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All last week I was in Tokyo to attend ICFP and associated workshops. It was nice to finally meet a bunch of people I've been talking with online for the last few years. And I met up with Ken Shan and Oleg Kiselyov again, which is always a pleasure. Unlike last time I was in Japan, I didn't get too much time to explore and go sightseeing. I got to explore Chiyoda, which I missed last time around, and I made sure to do two of the most important things: (1) eat some okonomiyaki, (2) visit Akihabara to buy some new manga.
My newest acquisition is 銃姫 ("Gun Princess") Phantom Pain, which I'm rather enjoying so far. Anything that starts off with an execution, spell-casting based on Buddhist mantras, and a prolonged diatribe on why one of the characters is a good-for-nothing incompetent layabout, can't be half bad :) Unfortunately, I only got the first two volumes, so I'll finish them all too soon. So far it's proving easier to read than my previous acquisition (Peace Maker 鐵), though I'm not sure if that's due to getting better at Japanese or because 鐵 is written in a particular style. I definitely noticed my deterioration in fluency since five years ago; grammar's fine, but my vocab is abysmal. I need to find a decent way to work on that.
