Let’s take a month-by-month look back at 2025!
- January: Served as the person in charge of the JBA Saitama Solo Competition. I also had the opportunity to perform at high school music festivals in two different prefectures.
- February: The Saitama Luminous Wind Orchestra’s (LWO) annual concert was nearly a full house! I also enjoyed watching the Japan Curling Championships in Yokohama.🥌
- March: Spent half the month in China.🇨🇳 I finally conducted the “Intermediate Course” for the Yamaha China Band Director Seminar. On the other hand, my Finale course at Yamaha Music Avenue ended after 23 years.
- April: Worked with Mr Kyle Mechmet, saxophonist from the US, at schools and with the LWO.🎷
- May: The annual concert for Kumagaya Girls’ High School, the retirement performance for the senior students, was another deeply moving and wonderful concert.
- June: Held an “out-of-season” Christmas concert with LWO.🎄
- July: Fully immersed in band activities. In between, I also participated in a music festival in Chengdu, China.🐼
- August: My schedule was packed with band events in early August, followed by a concert in Yantai, China, named after me! The APBDA event in Singapore was also a great success.🇸🇬
- September: Finally took a breather after a hectic summer and attended many concerts as an audience member.🎻 At the end of the month, the Aeon Kita-Urawa temporarily closed its doors.
- October: My fourth trip to China this year. It was a literal “national tour,” travelling through Changchun, Shanghai, Wuxi, Beijing, Nanchang, Guangzhou, Kunming, and back to Shanghai.✈️
- November: Performed on two consecutive days at the Saitama Civic Music Festival and the “Band Day” by JBA Saitama, which I also served as the organiser.
- December: Managed to dedicate more time to writing scores. I also received the sad news of the passing of Mr Toshio Akiyama.
Just as 1998, the year Windows 98 was released, was the “dawn of the PC era,” I feel that 2025 will be remembered as the “dawn of Generative AI.” Personally, it has significantly reduced my workload, especially for tasks like translation and proofreading. I don’t think I could have handled the sheer volume of work in the first half of this year without ChatGPT and Gemini.
However, knowing how to prompt AI and spotting its errors is something only humans can do. I hope the younger generation continues to work manually to build their own fundamental intellectual stamina.
Looking ahead to 2026, my visits to China will likely be less frequent, but not zero, though. Nevertheless, I have plenty of things I want and need to achieve. I look forward to continuing my efforts!
Thank you to everyone who supported me this year.
I wish you all a very Happy New Year.
Immigration and Emigration Records
- Japan 🇯🇵: 307 days
- China: 🇨🇳 53 days
- Singapore 🇸🇬: 8 days
- Hong Kong: 🇭🇰 3 days
- Malaysia 🇲🇾: 2 days
Note: “Counts” refer to the number of times passing through immigration. Since travel days involve staying in two or more countries/regions on the same day, the total exceeds 365 days.
Flight Records
- Cathay Pacific (CX): 8
- Air China (CA): 6
- Japan Airlines (JL): 4
- China Eastern Airlines (MU): 4
- China Southern Airlines (CZ): 3
- Juneyao Air (HO): 1
- Spring Airlines Japan (IJ): 1
- Kunming Airlines (KY): 1
- Malaysia Airlines (MH): 1
- HK Express (UO): 1
It seems I took 29 flights in total, spending 66.9 hours in the air and covering 47,336 km.✈️ While it felt like I flew a lot, surprisingly, both the frequency and distance were lower than last year.
