SazakoRegular Boarder

Hello! Thanks for asking, am a bit tired currently and looking forward to everything being more chill at work during the summer vacation, hehe. How have you been doing?

Yeah I've brought this up with some other people in the meantime as well and most answers people gave me is:
a) They spent time online out of boredom and now have more free time, so no interest anymore
b) People picking up new hobbies and/or not wanting to be on the computer/phone so much, so less online interactions)
c)Apparently a lot of people also do this as slacking off during work time and now there is nothing or less to slack off from (?? That last one really baffled me!)

Seems like we are rather in the minority by seeing this as an opportunity to work on backlogs. :P

Yeah the like-system was heavily debated here a lot of times. They removed everything from comments and with articles they replaced the up/downvote with a like-system. I personally prefer the like-system, but now my older articles seem like nobody cared for them because the ratings were wiped. ^^''

Nope, postal services are still a mess here, so I'm avoiding buying things from the internet. The few things I have shipped out during these times also never arrived at the recipient, so I just don't trust it all... Only thing I have now is a pre-order for late October, and it will depend on the corona and postal situation if I will get anything earlier than that.

I'm actually more sad about Plamoya closing down...I regularly used to buy from them and I had no clue that only a couple of months into Corona would be their downfall. :(

Huh, so you guys still have the 14-day rule, but can travel (sort of) freely? That doesn't really seem to work together that well tbh. :S

Nope, we are still waiting on the numbers and the news if we are going to have a second wave or that we are 'clear' soon. Expected is that around August we know if it's safe to go back to normal life in September.

Yeah the UK was hit hardest here. They also took the longest before going into lockdown, which made the results for them pretty worse...

Well since yesterday (!) Finnish is finally an option on Duolingo, so I'm now trying that out daily haha.

So English is not your first language? Which language is it? 

Even though it's a neighboring country for me and only one train-ride, I will also need a visa to be able to enter Russia! And yes, the pretty architecture in St. Petersburg is something we are also really looking forward to! Next to the museums and general city-life. :)

Hehe so you also fell down the collecting shirts hole? :D But I always tell myself it's a good collection, because you use it! :)

I'm really excited about the announcement of RE8 and plan on ordering and playing it the moment it's available! :D I only pay full pre-order price for the franchises I heavily follow. I either do that or buy them on sale, I barely go for 'midpriced' games.

Well, right now I'm using imgBB and it seems to work. So now I'll just hope it won't go offline suddenly one day.

Good luck and speak to you later! :)

They might have, they are not really open about this news (it might help with support if they did)!

I've been pretty close multiple times myself to buy lifetime supporter, but things like those random outages and random updates changing tons of things on this site make it hard for me to commit. I've also had a bad experience in the past by supporting a site I used to frequent for years and then see it go offline only a couple of weeks later. >.<

Hi! Yeah, the owner of the website let me know that there was an unexpected server outage, so everyone experienced it. Right now everything should be fully working again. :) Although we still have the weird updated stuff like the huge font, which I just need to get used to I guess.

Hello again! :)

I have the feeling that the amount of blogs, new pictures, etc. is not really lower, but I think the interaction/amount of hits etc. is lower than it used to be. I'm just really surprised because you would think that people now have time to finish things they had in their backlog. If it wasn't for me being busy with unpacking from my move, I would for sure be catching up with sifting through pictures for blogs I have planned.

And that is a really nice shirt! I don't understand the meme part of it, though? I'm not that much into Touhou community anymore, although I keep on liking the character designs and sometimes check on new releases that have come out.

Will do! Right now I have my eye on:



Hoping it will stay in stock for a while more!

Wow, I think it's really cool that you already had access to model kits when you were so young! :O I didn't see them before joining this website.

Ah yes, I have heard of Skylines. :) Not really my type of game to play (although I did play Simcity as a kid/teen), but I hear a lot of good things from other people that play it.

Well, your pictures are more like travel guide/travel memory, right? So I personally see it more as a diary thing instead. Makes sense that you won't spend a lot of time setting up for such a thing, because you want to enjoy your holiday as well. :)

Oh! I really like those printed books! I actually have been thinking about it before, to make a sort of magazine-style print of some of my favorite/most popular articles, but never got to it. I'm so bad with graphic design.

All my new coworkers are very nice, it's a bit hard to get to know them all through videocamera, but in a couple of months I hope I can see them all at the office.

Nope, unfortunately I'm very bad with languages. I'm trying my best on some basics with Finnish, but it's one of the hardest languages out there, on top of my already bad language skills. >.< I hope that in a couple of years I'll know some basics for conversations in shops/with neighbors etc.

Wouldn't really say I'm popular here anymore, unless I get more active on blogging again, haha!

Well yeah, it sounds like bragging, but I don't really know how to put it otherwise: I was one of the fastest workers there, so they had a lot of work to pick up that I left behind. I still sometimes have contact with one of my former coworkers there and they never replaced me, it just got busier. And yes, thanks! Lots of ups and downs in just that small bit of text LOL.

The north of Finland is almost like permanent winter, so if you check out some temperatures and expected snow before you go, you will be good! The southern part where I live is in general already 'warmer'. I have no clue about the 72h and not needing a VISA though, is that for Russia or Finland? We are planning to take the train to St Petersburg one day as well, maybe as our vacation for 2021. :)

Oh wow, buy a home without mortgage?! That seems like an impossible dream to me! But it seems like you have some good plans, so good luck! :)

We now both work and live in Finland. :) But I was talking about before when I was still in the Netherlands and he already moved to here. And wow, such low numbers of corona! But that is good! I hope it stays that way.

I know from my own collecting that I'm very materialistic, but I am quite a cheapskate when it comes to other stuff. For example, I won't buy new furniture until the old stuff is worn out, with electronics I also mostly hold onto them until they are (close to) dying, clothes I wear for a long time before retiring as well etc. I feel like only on those three subjects I am already a lot cheaper than most other people...I know so many people that regularly redecorate their home and replace all their furniture, people that take a new phone every other year etc. So even though I have expensive hobbies, I feel like I handle my finances well when it comes to retirement and starting hopefully soon also more in making travel possible.

I liked RE3 quite a lot, but it's because of nostalgia goggles for sure, I can understand a lot of complaints people have about this remake. It's very short and a lot of environments and enemies are re-used from RE2 (this was already the case in the original game). If you're in general a fan of the franchise it's fun, but otherwise I would recommend to wait for it to come on sale. I didn't buy Doom Eternal yet, I don't really have time to play games right now, so it's better for the wallet to wait until it had a few pricedrops.

Heh, I really like that hoodie! :D And yeah focus is more on goods right now and hopefully starting 2021 more travelling. :) So my money will get spend at other fun things haha.

Well according to the youngsters, Facebook is not cool anymore and they're on apps like Instagram, Tiktok and a couple of others. Very recently I opened up a Twitter: twitter.com/Maa... , but I'm not really active on social media. I keep it mainly to MFC and private mail/chatting with people on the internet.

Yes, I really like that about Syoko! Both her 'personalities' are very cute to me. :) I recently started using imgbb for image hosting, which multiple users here recommended me. Only time will tell if it stays that way (same for Cube I guess...)

If you don't mind me asking, then you are going to travel somewhere else to do work? Is that still possible? :O

I don't know if you're having the same, but surprisingly every place I visit online seems a lot more inactive since quarantine hit. So I've been getting a lot less messages than I normally would and can reply faster.

That jumper is super cool! I have a few in similar style from Kancolle where I'm keeping my eyes on and this is getting me motivated to buy them, haha!

I just checked out your article, it's so cute! Must have taken quite a lot of time to write it up as well. And yeah this site having less traffic + current corona-situation = low amount of hits. I hope it gets a bit better once quarantine is over.

It's good that you also quoted me in your reply, because I had no clue what we were talking about back then anymore. xD Seems like you read all my blogs inbetween. :) I have moved here 2,5 months ago and have been working my new job for 1,5 months. Just a week ago we got our permanent address and I'm going through unboxing everything I own again. Which is fun and not fun at the same time, haha!

Good to hear your area is not that hard hit by the Corona. Quarantine is no fun, but it's something that was really needed in my area as the numbers were going super fast and as we live only 1 hr away from the airport, so it's like the center of bad stuff happening in the country. :( My last job...well I was as polite as I could be, but of course they were pissed that I left. They were already understaffed and then I went as well. I tried to not feel too guilty about it, because they were not a nice employer to me (lied about pay I would be getting and although it started good, ended up being quite a toxic place to work). Selling our house went very well, though! The housing market was booming, so we had a perfect selling time. We had 4 visitors on the first day of which 2 ended up bidding on the house. We sold it with a bit of profit and it helped us easily purchase something new in Finland. Especially looking at the current situation in the world, timing couldn't have been better!

Paperwork hell is still not over, as everything is (of course) on hold with the government right now. My main issue is still no clear information/agreement on my health insurance. But yeah it's not like I want to do my dentist appointment or anything else non-essential until the quarantine is over. Image hosting is going so-so. For every new blog I upload, I fix an old one and every now and then when someone requests one to be fixed, I fix it up. If there is anything specific you would like me to fix, you can always let me know. :)

Oh, that's cool! :D Unfortunately I did not have much time to explore here as a bit more than one month after I got here the quarantine started. Normally winter is cold here, but our first winter here it was similar to a winter in our home country, which means the temperature varies from -10 to +5. The Finnish people hated that, but we thought it was nice.

Why isn't it possible to get a house in a less busy place for you? Is it because of work location making you not able to? Otherwise this seems like a great time to buy a house as banks are giving huge discounts on mortgages and house value is tanking almost everywhere.

I unfortunately also have not used the new camera much. A little bit for a few tests for possible reviews and when I went a week to visit my husband in September (before knowing I would actually move there myself half a year later). I was actually hoping when the spring would start here (which is in May) to be able to explore and photograph the nature here, but even nature parks are closed and I also don't want to put myself at risk even if they were opened.

Thanks for those graphs information! Really helps! I got a bit better with adjusting settings, but I easily dip into being 'lazy auto mode' again because of how easy my previous camera was. In general I'm really liking this camera so far, and I hope to delve into it some more when I have more free time.

Ohh so then you were just on time before lockdowns with that vacation in February! Our vacation is planned for October, but with how strict the rules for quarantine are here, I'm putting it at a 50/50 chance right now we are able to go. :(

There is a big list on my profile of everything I visited if you want to check. It was mainly in the Netherlands and Germany, a couple in UK and I still have one I actively help in Czech. It was supposed to have an edition in May, but yeah, you know...
I haven't officially quit volunteer work and I think I will never be fully able to do so, but since I have moved I did take a step down from everything I am doing.

Emigrating to a new country is already stressfull and I had to find a new paying job. If it didn't cost money to live, for sure I would do more volunteer, but that is not possible unfortunately. I do hope that I can retire at an earlier age. :)

The only game I recently played was the remake of Resident Evil 3 and I hope to pick up Doom Eternal in a while. :) The desktop could run it at 75% of it's max settings. I might get a new graphics card for when RE8 would get released. :)

Huh, interesting. When we booked our Okinawa trip last December, we found the flight prices higher than expected, but the hotel was very affordable. I think flight taxes in Finland are pretty high.

LOL oil is in the minus now. xD Although I have no place to store it even if people paid me to take it. xD From the few times I used AirBnB I had good experiences, but as a personal thing I think I will always prefer hotels. There is more of a 'human factor' with AirBnB which is on one hand good, but on the other...we've had situations of the host not being available to pick up keys and one time a bit of an intrusive host that really wanted us to hang out with him, which was kindness of course, but we rather make our own plans on vacation.

Just before I started my new job I had a bit more free time to make some reviews and I was shocked at how low the amount of hits got on them. I'm happy to see there is still quite a bit of interaction through the comments I got on them, though.

I think the hobby seems to be just as busy, but a lot more figures seem to be based on original character illustrations. Nowadays prices have basically outpriced my budget for the average figure, so I expect to only buy figures I really want (and missed out on) in the upcoming years. After that is finished, I will probably continue buying goods over figures.

About people leaving MFC, it's simple: Social media. I would say there is even more collectors nowadays with figures like Nendoroids and Funko POPs being more accessable, but as the 'general public' rather has social media than websites, we see niche sites like this dying. Why read a review, if it's way faster to absorb information on social media? Add on top of that as a side-reason the rising prices and this hobby becomes less interesting to continue or to pick up as a newly interested person. I don't think I will ever quit collecting or quit using my profile here, but for sure am I not heavily buying anymore as I used to. I think over time more 'older' collectors will get into this pattern as well.

Thank you! :) I have been writing a blog about how I created that costume as well. It's 90% finished, but as I lost all my image hosting I also lost motivation to finish it...one day... Also thanks for liking the GK! I did finish some more GK's since the time we didn't speak, but again, image hosting lost bla bla. *sigh* Yes the figures have arrived, but I had to pack them up for the move shortly after, so I never unboxed them. Hopefully in a couple of months I'll be able to set up my collection again. :)

Heh, that is an interesting rule you have for allowing yourself to open up figures! :D As for IdolM@ster, I recently fell in love with Syoko ENTRY #50858 . I'm right now thinking of making a shelf with Anzu, Syoko and Koume together. Three cute weird girls. <3

Yeah I did make some new reviews, but still did not pick up writing about those loots I talked about, haha!

Similar, especially once I started packing my figures for the move, I have been thinking of replacing all my prize figures for scaled figures of the same characters. Although some of my prize figures are very good for their price, such as my Kan Colle Abyssals.

Same for you! Hope you'll be able to keep safe as well. :)

Sorry for being a bit late!



I hope you had a nice day, even with the weird current situation of the world!

Thanks :^)

Still a 2hu fan, but dabbling in other stuffs now.

Hello! Same here, I am quite delayed in all the things I do online. ^^'' If you want a quick life update from me, it's now easy for me to reference to this blog: BLOG #43410 . :) Seems like you did a similar change as I did, going from a crazy busy job, to one more managable (although still quite busy). I hope things can calm down for you, overworking is never good!

Inbetween our messages, I actually bought a new camera! A Sony Alpha A5100, I only got it a bit over a week ago and have done one quick photoshoot with it. It's REALLY different from my previous camera, haha! I will have to practice a lot more before my shots will turn out somewhat decent. I got the version with the 16-50mm + 55-210mm lenses. If you have any tips for the perfect settings for regular figure review photoshoots, I'm all ears! My own results so far mean that the pictures look good on the camera screen, but on the computer they are too grainy... I'm also currently improving the light in my photography set up and hope that will help to get the perfect shot better.

That's a good tip about the street photogrpahy! I will keep that in mind when I take this camera with me on my trip next month. :) I also have wanting to travel becoming more and more important to me, but unfortunately money + getting time off from work to do such things is quite hard! How do you even do it with getting time off from work when you work so many hours??

I have thought about getting a Sony RX100, but I've been doing photography for so long that I was like "fuck it, I want a camera where I can change the lenses on and learn to do manual better". ;) And hehe, I am in a Sony fanboy household. Even when I *try* to get different brand electronics, I end up with something from Sony 90% of the time... :') The Playstations, our TV is a Bravia, Xperia phone, VAIO laptop etc. etc. and now also my camera went from Canon to Sony. :D

My husband and I have been saving up money for a long time so we can go to Okinawa in 2020. :) Even with our big life changes the saving is going well and we hoop to book late this year/early next year. :) What are the travels you have planned to do soon?

I do a ton of different types of volunteer work, but my favorite is my work for: www.fakeissad.c... , although unfortunately they have been sending me to a lot less conventions recently. :( I hope that picks up soon again, especially now that I "live alone" it's easier for me to just pack up my stuff and go to such an event if work lets me of course.

I play a mix of both Western and Eastern games, although most of the franchises high in my favorites are Japanese games made to look like they are Western LOL (Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Evil Within etc.).

I saw some good things about that new FF14 expansion pack! And for me with my 3DS I only play on it when I travel, so i either have a huge burst of playing time on it and then I don't play on it for weeks/months. :P I'm still trying to complete my Pokedex in Pokemon Sun. :P

Ugh I currently have to work on a Dell for my new job and it SUCKS lol, but I think it's an old Dell as well, so it might not be like what you said with the new quality for them. My VAIO laptop is still alive, but not good enough for games, luckily my custom desktop should still be able to play new games for quite some more years and when it needs an upgrade, it would only have to be the graphics card. :) But yeah, I haven't played any games since the RE2 remake actually, life got too busy.

Jup, one of the things making it expensive to go to Japan is that you always have to transfer to another airline. Mostly you go to somewhere in Asia first and then do the transfer to the place in Japan you want to be. And wow, you even have a direct flight closeby?! That's amazing! And about sleeping places: more and more people rely on AirBnB instead of actual hotels. I'm very mixed about AirBnB personally.

Sounds like what is happening in a lot of big cities, for us Dutch people, Amsterdam is getting more and more "ugly". Makes me wonder if all those big cities that are getting bigger will become like NYC, high rent forces you to have a ton of roommates, buildings are barely being cared for...etc. Anyway, regarding Australia, I would love to visit it someday and see both the nature and the cities. :)

Hehe, unfortunately MFC is dying so it's not really worth a lot to be 'popular' on here? :') I hope at least the website stays in the air for the database and the possibility to read/share reviews.

Considering we didn' talk for a while, you probably have not seen yet my competition entry with my TERA cosplay? Here it is!



Haha, don't be envious of my life and the things I do as I of course mainly share the positive stuff online. :P Most of my regular daily life is an office job and only in the weekends I can do the cool stuff like working on cosplaying, working on my collection etc. :) I quite feel you on the 'feeling old' at conventions. The next cosplay I'm working on might be my last, I realized while I was working on it. I have been visiting less and less events and when I visit them, I mostly have to do stuff for Fake is Sad or give lectures, so it's not comfortable to be in big/warm/extensive cosplays. So yeah, then I work close to a year on an outfit I will wear 1 or 2 times tops, of which only 1 time at an event...I better spend my time and money on other crafts/hobby's from now on... Not that I'm without motivation to finish my current cosplay by the way! I really want it to be impressive, especially if it will be my last one. I'm looking forward to a picture of your cosplay! :)

Cycling (and in general being active) is good! Even though it also eats away my free time, I try to exercise at least 30 minutes a day every day, not just to stay thin, but because it feels good to be fit. :) And ah, about those Gundam in my profile, they are my husbands'. He's not a Gundam fan, but he likes the building process. :) And no, not yet! Modding that Shinobu figure is still on my to-do list!! I did finish a GK this year BLOG #43149 and I am currently working on more (no clue yet when they will be finished though).

Just a few days ago I purchases these three ladies ITEM #323987 + ITEM #323988 + ITEM #396977 from an MFC user and I'm anxiously refreshing the tracking code multiple times a day to see when they will arrive, haha! And that's so cute to buy Nendoroids of characters that are a couple for them for their marriage! I hope they enjoy the gift!

That Miku has a crazy amount of details, but still that price is way too much... I also don't buy much of the 'new' figures, although Kotobukiya has me with their Pokemon line as I recently pre-ordered ITEM #806057 . I also don't watch a lot of anime nowadays, but I did watch Youjo Senki which made me pre-order ITEM #604888 . The series is so good, I highly recommend it!

I haven't played/watched much IdolM@ster recently. I know there are a lot of new girls, but I haven't got to know them enough yet to make any new favorites. So yeah, Anzu is still my #1! :D

I have bought quite some things in the last year and also made pictures, but no time to write about the loots! But maybe at the end of this year things will calm down for me. I hope for you that you can pick up reviewing/blogging one day again as well. Even if you don't get a lot of hits/comments, it's a lot of fun even for your own documentation.

Oh wow, all your figure boxes gone!!! But the collage sounds great, would love to see pictures and/or a blog about it.

About 2 years ago I decided to change the focus of my collection on Mecha Musume (and related franchises), Baccano! and Chrono Crusade...and well, I can say I sticked to it! I sold/traded a lot of it that are not 'fitting' in my collectoin anymore and I acquired a lot of new goods for the franchises I continue to collect from. :) How about you and your collection in the last few years, any big changes?

Hey, thanks!