● No news again but I expect normal service to resume on Monday!

● The NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen is a huge cultural event on New Years Eve in Japan and is never likely to be surpassed in the near future as there’s no Bob Sapp nor Akebono type freakshow anymore and no combat sport can seriously hope to compete. This year’s was headlined by Dream5 performing the Yokai Watch theme with several of the characters. Watch the performance at http://youtu.be/OIr_4CjvFlE and the characters with A · RA · SHI at http://youtu.be/YCooEAD-EeY

● I uploaded my 2014 Activity Log totals earlier at http://www.japanese3ds.com/post/106997729374 and kinda surprised I played so much Medarot and Kumamon (about twenty hours each!). I’m really intrigued by what the totals will be for 2015 as there’s not much announced at present that I expect to play twenty hours plus (I might buy Dragon Quest X finally however!).

● Since there’s no actual news it gives me time to just ramble for awhile and I thought I’d just talk about a few of my favourite blogs: Tiny Cartridge (http://tinycartridge.com) should be known to most -if not all- of you and needs no introduction, The Gay Gamer (http://www.thegaygamer.com) is superbly written and gives a different perspective on mostly portable (both modern and retro) games and a ton of import games too! Finally A Lady and Gaming (http://ladiesgamers.com) which is run by YvoCaro (who recently wrote the excellent Okaeri! Chibi Robo! Happy Richie Ōsōji! review for this blog) and who hasn’t been gaming for all that many years but has a great enthusiasm for gaming which comes across brilliantly in her writing. Follow them all!

● I’m almost up-to-date with my catching up of old reviews since last week’s review round-up. Expect to (finally!) see Girls RPG: Cinderellife, Chousoku Henkei Gyrozetter: Albatross no Tsubasa, Culdcept and For The Frog The Bell Tolls at some point in 2015 as well as all the new games and a Game Gear twenty five year retrospective plus several exciting new features. I’ll be busy until late March so expect to see them from April! Also check out the updated Review Scores page at http://www.japanese3ds.com/reviews with now over 300 Japanese 3DS games included. I aim to overhaul it this year and hopefully double that amount!

● And that’s all for my rambling! All the Weekly Famitsu scans have been uploaded and I only expect to post the latest eShop news later this weekend (no Weekly News Update as all we got was a Hazumi announcement) so no further posting until we finally (well, hopefully!) get some new news next week! Thank you everybody for following and for all the likes, reblogs, comments etc and have a great 2015!