January: Honestly, not much stands out. I spent the New Year holidays at my parents' place, but this year I watched neither Gaki no Tsukai nor Kōhaku — the two shows that soundtrack the end of the year in most Japanese households. If anything, early completion of my master's program was starting to come into view, and a vague, drifting sense of urgency had begun to set in. I was nowhere near meeting the credit requirements, so the end of the semester turned into a marathon of exams and reports. I even pulled an all-nighter helping a fourth-year undergrad with their senior thesis. Looking back, it was a peaceful month.
February: It would be natural to remember February as the final push toward my master's thesis interim presentation, but I don't really remember it that way. The shape of the thesis gradually came together: I decided one track would combine differential games with a trajectory prediction model. A second track on traffic control — something I really wanted to work on — had to be set aside. In retrospect, the urgency of that period made it hard to think about anything deeply. At the end of the month, my lab took a trip around eastern Hokkaido: Abashiri, Kushiro, Nemuro, and Shiretoko. It was wonderful. One of the banner images on this site is the drift ice I saw there; that pure, immense landscape is something I still can't shake.
March: Even as farewells filled the air, I was in full drive from early spring toward the master's thesis seminars, IEEE ITSC, and the JSTE conference. Caught in the rhythm of goodbyes and new arrivals, I was unsettled by rumours of incoming faculty and talk of my advisor's office being reshuffled. I also attended the farewell dinner for my university club and spoke on behalf of the remaining members to the graduating seniors. I've never been comfortable with handwritten farewell notes or goodbye speeches, so every one of these occasions is a struggle. Even so, I was genuinely happy that the junior I'd spent the most time with graduated without a hitch. Congratulations.
April: Two big thesis progress presentations on April 1 and April 23. Lab seminars for HKSTS, IEEE ITSC, JSTE, and our internal group all kicked off at once, and I found myself cornered in both mind and body. Research wasn't going well. The feedback stung. Chasing too many rabbits at once, I ended up with nothing but surface-level ideas on every front. Not a month I have fond memories of.
May: Paper submissions to IEEE ITSC and JSTE, the DC1 fellowship application, and a third round of thesis seminars — early May was one long string of deliverables and, looking back, one of the biggest peaks of the whole master's thesis cycle. The DC1 application was ultimately unsuccessful, but the pace at which I could produce work grew noticeably faster after this stretch. April through early May had been painful enough that I started drifting, and one of the things I drifted into was an oil painting class. I ended up going for a full year, and it became a genuine anchor for me. In the last week of May, I joined a firefly walk along the rural footpaths — a proper cleanse for the mind.
June: I don't remember taking a single day off. And yet — I did quietly slip off to Gen Hoshino's MAD HOPE Japan Tour in Sendai. I've been a fan since my gap year before university, when I was listening to his All Night Nippon radio show almost every week, and I applied for tickets to every date on this tour. I got lucky and won a Sendai seat, and my luck didn't stop there: the seat turned out to be right next to the center stage, close enough that Gen Hoshino was only a few meters away — close enough to hear him breathing. It was deeply moving. The obsession Gen Hoshino brings to his creative work is genuinely unhinged, and I admire him for it. I wanted to face my own research with the same posture — a thought that lasted about five minutes, because then I was off to TRISTAN 2025 in Okinawa as staff. Putting thesis progress aside, it was the best conference experience I've had. I felt my ties inside and outside the lab grow meaningfully stronger. Brazil next time! At the end of the month, I submitted the first draft of my master's thesis.
July:
August:
September:
October:
November:
December:
In summary: