Happy New Year! How was 2015 for you? When a year ends and a new year begins, I like to reflect on the year as well as look ahead to the new year. This year I’ll do it in a style I saw elsewhere online, which looks at things in 3 parts.

1. What went well

Met 4.91 out of the 5 goals I set in 2015:

1. Get Japanese driver’s license for real -_-
   CHECK!!! Read about the miracle here. (p.s. miracle because the test is very difficult to pass on the first try, not any other reason ok!)
2. Another leftover from last year: Attend at least one baking class
   CHECK! [post here]
3. Explore more of Japan – at least visit a couple of new prefectures. For the sake of specificity, I’ll say… at least 3?
   CHECK! Traveled Japan lots this year! Listing just the new prefectures this year: Aichi, Mie, Kobe, Ibaraki.
4. Blog at least twice a week (ha! I’m gonna kill myself trying to keep this up the entire year, but here goes nothing!)
   … not really >_> but almost! I should have at least 104 posts during the year and I wrote only 95 times. But good effort, self!
5. Make friends. Been here 2 years and never did try to seriously make friends. It’s delayed, but never too late!
   CHECK! Made quite a few friends this year :D

How did the 0.91 come about? Well, for #4, 95/104 is 91%! What? It counts ok!

I passed JLPT 1! Which is the highest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test and freaking @&!*^&$ annoyingly difficult to pass. So I deserve all the bragging rights for this one lol.

Milk Tea joins our family! The little fluff ball brought lots of joy, laughter, but also tears, wrinkles, and elevated blood pressure, so she almost qualifies for part 2 (What didn’t go well) as well.

We got Haru! No more cycling in the freezing cold while balancing a ton of groceries! Plus it’s so much easier to explore Japan with a car!

Started Invisalign! Straight teeth in one more year!

Started Korean classes!

Started a beauty sub-blog!

Started a beauty review website together with Fu!

Started going to the gym, also with Fu!

I also did many other things, but some are not as major and some I want to keep a secret so I won’t list them all. In short, I felt like I accomplished a lot in 2015!

2. What didn’t go well

Fell sick twice. Both times caused directly or indirectly by Carys -_-;;

Grandma admitted to hospital 4 times. She’s ok now, but I wished I could be there :(

Hmmm, I think that’s about it! I really don’t have much to complain about :)

3. Planning for 2016

Be healthy! Everything that didn’t go well was health-related, and it’s true that health is wealth, so I’ll have to up my game at taking better care of my health. I already sleep plenty (how does 12 hours a day on average sound? lol) so better diet, more water intake (still not drinking as much as I’d like to currently) and more exercise!

Travel Japan more. I think this will be a recurring theme every year haha. Traveling might be a little tougher this year due to fluff ball, but let’s put the target at 3 prefectures. The difference is this year the 3 doesn’t have to be new prefectures, since new ones are all far away.

Be moderate and focus. The thing with me is that I have interest in a LOT of things, which means I have the tendency to dabble in a bit of everything I’m interested in. But that results in me generally having only a shallow insight of the subject and has often left me feeling unsatisfied and strangely burnt out. Which is really darn annoying because I’ll think “I didn’t even do much so why am I tired?!” and then “I wanna do more!” Ugh. This year I’m going to try focusing on lesser things at a time, and seeing more to completion. Hopefully this will give me a greater sense of achievement and satisfaction. We’ll see. Check back in a year! Haha.

Play more. I did lots of things in 2015, but I didn’t feel like I played a lot (like, literally play). Might be related to the point above. For example, I have many games, all only completed partway, including Kingdom Hearts (yes, the Kingdom Hearts released in 2002 and Carys is gonna roll her eyes to the back of her head when she reads this). I also have several board games that have been unwrapped but never played! WHAT IS THIS. Need to rectify it soon!

Grow our websites. Combined, Fu and I have several websites and we hope we can grow them (lots!) in 2016!

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That’s all there is to life, isn’t it? Find the things that make you happy and indulge in them!

Here’s to a brilliant, exciting, and fulfilling 2016 ahead!