Amsterdam City Trip

 Noshi and me went to Amsterdam the past week, to blow out a bit from the rather hectic month of december.

With little Thorin and my father getting heavy medical diagnoses, all in one month it has been a very emotional, sleep derived month and not the best of seasonal holidays.

So we needed this break, if only to get some sleep for one, and to put everything in a row to carry on with life and recharge the emotional batteries.  So of we went for a trip of food, beer and (adult) entertainmant.

It is also Noshi's birthday on the day we arrived, so needless to say that meant a good dinner was in order before causing some noise issues in the hotelroom (SNORING, you pervs!!!!).  

One of the things we had planned was visiting the Otaking store, which has a huge selection of gachapon machines, but it was closed for the seasonal brake unfortunatly.  No idea when I will get there again though, but it remains on the to visit list for sure.

Not to despair though, as I had found online another store with a LOT of manga, namely Henk's Comics.  Going there for a stroll, I picked up a few manga.

Of course, when in other cities, one visits museum's, and we had selected two to visit for our three day stay in the city.  The first one was Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum

While the second one was located in the famous Red Lights district (I told you, adult entertainment, you all just thought far to wrong, bunch of hentai!) which tells the story of the history of erotic art.

Both where fun museums, and for the rest we have been strengthening the inner person.  On the first night, we went for mexican food (it was okay, not great, but fast foody wise okay) before going for drinks in Cafe Cuba for the birthday girl.  Here I discovered a tasty local IPA I must say.

On the second day we went first for a drink where I got a local micro steam brewery, and it was a fine beer I must say, very soft in taste.

Afterwards, it was time for a good italian for a bite, some penne con gamberetti e spinaci always is welcome.

 

 

And I found the street I want to move to.  Imagine the fun of dictating your adress to people if you live here, they would be thinking you're pulling their leg!

Of course, we went for some strolling and shopping during our stay. Like this huge, two story candy store.  Noshi was in her element with all that tastyness around!

 

And crepes...

I also saw a book I liked in a HUGE bookstore, but decided to not get it.  That is, until the morning after so we went back to the store and I picked it up in the end after all.

And so it was time to go back to our homestead, and hopping on the train back to Antwerp after a short but relaxing break from everything.

Though of course, I can't pass Antwerp Central Station without dropping by at Akiba and do some gachapon, to compensate for the above mentioned store being closed during the trip...

 

Did I manage to build my mangatheque in 2022?

 So, one of the goals for the nearly closing 2022 was rebuilding my manga collection, or mangatheque I like to call it.

And this in part of the goal of reading 100 books this year.

Now, about the goal itself, you could read about that a few days ago, but this post will focus purely on obtained manga's.

Starting with this short clip, showing the ones now in my collection:

 

 

 

Yeah, that pile is the ones that I still need to read, some are very recent additions from right before I closed this post and taped the clip, but also volumes of series I follow, but lack previous books from...

 

So while still not a library at all, that cabinet saw some SERIOUS growth over the past year. And it seems 2023 will have the collection at least doubled for certain, so next year's update will be a tat longer hehehe...

The Haul Report 348: the last one of the year

 Okay, so we upload this one on tuesday instead of sundays, as the christmas weekend just passed by and way to much food didn`t give me any juice anymore the past days.

But the days to be jolly have passed now, and I received some awesome gifts!

Starting with this nice stack of manga from my darling, meaning I now have the full series and a lot of enjoyable reading to come!

 

 

While the little guy got me the highly needed new slippers for in the house!

But not everything was holiday gifts this week, as I ordered some paints to tackle both my Quintuplets piece as well as Lunamaria's GunPla kit, which arrived this week.

But of course, the inner person needs to be fed as well, and that will happen thanks to the christmas present for the employees.

On christmas eve I was home with my sick little boy who caught the flu, and I send Noshi to her family.  We did a Secret Santa (I learned me and Noshi had actually drawn each other), and the present she got me for that was this awesome thingies:

My parents also got me more manga, and namely these volumes.

 

 

As well as some more beer to strengthen the inner person.

 

So this has been a pretty awesome, Manga-nificent, christmas gift round, thanks you all!

The Aphabet Challenge: the selection

 As you could read earlier this week, in my quest to devour anime series I went for 27 randomly determined anime series this year, all from my MAL "Planned to Watch" list.

One for each letter of the alphabet, as well as one for the "numerical" designated series.

And here is the selection, which will be followed in sequence, and as such you can see over the coming twelve months how far I will get in this list.

#: 86 second season

A: Akiba Maid Sensou

B: Black Lagoon The Second Barrage

C: Choujuusin Gravion Zwei

D: Dies Irae: To the Ring Incarnation

E: Engage Kiss

F: Fate / Kaleid Liner Prisma Ilya

G: Gamers!

H: Hoozuki no Reitetsu

I: Ikkitousen Western Wolves

J: Jahy-sama wa Kujikenai!

 

K: Kakegurui Twin

 

L: Lycoris Recoil

 

M: Muv-Luv Alternative

 

N: Natsuyuki Rendezvous

 

O: One Punch Man 2nd Season

 

P: Planet With

 

Q: Queen's Blade Grimoire

 

R: RPG Fudousan

 

S: Sakugan

 

T: Tokyo Ghoul Va

 

U: Uchuu Senkan Yamato 2199

 

V: Vinland Saga

 

W: Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii

 

X: xxxHolic

 

Y: Yuru Camp

 

Z: Zaregoto

 

As these are all older series that have been released, nothing new for 2023, that means also that I can take a serious bite out of my backlog from my MAL plan to watch list hopefully, and get that number down to more manageable levels. 

Let the binging begin!

The 2023 Goals: the year of Ink

 A new year, a new set of hobby goals!

 

After the year of manga, it is time for the year of Ink.

And while the usual hobby targets will be included, this year there are also goals I want to achieve that are related, yet aren`t.

The title is for my other intrest: tattoos.  Though it might involve getting a leg surgery out of the way first unfortunatly.  But the goal for this year is to get both my Thorin dedicated Kitsune tattoo, as well as my planned Kurumi tattoo, Zero Two AND have my Saint tattoo's freshened up and expanded all over the chest area and sleeved in.  That is, if Hagen is salvageable.  Needle-ess to say (see what I did there!), a lot of my free spend budget as such will go to that goal.

 

But I also keep fighting with getting back in shape, though maybe for cosplay, but definitly for other things, and I`ll be rewarding myself this year if I hit some benchmarks: 85 and I`ll get a new nipple piercing, 80 and I`ll be getting an "ear bar" at last. 

To that end, me and Noshi have an appointment at the Arlon Tattoo Convention in april, where I will have a fox tattooed to honour my little boy.  The artist, Mornee Tattoos, is one we discovered last year at the Brussels convention.

 

Another thing I am aiming for that is not anime hobby related, is discovering, tasting and hopefully enjoying 50 new beers for my Untappd app account.  That means about 1 totally new beer every week, so some Hopt orders and resulting tasting reports are definitly in the pipeline as such.  

 

But we move ever further of course to the mainstay hobby goals.

And this year, I`m going big again on anime, aiming to complete at least 50 once again this year!  Including something I`m going to call the Alphabet challenge: one anime at random from every letter of the alphabet, and including the category of numbers, so of those 50 there will be 27 (not 26) random series.  As I`m aiming for series released before this year, new series I`m watching with one of those letters don`t count.  I`ll post a list of the selected anime later this week as such.

For the books, and especially manga's, I will continue building a collection in earnest further, and aim to read as such 50 volumes and books this year.

Series and movies wise, I`m not putting high bars this year, with all my anime devouring I barely come round to those in the end.  So let's put those at 20 each and see how far we get without bothering about them to much.

Of course, I will be doing some painting as well in the new year, but it will be an adaption of the time schedule to get used to as Thorin started going to school and all.

And while I`m aiming to get more stuff done with MechaTop, aiming for a further 10 gachapon mobile suits.

More Mecha gaming stuff, as I`ll also be going for 1/144 scale GunPla gaming, and to that end I want to paint a set of models from my backlog for the ruleset, let's put the bar at 5 model kit sets (not necessarily 1/144 but suitable for MechaTop), but as you can see, the painting goals are no longer hinting at any wargaming.  Surely, I`ll be doing the occassional solo game for MechaTop as I love using my models, but the fact is I doubt I`ll ever seriously find the time in the upcoming years to go to a club full time again.  So better to spend the time in the relaxing, painting and building part of the hobby, then actually trying to build armies and meet deadlines for something that won't happen soon anyways.

So, that's a nice stack on the menu for the coming year, so let's see how it'll go!