Intro
It’s kind of alarming that I don’t really remember much about 2025, so I’m taking the time to actively recall what happened while writing this blog post.
Reflection time
Thankfully I’ve been somewhat active in writing blog posts, so I could fill the gaps in my memories. Key points of my life during 2025 has been:
- Purchasing a domain & hosting my personal site, as well as this blog on that domain
- Learned some react native, but since I never used it I think I already mostly forgot how to use it
- Used a split keyboard but ended up selling it to a friend
- Created a personal project (maisocial) but ended up abandoning it due to me quitting maimai
- Took the N3 JLPT exam on July & ended up passing, so I didn’t take any JLPT test on December
- Tried applying for a job at PayPay, but ended up getting rejected without even getting an online coding test
- First time resigning from a job (previously I was laid off)
- Prepared & ran a 5K with a friend
- Started spamming chunithm instead of maimai at arcades
- Joined a rhythm game tournament & ended up top 8 (out of 38 players)
A pretty eventful year, I’m satisfied with what I’ve done this year. Now, let’s look at my resolutions last year:
maimai: Achieve 15750 rating
I ended up not achieving this because my skills plateaued, and I don’t think I can keep pushing this uphill battle of bad arcade conditions & toxic community. In the end I ended up quitting after finishing the rhythm game tournament.
I think what Horie said here speaks to me, because I saw a lot of people that improved way faster than me in such a shorter time that I have to accept reality.
Unlike the popular saying, putting in hard work will sometimes (or frequently) betray you. Some people are just born with it. Instead, focus on your personal growth.
It would be awesome if everyone achieve their greatest feats, but reality is much harsher than that. It’s only natural to compare yourself to others who are better. To make up for your shortcomings, you might put in even more effort than others - but even then, sometimes catching up is impossible! If this conundrum continues, it affects you negatively, eating away your mental health.
There are ways to overcome this situation - like taking breaks - but if it’s affecting you too much, you should consider quitting. There is one ultimate answer to this though, which is to recognize you are lacking.
PIU: Get Internmediate Lv.10
Turns out there are quite a lot of easy 19s that I ended up getting this way faster than I thought, on February. I didn’t touch any double 19 charts at all, which might hinder my growth/target for later charts.
After I reached my target I ended up not playing much, so my skill decayed to the point where I can barely clear 18s now. I’m playing around the 17 level, but I want to put in the effort to get back to where I was.
JLPT: Retake N4 if needed, take N3 on 2nd period
I took the N4 on December 2024, so at that time I wasn’t sure if I passed or not. I ended up passing the N4 with a score of 154/180, so I decided to push myself and take on the N3 on July 2025. My thought process was at least I could retake it on December if I failed, but I ended up passing N3 with a score of 131/180. I’m satisfied with where I am, but N2 is probably my next and final target.
Life: Reduce sugar intake, exercise more
I did end up exercising more because my friend pushed me to join a 5K run. After the 5K finished however, my motivation kinda crashed hard, and combined with the stress of everyday life I ended up developing a sugar addiction. I’m aware that this is bad, which is why I’m trying to reduce my sugar intake.
New resolutions
Here are my new year resolutions for 2026. I don’t expect to achieve every single one of them, but I want to put an effort to do so.
chunithm: Achieve 16.5 rating
Ever since quitting maimai, I started spamming chunithm and got to a rating of 16.2. You may think that going from 16.2 to 16.5 is a short journey, but for me I think it is quite hard. To get to 16.5, I need to be able to constantly clear 14+ songs with high accuracy (at least SSS, or in layman’s terms, ~99.75% of the maximum possible score)
My ability to clear 14s with high accuracy is not there yet, and I’m trying to push my skill ceiling by spamming 14+s while pulling my skill floor by going for high 13 - 13+ scores. In theory this is one of the possible resolutions to achieve, since a year is quite a long time.
PIU: Get Advanced Lv.1
I have this stigma where I want to get Advanced Lv.1 because Intermediate Lv.10 feels like I’m in the borderline, and I could push for Advanced Lv.1 in order to be recognized as “quite good” (because after Advanced there is still Expert after all).
I actually have like 6 level 20 clears, and in theory I only need 14 more. But as I said, my skill decayed because I didn’t put much effort into PIU.
I’m gonna spend the first half of the year raising my skill floor to 18, and spend the second half pushing for 20s. Wish me luck I guess?
JLPT: Take N2
I’m not sure if it is possible to pass the N2, since the gap between N3 and N2 is huge. Nevertheless, I want to attempt it. The question is, should I try in on July, or December? I can try both, but it feels like a waste if I ended up not passing.
One of my friends wanted to take the N3, so by helping him, I think I will end up revieweing my N3 knowledge as well.
If any one of you reading this want to study Japanese together (as long as it is N2, N3, N4, N5), contact me 😄
Life: Run 10K in 65 minutes
My friend invited me to run 5K in under 30 minutes, and both of us achieved that on September. I asked him if he is interested in doing a 10K, and he said that he can run whenever as long as there is sufficient heads up, so that he can train before the event.
Personally I’m not sure when I want to run the 10K, but I think I want to take the first 4 months training for a 65 minute finish.
If my friend ends up not wanting to join a 10K event, I’ll run by myself if I need to 😭
Life: Maintain a body weight of 65kg
My body weight actually reached 66kg during my 5K training regimen, but the stress of living screwed me over by handing me a sugar addiction debuff. As of writing, my weight is hovering around 70.5 - 71.5 kg (not overweight, but about to be, according to BMI), and my blood pressure’s systole (upper number) is around 140 - 150.
I hope the new year motivation is enough to cut off my sugar addiction, and that my 10K training regimen will reduce my weight back to healthy levels.
Code: Finish my personal project - goi (語彙)
MaiSocial was a personal project to pad my CV & I hoped for it to be used by the community, but things happened and I ended up stopping the project. Since that is the case, then I could say that this project is not finished.
Goi is a curated vocabulary list of Japanese words, since I feel that my biggest weakness is vocabulary and listening. This project is a means to help with my Japanese vocabulary, and hopefully help others who are interested in taking the JLPT.
As of writing only the DB population script is done. I have yet to start the backend (which I plan to use Spring Boot) and frontend (not sure what I will use for this one). Hopefully I could finish it by the first half of the year so that I could use it as a supplement to my N2 goal.
Career: Re-apply for a Software Engineer job in Japan
It’s kind of a yearly tradition at this point, ever since I was laid off by Tokopedia/Bytedance on 2024. I got rejected at 2024, and despite my improved skillset & polished CV, I still got rejected at 2025. PayPay has a cooldown period of 1 year, which is why I said that it’s a yearly tradition. Not that I have to join Paypay, but I’m not sure how open other companies are to foreign Software Engineers.
If my current employer sees this, please do not worry, I do not plan on re-applying until August 2026, even then I might still be rejected 😆
Closing thoughts
Not much to say, I will face 2026 with some semblance of optimism, or at least try to. The world may keep blasting bad news at us, but let us at least help each other out instead of doing nothing & simply getting depressed over global issues that we can’t do anything about.