sadly condemned to a streaming platform we can't even pay for in Japan rather than the theatrical release it deserved. Genuinely fantastic animation and a surprisingly solid story (though I definitely have some quibbles; was it really necessary for Katara to bring people back to life??? They could've just as easily been unconscious).

Work

Finally, some movement on the PFM -> web services integration on the PFM side. Admittedly that movement resulted in one (1) merged PR this month but they are reportedly working on it, which means sometime in the next 6 months I might be freed up for another 'major' project (despite this major project mostly consisting of small UI changes) I did in between other work. I know it's a very useful project because it removes a lot of duplicate logic across different codebases, but I've been stuck on it for so long despite having nothing to do on our end that it's demoralizing.

What Went Badly

No complaints, life is good.

Action Items

Review

At least 3 rides a week

Success! And a pretty emphatic one too; I finally stopped putting off riding to Futakotamagawa as some big thing I needed to plan well in advance and just did it. Then followed it up the next evening with a ride to Sengawa which should've been significantly shorter/more relaxing but actually took longer while being more stressful. Nevertheless, great progress this month since I rode twice as far as any other month this season.

Two shootarounds at Shinjuku Chuo this month

Nope, I just don't think I'm that interested in doing this. Next month will change it to 2 home workouts a week and see if I can manage that.

Next Month