Bloody Great Year To Have Been Alive In ’25

31 December 2025

Not much went right in 2025, but more than enough to have made it a bloody great year to have been alive.

Apart from my relationships with Mrs. Kangaeroo, friends, family and dinosaurs, work provided me with an immense amount of joy.

I threw everything I could at my job, and was happy to do so. But it turns out that I’m maybe not very good at it. At least that recognition provides a basis to make myself better in 2026.

I don’t really have a great recollection of the year as it progressed, continuing my long-term pattern of short-term memory loss.

I started the year with the aim of getting good at my job, passing the Certified Financial Analyst Foundations course, dropping my weight below 90 kilograms, and averaging at least 1,000 kilometers per month cycling for the entire year.

January’s highlights were probably a trip to Enoshima for the New Year with Mrs. Kangaeroo, and seeing the garden bloom beautifully amid a warmer than normal winter. I was also the delighted beneficiary of a wonderful piece of largesse when a friend gave me a beautiful bike, but circumstances have largely prevented me from taking advantage of this wonderful gift almost a year later.

February stood out because someone stole one of my bikes. It was the start of an amazing tale, but I didn’t realize it at the time.

As always, March was a delight because of the cherry blossoms. But 2025 was also special because the marvelous Ms. Minogue performed in Japan for the first time in 14 years. Mrs. Kangaeroo had bought me a ticket and I feigned interest to avoid hurting her feelings only to be absolutely bedazzled by Kylie’s stunning show. It filled me with Melburnian pride and I was instantly converted to adoration of the Singing Budgie.

Our rosy-faced lovebird Dino took a turn for the worse in April, falling ill with a mysterious stomach infection resulting from eating too much human food and laying eggs too often. Her ailment turned out to be irreversible, but she remains strong and active as the year draws to a close.

Pop goes the blister

Around the same time, I popped a blister on my finger, which morphed into becoming my first freak accident in a year that would become full of them. The finger became infected with the infection spreading to my bone and up my arm necessitating almost daily treatment, coming within a whisker of amputation and ending with permanent disfiguration and niggling pain.

May was a delight for the beauty of our garden, even as I struggled to maintain it while undergoing treatment for my finger. I also got to see a great show at the Tokyo Comedy Store, pondered why foods made in Australia sell for cheaper here in Japan than they do in their country of production, and experience my first democracy sausage as Australia went to the polls.

Giving back a bit

I also found myself lumbered with a position on the Body Corporate of the estate where I live. All residents are obliged to do it at some stage, and it wasn’t supposed to be my turn. It would end up taking a huge amount of time and though I often resented it, it was a good learning process, and I really got to enjoy the company of some of my fellow residents and saw firsthand what kind, decent and hard-working fellows they are.

June was a month for amazements. Our garden continued to provide daily delight as hand-grown kangaroo paws thrived, Mrs. Kangaeroo and I took our longest trip of the year to surprising Kakegawa to see all the terrific birds there, and the bike that was stolen in February was returned in exactly the same spot it had been taken from almost four months to the day later. I also tried to spread the word about Aussie bikkies.

As summer moved on, I began to plan to fulfill a long-held dream to ride the Nakasendo, an ancient road that once linked what is now Tokyo with Kyoto. One of the results of the bike theft was that I needed to replace the missing bike with another bicycle capable of the same all-terrain performance, as well as having disc brakes to aid my arthritic and now disfigured hands.

Here comes Big Red

Enter, the Big Red, so named because it couldn’t possibly get any bluer. Much of the summer was spent in the saddle as we tried to get acquainted. There was some sadness, though, as the Fountain of Strewth that had brought us so much delighted by attracting birds to our garden had to be dismantled because the neighbors weren’t as keen as we are to have avian friends, allegedly because they poop on their washing. The birds, not the neighbors. I think.

Oh, no, Dino!

And the month verged on tragedy as it drew to a close, also relating to bird poop. Dino, ailing for months, came back from the avian vet with the news that she could no longer defecate naturally, and we were advised to prepare for the worst.

August saw an increasing number of strains start to surface. We put Dino into a hospital to give her a chance of survival: she has proved flawless at doing so, even though it has come at great expense in terms of finances and time. She has been a great friend, so worth it. Racing to and from the hospital every few days, it became obvious that my planned long ride would not be possible any longer, rendering useless a lot of the equipment I had bought in preparation, including the new Kangaeroo cycling jersey.

With Nakasendo thwarted, my Big Red Bike Tour focused on day trips much closer to home. It proved to be great fun anyway, as cycling almost invariably does, and I could accumulate kilometers toward my year-end goal, which I hadn’t given much focus to until I realized the summer was over. I didn’t have much spare time, but when I was free, I would get on the bike.

The year seemed to be flying past as October came around, and it was a bit of a frenzy. Mrs. Kangaeroo and I got to see the show by Damiano David, the lead singer of Maneskin, when he came to Tokyo, and also looked after Uyu, our son’s dog, who is a little bit unfriendly. I got to organize a cycling trip for the company, but unfortunately nobody else could turn up on the day. It was an excellent opportunity to learn about planning such an event, and I hope to get to know colleagues in this way down the track.

November remained unseasonably warm and I was adjusting my yearly targets in the hope of cycling more. And then another freak accident happened. While cycling in the mountains near Chichibu, I fell off my bike. I was traveling slowly and being cautious as word had gone around that we were on a treacherous trail and I could tell that this was the case. Something, probably a rock, hit my back wheel and my bike slipped out from beneath me.

Ouch!

I saw my leg land awkwardly and I thought to myself that it looked bad. But, though shaken, I could stand and walk. With a bit of help from my mates, I was back on the bike again soon, then rode another 100 kilometers or so. I had planned to ride more, but was starting to hurt, so boarded a train with my bike, struggled to get back on again at the closest station to home, and finally managed to make it back.

Gimme a break. Then again…

And I haven’t ridden since. Or barely walked. It turns out I broke my ankle and have been pretty much immobilized since, not getting off crutches until Dec. 27, but now walking; slowly and gingerly for short distances, but walking nonetheless.

And, immobilized and largely on annual leave from work, there wasn’t much going on for me in December. I did manage to drag myself out for Mrs. Kangaeroo to accompany her to a Franz Ferdinand concert, but being on crutches and allowed to work from home while being ordered by the doctor to rest to heal the broken bone, there wasn’t a great deal I could do. There was no cycling, no gardening, no trips to the avian vet. I binge watched anything I was capable of, but still had loads of time left over.

Keep on bloggin’

Ultimately I wrote blog posts, reverting a bit back to the Japan-Australia focus that Kangaeroo.com originally pursued when I started the blog in 2010. The month was my most prolific for blogging on Kangaeroo.com since 2010, the site’s inaugural year when I was filling it with content. It was great fun, but I have annoyed my co-workers in the final quarter of the year, and I am champing at the bit to get back to the office and make it up to them and to my company. Despite a disfigured hand, walking with a limp, pissing off colleagues and living in a somewhat unpleasant era, it has been a fantastic year in many ways.

I could tick off some 2025 goals, and great thanks to all

And I managed to keep a few goals. I passed the CFA Foundations over the summer. And I cycled over 12,000 kilometers for the year despite the crash, which was an achievement, albeit being a far cry from my 2021 heyday. Finally, I got my weight under 90 kilograms despite the final two months of the year basically being a gutsfest as I ate like a pig and watched my muscles disappear.

My great thanks go out to all who shared the year with me.