A little over a year ago, I started a small blog on Blogger as a random news blog, highlighting random going-ons of Asian films and box office numbers. Eventually, the daily posts, which used to only share news that share a common theme, got longer and longer. Then it simply became what is now The Golden Rock: An (almost) daily news aggregation blog really inspired by the old daily news post by Japan Probe.

Slowly, the blog began getting attention from those who cover the same field such as Jason Gray, Don Brown (of Ryuganji), Kaiju Shakedown’s Grady Hendrix, and of course, my boss at lovehkfilm, who has been a great enough supporter to make this blog legit by bringing it on board this site. For this past year’s support, I thank all these people, plus my average of 100 daily readers and those who have commented, sincerely from the bottom of my heart.

And so I ask myself, what are my goals for this upcoming year?

- Continue developing the right format for the blog, which is an ongoing process.
- Try and stay grammatically correct in every entry. That’s reaching a little bit.
- Update the spin-off more often. That might not happen until I’m out of school.
- More picture posts. People like pictures.
- Write entries more efficiently. Aggregating news means I would waste time looking at other sites while I’m writing.
- Now that there’s no more podcast (no time), bring back the Best of the Week entries.

And of course, I’ll think of some more as the year goes by. As they say in Japan: 今年もよろしくお願いします！ (if someone can translate that in English, that’d be great).

And now, more random discoveries in Japan that I forgot to cover last time:

Don’t mistaken this as an actual sequel for Bae Yong-Joon’s (or Yong-sama) classic drama Winter Sonata. It’s actually an ad for a new pachinko machine (the steel marble game). I guess to attract more housewives to pachinko parlor?

A picture of the blogger with his own blog. No, seriously, I got it at a temple on New Years day and just don’t feel like eating it.

And then there’s the biggest discovery of the trip: The ass-biting bug (this is a PG-13 blog, so forget the kid-friendly names). I first discovered this catchy and addictive tune at a display in the “practical life store” Tokyu Hands, where this song was playing on loop:

It has no real melody, it has a bug that bites people’s asses, and he even goes under the waterfall training seen in The Storm Riders.

So of course I had to buy one for myself.

Because really, how can you not like a bug that bites asses to bring people closer together? Thank you, NHK.

Just in case you haven’t had enough, here’s a live version: