Dear Readers,

Welcome to the New Year and Happy 2025 to you all. The blog also celebrates its blogoversary on January 26th, 2011! The blog is 14 years old. 🥳

The first posts, posted on the same day, are here and here. At the time this blog was meant to be a side project. However it outlasted my other blogs.

The blog has had its periods of activity, and periods of quiet. Lately, the blog has been quiet as I have been preoccupied with holidays, family, and other hobbies. I haven’t played karuta in months, and haven’t been reading any pertinent books lately either.

However, I am working quietly on the back-end to make some improvements to searching the blog and making certain information more easily accessible (based on recent feedback), and shuffling a few pages around.¹ What happens after that, time will tell.

But it has also been nice to just recharge and take a break.

Nonetheless, I am happy to celebrate this blog lasting as long as it has, inactivity notwithstanding. And of course, thank you readers and Hyakunin Isshu for your support and encouragement.

As for 2025, best wishes to everyone, and may the new year bring you many smiles.

¹ It’s interesting to look at anonymous blog stats and see people’s viewing habits. Oftentimes, they surprise me: what I think people will want to read versus what people are actually looking for.