There’s a custom in Japan where you do not say Happy New Year if a family member died the year before. I’ve had the misfortune of not saying Happy New Year for most of my Japan life, if you can believe it. If you’re asking how do people realize you’re being respectful to the dead and not rude to the living, well you probably are also asking when a piece of Japanese media will be translated into English for longer than it would have taken you to learn Japanese and realize there are other things you could do with that time, like navigate cultural practices.
I’m glad 2024 was not like the year that everybody died, because I didn’t. I would find out I might be dying right after I travelled 7000 miles to attend a funeral. Everyone that was there would be in their right to think I was lying about being healthy. It was the truth that I was not lying about what I knew about my body’s condition.
As a foreigner living in Japan if I tell the disrespectful lie of “Happy New Year” that’s probably more culturally appropriate than if I respond with the Honoring Lie “Yes, Hello.” I can never be sure that they’ll recognize I’m communicating social knowledge instead of language incompetence.
With that, “Yes, Hello,” to 2025 and the 2024 Fukubukuro. It turns out I still play Video Games. What follows is some essays and some lists encompassing 2024 and Video Games for me. I’ve figured out I’ll never escape this idiot art form, yet still escaped the grip of death.
I’m coming back to the intro after having written the rest of this to say I didn’t even write about my Top 100 Games list. That was a bullet point I had back in September. I couldn’t figure out how to make that an essay. If you read that list and all of this and want that essay, let me know. I wrote it because I was dying, and had to leave my mark on Video Games.
You can expect a lot of black humor references this year. Let’s start with Pledges.
INDEX:
Pledge Games
Rebirth
Jeans
Blockbuster
Short Message
Invader
Animal Well
Gazillion
Interruption
Scene Akihabara 2024
Mine
Look
Hinge Problems 
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