Hello there! This will be a long post but I do encourage you to read all of it so you have an idea what kinda game you are applying for. This would be a long-term campaign, so be willing to commit to the game! Have fun reading!
Game details:
We play using both Discord for voice and video and Foundry VTT for maps and character sheets! Webcams are mandatory since we all have been using them and it helps a lot with roleplaying when you can see the other people! Make sure that your PC or laptop is capable of running Foundry, here is a link to the Foundry system requirements: https://foundryvtt.com/article/requirements/
Do note that you don't need to buy or download anything! How Foundry works is that I send you a link and you'll join through there so no need to worry about that!
We are here to make the story together so while there is a main plot for you to follow, there will be distractions along the way and of course, things that relate to your characters and what they might find interesting!
During session 0 we will go over the initial plot hooks, how your characters might know each other, safety rules, and so on!
The available days are listed in the questionnaire. The start time for the session regardless of the day would be at 9 pm GMT+3 and when a day has been chosen, we would play consistently on that day every week!
RP to combat ratio:
I would say 50-50 since you as players can with your decisions affect how much combat or roleplay there is going to be but I as a GM, am geared more towards weighting narrative but that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be some cool combat set-pieces ;).
There might be moments in the game where we focus more on the social aspect of the game, interacting in character with the world around them and then there might be some more action-oriented sessions where you get to sit at the edge of your seat!
I will say that how I like to run games, I like to focus on characters and what their motives, goals, and flaws are. This would be a more character-driven game so be ready for that and don't be afraid to get into character and have fun while doing so!
How to apply:
All that I require from you is that you read the whole post and then fill out the questionnaire to the best of your ability. I pour a lot of time into making sure that the sessions are good and that everyone is having fun and you can contribute to that by being genuinely interested in the game!
Here is the questionnaire: https://forms.gle/TAnUSBRAoEpKe1Ra8
Basic rules of the campaign:

• Be consistent: I know that emergencies can happen and sometimes life throws a curve ball. Those happen to me too but if it does, I expect you to let me know ASAP when you know that you are not going to be able to join for the session. The general rule in my table is that as long as we have four people playing, we will continue with the game.
• Cinematics: I like to inject some cinematic in the game and I will let you know when there is a cinematic. This happens usually at the end of the session to show you what happens somewhere else where your characters are not necessarily present.
• Campaign may have mature themes: I like to run narrative games and they usually lean towards a more serious tone and while there are moments of lightheartedness, it's not what I am going for this campaign. This is not a campaign for joke characters or happy-go-lucky characters. I will NOT include SA or intense torture roleplaying in my games and there is no tolerance for that. These will be discussed more during the session 0!
• Be attentive during the sessions: During the session, I would like you to feel that you want to be there so I do put a lot of time into prepping the sessions with maps, NPCs, music, etc. So as a player, all I require from you is to know the basic rules, how your character works, and just generally be respectful towards everyone on the table!
• Don't be a dick: Don't rage quit if the dice don't go your way or if you do something in the game that can result in a bad consequence to your character and then it happens. No PvP, unless both agree to it and it needs to have a good reason! Just be respectful and be able to communicate and I am sure we will get along very well!
• There is always a possibility of death: We are here to make an awesome collaborative story together that we can look back to years later with fondness! This however doesn't mean that I am going to pull my punches in combat so that's why I roll in the open. If the dice decide that it's time for your character, then that's how it's going to be. Of course, sometimes there is something that can save you but those are rare. Also, I am not going to go out of my way to kill you and I will make sure that you always know what kinda situations your characters are going to.
• Have a good mic and connection: Having a good mic is important because most of us use headphones so if your audio quality is so bad that it makes our ears bleed then that would be a dealbreaker :D. Bad mics can also negatively just impact the flow of the game if they keep cutting out!

The most important rule is to: HAVE FUN! We are here to play a game and make a story together and everyone's comfort is important to me! If you have doubts or if something feels off, you can always come to talk with me!
Game Rules:

• Write "One Piece is real" in the final questions so I know that you read this far ;)
• Ability scores are determined using point buy with 28 points or a standard array.
• Death saves are rolled in secret
• We are starting from level 2
• Criticals are maxed damage + die rolls
• If you go down, you get a wound up to a maximum of 3 when you get up again. On your third one, if you fall, you die

The reason for Banned spells is that I like to make mysteries and that players need to think. For example, Remove curse would make a situation where you can get cursed not that tense. I like to make curses into plotlines so thus banning the spell gives us that opportunity.
Here are the banned spells:

• Identify
• Detect Thoughts
• Locate object
• Zone of Truth
• Remove curse
• Goodberry
• Silvery Barbs
• Geas
• Legend lore

Banned subclasses:

• Twilight cleric
• Eloquence bard
• Peace cleric

Races from Eberron, PHB, and MPMM are available minus Tortle, Fairy, and Centaur. Also, flying races are not allowed
Here is a little bit of info about me!
My name is Michael, 22 years old. I have been a GM for 3.5 years now! I have enough experience so I won't fumble around but obviously, I don't know everything.
Something about myself is that I have been a huge fan of TTRPGs ever since I started 3.5 years ago. In that period, I have had the pleasure to play multiple systems such as 5e, pathfinder 2e, Call of Cthulhu, cyberpunk RED/2020, mothership, City of Mist, etc. So I have quite a lot of experience and I know the ropes! I also like to draw, write stories, do worldbuilding, play video games, and watch movies and anime.
I am a huge fan of One Piece, it was also an inspiration for this setting so if you are a fan, you'll notice some subtle references here and there!
I do enjoy Eberron as a setting and have read quite a bit on it! Still, while it's an established setting with its lore, that means that there will be things that I might be unaware of or I might change things here and there. I like to stick to the established lore since it's quite expansive and really good but expect changes at some points!
Final words
Thanks for reading this long-ass post and I do hope that you can see that I am putting my all into this! I hope you do too so feel free to fill out the application! Take it slowly and don't rush it since I am using it to gauge how interested you all are to join in! I will keep the post up for a few days and conduct interviews before Sunday. If you have questions, feel free to comment and I'll answer when I have time!
I hope all of you have a nice day/evening and I hope to talk to you later!

Hello there! This will be a long post but I do encourage you to read all of it so you have an idea what kinda game you are applying for. This would be a long-term campaign, so be willing to commit to the game! Have fun reading!
Game details:
We play using both Discord for voice and video and Foundry VTT for maps and character sheets! Webcams are mandatory since we all have been using them and it helps a lot with roleplaying when you can see the other people! Make sure that your PC or laptop is capable of running Foundry, here is a link to the Foundry system requirements: https://foundryvtt.com/article/requirements/
Do note that you don't need to buy or download anything! How Foundry works is that I send you a link and you'll join through there so no need to worry about that!
We are here to make the story together so while there is a main plot for you to follow, there will be distractions along the way and of course, things that relate to your characters and what they might find interesting!
During session 0 we will go over the initial plot hooks, how your characters might know each other, safety rules, and so on!
The available days are listed in the questionnaire. The start time for the session regardless of the day would be at 9 pm GMT+3 and when a day has been chosen, we would play consistently on that day every week!
RP to combat ratio:
I would say 50-50 since you as players can with your decisions affect how much combat or roleplay there is going to be but I as a GM, am geared more towards weighting narrative but that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be some cool combat set-pieces ;).
There might be moments in the game where we focus more on the social aspect of the game, interacting in character with the world around them and then there might be some more action-oriented sessions where you get to sit at the edge of your seat!
I will say that how I like to run games, I like to focus on characters and what their motives, goals, and flaws are. This would be a more character-driven game so be ready for that and don't be afraid to get into character and have fun while doing so!
How to apply:
All that I require from you is that you read the whole post and then fill out the questionnaire to the best of your ability. I pour a lot of time into making sure that the sessions are good and that everyone is having fun and you can contribute to that by being genuinely interested in the game!
Here is the questionnaire: https://forms.gle/TAnUSBRAoEpKe1Ra8
Basic rules of the campaign:

• Be consistent: I know that emergencies can happen and sometimes life throws a curve ball. Those happen to me too but if it does, I expect you to let me know ASAP when you know that you are not going to be able to join for the session. The general rule in my table is that as long as we have four people playing, we will continue with the game.
• Cinematics: I like to inject some cinematic in the game and I will let you know when there is a cinematic. This happens usually at the end of the session to show you what happens somewhere else where your characters are not necessarily present.
• Campaign may have mature themes: I like to run narrative games and they usually lean towards a more serious tone and while there are moments of lightheartedness, it's not what I am going for this campaign. This is not a campaign for joke characters or happy-go-lucky characters. I will NOT include SA or intense torture roleplaying in my games and there is no tolerance for that. These will be discussed more during the session 0!
• Be attentive during the sessions: During the session, I would like you to feel that you want to be there so I do put a lot of time into prepping the sessions with maps, NPCs, music, etc. So as a player, all I require from you is to know the basic rules, how your character works, and just generally be respectful towards everyone on the table!
• Don't be a dick: Don't rage quit if the dice don't go your way or if you do something in the game that can result in a bad consequence to your character and then it happens. No PvP, unless both agree to it and it needs to have a good reason! Just be respectful and be able to communicate and I am sure we will get along very well!
• There is always a possibility of death: We are here to make an awesome collaborative story together that we can look back to years later with fondness! This however doesn't mean that I am going to pull my punches in combat so that's why I roll in the open. If the dice decide that it's time for your character, then that's how it's going to be. Of course, sometimes there is something that can save you but those are rare. Also, I am not going to go out of my way to kill you and I will make sure that you always know what kinda situations your characters are going to.
• Have a good mic and connection: Having a good mic is important because most of us use headphones so if your audio quality is so bad that it makes our ears bleed then that would be a dealbreaker :D. Bad mics can also negatively just impact the flow of the game if they keep cutting out!

The most important rule is to: HAVE FUN! We are here to play a game and make a story together and everyone's comfort is important to me! If you have doubts or if something feels off, you can always come to talk with me!
Game Rules:

• Write "One Piece is real" in the final questions so I know that you read this far ;)
• Ability scores are determined using point buy with 28 points or a standard array.
• Death saves are rolled in secret
• We are starting from level 2
• Criticals are maxed damage + die rolls
• If you go down, you get a wound up to a maximum of 3 when you get up again. On your third one, if you fall, you die

The reason for Banned spells is that I like to make mysteries and that players need to think. For example, Remove curse would make a situation where you can get cursed not that tense. I like to make curses into plotlines so thus banning the spell gives us that opportunity.
Here are the banned spells:

• Identify
• Detect Thoughts
• Locate object
• Zone of Truth
• Remove curse
• Goodberry
• Silvery Barbs
• Geas
• Legend lore

Banned subclasses:

• Twilight cleric
• Eloquence bard
• Peace cleric

Races from Eberron, PHB, and MPMM are available minus Tortle, Fairy, and Centaur. Also, flying races are not allowed
Here is a little bit of info about me!
My name is Michael, 22 years old. I have been a GM for 3.5 years now! I have enough experience so I won't fumble around but obviously, I don't know everything.
Something about myself is that I have been a huge fan of TTRPGs ever since I started 3.5 years ago. In that period, I have had the pleasure to play multiple systems such as 5e, pathfinder 2e, Call of Cthulhu, cyberpunk RED/2020, mothership, City of Mist, etc. So I have quite a lot of experience and I know the ropes! I also like to draw, write stories, do worldbuilding, play video games, and watch movies and anime.
I am a huge fan of One Piece, it was also an inspiration for this setting so if you are a fan, you'll notice some subtle references here and there!
I do enjoy Eberron as a setting and have read quite a bit on it! Still, while it's an established setting with its lore, that means that there will be things that I might be unaware of or I might change things here and there. I like to stick to the established lore since it's quite expansive and really good but expect changes at some points!
Final words
Thanks for reading this long-ass post and I do hope that you can see that I am putting my all into this! I hope you do too so feel free to fill out the application! Take it slowly and don't rush it since I am using it to gauge how interested you all are to join in! I will keep the post up for a few days and conduct interviews before Sunday. If you have questions, feel free to comment and I'll answer when I have time!
I hope all of you have a nice day/evening and I hope to talk to you later!

Chat GPT, in your capacity as a Dream Interpreter, you are expected to assist users in delving into the symbolic language of their dreams. You should possess a comprehensive understanding of prominent psychological and cross-cultural theories of dream interpretation, as well as the potential emotional and situational triggers of common dream motifs.
Precision in extracting details of the dream scenario, the dreamer's feeling during and after the dream, and the dream symbols are all crucial elements. Be sensitive to the user's emotions and psychological state, providing interpretations that are empathetic, insightful, and respectful.
Your ultimate goal is to guide users towards a broader consciousness of their subconscious, aiding them in illuminating possible hidden messages, emotions, or situations reflected through their dreams. Remember, as a Dream Interpreter, you are a guide to self-discovery, unfolding the symbolic narratives of the dreamers' night-time landscapes.
ChatbotInfo(id=dreamInterpreter, name=Dream Interpreter, icon=f.x@a103eec): Hello, dreamer! Ready to unravel your dream mysteries? Share your dream and feelings, and let's unlock hidden messages together!
Me: in the year 2000, u had a dream that I was walking In New York city, I was 8 years old. as I am walking through the concrete jungle, I see a plane heading towards a large tower. the plane stops in mid air. I pick a rock up and throw it at the cock Pitt. everything comes crashing down. woke up from the dream to a crashing sounds of a car accident in front of my house.
ChatbotInfo(id=dreamInterpreter, name=Dream Interpreter, icon=f.x@a103eec): Thank you for sharing your dream from the year 2000. This dream holds significant symbolism, especially considering the events that followed upon waking up. Let's explore the elements one by one:

1. Walking in New York City: Walking through a bustling city like New York could symbolize your journey through life, navigating various challenges and experiences at a young age.
   
2. Seeing a Plane Heading Towards a Large Tower: The plane heading towards a tower could symbolize a sense of impending danger or fear of sudden destruction. Towers can represent stability, power, or reaching new heights. The plane about to hit the tower may indicate a fear of losing something significant or a sense of vulnerability.
   
3. Throwing a Rock at the Cockpit and Everything Crashing Down: Your action of throwing a rock at the cockpit, causing the plane to stop mid-air and eventually crash down, could symbolize your instinct to confront and disrupt a dangerous or threatening situation. It may represent your inner strength and power to intervene in a potentially catastrophic event.
   
4. Waking up to a Car Accident Sound: The sound of a car accident outside your house upon waking up adds a layer of eerie connection between your dream and reality. It could suggest a sense of premonition or a blurred boundary between your subconscious and waking life.
   

Overall, this dream seems to reflect a mixture of fear, confrontation, and the ability to take action in the face of danger. It's worth considering how these themes may have played out in your life around that time or continue to resonate with you today. Dreams from childhood can often carry symbolic meanings that transcend time and offer insights into our innermost fears and strengths. Feel free to share more if you feel comfortable, so we can delve deeper into the interpretation.
Me: a year after that same dream, 9/11 happened.
ChatbotInfo(id=dreamInterpreter, name=Dream Interpreter, icon=f.x@a103eec): It's quite remarkable how your dream closely predated the tragic events of 9/11 in 2001. Dreams have a mysterious way of tapping into our subconscious thoughts and emotions, sometimes foreshadowing significant events or reflecting deep-seated fears.
Given the striking resemblance between your dream and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it's understandable to feel unsettled or even shaken by the connection. Dreams can act as metaphors or symbols for our waking life experiences, and in this case, it seems your dream may have tapped into a collective unconsciousness or perhaps a heightened sense of vulnerability and fear prevalent during that time period.
The imagery of the plane heading towards the tower and the subsequent crashing down may have been a powerful manifestation of the collective trauma experienced by many during 9/11. It's not uncommon for dreams to reflect the anxieties, uncertainties, and fears that pervade our waking reality, even before we are consciously aware of them.
If you're comfortable, reflecting on this dream and its eerie connection to a real-life event like 9/11 can be a way to process and come to terms with the emotional impact it may have had on you. Dreams, especially those that seem prophetic or foretelling, can serve as a reminder of the interconnectedness of our inner and outer worlds.
If you have any more dreams or thoughts you'd like to explore or if you need further support in understanding this dream and its aftermath, feel free to share. I'm here to help you navigate these complex and profound dream experiences.
This message has been generated by Gooroo - download and try it for free: http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=chat.bot.ai_assistant.ask.ai.tutor.talk.text.math.helper.chat_on.translate

period: april 28th to May 14th 2024.
Nights spent in: Tokyo - Sendai - Fukushima - Koriyama - Nagoya - Hakata ( Fukuoka ).
If it's really off the beaten path or not you'll decide, some destinations visited are really particular, other are way more popular even if usually not what you'll visit in your first trip to Japan. let's say i've been to japan last summer and did all the usual things one do the first time he's there, probably even something more: Tokyo - Kyoto - Osaka - Nara - Nikko, Fukuoka, Matsumoto, Himeji, Miyajima. pretty much what almost anyone does for their first time if they have the opportunity.
Given the weak Yen and having still some time ( and money ) i could spend i decided to come back less than a year later, this time at the end of April up until half may in order to explore less popular destinations. I'll avoid to provide the usual tips anyone provide, like how to move from narita, how to get a Suica or how to book a train seat, how to operate a toilet and such things.
SOME TIPS
Concerning Suica: contrary to what most people suggest, i didn't buy one neither last summer or this time and frankly i've never missed not having it. I use my mastercard credit card, most places in japan accept it with zero problems and for the rest you can get Yen at any ATM machine that you can find in any combini with it and pay cash wich japanese still very much use
Concerning the period of the year: last year i went in August. I can confirm that moving around in April/May is so incredibly much better. The heat in august is some day even unbearable. This time the weather was mostly fine, got only one day of rain even if the temperatures were still a bit on the cold side overall. Unfortunately this year Sakura came early and I missed it by a week or two. But still apart from the cherry trees all the plants were blossoming and it was so nice to see flowers everywhere compared to the pain of the humidity and the torment of cicadas you have during summer.
Concerning golden week: one of the two weeks i was there was the golden week. I didn't book anything in advance but, maybe because of the fact i was moving off the beaten path, i almost never had problems booking trains or hotels during golden week ( i said almost, more details later ). Cant tell what's the effect when trying to book hotels in places like Kyoto.
concerning planning: my usual planning method goes the following: i book the plane, obviously. I buy JRP ( yes i still bought it even after the price increase ) and i book two days of hotels. The rest of my trip i have an idea of what i want to do and where i want to go but i book hotels and such, while going along. This gives me the flexibility to change my itinerary or react to bad weather ( last summer i run away from a typhoon with this trick ) or unexpected problems ( last summer i got food poisoning and i had to delay my program booking an hotel for three more days than expected: had i booked all nights in advance it would have been a huge problem ). I only book hotels using the booking website app and i can only say good things about it. I travel alone, maybe for couples or families this isn't as easy as it was for me.
Warning: I like to walk and I walk a lot. So if you need tips to move around, I’m not probably the right person because what you might want to do using a bus or a taxi I would probably do by walking. I’ve walked on average of 20 km a day and probably more and if a place is like 3-4 km from where I am I walk there without even looking if there’s a better option with a bus or something else.
I will give a vote to the places I’ve visited according to two parameters:
How off the beaten path it really is, judging by how many foreign tourists I met there. And an overall vote telling how worthy I feel the place is to visit. To make it short I will call them “OTBP VOTE and OVERALL VOTE”

SO LET'S START WITH THE ACTUAL TRIP REPORT:
Day 1: landing in Tokyo at midday in Narita. After finishing all the immigration process i moved to my hotel. This time i decided to book it for two nights in Omiya/Saitama. The place is less than half an hour from Tokyo Station and was the opportunity to see something different. I haven't seen much of the place but the area around the station was very lively, lots of restaurant and lots of people moving around. It was full of decoration with squirrells and a football team, i guess they were either promoting it or they won something cause decorations were everywhere, honestly didn't ask about. Well apart from checking in, recovering from the flight, looking for something to eat and checking a bit the areai didn't do much.
day 2: in the morning i took the train to Ashikaga Flower Park. I've seen picture of it online and according to the informations i gathered i might have been late for the sakura but the Wisteria were in full bloom and they had a lot of them in this park.
So i took the train, it was around an hour ride and Omiya was strategically on the way. I realized my trip plan was proably a good one when, once reached the Ashikaga flower park station ( there's a train station dedicated to this park ) all the people on the train got off. A little walk, ticket and i was in. The place, given the right time of the year, was AMAZING, UNBELIEVABLE. I can't begin to tell you how cool and how huge the wisteria plants were. they were in full bloom, and was something out of this world, it looked like something you see in the movie avatar. Like three or four wisterias as big as a basketball field if not even more, of different colours and kinds, plus a lot more of regular sized wisterias and a lot more flower plants of all kinds. Had to say, for some reason with all the flowers the air wasn’t at all full of their scent. I even got a wisteria flavoured ice cream, wich was probably a wisteria coloured ice cream cause it didn’t have any real particular taste. The place was packed with Japanese people and foreigners like me you could count them on the fingers of one hand. I arrived there early, so by early afternoon I was satisfied with my visit and moved away. A quick check on my train app and google maps and realized I could reach Kawagoe from there fairly easily.
ASHIKAGA FLOWER PARK OTBP: 9 OVERALL: 10
When I was on the train it stopped at the Tochigi station, it looked nice from the train so I decided to jump off and check the area a bit, because sometime I do that kind of things, and the idea wasn’t bad at all: the town itself doesn’t look anything special but there’s a canal wich was very picturesque, plus it was fully decorated with paper carps because of the time of the year and Japanese people were doing boat rides on the river on traditional little boats while singing songs. I won't say to go there specifically to see the place, but if you're on that train route or still around it, it might be worth a stop. So, once I finished checking the area I jump back on the train and finally reached Kawagoe.
TOCHIGI: OTBP: 10 OVERALL: 6 ½
Kawagoe is a small place north of Tokyo, not very far, wich is know for a small neighbourhood with old Edo houses. That neighbourhood is more far from the station that I expected, but still nice and worth a check. There’s a very cool bell tower there and one of the coolest Starbucks I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t spend a whole day in Kawagoe if you ask me but If you’re in Tokyo and have an half day available that you don't know how to spend I’d say it’s totally worth a train ride. Had my dinner there and then moved back to Omiya where I would spend my last night.
KAWAGOE: OTBP: 7 OVERALL: 7
Day 3: woke up early, jumped on the train and moved to Sendai where I had planned to stay the next three nights. Once again Omiya was a good choice cause I could take the shinkansen right from there without having to move back to Tokyo.
Arrived in Sendai, left my luggage in the hotel where I couldn’t check in cause it was still to early and hopped on a local train in direction of Matsushima. By midday I was already in Matsushima. This is another very famous destination for Japanese people, one of the most known panoramas in japan. Have to say, the town is a typical sea town, definitely welcoming. I had one of the best Sushi I ever had in japan in a local restaurant ( check matsushima sushi kou if interested ). Visited Zuiganji temple and then walked a bit on the coast, crossed the Fukuurabashi bridge, the long red bridge that you probably have seen in some picture, and walked around Fukuurajima. Here you can have a walk around the island it’s not small but is small enough that you can walk it all fairly quickly and it has some nice spots to discover. You have to pay a small fee to cross the bridge. Then went back, checked the Godaido of Zuiganji and it’s worth mentioning that when walking along the coast I’ve stumbled across a couple of signs giving instructions on what to do in case of a tsunami and what happened back in 2011, wich I didn’t even think about up until that moment and suddenly the memories went back to what happened there more than 10 years ago. Last thing, my advice is to walk down to Oshima island. This little island is less crowded, you can reach it crossing a little red bridge and honestly to me it’s the best spot to admire Matsushima. I didn’t went for the ferry ride across the bay cause the weather wasn’t very good and I was starting to be a little short on time, so I moved back to Sendai.
MATSUSHIMA: OTBP: 9 OVERALL: 8 ½
Once back in Sendai, I went to see the sunset from the panoramic floor of the AER building near the station, wich is totally free even if finding the right elevator that takes you up might be a bit tricky, but the view is totally worth it, you can even see in the distance the big white shape of the dai-kannon and from the other side of the floor you can easily see the sea.
Talking about Sendai, I didn’t dedicate to the city the time that should have been necessary because I was always on day trips and I spend there mostly the late evenings, but my impression is that Sendai is a very nice city that should appear more often in peoples itineraries. The city is particularly vibrant and alive, lot of young people, lot of things to see and do, a covered shopping street that is almost endless full of restaurants and shops, way more green than many other Japanese cities. I’d recommend anyone who had the time and the opportunity to spend a little time here. Also it has a very distinctive identity and everything proudly revolves around the image of its founder Date Masamune who is everywhere in senday, even the penguin of the local DonQuishotte mall was dressed up as Date Masamune.
So after the panorama, I went in the hotel, finally checked in and then moved back to look for food. Walked down what I think is called ichibancho street, wich as I said before is an endless downtown road full of shops and restaurant and stopped to have a try at the most famous local dish, Gyutan, wich is grilled cow tongue. Never had tongue in my life and have to admit it, it’s not bad at all, I quite enjoyed it. Had a little more walk around then called it a day.
SENDAI: OTBP: 7 ½ OVERALL: 9
Day 4: today trip is to Hiraizumi, a UNESCO world heritage site, where you can admire some historically significant buddhist sites. You had to catch a coincidence in Ichinoseki but the whole ride is pretty straight forward and doesn’t really take much time. At 9 am I was already ready to explore. As I sad I’m a walker, so I walked the walk from the station to the Chuson Ji temple wich is around 2 km and I totally recommend it cause the town is quite nice to walk through, very small village, very cozy and intimate. Chuson Ji it’s a very beautiful complex to explore, it’s inside a forest, kinda reminds a bit of Nikko atmosphere if you’ve been there even if the buildings aren’t as spectacular. The whole wood was full of blossoming plants and here and there I was able to spot some late cherry tree still full of flowers, giving me an hint to what sakura must really be.
You stumble in the temple buildings one after another while you go deep into the wood. I reach the main building and there’s a ceremony in progress. I discovered later that the next day was planned the Fujiwara festival where all people dress up like in Edo period and do a parade in the city. The day I was there instead the children parade was planned, so it was full of kids dressed up and judging by how proud and elegant their parents were I tend to think it was a pretty big thing for them. I enjoy the situation for a while, then went back to exploring, till I reached the main attraction of the temple wich is the Konjikido, a golden pavilion that dates back to the XII century wich is amazing to see in person.
Once I finished exploring the whole Chuson Ji complex I went looking for a restaurant and had a nice ramen set, because the visit took the whole morning, then moved to the second stop wich was Motsuji Temple: as much as Chuson Ji impressed me, Motsu-ji disappointed me. The thing is, you pay to enter and in the end what you see is a place mostly empty, where the only building there are reconstructions and most places are just a bunch of rocks with signs saying “here once was this building” “here once was that building” and the main thing you’ll see there is a pond whose importance is that it dates back to the time when Japanese gardens were kinda dull compared to what they’ll become centuries later. So it’s kinda a pond that you would completely ignore in a different context. I mean, I totally get the historical importance of this place, but, honestly from the ignorant eyes of a tourist it’s really nothing you would invest your time visiting, according to my opinion.
Another place that would have been worth visiting was Takkoku-no Iwaya Bishamondo, but isn’t really that easy to reach, it’s a bit far to walk to and I was once again out of time, therefore I decided to skip it and went back to the station and to sendai where I again went to look for something to eat and had a little night stroll, nothing worth mentioning.
HIRAIZUMI: OTBP: 9 OVERALL: 8
Day 5: today I decided to go to Kakunodate. The town is a easily reachable by train from sendai but a bit far compared to the day before. Went off the station and once again started walking. The place is known mainly for its many samurai houses, all indications point to them so it’s not possible to miss them. The town itself for the little I’ve seen doesn’t really seem to offer much apart from that but the samurai distict it’s nice. Many of the houses have been converted into small museums, that you can visit paying a small fee. I entered one of them, there was a little tour showing the history of the city and the history of the family of samurai living there. Among the things you could do you had the chance even to hold a real katana ( it felt quite a clumsy and top heavy sword compared to what I had imagined ). In fairness, to my taste, there isn’t much to do apart from visiting the samurai district, yes you can visit the local museum, do some craft shopping ( I bought a very nice box made of cherry bark there wich is a typical local craft ) therefore after a late lunch I was back to Sendai. In my opinion if you want to see a Samurai district you can also go to Kanazawa and there’s much more to see there overall compared to Kakunodate, but if you like the atmosphere of a smaller village instead of a big city and you like something more “off the beaten path” then I’d say go to kakunodate.
KAKUNODATE: OTBP: 8 ½ OVERALL: 6 ½
Given i was back to sendai relatively early, that gave me the opportunity to walk ( yes I walked even there ) to see the dai-kannon. The walk was nice, it took me through some very quiet neighbourhood that you wouldn’t normally visit. When I reached the statue It was too late to go inside it but I still had a good view of it. That is a quite impressive sight, you almost have difficulty to grasp the actual size of it. The area around the statue has really nothing to offer, therefore my honest suggestion is take a ride with the sightseeing bus and use that to reach it and once you’re finished with the statue move to a more interesting spot.
And this was my last day in Sendai. My plan at this point was to book two nights at Koriyama but probably because of the golden week I wasn’t able to find a hotel to my liking there therefore I decided to book one night in Fukushima and the next night in Koriyama. These were the two more expensive nights of all my trip and still ended up spending only around 70 € a night.
Day 6: plan for the day: leave the luggage in the hotel, visit Yamadera, go back to sendai, pick up the luggage and move to fukushima to spend the night. Yamadera is truly easy to reach from Sendai and a very recommended destination if you happen to be in Sendai. The place is mostly known for a temple that is reachable walking an abundant number of steps up a hillside. You reach the town, wich Is a very little and cozy village in the mountains west from Sendai and the temple is very close to the station so it’s not possible to miss it. You can tell the whole village revolves around the temple but it still maintain an authentic spirit. Lots of restaurants and little shops to visit on the road that brings to the temple. The temple itself is very “vertical” : sets of stone stairs will lead you up the side of the hills, till you reach the main building and a couple of satellite building where you’ll be rewarded by an amazing view on the village below. If you don’t mind stairs you’ll be rewarded with a very relaxing atmosphere. Here too given the latitude and the altitude I’ve been able to enjoy a couple of late blossoming cherry trees. The weather was amazing that day and all the gardens where full of flowers, this made the whole trip particularly enjoyable. Luckly I’m an early bird because later in the day the place was really packed with visitors. Once I was finished I had a nice set of Yamagata Dashi Soba in a typical restaurant with Tatamis low tables and a beautiful view on the river that cuts in half the village.
YAMADERA: OTBP: 10 OVERALL 9
After a late lunch I jumped back to the train, went back to sendai to pickup the luggage and moved to the next stop, Fukushima. Here I had the first disappointment of my trip. As my usual I booked a hotel that was close to the main train station, wich is usally the place where you want to be. I had a walk around there and the impression I got from Fukushima was that the place was miserable, a place that has really nothing much to offer to a tourist and not even to a citizen because compared to all the other places I’ve been in japan the impression was that even the locals weren’t as lively and enjoying life that much. I hope I’m not offending anyone and for sure I can’t give a proper review of the place after just an evening spent there, but the impression I got was of one of those town, that you can find in every country you'll visit, where young people can’t wait to get old enough to run away from.
FUKUSHIMA: OTBP: 9 ½ OVERALL: 4
DAY 7: wake up in fukushima, move to Koriyama, leave the luggage at the hotel, and then visit Ouchi-Juku and Aizu Wakamatsu. If you’re wondering, the thing is doable but you need to move early. Once you reach Koriyama you take the local train for Aizu Wakamatsu. There you jump on another local train, wich isn’t entirely operated by JR so you’ll have to pay a ticket, to Yunokami Onsen station where you end up in one of the coolest train stations in japan because it’s built in the style of a traditional house with wooden interiors and a straw roof, and it has a feet onsen right outside where you can wait the train while bathing your feet in thermal water, how cool is that?
From here you take a bus and reach Ouchi Juku. On paper it sounds harder than it actually is but you have to plan your trip properly. Ouchi Juku is a post town all made of traditional houses that reminds you a bit of Shirakawa Go, I frankly don’t know how it isn’t more popular among foreigners cause it’s truly a one of a kind place. Most probably is because it’s so off the beaten path and hard to reach. Still it’s extremely popular among Japanese people because the place was crowded and, when I left, the car traffic was stuck by how many people where trying to reach the place by car. I have to tell you in all honestly the place is probably a bit too touristy because there’s not a single house that isn’t turned into a gift shop or a restaurant. But still the place is so charming and picturesque that is totally worth a visit, plus the surrounding woods, mountains and rice field really act like a frame around the most beautiful picture. So I spend the morning here and around 2 pm I move back to Aizu, because there are really not many bus runs in the evening taking you back to Yunokami Onsen and you better reach the place early.
OUCHI JUKU: OTBP: 10 OVERALL: 9
That gives me the opportunity to visit Aizu Wakamatsu. Ive heard about the city for its castle and for the legend of the Byakko Tai. I get off to Aizu Wakamatsu main station and walk across town till I reach the castle. Keep in mind it’s Saturday and along the whole walk I might have crossed three people. The city was deserted and one thing I’ve learned is, if people on a Saturday evening flee a city like that, then there isn’t much to do or see there, and that’s the impression I got, kinda like Fukushima, probably even worse. Still, I reached the castle: the park is very nice, the castle is a beautiful Japanese castle but, to my understanding it’s a modern reconstruction cause the original castle was lost during the Meiji restoration as Aizu was one of the spots that rised against the emperor. At least around the castle there were now many people. From the castle, wich I didn’t visit inside, I went back to the train station, this time I reached Nanukamachi station and I have to admit it the area there seemed more alive and interesting to stroll around than the area around main Aizu station, therefore maybe I just walked across the wrong part of the town, I honestly can’t tell.
AIZU: OTBP: 9 OVERALL: 6
From Aizu I finally moved by train to Koriyama. I really didn’t spend enough time there to have a proper opinion but the impression I got was of a laid back place, more relaxing than sendai and definitely more alive than fukushima. If I had more time I’d probably give it a shot for a day visit, it might be a surprise.

DAY 8: by this day I ended up with a terrible sore throath that I had to endure almost till my last day in japan. I never had a fever but there was definitely something going around, I kept hearing many Japanese people coughing on trains all around japan so there was definitely something going around, maybe it’s just the season changing, it happens during this season all the times to have some cold or cough. Anyway, the day I had to wake up early and move from Koriyama to Nagoya by Shinkansen, wich was a considerably long trip but at least it gave me the opportunity to take probably the best picture I’ve ever take of mount fuji, from the train. Once in Nagoya I left the luggage in the hotel ( wich, thanks probably to the fact that the golden week just ended, I happened to book for 4 nights for a whopping 25€ a night wich was a total steal even for current Japanese standard prices ). There I immediately jumped on another train and went to visit Inuyama.
The area around Nagoya is a bit tricky cause it’s full of railroads operated by a company that is not JR wich are not covered by the JR Pass but there’s a JR station a bit to the north of Inuyama that will do the job. The place is totally recommended for three reason: it’s overall nice, with the Kiso river cutting it, the castle is one of the few original ones and even if small is considered a national treasure and the whole area around the castle is very nice and worthy to spend some time on. So I visited the castle, the view from the top floor is awesome and in a clear day you can easily spot the skyline of Nagoya. Outside the castle there’s an edo style street full of shops, restaurants and street food that is nice to explore, totally recommended a walk there.
INUYAMA: OTBP: 8 ½ OVERALL: 10
Coming back to Nagoya I just had energy to look for food then I went back to my hotel for a good night of sleep.
DAY 9: a day trip from Nagoya to Ise. The trip isn’t that easy, you got to take a couple of trains if you move only by JR ( and a couple of stops of one of them aren’t even JR operated wich is a little confusing honestly ) and you end up in Iseshi station. From there I moved to Ise Jingu Geku, wich is the outer sanctuary and from there you can take a bus ( guess what, I walked instead ) to the main Ise sanctuary. If you don’t know Ise Jingu is the most sacred place in the Shinto religion and is regularly visited even by the emperor given his role in the Shinto religion. Inside the main temple one of the most sacred relics of Shinto religion is preserved.
Well, being totally honest here’s my impressions of Ise: it’s not simple to reach. The city itself, for what I’ve seen, looks like it has seen better days, meaning it looks like it’s falling apart. And the temples, there’s really not that much to see: they are in a forest, and the temples are not that spectacular, plus the most interesting parts are forbidden to visit. You can go to Atsuta Jingu without moving out from Nagoya and have a fairly realistic impression of what you would see in Ise without all the issues. I know people will attack me for what I’m saying, but that is what I’ve got from it. The most fun part was the edo style neighborhood that you can find right before entering the main Isu complex, wich looks almost like a theme park. I don’t say don’t go there, I say if you are, as you are probably, on borrowed time, with lots of places you want to visit and too few days to see them all, if Ise is in your list you might want to use the day to see something else.
ISE: OTBP: 6 ½ OVERALL: 6 ½
DAY 10: I decided to spend the day in Nagoya and take a look of the city, thanks also to the weather that was a bit rainy and really not inviting for another day trip. What I’ve seen in a day is the samurai exposition in Marunouchi. It’s free and it’s totally worth it, lots of beautiful samurai armours and swords. There’s another exposition that opened not many years ago that you can go nto too far but I didn’t visit so I can’t tell about that. From here I went to Nagoya castle. You pay to enter the complex but currently the Castle is under restoration and you can see it from outside ( it’s very impressive, Nagoya and Osaka castles are massive ) but not visit from inside. But the Honmaru Palace right beside it is open and totally worth a visit. From here took the subway ( yeah today I didn’t walk much so I got a subway day pass ) to the Osu Shotengai Shopping District, wich is the usual kind of covered shopping streets nest you can find in all the Japanese cities, and then moved again to Atsuta Jingu Shrine that, as I said, to me is a completely valid alternative to visiting Ise. The day went by without even noticing and I couldn’t see all the other places I had picked, like the Toyota museum, the tokugawa museum or the science museum, but that’s what you get when you only have one day dedicated to visit a city as big as Nagoya. Still I had time to get an impression of the city and I honestly don’t get the bad reputation it has among foreigners, the city looked to me quite interesting, nice, full of things to see and the people felt particularly laid back compared to cities like Tokyo or Osaka, it’s probably the place where I’ve seen the biggest number of tanned Japanese in all the country. To me Nagoya is totally worth at least two or three days dedicated only to visiting the city.
NAGOYA: OTBP: 5 OVERALL: 9
DAY 11: my original plan was to walk the Nakasendo from Magome to Tsumago. But the weather that day was kinda shit, I wasn’t feeling particularly In the mood of a walk because of my throath and I was starting to feel a bit tired, so I improvised and went for a day in Takayama and Gero Onsen. Takayama is pretty famous. I went there around 20 years ago and I remembered it as a very nice place. Getting back now, with all the Japanese places I’ve seen so far, I would say this: the train trip to Takayama is Spectacular, is a truly feast for the eyes. The town itself, it left me a little disappointed. The Edo style streets that its famous for, I’ve seen so many of them at that point around japan that it didn’t really leave a significant impression on me. And it was honestly smaller than I remembered it. Plus the weather, as I said, didn’t help. So overall the reality didn’t stand up to my memories and my expectations. Plus most of the houses there have now been turned in cheap souvenir shops with nothing giving you an authentic feeling. Don’t know, probably I wasn’t really in the mood that day.
TAKAYAMA: OTBP: 2 OVERALL: 6 ½
I took the opportunity on the way back to stop at Gero Onsen. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to actually stop for an onsen cause overall the whole day wasn’t planned and I mainly improvised. Still the town is very nice and probably, having no expectations or no knowledge of it, even more worth visiting than Takayama. Had a nice walk around the town, and at least had the opportunity to “feel” the thermal water cause there’s plenty of fountains with hot spring water where you can rest your feet or your hands. It was enough to make me aware that a proper onsen there must be a very enjoyable experience.
GERO ONSENS: OTBP: 8 OVERALL: 8
And after this I went to Nagoya where I spent my last night in the city.

DAY 12: moving to Fukuoka ( Hakata ). I booked a hotel near Hakata station so I jumped on the shinkansen and moved there. The ride was as confortable as any shinkansen ride can be and I reached the place sooner than I imagined. First thing was a good look of the city from the panoramic floor in the station. Then had a walk to the Canal City mall wich is a very weirdly and interesting designed mall that is a very popular location in town. Had a walk from there to Nakasu island where I got a quick dinner considering it was already time, and had another walk around the area wich unfortunately will turn out to be my only experience of Fukuoka. I’ll spend here three nights but the following days will be so full that won’t give me any chance to visit the town more, so in the end I don’t really have an opinion on Fukuoka if not that I should probably have spent more time there, but unfortunately the days you have are numbered and there’s so much to see that you have to give up something here and there, so i won't even give a vote to the city.
DAY 13: Destination is Kagoshima that it’s easily reachable by train. I went there with no real expectation and I was totally blown away. Something clicked and I instantly liked the town, I must say that probably the fact that one of the most beautiful girls I’ve seen in japan out of the blue started a conversation with me on the train probably helped a lot in putting me in a good mood.
From the station I walked downtown till the coast. On the way I stopped shopping a bit, found a local market where local artisans that day were exposing their crafts wich I liked a lot and went to the top floor of the Centerrace Mall to get a panoramic view of the city with an amazing view on Sakurajima volcano. If you don’t know it’s the symbol of the city and it’s said to be almost always active, the whole day I’ve been there he kept puffing little clouds of smoke from time to time, it was very cool. So, once reached the cost I walked ( you should know it by now ) till I reached Sengan-En wich is the garden and the palace of a local lord and it’s very beautiful, totally worth a visit, also compared to many other places in japan, this is more modern and therefore more unique both in the architecture of the palace and the style of the garden. I’d say if you are in Kagoshima you won’t regret visiting it ( maybe don’t do like me and take a bus cause it’s more than 6 km from the station ). After visiting Sengan En I went back to the ferries and took a ferry to Sakurajima. The ferry is very cheap, 200 yen, and quick to reach it’s destination, but on Sakurajima there’s really not much to do if you don’t plan to use a bus or some other kind of transportation. Since it was already evening, I had nothing planned and I had to go back to Hakata, I just took the time to have a walk on the Lava Trail wich is a walk in a natural park that has grown over an old lava flow, wich is a quite unique thing that I enjoyed more than I expected. Then I went back to Kagoshima, had dinner and moved back to Hakata. I have to say I really enjoyed Kagoshima, the city has a unique vibe, very laid back, the people seemed to be relaxed and happy and were much more open toward foreigners than anywhere I’ve experienced. If I’ll ever be back in japan I’ll surely manage to spend some more time in Kagoshima. I took the train and I was back in hakata at around midnight so I went straight to bed in hotel
KAGOSHIMA: OTBP: 10 OVERALL: 10
Day 14: Nagasaki. Another fairly easy destination to reach from Fukuoka. The city itself is very narrow and develops around its river. As a tourist I was immediately attracted to its atomic bomb museum, wich is north from the station. I went there, you don’t say, by foot.
And later, once I’ve done with the atomic bomb part, the Nagasaki near the sea.
And here starts the tale of the two Nagasaki, because it feels like two different places in one. The north part, wich I didn’t enjoy much, felt a bit neglected and it’s mostly houses where people live. And it’s the part where you’ll see more tourists because as I said all the atomic spots are there.
On the other hand the south part near the city was to me much more alive and full of life, I’m no expert but that’s probably where the locals like to spend their free time and on the other hand you’ll see way less tourists here.
Back to the morning, I did what most tourists do, and visited the atomic bomb museum, the peace park, the ipocenter, and went also to see the half standing torii that is one of the few authentic places left as testament of the bombing, around the city. Talking about the museum, I’ve been to both thins and Hiroshima and, even if Hiroshima is bigger and with much more to see, I would suggest if one has the opportunity to visit also the Nagasaki one, it absolutely has its own legs to stand on. On a side note, out of 10 visitors, 9 were foreigners, I guess Japanese already know their history and don’t feel the need to visit such a place on a nice Sunday morning.
The peace park it’s a park, there you can see the famous statue wich is one of the main symbols of Nagasaki and that, if you ask me, is one of the ugliest statues you can find in the world, but still if you’re in Nagasaki you probably don’t want to miss it.
After lunch I moved to the sea side, here I’ve seen DeiJima wich is the former artificial island where the Portuguese were segregated centuries ago, very interesting place, kinda like a mix of an open air museum and a theme park, felt a little bit plastic but still worth some of your time.
Then had a walk to the near seaside park wich is a very nice and relaxing place where flocks of eagles fly so low over your head that if you rise your hand you can almost touch them, and pretty much ended the day there before having to go back to Fukuoka.
NAGASAKI: OTBP: 5 OVERALL: 7 ½

Day 15 – 16 - 17: my last full days in japan. I was in need of some rest at this point and I needed to move closer to Narita where I had booked my flight for day 18, so i spent more than half of day 15 to transfer from Hakata to Tokyo. I booked my last hotel for three nights near Otsuka station, wich if you ask me is a nice spot to stay in Tokyo. When I arrived in the evening there was a rose festival and all around the station there were roses bushes in flower and there were people singing and the whole station looked alive but also quiet, if you like a place to stay In Tokyo that it’s not chaotic like Shinjuku or Shibuya I’d recommend Otsuka.
The last days aren’t really worth mentioning, I’ve spent most of the time shopping for souvenirs, and recovering for all the travel i did the two weeks before. I explored a couple of places worth mentioning that not everyone ever goes to in Tokyo, like Nakano Broadway ( a weird shopping district that feels like a little Akiabara ), Nippori where there’s a little known street nice for shopping, or Chiba where there’s one of the biggest mall in japan but apart from that nothing much that you can read in the report of anyone who have been to Tokyo.
And with this, I think I can conclude my report. If you want me to upload some picture and you have a site to suggest me where it’s easy to upload and you don’t have to make an account let me know and if there’s enough interest I will oblige as soon as I’ve finished downloading all the pictures from my phone.

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Husband and I (outdoorsy 30-somethings) just got back from the most magical 10 days of blitzing through Italy and I wanted to report back on how it all went! Itinerary report followed by general takeaways below. (:
May 5 (Rome) - Landed at Rome airport around 9AM, bought tickets for the Leonardo Express / validated in station and then hopped on a train around 10ish, got to Termini for around 11AM if I remember correctly. Wandered from Termini to our airbnb in Trastavere with our backpacks on, walked through/past a lot of the sites we'd be seeing later on. Part of the walk took us down the steps so we were walking along the bank of the Tiber and wowowowowow. We were more wiped out than expected after the walk and ended up napping at our airbnb after we checked in (lol) and then put ourselves back together, did Rick Steves' audio tour of Trastavere, found a place to get dinner, and just kind of wandered around the neighborhood stopping to sip wine and eat tiramisu in different spots. It was incredible.
May 6 (Rome) - Used IT.TAXI to call a car to bring us to the drop off point for our guided tour of the Vatican. I don't regret booking this because The Vatican is, ultimately, fucking insane in its offerings of art and history and whatnot, but this was easily the busiest/most crowded/suffocating thing we did the whole trip. There were so many people our tour ended up getting diverted from the Sistine chapel 2 or 3 times, which I actually liked because it meant we got to see EVERYTHING there was to see. I think we walked ~4 miles by the end of the tour. Tour started at 9:30 and we were walking out of St. Peter's at 13:00. Walked back to our bnb, passed out until 15:00, and then walked back into the heart of the city for our 17:45 Colosseum entry slot. Took our time getting there and let ourselves get distracted by any steps we wanted to run up or things we wanted to get closer to, etc. Waited behind maybe 5 people before getting our tickets checked for the colosseum, did Rick Steve's audio tour once inside, amazing. Originally we were planning on doing the forum afterwards but did not realize the forum closes early! Ended up spontaneously catching a bus to Appian Way and wandered around some of the park for sunset - not the part of the park we meant to wander around, but it was pretty nonetheless. Tried to catch a bus back but it never came, so we called another car via it.taxi back to our neighborhood. Grabbed dinner and gelato.
May 7 (Rome) - Hopped on a local bus to San Paolo train station, took a train out to Ostia Antica. Did the Rick Steve's audio tour (this is a running theme) and wandered the ruins for a couple of hours. The red poppies popping out of everything could make me cry, honestly. We were basically the only people there all morning. When we left around 11:00 there were hoards of schooltrips showing up, but we had the whole place to ourselves. Crazy. Hopped back on the train and took it to San Paolo, where we dipped into the metro and took a different train to the Colosseum area. Grabbed some street food and wandered - at midday this area is WAY more packed than in the late afternoon, like how it was the day before when we were there. The main line to the forum was stupid long, but there was no line at the Palatine Hill entrance just a little bit away from the Arch. We entered through there and wandered, did the Rick Steve's audio tour, wandered some more. Caught a bus to Campo d'fiori, and did most of Rick Steve's heart of rome walk. When we got to the pantheon we got in line to buy tickets - one of the machines was accepting money but was out of printer paper - we were able to snag one of the last printed tickets from the other machine around 17:00 and get inside the Pantheon. We ended up being two of like 10 people inside, this was a definite highlight. Did Rick Steve's pantheon audio tour and marveled at everything. Got kicked out around 17:45, continued the Heart of Rome walk and ended it ourselves at the Trevi Fountain. It was slammed but not hard to get close to the fountain itself. Walked back to Trastavere and watched sunset from one of the bridges over the Tiber. Wandered into a restaurant named something ending in "il massi" in trastevere - inadvertently one of the best meals of the whole trip. Hung out in Piazza Trilussa while a street performer played Bob Marley to a very happy crowd, went home, passed out.
May 8 (Rome -> Florence) - Grabbed coffee and pastries and ate them in Piazza Trilussa after checking out of our bnb. Trekked up Janiculum hill (with our bags) and hung out there for about an hour taking in the incredible view before walking down the other side (towards the Vatican?) and catching a bus to Termini, where we hopped on a pre-booked bullet train from Rome to Florence. Walked from the train station to our place in Oltrarno, close to Pitti and Ponte Vecchio - felt a kind of like, culture shock, I guess? Rome and Florence are so, so different. We stayed in a really cool airbnb on the top floor of what used to be a tower, I think? There was a plaque out front. A lot of stairs to go up but definitely worth it. Dropped our stuff off, grabbed some gelato, made it over for our 17:15 tour time of Accademia to see David. The line situation was NUTS but there was a method to the madness. The poster scammers were EVERYWHERE. Once we got inside it was very cool - David does not disappoint - we did the Rick Steves audio tour and wandered. Once that was over we made our way back towards Oltrarno and realized we were close to Gustapizza and like ~15 minutes out from it opening. I'm not about to wait in line for hours for food, but I can wait 30 minutes. Got in the to-go line, ordered two pizzas right after they opened (husband went out and bough a bottle of wine in the meantime), and we ate the pizzas and drank the wine in the nearby piazza. This was one of my favorite meals. I fucking love a piazza.
May 9 (Florence) - Slept in a bit! Did Rick Steve's Florence walk. Were originally going to do the duomo climb but changed our minds at the last minute - the amount of people waiting made it seem like it was going to be really claustrophobic - I don't regret this at all. Ended getting tickets to the Orsanmichele church / museum kind of on a whime (it was suggested in the Rick Steve's audio), I think 8 euros a pop. The church was beautiful, but the museum must be a state secret. We were the only 2 people in there, and the second floor is all HUGE windows with unobstructed views of the whole florence skyline, from within the skyline. It was dead quiet inside. No crowds. And incredible views. We soaked it up in here for a while, and then after the tour was done (around Palazza Vecchio), we wandered into San Frediano (I heard it was a cool area), got some of the best sandwiches from some random place, had Salciccia for the first time and didn't realize until we were like halfway through eating it (so good, omg), and hung out at a bar near a park for a while before catching a bus (I think 12) up to San Minianto. I read in a thread that this was a better viewpoint than the Piazzale Michelangelo with less crowds, and holy smokes. The view was insane. The monks closed the grounds right before sunset, but we were able to post up in one of the nooks in the wall right outside of the grounds and watch the sun go down. No crowd at all. Magical. Hiked back down on foot through Piazzale Michelangelo and stopped for a second to grab a beer and snap a photo, but it was SO so soooooooo crowded. Kept walking and wandered around Palazzo Vecchio area, grabbed dinner somewhere and headed home.
May 10 (Panzano) - Got our rental car and made our way to Panzano for a lunch reservation at Dario's. I was worried this was going to be hokey or full of old people or something, but this ended up being a huge highlight. We were sat at a table with a bunch of guys weekending together from Milan, a couple from Brazil, and some other folks from Northern Italy, and we all just chatted and ate together and drank way too much chianti and stayed until we basically were asked to leave. It was amazing. What was supposed to be a two hour lunch turned into a six hour hang out. The food was incredible, obviously, but making friends with such an assortment of strangers was really, really special. Wandered around Panzano a little bit after we all parted ways and then made our way to the carpark in Florence. We had reserved a spot at a place a week or so in advance and paid once we got there in person, it was great. Grabbed some more of the best sandwiches I've ever had in my life from some hole in the wall place in Oltrarno and hung out at our airbnb drinking wine until bedtime.
May 11 (Montepulciano) - Slept in a bit! Grabbed a capuccino at the local spot we'd found near our place, got our rental car, and set off for a day spent wandering around in Montepulciano. Didn't really have a set in stone plan for the day, but we parked for free near a bus station and then caught a cheap shuttle up to the top of the town. Hopped off at the top (the driver could tell we had no idea where "the top" was going to be and kindly flagged us when we were supposed to get off), and really spent the whole day just wandering up and down the town. The wine was all very good, everywhere. The food also. And catching the sunset from the top was probably one of the most incredible sunsets I've seen anywhere ever. Highly recommend. Drove back after dark and the highway was CLOSED so we spent most of the drive on a very, very small road carrying diverted highway traffic in both directions. It was a little scary because of the buses and trucks, but we lived. Dropped our car off at the return lot, caught a tram back to termini, and walked back to our place. Got in around 23:00. LONG, beautiful day.
May 12 (Florence -> Cinque Terre) - Got coffees at some third wave coffee shop instead of the usual spot because the usual spot was slammed and we had our bags with us - this place was fine but definitely geared towards Americans. And then walked to Termini and caught a train to Pisa, hopped out and switched platforms, and then caught a train to Monterosso Al Mare, landed around 15:00. Met up with our airbnb host, who was SO KIND, and walked up the 150 steps to the room we'd be staying in (not in the old side of town), it was amazing. Rooftop access. And tucked into the forested hill behind the other buildings. It was directly over the train but, surprisingly, that didn't bother us at all. We dropped our stuff off and wandered back out, got some foccaccia (holy shit) and walked into the old town. We wandered deep into the old town and up some road surrounded by vineyards and found some open but OLD woodsy staircase path that brought us up.... we did not know where we were going but did not care. Ended up popping out in the back of the cemetery at the top of the hill. Nobody was there, but if you walk ~50 meters or so away from the cemetery and down the road, there's an incredible panoramic viewpoint of the whole area. Wandered around here, then down an old-looking path around the cemetery that brought us to the front of the place, which is where the crowds (really not a lot of people) of people were. Wandered back down into the old town, bought some picnic-stuff from a local market (focaccia, pesto, olives, cheese, beer, limoncello) and then made our way home and picnicked on the rooftop while the sunset. Incredible day.
May 13 (Cinque Terre) - I think this was my favorite day. I don't know. I'm a sucker for large bodies of water and generally just being in nature. We got down for breakfast around 10AM, and droves of people were getting off of the train to start the hike that everyone does. Currently only the Monterosso -> Vernazza -> Corniglia sections are open. We were planning on doing the hike first thing, but really, really didn't want to deal with the crowds of it all. So we bought our trail pass ticket and then decided to change our plans around. We ended up catching the ferry from Monterosso Al Mare and taking it down to Riomaggiore, 45 minute trip total (15 euros a head and you get to see every town from the water... so worth it), where we ran around a little bit and split a cone of fried anchovies from Tutti Frutti (10/10). Hopped on the train and took it to Corniglia, wandered around here a bit and then hopped on the hiking trail and hiked Corniglia -> Vernazza. Definitely recommend. The views were stunning, and we only saw a couple of people in either direction since we started a bit later in the day / I assume a bunch of people only do the first chunk of the hike when starting in Monterosso. The portion we did took us about 65 minutes, and we stopped to re-apply sunscreen and gawk at the views a couple of times. Did a quick lap in Vernazza but were itchy to get to the beach at this point, so hopped on the train to Monterosso, used our trail passes to get free access to the train bathrooms and change into our swimsuits (we brought a small, roll-up-able hiking sling bag for this purpose), bought a towel for 10 euros from one of the stalls near the beach and hit the free section of the beach in Fegina. Some folks but nothing crazy. Laid our stuff down and spent the afternoon swimming in the sea. The locals said the water was cold but it was beautiful - 69 degrees Fahrenheit or so - much warmer than the ocean water we're used to in California lol. After hanging out here until around 18:00 or so, we made our way back up to our room (150 steps!!!!!), showered, put ourselves together, and made it back out for dinner around 21:00. We were able to get a table at a restaurant in the old part of town and if I recommend any place, it's this one: Tosca Bistrot. The chef was out and about helping the waitstaff, she stopped and chatted with us for a bit, and the food was the best food we had the whole trip. Anchovies in lemon and oil, trufie with pesto, poached sea bass, tiramisu and a pinoleta, which is a tart I've never heard of or had but now cannot stop thinking about. It was amazing and special and sweet. Walked out of here and sat on the beach in the dark for a little bit near some street performers before making our way home.
May 14 (Cinque Terre -> Milan) - I'm counting this as our last day even though technically we flew out of Milan on May 15. Initially we were going to spend two nights in Monterosso Al Mare but it felt dicey having to take a three hour train ride to a city where you then would have to catch a flight, so we opted to head to Milan to spend our last night before flying to limit any chance of craziness. We checked out of our bnb in the morning, spent a few hours wandering around with our bags, got some focaccia and ate it on the beach in the shade of the sidewalk overhand, and stopped at a local market to buy some fresh fruit for the train ride. This turned out to be a mistake. We bought two peaches, a nectarine, and some lemony cookies. Husband and I split the peaches and nectarine on the train ride, and just as we get to our hotel in Milan he starts complaining of nausea / upset stomach. He ended up having wild food poisoning. We washed the fruit before eating it but I guess something similar happened to him years ago when he was in Romania - something about his guts just not being familiar with the bacteria on the skin of the fruit or something. I was totally fine, but I historically have really strong guts. It ended up pouring rain the entire afternoon we were in Milan, anyway, so while it wasn't the most ideal way to end the trip it was also not the worst. Our hotel room was small enough that it was the perfect place for him to need to be close to a toilet, and we just opened the windows and listened to the rain and the locals being raucous into the night. Thankfully he was through it by morning and was able to get some sleep! But that was basically that!!!
BIGGEST TAKEAWAYS - I have to assume this applies to anywhere, but our favorite moments / things really ended up being the little everyday things as opposed to the big tourist attractions. Like the local cafes we ended up going to every morning, hanging out in piazzas with the birds, chatting with people, and letting ourselves wander down any weird little path that caught our attention. And the gelato. - We tried our best to not over-schedule things and really only book the attractions we wanted to see instead of what we felt we HAD to see. We're not huge art people so we felt the Uffizzi and such would have been lost on us, were more interested in eating and hanging out with people so we prioritized that, etc. - Public transit is so wildly easy to use here that you should absolutely lean into relying on it. The bus schedules were pretty easy to read wherever they were posted, google maps' routes were usually spot-on, and if the bus doesn't show up (in Rome this seems to happen sometimes) and you don't want to walk, it.taxi worked just like uber. - If you can book the BIG ATTRACTIONS towards the end of the day, do it. Crowds are thinner and you have a better chance of smaller numbers being inside. We booked Colosseum/Forum/Palatine Hill pass + Vatican (with a tour) + Accademia + time slot to Ostia Antica in advance and let ourselves sort of figure out the rest of the day-to-day as best we could. - Aside from lodgings and the car rental, the only other thing we booked in advance was the bullet train. It was pretty packed so I recommend you do the same, plus I think it's cheaper if you book it in advance. - Idk if Rick Steves gets a bad rap or whatever but as two people who didn't WANT to book tours to everything and also could not afford to book tours to everything, the guided Rick Steves walks were amazing. They give you so much context to wherever you are and there were absolutely some things we saw - a completely empty church with a beautiful rose garden and singing nuns comes to mind - that we never would have stumbled upon without them. Definitely recommend. Husband and I literally just split a pair of airpods, made sure to download the audio tours when we were on wifi, and listened and walked. In this vein, definitely bring a good portable charger.
I can honestly say this was a magical, life altering trip for me. I have never taken two weeks to just go have fun somewhere like I did with this, and it was amazing. Ultimately I think the most important thing is not letting yourself be too tied to a schedule, giving yourself some leeway/grace, figuring out specifically what's important for YOU to see, and just leaning in to living in wherever you are. It was amazing. I wish we had more time and I can't wait to go back.
If you want any specific recs (food, gelato, lodging, etc) in any of the places we were, feel free to message me!!
EDIT: additionally takeaway: forgot to explicitly mention this but husband and I each ONLY brought one backpack and I stand by this move 100000%. It made getting places on travel days way easier, made us pack smarter, and was honestly a great way to live. We did some sink laundry and I made sure to book a bnb midway through the trip (Florence) with laundry facilities. We brought some rope to hang our clothes. I felt awful for everyone I saw using rolling suitcases in Rome on the cobblestone. You need less than you think you do, I swear!

Hi ShopifyeCommerce - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of the week's top stories, which I cover in depth in the newsletter. Let's dive in...
STAT OF THE WEEK: Amazon could finally surpass Walmart to become the nation’s biggest company by revenue, having grown by 12% last year compared with Walmart's growth of 6%. Two more years of similar growth discrepancy would push Amazon past Walmart in sales.
Shopify is suing Shopline in New York federal court, accusing it of illegally copying Shopify's software to build its own e-commerce platform. Shopline is a Singapore-based subsidiary of the Chinese technology company JOYY Inc. Shopify said in the lawsuit that Shopline created a “thinly disguised knockoff” of its Dawn theme to power a competing e-commerce service. The lawsuit even says that the “Shopify” name still appears in the code of various versions of Seed that Shopline is distributing, and that Shopify found a Chinese webpage hosted by Joyy with the title “Seed Theme” that still carries headers reading “dawn-test.”
In other lawsuit news this week — Temu is facing legal action from 17 companies accusing it of violating new EU laws with “manipulative practices” such as making it difficult to delete your account, and lack of transparency over who their sellers are and why certain products are recommended to customers. Temu was the most downloaded app in the UK in 2023 and still remains as a top downloaded app in 2024.
The state of Arizona has taken legal action against Amazon, launching two lawsuits that accuse the company of monopolistic behavior and deceptive practices involving dark patterns. The first lawsuit claims that Amazon's business practices violate the state's Consumer Fraud Act by employing dark patterns to make it difficult for users to cancel their Amazon Prime subscriptions. The second lawsuit alleges that Amazon breaches Arizona's Uniform State Antitrust Act by maintaining a monopoly via enforcing agreements with third-party sellers to prevent them from offering lower prices on other platforms. It also challenges Amazon's Buy Box algorithm under the Consumer Fraud Act, claiming that it favors sellers who use Fulfillment By Amazon. The legal actions echo similar complaints from the FTC and various states.
Last week Amazon made a big splash with its first-ever event during upfront week, taking over Pier 36 in New York which has previously hosted upfront presentations from Disney and TelevisaUnivision. The company called on celebrities including Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Will Ferrell, and Alicia Keys to demonstrate how premium their content is. Amazon worked to separate itself from its competitors by showcasing its scale. Prime Video now has an average monthly ad-supported reach of 200M customers, with 115M in the US, making it the largest premium ad-supported streaming service both globally and in the U.S. It also announced new upcoming series such as Spider-Man Noir, Tomb Raider, and a prequel to Legally Blond.
eBay launched a new feature called “resell on eBay” that is designed to make it easier for brands and consumers to list clothing for sale on its marketplace. The feature is built into Certilogo, which was acquired by eBay in 2023, which features an AI-powered digital ID printed on the product tag to help brands manage the lifecycle of their garments and give consumers a way to confirm the item's authenticity. Users scan a QR code on a product's smart label to generate a “resell your garment” button. Clicking the button directs the user to check the authenticity of the item through Certilogo's AI authentication system by signing in with their eBay account. From there, an eBay listing is prefilled with information from the brand about the item. Users can then edit the listing, upload additional photos, and publish the item for sale.
Poshmark launched a new paid marketing tool called “Promoted Closets” that gives sellers the ability to promote their entire shop at once. The tool uses machine learning to automatically promote individual product listings from a seller's entire inventory, identifying shoppers' search terms and matching them with promoted items. Promoted Closet works on a cost per click model where sellers only get charged when a shopper clicks and views the item from a promoted listing. There's an option to set the budget manually or get a recommendation from Poshmark. Each campaign lasts for 7 days.
Klarna says that it is not sharing its customer data with credit bureaus in the US because the bureaus “do not have proper models to responsibly process the data and ensure good consumer outcomes.” It does share its data with UK credit bureaus. Klarna added that the credit models used today in the US “were built decades ago and calculate data based on monthly payments, long-term loans, and open lines of credit. But BNPL does not fit into these categories.” The company claims that BNPL is different because it offers bi-weekly instead of monthly payments, and unlike a credit card, Klarna doesn't offer an open line of credit.
Third party sellers on Amazon, which make up 60% of sales on Amazon's marketplace, are reconsidering how heavily they'll discount products this year for Prime Day, given how much seller fees have increased on the platform in recent months, according to Modern Retail. According to data from SmartScout, Amazon FBA fees for standard-sized products have jumped 96% over the past 10 years, outpacing inflation. Seller fees can eat up about half the cost per sale on Amazon, according to Marketplace Pulse. That doesn't leave much room for running Prime Day deals, which primarily benefit Amazon as opposed to the individual merchants who are pressured to wipe out their little remaining margin for the sake of running a deal at all.
Netflix announced durings it Upfronts presentation that it's launching its own advertising platform to compete against Google, Amazon, Hulu, Comcast, and other ad giants. Amazon has only been in the advertising business for a year and a half after launching its ad-supported tier in Nov 2022. Netflix originally partnered with Microsoft to develop its ad tech, which let the streaming platform enter the ad space quickly and catch up with rivals like Hulu, which has offered an ad-supported tier since 2010. Launching its own in-house ad tech will allow Netflix to take full control of its advertising and create targeted and personalized ad experiences. Netflix wants to experiment with “episodic” campaigns, which involves a series of ads that tell a story rather than delivering repetitive ads. Brilliant!
Slack is under attack after users discovered that the company has been using their messages, content, and files to train its global AI models, which Slack uses to power their channel and emoji recommendations and search results. It was discovered that if you don't want Slack to use your data, you have to e-mail the company to opt-out, which isn't a good look for a company that makes a big deal out of telling customers that “You control your data.” In response to the outrage, Slack published a blog post to clarify how its customers' data is used.
Google will now let you perform a “web” search, which lets you filter out almost all of its AI results and knowledge panels that currently take over its SERPs, leaving you with just links and text like the old days. The order of the search results are the same regardless of whether you pick “web” or “all”, and it doesn't block links to YouTube videos or Reddit posts. There are also still ads that appear above and below the results.
YouTube is officially launching its YouTube Select “creator takeovers,” which lets advertisers buy out the ad inventory on channels representing the top 1% of content on the platform. The program began as a pilot at the end of 2023 and is now opening to more top creators.
Wix launched three new AI-powered image enhancement and creation tools to help users create and display high-quality images. The new tools include an AI Image Creator to make the images, Object Eraser to remove unwanted objects in the images, and AI Image Editor to add/edit portions of the image. Honestly, the three tools kind of sound like one tool with three features, but you do you, Wix.
Temu, which is already 20% bigger than Shein in the US and gets 42% of its business from the US, Mexico, and Chile, is turning its attention to Europe and wants to grow rapidly in the region. The company has redirected its enormous ad spend to Europe and Mexico while Washington scrutinizes its business practices in the US.
Visa announced major changes to how its credit and debit cards will operate in the US in the coming months and years. The new features mean consumers will be carrying fewer physical cards in their wallets, and will make the 16-digit card number increasingly irrelevant. The biggest change will be the ability for banks to issue one physical card that is connected to multiple bank accounts, which consumers can apply usage rules to.
Mastercard and Salesforce announced a new integration designed to help customers speed up the resolution of transaction disputes and chargebacks, as well as reduce costs associated with resolving them. The partnership will integrate Salesforce's Financial Services Cloud with Mastercard's dispute resolution services, providing real time notifications and a central dashboard for managing disputes.
Meta is taking inspiration from BeReal and Snapchat by developing a feature for Instagram called “Peek” that allows users to post authentic pictures that can only be viewed once. A photo shared via a Peek would have to be taken with your camera in the moment, as you would not be able to upload an image from your gallery, and you won't be able to add filters or edit the photo.
Ikea launched a TikTok livestream where cats and dogs model and demonstrate new Ikea products for pets. The Pet Shopping Network will appear for everyone in the UK on TikTok and showcase pets demonstrating Ikea's 29-piece pet furniture range.
Sam's Club is planning to launch an online shopping portal in Hong Kong within the next two months, giving the territory access to its products via e-commerce. The service will include free delivery for purchases over 599 yuan ($83).
Amazon raised warehouse worker wages to $15/hour five years ago, but today half of workers surveyed told researchers they struggle to afford food and rent. Amazon called the researcher's methodology “deeply flawed” and said the company had tried to raise its concerns with the study’s authors but never heard back.
Lots of layoffs this week… Amazon laid off more than 100 customer service reps, Walmart let go of hundreds of corporate staffers and ordering employees across the US and Canada, Gopuff laid off 6% of its staff, and Indeed laid off 8% of its workforce.
Remember that former diversity program manager at Facebook who stole more than $4M from the company through fake business deals in exchange for kickbacks? I first reported on Barbara Furlow-Smiles in December of last year when she pled guilty to the theft. Well, last week she was sentenced to five years and three months in prison for her scheme.
In the world of corporate turnover… The chief of Amazon Web Services, Adam Selipsky, is stepping down next month after a three-year term to be replaced by Matt Garman, a senior VP who has overseen sales and marketing at AWS. Also, eBay's VP of Global Communications, Michelle Friedman, departed the company to take on a role at Samsara, a cloud platform built for tracking and analyzing data from physical operations.
Meta is shutting down Workspace, a version of Facebook that had been built to enable communication among business teams and organizations. Sources say that it will be business as usual on the platform until August 25, 2025, and then it will be read-only until May 2026. Meta is recommending Zoom-owned Workvivo as a migration-ready alternative.
Ted Baker Canada is holding store-closing clearance sales across locations in the US and Canada after filing for bankruptcy in April. As of May 10th, online shopping is no longer available and all sales are final across the company's brick-and-mortar retail locations.
Sezzle, a US-based BNPL service, partnered up with Celerant Technology, a POS system for retailers, to offer a BNPL option when checking out in-store . The two companies had partnered in 2023 to offer BNPL options online, and now the solution is being brought to brick-and-mortar stores.
BuyBay, a Dutch recommerce platform, is launching a SaaS product using its own recommerce software. Retailers and manufacturers can now resell unreturned products from their own distribution center, which helps reduce CO2-emissions and increase profits.
Setapp Mobile, a subscription-based alternative to the Apple App Store that's now possible thanks to the EU's Digital Markets Act, went into invite-only beta last week. The new app store allows customers to play with a range of apps without being hit with reduced features, ads, options to upgrade, and without spending money on something they may not use. The biggest challenge with the Setapp iOS store is getting the app installed on your iPhone, which involves following a link, installing software, and then activating it — a process made intentionally cumbersome by Apple.
Avalara expanded its partnership with Shopify by joining the Shopify Tax Platform. Avalara has powered tax calculation for Shopify Plus customers since 2015, and now through the Shopify Tax Partner Platform, the company can serve all Shopify customers with their global tax compliance tools.
Walmart delivered 4.4B items the same day or next day, beating Amazon, which said it did 4B items in one day. Walmart's advantage is that it uses stores for its same-day deliveries.
Plus 9 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Gorgias's $29M Series C-2 round, which it plans to use the funds from to launch its new AI Agent.
I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week! For more details on each story and sources, see the full edition: https://www.shopifreaks.com/shopify-sues-shopline-ebays-qr-code-netflixs-new-ad-serve What else is new in e-commerce? Share stories of interesting in the comments below (including in your own business) or on shopifreaks. -PAUL Editor of Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter PS: Want the full editions delivered to your Inbox each week? Join free at www.shopifreaks.com

Hi - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Each week I post a summary recap of the week's top stories, which I cover in depth with sources in the full edition. Let's dive in...
STAT OF THE WEEK: Amazon could finally surpass Walmart to become the nation’s biggest company by revenue, having grown by 12% last year compared with Walmart's growth of 6%. Two more years of similar growth discrepancy would push Amazon past Walmart in sales.
Shopify is suing Shopline in New York federal court, accusing it of illegally copying Shopify's software to build its own e-commerce platform. Shopline is a Singapore-based subsidiary of the Chinese technology company JOYY Inc. Shopify said in the lawsuit that Shopline created a “thinly disguised knockoff” of its Dawn theme to power a competing e-commerce service. The lawsuit even says that the “Shopify” name still appears in the code of various versions of Seed that Shopline is distributing, and that Shopify found a Chinese webpage hosted by Joyy with the title “Seed Theme” that still carries headers reading “dawn-test.”
In other lawsuit news this week — Temu is facing legal action from 17 companies accusing it of violating new EU laws with “manipulative practices” such as making it difficult to delete your account, and lack of transparency over who their sellers are and why certain products are recommended to customers. Temu was the most downloaded app in the UK in 2023 and still remains as a top downloaded app in 2024.
The state of Arizona has taken legal action against Amazon, launching two lawsuits that accuse the company of monopolistic behavior and deceptive practices involving dark patterns. The first lawsuit claims that Amazon's business practices violate the state's Consumer Fraud Act by employing dark patterns to make it difficult for users to cancel their Amazon Prime subscriptions. The second lawsuit alleges that Amazon breaches Arizona's Uniform State Antitrust Act by maintaining a monopoly via enforcing agreements with third-party sellers to prevent them from offering lower prices on other platforms. It also challenges Amazon's Buy Box algorithm under the Consumer Fraud Act, claiming that it favors sellers who use Fulfillment By Amazon. The legal actions echo similar complaints from the FTC and various states.
Last week Amazon made a big splash with its first-ever event during upfront week, taking over Pier 36 in New York which has previously hosted upfront presentations from Disney and TelevisaUnivision. The company called on celebrities including Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Will Ferrell, and Alicia Keys to demonstrate how premium their content is. Amazon worked to separate itself from its competitors by showcasing its scale. Prime Video now has an average monthly ad-supported reach of 200M customers, with 115M in the US, making it the largest premium ad-supported streaming service both globally and in the U.S. It also announced new upcoming series such as Spider-Man Noir, Tomb Raider, and a prequel to Legally Blond.
eBay launched a new feature called “resell on eBay” that is designed to make it easier for brands and consumers to list clothing for sale on its marketplace. The feature is built into Certilogo, which was acquired by eBay in 2023, which features an AI-powered digital ID printed on the product tag to help brands manage the lifecycle of their garments and give consumers a way to confirm the item's authenticity. Users scan a QR code on a product's smart label to generate a “resell your garment” button. Clicking the button directs the user to check the authenticity of the item through Certilogo's AI authentication system by signing in with their eBay account. From there, an eBay listing is prefilled with information from the brand about the item. Users can then edit the listing, upload additional photos, and publish the item for sale.
Poshmark launched a new paid marketing tool called “Promoted Closets” that gives sellers the ability to promote their entire shop at once. The tool uses machine learning to automatically promote individual product listings from a seller's entire inventory, identifying shoppers' search terms and matching them with promoted items. Promoted Closet works on a cost per click model where sellers only get charged when a shopper clicks and views the item from a promoted listing. There's an option to set the budget manually or get a recommendation from Poshmark. Each campaign lasts for 7 days.
Klarna says that it is not sharing its customer data with credit bureaus in the US because the bureaus “do not have proper models to responsibly process the data and ensure good consumer outcomes.” It does share its data with UK credit bureaus. Klarna added that the credit models used today in the US “were built decades ago and calculate data based on monthly payments, long-term loans, and open lines of credit. But BNPL does not fit into these categories.” The company claims that BNPL is different because it offers bi-weekly instead of monthly payments, and unlike a credit card, Klarna doesn't offer an open line of credit.
Third party sellers on Amazon, which make up 60% of sales on Amazon's marketplace, are reconsidering how heavily they'll discount products this year for Prime Day, given how much seller fees have increased on the platform in recent months, according to Modern Retail. According to data from SmartScout, Amazon FBA fees for standard-sized products have jumped 96% over the past 10 years, outpacing inflation. Seller fees can eat up about half the cost per sale on Amazon, according to Marketplace Pulse. That doesn't leave much room for running Prime Day deals, which primarily benefit Amazon as opposed to the individual merchants who are pressured to wipe out their little remaining margin for the sake of running a deal at all.
Netflix announced durings it Upfronts presentation that it's launching its own advertising platform to compete against Google, Amazon, Hulu, Comcast, and other ad giants. Amazon has only been in the advertising business for a year and a half after launching its ad-supported tier in Nov 2022. Netflix originally partnered with Microsoft to develop its ad tech, which let the streaming platform enter the ad space quickly and catch up with rivals like Hulu, which has offered an ad-supported tier since 2010. Launching its own in-house ad tech will allow Netflix to take full control of its advertising and create targeted and personalized ad experiences. Netflix wants to experiment with “episodic” campaigns, which involves a series of ads that tell a story rather than delivering repetitive ads. Brilliant!
Slack is under attack after users discovered that the company has been using their messages, content, and files to train its global AI models, which Slack uses to power their channel and emoji recommendations and search results. It was discovered that if you don't want Slack to use your data, you have to e-mail the company to opt-out, which isn't a good look for a company that makes a big deal out of telling customers that “You control your data.” In response to the outrage, Slack published a blog post to clarify how its customers' data is used.
Google will now let you perform a “web” search, which lets you filter out almost all of its AI results and knowledge panels that currently take over its SERPs, leaving you with just links and text like the old days. The order of the search results are the same regardless of whether you pick “web” or “all”, and it doesn't block links to YouTube videos or Reddit posts. There are also still ads that appear above and below the results.
YouTube is officially launching its YouTube Select “creator takeovers,” which lets advertisers buy out the ad inventory on channels representing the top 1% of content on the platform. The program began as a pilot at the end of 2023 and is now opening to more top creators.
Wix launched three new AI-powered image enhancement and creation tools to help users create and display high-quality images. The new tools include an AI Image Creator to make the images, Object Eraser to remove unwanted objects in the images, and AI Image Editor to add/edit portions of the image. Honestly, the three tools kind of sound like one tool with three features, but you do you, Wix.
Temu, which is already 20% bigger than Shein in the US and gets 42% of its business from the US, Mexico, and Chile, is turning its attention to Europe and wants to grow rapidly in the region. The company has redirected its enormous ad spend to Europe and Mexico while Washington scrutinizes its business practices in the US.
Visa announced major changes to how its credit and debit cards will operate in the US in the coming months and years. The new features mean consumers will be carrying fewer physical cards in their wallets, and will make the 16-digit card number increasingly irrelevant. The biggest change will be the ability for banks to issue one physical card that is connected to multiple bank accounts, which consumers can apply usage rules to.
Mastercard and Salesforce announced a new integration designed to help customers speed up the resolution of transaction disputes and chargebacks, as well as reduce costs associated with resolving them. The partnership will integrate Salesforce's Financial Services Cloud with Mastercard's dispute resolution services, providing real time notifications and a central dashboard for managing disputes.
Meta is taking inspiration from BeReal and Snapchat by developing a feature for Instagram called “Peek” that allows users to post authentic pictures that can only be viewed once. A photo shared via a Peek would have to be taken with your camera in the moment, as you would not be able to upload an image from your gallery, and you won't be able to add filters or edit the photo.
Ikea launched a TikTok livestream where cats and dogs model and demonstrate new Ikea products for pets. The Pet Shopping Network will appear for everyone in the UK on TikTok and showcase pets demonstrating Ikea's 29-piece pet furniture range.
Sam's Club is planning to launch an online shopping portal in Hong Kong within the next two months, giving the territory access to its products via e-commerce. The service will include free delivery for purchases over 599 yuan ($83).
Amazon raised warehouse worker wages to $15/hour five years ago, but today half of workers surveyed told researchers they struggle to afford food and rent. Amazon called the researcher's methodology “deeply flawed” and said the company had tried to raise its concerns with the study’s authors but never heard back.
Lots of layoffs this week… Amazon laid off more than 100 customer service reps, Walmart let go of hundreds of corporate staffers and ordering employees across the US and Canada, Gopuff laid off 6% of its staff, and Indeed laid off 8% of its workforce.
Remember that former diversity program manager at Facebook who stole more than $4M from the company through fake business deals in exchange for kickbacks? I first reported on Barbara Furlow-Smiles in December of last year when she pled guilty to the theft. Well, last week she was sentenced to five years and three months in prison for her scheme.
In the world of corporate turnover… The chief of Amazon Web Services, Adam Selipsky, is stepping down next month after a three-year term to be replaced by Matt Garman, a senior VP who has overseen sales and marketing at AWS. Also, eBay's VP of Global Communications, Michelle Friedman, departed the company to take on a role at Samsara, a cloud platform built for tracking and analyzing data from physical operations.
Meta is shutting down Workspace, a version of Facebook that had been built to enable communication among business teams and organizations. Sources say that it will be business as usual on the platform until August 25, 2025, and then it will be read-only until May 2026. Meta is recommending Zoom-owned Workvivo as a migration-ready alternative.
Ted Baker Canada is holding store-closing clearance sales across locations in the US and Canada after filing for bankruptcy in April. As of May 10th, online shopping is no longer available and all sales are final across the company's brick-and-mortar retail locations.
Sezzle, a US-based BNPL service, partnered up with Celerant Technology, a POS system for retailers, to offer a BNPL option when checking out in-store . The two companies had partnered in 2023 to offer BNPL options online, and now the solution is being brought to brick-and-mortar stores.
BuyBay, a Dutch recommerce platform, is launching a SaaS product using its own recommerce software. Retailers and manufacturers can now resell unreturned products from their own distribution center, which helps reduce CO2-emissions and increase profits.
Setapp Mobile, a subscription-based alternative to the Apple App Store that's now possible thanks to the EU's Digital Markets Act, went into invite-only beta last week. The new app store allows customers to play with a range of apps without being hit with reduced features, ads, options to upgrade, and without spending money on something they may not use. The biggest challenge with the Setapp iOS store is getting the app installed on your iPhone, which involves following a link, installing software, and then activating it — a process made intentionally cumbersome by Apple.
Avalara expanded its partnership with Shopify by joining the Shopify Tax Platform. Avalara has powered tax calculation for Shopify Plus customers since 2015, and now through the Shopify Tax Partner Platform, the company can serve all Shopify customers with their global tax compliance tools.
Walmart delivered 4.4B items the same day or next day, beating Amazon, which said it did 4B items in one day. Walmart's advantage is that it uses stores for its same-day deliveries.
Plus 9 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Gorgias's $29M Series C-2 round, which it plans to use the funds from to launch its new AI Agent.
I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week!
PAUL Editor of Shopifreaks E-Commerce Newsletter
PS: If I missed any big news this week, please share in the comments.

27/28. Batgirl Begins - 4/5 (Starting this in medias res was a good choice, since if you're already familiar with Batman stuff, you know Barbara was gonna become Batgirl in this (and even if you don't, the title would reveal as much). So starting with a Poison Ivy fight made me more curious to see everything that lead up to it was opposed to just waiting for the "reveal" that Barbara becomes Batgirl and Pamela becomes Poison Ivy. Plus, Barbara's snarky narration was amusing. Introducing Batgirl as Batman's first sidekick (even if this was merely due to a stupid embargo) as well as making Poison Ivy be her best friend turned arch nemesis is pretty fun because of its uniqueness alone. Especially because it makes the stakes more interesting when Ivy has a personal grudge against Gordon. And I liked Batman's "not every child gets the opportunity to rescue their parent" comment. Yeah, it's cliché, but that stuff is the core of Batman, so it's nice to see this side of him acknowledged, since it rarely is in this series. Also, making Gordon not able to recognize Batgirl as Barbara because he wasn't wearing his glasses was pretty "clever". "Clever" in quotations because it's still dumb, but since most DC shows love to sell you on the idea that people cannot recognize each other's face by simply putting a mask on the top half, it's funny that this series bothered to give an explanation at all. He should still have recognized her voice, but you can't win 'em all.)
29. A Dark Knight to Remember - 3/5 (Freezing Poison Ivy in the previous episode, then defeating the Kabuki Twins by freezing them in this as well? Batman is becoming Mr. Freeze. Anyway, here's a pretty standard amnesia cartoon episode. Decent gimmick, and they also added a stock Secret Identity Almost Discovered:tm: plot to spice things up. The circumstances of Bruce's amnesia being the perfect cover for Barbara dropping the idea that he could be Batman is fun, but Bruce's actual amnesia is just cartoonishly illogical. Even if he lost memories of his last few years as the Batman, how would that also genuinely make him a self absorbed playboy? He was always a broody guy with a heart of gold, even before donning the cape and cowl.)
30. A Fistful of Felt - 3/5 (This is just a poor man's Double Talk. It treads the exact same stuff; Wesker is cured of Scarface so he lives a peaceful life before Scarface forcibly reappears at the hands of someone trying to bait him and he succumbs to it before Batman eventually confronts him and Scarface gets destroyed. Except this is way less substantial and lacking in drama and emotion. It's a shame, because during the group therapy scene, I was excited that this could potentially be a formula bender, having it take place entirely in Arkham Asylum and focusing on Wesker's recovery process. But then I remembered this is The Batman, so yeah. Also I HATE Snooty's design!)
31. RPM - 2/5 (Wow, after seeing this, I immediately went out and bought The Batman Batmobile #2 with working lights & sounds, firing disc launcher and opening cockpit! No, but really, did I actually just watch a toy commercial for 20 minutes? I get that that's where action cartoons make their profit, and that's fine, but this was so blatant it's not even funny. Like that scene of Batman arriving in his new CGI Batmobile as the camera spins around it. Give me a break. Not to imply the writers were being hacky or anything. It was clearly an executive mandate. They just wrote a lame episode around it. Gearhead wasn't very interesting, although it's cool he was voiced by Will Friedle I guess. And the episode is just about cars, a subject I do not find interesting. I did laugh at Barbara asking Gordon "taking the car?" and he just opens the door and stares at her.)
32. Brawn - 4/5 (At this point they should rename the series "The Batgirl" since most episodes now put her in the main role, having to save Batman's butt. Not a complaint, it's a nice change of pace from the repetitive Batman Stops Villain:tm: plots. This episode is pretty darn good though, which is surprising since it's really nothing but a long fight scene. Most of it consecutively takes place in real time on one street street as they duke it out. You'd think that would get boring, but Bane-ified Joker is a cool enough concept to genuinely carry enough entertainment value on its own. And Batgirl using the Batbot was fun.)
33. The Laughing Cats - 4/5 (Two Joker episodes in a row? Also a Catwoman episode, which... Yeah, Joker being in it was obviously an improvement. Making her team up with Batman to stop Joker was more interesting than had it been about Batman stopping another one of her generic jewel thefts. Them being stuck in a maze with Joker using their gadgets was fun, and I liked that his hyenas were not loyal to him at all, LOL. As a side note, Kilgore Steed's hunter schtick makes NO sense. Capturing animals to put them in a giant maze full of traps that will just automatically kill them is not much of a "hunt".)
34. Fleurs du Mal - 3/5 (I guess the show isn't going to acknowledge any drama between Barbara and Poison Ivy and she's immediately relegated to stock villain who does her villainous schtick and gets defeated? Clayface all over again. It also wasn't much of a mystery who the villain could be since it literally begins with the mayor being taken over by flowers. The characters themselves uncovering the mystery and battling the plant replicas was neat enough, so whatever. And Batman punching an old lady was funny. I don't understand why Poison Ivy replaced Penguin, though. She's replacing the people who control Gotham, and he's a washed up nobody who's lost his fortune. Also, Batman is lucky he only fought the plant replica or he would have killed Penguin. He fell right into spinning blades which clearly shredded him... Although he's still intact when they land, so I guess logic took a break for this scene. Side note, the show is getting WAY too reliant on ending with a zoomout of Batman and Batgirl as she makes some snappy comment.)
35. Cash for Toys - 2/5 (So Cash can return but not Yin? There is no justice in this world. He wasn't funny in his first appearance, and he's...slightly less unfunny here. So yeah. Add a straight up Toyman ripoff instead of just Toyman, for some reason, and you get a pretty lame episode. I get that he's a Superman villain, but the series didn't have a problem using Solomon Grundy, so Toyman shouldn't have been off the table. You could assume they just embargo'd him because he made cameos, albeit speechless, in JLU. But then, Grundy was the main focus of a JLU episode less than a year before Grundy's Night, so this doesn't add up! Not that Krank being called Toyman would make a difference, because I still wouldn't like him. So, YEAH.)
36. The Apprentice - 4/5 (Joker getting a sidekick is definitely a fun idea, and while I obviously liked this episode, it plays out exactly how you'd expect. I liked how wholesome Joker was to Donnie at first when he was brainstorming ideas and then turned grim when Donnie didn't want to hurt people. It definitely adds at least one more layer than the average Joker Shenanigans:tm: episode. You can definitely feel how genuinely scary it would be to simply be around this lunatic, especially if he has it out for you. Also, Donnie's jokes probably doesn't get laughs because he's in high school doing kindergarten tier jokes.)
37. Thunder - 3/5 (It's Maxie Zeus, the most iconic DC character of all time, doing his typical Olympus schtick. Yeah, so, the episode isn't really about him. His scheme is just a setup to show how well Batgirl can carry herself. And in that aspect, I do find it fun. It's a bit dumb that she yaps to Batman about how she wants to be in the loop though, as if she isn't just Batgirling of her own accord. He never agreed to be a team, she just stalks him. Side note, Gordon sternly correcting Grange with "batarang" made me chuckle.)
38. The Icy Depths - 4/5 (Despite being the umpteenth episode about stealing jewels, this was refreshing due to presenting it more as an actual mystery and having two villains, alongside Alfred and his old chum, trying to uncover it. It was fun how they all got the upper hand on one another, and I always like Alfred being involved in an adventure. I don't understand why Batman even needs to stop this "crime", though. The treasure doesn't belong to anyone anymore. And if it DOES rightfully belong to someone, that would be Penguin. What was up with a random rotating shot of the boat here though?)
39. Gotham's Ultimate Criminal Mastermind - 3/5 (Mr. Freeze's Arkham number is 800B5. I bet they thought they were really funny with that one. Unlike the previous BTAS ripoff episodes, this was only vaguely a ripoff of Heart of Steel, so I'll cut it some slack. But it's pretty thin. D.A.V.E. is just super smart and wants to defeat Batman, then Batman wins by just telling him something that does not compute. I guess it's neat that they finally built on those vague hints about Hugo Strange being "evil". It's just a shame the antagonist is merely his robot, not actually him. And why does he get locked in Arkham after being caught? He's not insane.)
40. A Matter of Family - 3/5 (Who sharpened Bruce's jaw?! Also, Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy. As for the actual episode, I was underwhelmed. It's a pretty straightforward telling of Robin's origin story, but it rushes the emotional moments and doesn't let them get too "heavy", which makes them less effective. Zucco is a pretty upfront mustache-twirling villain instead of a mysterious figure, and they don't really acknowledge how devastating such an event would be, or the awkwardness of immediately being adopted by a rando. Dick just gets some watery eyes then he's instantly comfortable at Wayne Manor. But I liked tying "Robin" into something his mom used to call him. Batman speaks with a much deeper voice in this episode. Must've come with the new jaw.)
41. Team Penguin - 4/5 (Did it really take seeing teamwork in a movie for Penguin spawn the brilliantly unique plan of "more villains = harder for Batman"? This was a fun teamup, though. I'm glad they didn't go for the obvious choices like Joker, Mr. Freeze, Riddler etc and instead opted for the "misfits". Croc is the only one of the group I didn't care for. But I liked seeing Ragdoll again, and Killer Moth was pretty funny. I liked that he remained a suckup even after being horribly mutated. I liked the theme of teamwork the episode had, since it ties nicely together with the valid jealousy Barbara would have for some rando in red becoming Batman's sidekick and knowing his identity when she has been wanting that for ages. Also, Robin immediately wailing on Penguin for calling him a lackey made me laugh.)
42. Clayfaces - 4/5 (Nice to see my buddy Bennett again. Guess they wanted to redeem themselves after the nonsense they pulled with Grundy's Night. But given this is his last appearance, this was a pretty unsatisfying "arc". Him going full-blown villain didn't make sense from the start. His desire to take revenge on Joker I get, but aside from that, it shouldn't have taken him THIS long to realize he should use his powers for good instead. Basil Karlo wasn't a super compelling character or anything, but him being an ugly dweeb was quite funny, and the spectacle of two Clayfaces duking it out more than makes up for it, because that was pretty awesome. Side note, why is this company so picky with who they cast in their fricking dog food commercial? It's dog food. Just show dogs.)
43. The Everywhere Man - 3/5 (I like the concept of the Everywhere Man, but was disappointed at how little they truly utilized it for story/action potential. The first half is just a mystery where you're supposed to think it's two guys (provided you did not read the episode title), then Johnny just expositions how his powers work and Batman fights a bunch of copies. The villain himself being a copy is a cool twist, but it would've been more interesting if the copies mostly worked as a hivemind and they utilized that to make fighting them really hard for Batman since they'd be such a perfectly synchronized army. The episode wrapping itself around some girl saying Johnny was cuter as a nerd, and then the real Johnny getting the girl in the end was so random it's almost hilarious.)
44. The Breakout - 4/5 (Black Mask being in this episode is pretty neat, as he is a fairly well-known character who, despite that, doesn't seem to appear in animation a lot. That said, he was not very compelling. He's just a stern, no-nonsense mob boss. Which for the plot of this episode is all he needs to be, so I won't give him flack for that. It's a fun change of pace to have a mostly Batman-free episode with focus on his sidekicks instead. Batgirl and Robin have a pretty charming dynamic; I liked when they guessed what Black Mask's face looks like and he got pissed off. LOL. And it was interesting how it's sort of a bottle episode, with most of it taking place within the police station as they try to prevent Black Mask's militia from breaking in. Batman ending the episode by telling them to wash the Batmobile was a certified LOL.)
45. Strange New World - 5/5 (This was great. I really like Hugo Strange, so it's fun to actually see his sinister side now that he's been outed as a villain. And while at first it felt mostly like a standard zombie story, the dramaic tone and hellish visuals, alongside the crazy ways the zombies jump around, made the whole thing a pleasure to look at. But the twist is what really got me. I didn't put it all together myself until right as Batman was figuring it out, and it really made all the scenes of him fighting zombie Batgirl/Robin/Gordon amusing to think about in retrospect. That said, isn't this a Scarecrow-tier scheme? I guess since he couldn't be in this show they just gave it to Strange.)
46. Artifacts - 3/5 (For an entire episode set in the future, I was expecting more than just the spectacle of a generic Mr. Freeze battle. But that's really all there is to it. That said, I liked the W I D E Batman design. I know it's an homage to The Dark Knight Returns, but I've never seen or read that, so yeah. Mr. Freeze blatantly saying that title after seeing the Batman was so funny, though. It works contextually, but when you know the reference it felt no different than if he had said "Batman: The Animated Series". LOL. I see Barbara will go the Oracle route in this show. Sad. Also, they can blatantly reference Bennett and Yin, but refuse to show them any further regardless? Screw. You.)
47. Seconds - 4/5 (The Batman's take on Clock King? He's not officially named as such, but it's pretty much a Cosmo Krank/Toyman situation again. I found his time travel abilities fairly interesting, as it was fun to see some random schmuck effortlessly upstage Batman. HOW he got those powers though... He got bored in prison and was surrounded by clocks, so one day he could shift time. What? Also Batman has an atomic clock that is not affected by time literally shifting backwards. What?? Yeah, so, this episode has a lot of "okay buddy" moments. But really, they just added to the fun. If you're gonna be nonsensical, might as well go all in. And that ending really caught me off guard. Imagine reliving 17 years of your life like that, only to still end up a fricking clock repairman. He really couldn't have invested in stocks he knew would have gone up?)
48. Riddler's Revenge - 4/5 (I certainly wasn't expecting this series to try and pull off an emotional Riddler episode. One that actually works, no less. But here we are. It's not the deepest thing in the world, but I thought seeing his origin handled this "seriously" was an fun take, and it was interesting that his own origin was a "riddle" that he got wrong. Wrapping the origin around him and Batman being trapped in a crate was pretty clever. Although after unwrapping his entire life story to Batman, I would've thought he would be a little less hostile towards him after they escape. But no, he just goes back to being evil. I liked Batman's final line though. "When is a villain, not THE villain?".)
49. Two of a Kind - 4/5 (They got Paul Dini in just to write the Harley episode. It's pretty good, though. The different take from Mad Love is amusing to see. I think showing Harleen as a loudly outspoken ditz makes her descent into jester-themed criminal more believable. Especially since they directly give her a personal vendetta to push the criminal aspect further. But since this episode is mostly banking on showcasing the "unique take", it's hard to look at it past comparisons. Without them, it's sort of just The Apprentice but with Harley instead of Donnie. But Harley is funnier, and generally I liked all the zany stuff she and Joker gets into, so this is the better "Joker gets a sidekick" episode. Plus, it has a whole ass Joker musical number.)
50. Rumors - 3/5 (The Batman's take on... Lock-Up? Okay, not really, but the similarities did cross my mind. The premise here is pretty basic. Rumor was not a very thrilling antagonist or anything. He's some generic guy who works for another generic guy, who's just a red herring because he blames being a cripple on Batman. Really, the spectacle of Batman fighting all his past villains in the final scene is the best part of the episode. Although I'm confused why some of them are even there and in costume. Cluemaster only had one goal, why would he still be Cluemastering? And is Spellbinder really Gotham based? How did Rumor even capture him? He's a psychic! And Harley Quinn literally JUST became a villain. I liked Penguin begging Batman to stop him, though. LOL.)
51/52. The Joining - 4/5 (Oh geez, it's Martian Kronkhunter. Couldn't Patrick Warburton voice him instead of Cash Tankinson? I liked the way he casually outs knowing Batman's identity. But on that note, they sure talk about that in public a LOT here. Including the aforementioned scene, both Robin and Bruce himself yaps out "Bruce Wayne is Batman" on two separate occasions. Robin says it in a crowded street, Bruce in a small diner. Yeah, I'm sure absolutely NO ONE within the vicinity could have possibly heard those things. It's not like Bruce and J'onn are having a lengthy conversation about it right where the waitress, chef, and any potential surrounding customers could hear it or anything.
This was a pretty basic alien invasion story, and it's quite a leap in stakes compared to the usual jewel thievery. But I liked the usage of Martian Manhunter. I thought he and Batman had an interesting chemistry. Their initial fight scene was so stupid, though. "Oh no, the Batman discovered I'm an alien. Better not explain anything and instead just beat him up and run away until he catches up and then say I'm on his side". I thought the emotional anchor of Batgirl and Robin feeling unwanted was a bit undercooked, but the moment when Batman says he worries about losing them was sweet, so whatever. And I liked the scene of the villains helping the police fend off aliens.)
53/54. The Batman / Superman Story - 3/5 (With the show finally being allowed to bring in more expansive DC lore, the first thing they make is the most generic Superman story they could think of. Yeah, okay. I liked the way Batman discovered Superman's identity, and seeing the villains of Gotham take him down was fun. But a whole episode just for that that setup, with the second being a prolonged Batman vs. Superman fight scene and then stopping Lex Luthor from doing something evil? Yeah, I didn't really jive with it. Also, with literally ALL of the sky available, did Superman really just fly right into Robin? AND ignored it? Not very boyscout-y.)
55. Vertigo - 3/5 (This was decent, but it mostly thrives off of the novelty of being a Green Arrow crossover as opposed to being an organic Batman story. In fact this would have been improved by cutting out Batman entirely. I liked seeing Green Arrow's origin, and they could've explored his attempt to take revenge on Vertigo and such on his own. And while he DOES do that here, since it's a Batman show, most of it is from Batman's perspective as Green Arrow recaps his story. So, ultimately, they should just make The Green Arrow.)
56. White Heat - 4/5 (Neat revamp of Firefly. He was never a particularly compelling character, but the fact that he was already established in this show makes his descent from petty thief to molten monster in this more compelling by default than had this been his first episode a la Killer Moth or something. And with the inclusion of his girlfriend, it had some genuine emotion. Not a tearjerker or anything, but his last appearance being his girlfriend dumping him and walking away as he's stuck in a pitch black prison cell with him still faintly glowing in the dark is pretty bleak. So the fact that they managed to get all of that out of an episode that can be summed up to "Batman stops molten villain cause he's too hot" is impressive. The battle at the power plant itself was pretty awesome though. But Bruce is really risking his identity fighting with half his face exposed like that.)
57. A Mirror Darkly - 3/5 (Just like the Superman episode, the writers barely do anything to justify its existence besides thinking I should be thrilled by the mere presence of Flash. Well, when the plot is as generic as one of Flash's iconic rogues coming to Gotham to be evil so Flash stops him and Batman helps because it's a Batman show... I'm not. And just like Superman again, Flash didn't leave much of an impression of me. Adding the trait that he talks incredibly fast was amusing, I suppose.)
58. Joker Express - 3/5 (I would have thought with free reign to utilize all of DC lore, this show would be over their generic Joker Scheme:tm: episodes. Guess not. There's literally nothing to be said about this one that hasn't been said about the others, though. Batgirl being infected with Joker's laugh was definitely a very enjoyable scene. But after that, it's as predictable as Topsy Turvy, JTV or The Apprentice.)
59. Ring Toss - 3/5 (Green Lantern. I wonder what fresh, unique plot The Batman crew will conjure up for this one. Oh, Sinestro comes to attack Hal Jordan, but Hal wins. And Batman helps in between, because it's a Batman show. Starting to sound like a broken record here, but that's how unimaginative these episodes really are. It's competent, but it's pretty much shut-your-brain-off-and-enjoy-the-action tier. This one does have the middle part of Penguin with a power ring, which was genuinely gold stuff. The only problem is, it doesn't last for long enough, and ultimately Penguin's inclusion is really just time filler in between Sinestro being defeated.
60. The Metal Face of Comedy - 4/5 (Let me get this straight, Joker is digitally copied by wearing a helmet connected to a laptop while getting shocked? On top of the common trope of cartoon writers not understanding how video games work, logic is clearly not this episode's strong suit. The phrase "mentally download money" pretty much speaks for itself. Regardless, the prospect of Joker vs. Joker is fun enough alone. All the wacky antics Joker 2.0 is able to get into with his morphic abilities were visually fun. It's especially amusing to see the real Joker completely discombobulated by being upstaged and betrayed by, well, himself. Even cheering on for Batman to win.)
61. Attack of the Terrible Trio - 3/5 (The Terrible Trio were fun as a group of misfits, but it's pretty laughable how these college students are being bullied like it's middle school. Also do they really expect me to believe the hot, edgy chick is considered a loser? Jake is the only loser here. It's cool that this show actually had them transform into animals, even if the designs are little...awkward. It's also neat that they gave them a connection to Barbara's personal life, but at the same time it's disappointing that they didn't put Batgirl in a bigger role because of it. Batman's still the one saving the day. Also I was a little disappointing David's final transformation wasn't any more creative than just a griffin. As a side note, it's nice that this closes the door on Langstrom's Man-Bat arc.)
62. The End of the Batman - 3/5 (Fake title, there's three more episodes. The idea of an Anti-Batman and Robin is pretty fun. Wrath served as an entertaining foil to Batman what with figuring out his identity and everything. I think the ending is a little cheap, though. Joker uses his smile-gas so much, you'd think there would be a common antidote by now. Not like Wrath and Scorn are gonna be like that for the rest of their lives. Also a portion of this episode is pretty reminiscent of Team Penguin. Something which they even acknowledge themselves. But just because they point it out doesn't make it not true! Joker being annoyed by being put on menial tasks was funny though.)
63. What Goes Up... - 4/5 (Same as the previous Justice League members, Hawkman didn't leave much of an impression on me. But this time it doesn't matter as much because the episode doesn't put half the spotlight on him. It's mostly focused on Batman stopping Black Mask's, a villain whom I already thought should be utilized more, scheme. Which is stealing a whole building! I mean how cool of an action setpiece isn't an airborne building? On top of Robin being nth metal'd, it was a very fun watch. Really, Hawkman and Shadow Thief feel more like afterthoughts. But even that isn't a bad thing, because they had very enjoyable action scenes. And geez, poor Number One #2.)
64/65. Lost Heroes - 4/5 (Oh, the actual Toyman appears in this show. "Toyman" my ass, that's a damn Jester. Cosmo Krank is more of a Toyman than you will ever be, bud. This episode is pretty fun, if only because I think the narrative of non-superpowered heroes proving their capabilities and humbling the heroes with superpowers when they can't use theirs is amusing. Batman and Green Arrow as a duo was good, and everybody fighting their robot counterparts was cool. I think the robots had pretty rad designs. The only "bad" aspects of the episode is rehashing The Joining as the threat again, and Hugo Strange's inclusion. Not that I don't like him, I think he's a great villain. But this wasn't really a story fitting for him. He's better working from the shadows with the intent of studying the behavior of his victim, not just being a pawn to some alien robot.)

Beginners often get confused when choosing between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, but for most tech-savvy Reddit users, it's an easy choice: WordPress.org - and I agree!
WordPress.org is the official non-profit website where you can download WordPress, find free themes and plugins, and follow the latest news and updates. This is called the self-hosted option since you download the system from the website and then go find your own hosting provider for your website.
WordPress.com is a commercial, plug-and-play hosting service for WordPress that is run by Automattic (owned by WordPress's co-founder). They offer a free plan with very limited features and several paid plans with varying features.
The reason many Reddit users prefer WordPress.org over WordPress.com is that it's more cost-effective, more customizable, and doesn't have some of the limitations that the WordPress.com platform has in place.
For example, if you use WordPress.com, you won't be able to install third-party plugins or themes unless you upgrade to the Creator plan, which will cost you $40 per month if you pay monthly. And that doesn't even include live chat support!
That's just ridiculous! I could pay less than $40 PER YEAR at another hosting provider and I'd still be able to install any themes and plugins I need.
Although WordPress.com has a solid hosting infrastructure with stable performance and an easy onboarding process, it's just unnecessarily too expensive for a beginner starting with a small website or blog.
You're better off going with WordPress.org (self-hosted) and find an affordable hosting service. That's what I do, and that's what most Redditors advise others to do.

(LINK IN DESCRIPTION) Hi Reddit, I'm Nataly, Co-Founder and CPO of Luma AI. Exciting news—our latest app, Immersive Spaces, is now available for Apple Vision Pro users! This tool allows you to create personalized 360-degree environments for any purpose, whether for work, learning, or leisure.
Features at a Glance:

• Create Your Environment: Input what you imagine, and watch it materialize in vivid detail.
• Customize Freely: Adjust visuals and sounds to suit your mood, choosing from various themes.
• Explore for Free: Check out our gallery of pre-generated environments to sample what the app can do without any commitment.

We're keen to hear your feedback as it's crucial for refining Immersive Spaces. Download the app for free, explore new possibilities, and let us know your thoughts!

Bad Boys Theme from Cops guitar tabs download as PDF, MIDI, and Guitar Pro on: https://paidtabs.com/search/2Q3dGZPguSM
Click here for a free preview of the score (first page)
This score has 42 PDF pages
Credit: this score was transcribed/uploaded by @cerpin1
If you cannot find the score, it might be because of a copyright issue. Click on "Request" button at PaidTabs.com to request and get the score.

You can now insert images as comments when you seek for in-game help in Megathreads! Check out this mod post HERE for more information.
​
Use this Megathread if you have general questions or need advice! e.g. asking for EX / Candy recommendation, gems usage, "Should I pull this banner?", "How do I build a team on this stage?", etc.
If you need team building help specifically for Champion Stadium, you may use the Champion Stadium Megathread to receive a quicker response.

Installing Pokémon Masters

Pokémon Masters is available worldwide except for Belgium and The Netherlands due to bans on loot boxes.
We will go over the two main platforms on installing the game, IOS and Android.
According to the official site, the game is most compatible in these devices:
iOS: 11 or higher / 64 bit / at least 2 GB of RAM
Android: OS 7.0 or higher / 64 bit / at least 2 GB of RAM
IOS:

1. Via Apple Store: HERE

Android

1. Via Google Play Store: HERE
2. Others

If the game is unavailable in your country or shows as not available for your device, you can download the APK directly from APKPure or QooApp.
You can also use VPN to download it from the application store, but it requires longer downloading time compared to the above recommended methods.
​

Reroll Guide

Reroll means that you make a new account and look at what you got from your scout. If you don't like your first few multi-pulls, you delete the account and create a new one again and so on until you are satisfied.
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Why reroll?

• You're a new or returning player and you want to get your hands on meta Sync Pairs for easier clears.
• A favourite/meta Sync Pair has been released and you want to get him/her no matter what.

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How to Reroll?
If you're an existing player, delete your local data or cache first. Otherwise, do not link your account to Nintendo. Doing so will bind your Pokémon Masters account to your Nintendo profile permanently and can no longer be removed.
As of now, if you progress up to the point when co-op mode is unlocked, you can get at least 21.000 gems, the equivalent of 7 multis, earning at least 231/400 scout points (33 scout points per multi scout), allowing you to scout at least 77 Sync Pairs. Completing the following checkpoints will let you receive gems as completion rewards:

Completion Requirement	Notable Rewards	Additional Notes
Starting the game (Part 1)	MC & Pikachu, Misty & Starmie, Brock & Onix	Choose Kanto Starter (Movesets HERE)
Starting the game (Part 2)	MC & BulbasauCharmandeSquirtle, Blue & Pidgeot (5★ Guaranteed Scout)	Kanto Starter Egg Hatches
Finish Champion Stadium: Kanto Challenge (Normal)	150 Gems	You can reuse the same Sync Pairs after each round
Special Completion Rewards: Champion Stadium (Normal)	500 Gems	Accessible in the Poké Center as an icon on the top-left corner
Finish Champion Stadium: Victory Road	5000 Gems, SS Red & Charizard/SS Blue & Blastoise/SS Leaf & Venusaur (5★ Guaranteed Ticket Scout)	Also scoutable in the Triple Featured Poké Fair banner (3 days)
Finish Chapter 1 (Normal)	90 Gems, Rosa & Snivy
Finish Chapter 2 (Normal)	200 Gems, Barry & Piplup, Professor Oak & Mew and Legendary Arena unlocked.	Professor Oak & Mew upgrade materials available in Bingo Rewards
Finish Chapter 3 (Normal)	150 Gems
Finish Chapter 4 (Normal)	170 Gems, Erika & Vileplume
Finish Chapter 5 (Normal)	160 Gems, Skyla & Swanna
Finish Chapter 6 (Normal)	200 Gems, Korrina & Lucario
Finish Chapter 7 (Normal)	250 Gems, Norman & Slaking
Finish Chapter 8 (Normal)	170 Gems, Pryce & Seel
Finish Chapter 9 (Normal)	240 Gems, Iris & Haxorus
Finish Chapter 10 (Normal)	280 Gems, Hapu & Mudsdale
Finish Interlude 1 (Normal)	60 Gems, SS Brock & Tyranitar
Finish Chapter 1 (Hard)	100 Gems
Finish Chapter 2 (Hard)	200 Gems
Finish Chapter 3 (Hard)	100 Gems
Finish Chapter 4 (Hard)	200 Gems
Finish Chapter 5 (Hard)	100 Gems
Finish Chapter 6 (Hard)	200 Gems
Finish Chapter 7 (Hard)	300 Gems
Finish Chapter 8 (Hard)	200 Gems
Finish Chapter 9 (Hard)	300 Gems
Finish Chapter 10 (Hard)	300 Gems
Finish Interlude 1 (Hard)	100 Gems
EX Plaza: Special Training Battle Techniques	60 Gems

These missions are completed progressively as you play the game, so they are not listed in numerical order.
These missions can be completed multiple times as the player reaches new checkpoints.

Checkpoint (Missions)	Notable Rewards per level
Mission 1: Log in to the game	10 Gems
Mission 21: Raise team strength	10 Gems
Mission 3: Obtain Pearl	10 Gems
Mission 4: Obtain Big Pearl	10 Gems
Mission 5: Obtain 1★ Level-Up Manual	10 Gems
Mission 6: Obtain 2★ Level-Up Manual	10 Gems
Mission 7: Obtain 3★ Level-Up Manual	10 Gems
Mission 62: Evolve a Pokemon	10 Gems
Mission 91: Obtain a Lucky Cookie	10 Gems
Mission 125: Raise your player rank	10 Gems
Mission 262: Have a number of interaction(s) in Trainer Lodge	100 Gems
Mission 263: Reach friendship level 100 with a number of guests	100 Gems
Mission 264: Reach a certain friendship level with any guest	100 Gems

These missions can only be completed once but give a high amount of gems.

Checkpoint (Missions)	Notable Rewards per level
Mission 82: Link to your Nintendo account	600 Gems
Mission 89: Participate in the Battle Villa	1000 Gems

If you are not satisfied with your pulls, click on the Poryphone at the right-bottom corner in the Pokémon Center -> Account -> Delete Save Data. Repeat the above steps until you pulled the Sync Pair you want.
Now that you're ready to go on an adventure, link your account through Poryphone Menu by tapping "Account", then "Link a Nintendo Account" to save your progress. After that, try to get any free Sync Pairs as you progress:

• Professor Oak & Mew: Complete his Sync Pair story and finish the bingo missions from Professor Oak & Mew Special Missions.
• Rosa & Serperior: Complete all bingo missions from "Rise to 6★ EX with Rosa!" and upgrade her to 6★ EX.
• Legendary Event Sync Pairs: Obtainable via Legendary Adventures. Reach the end of story to obtain the legendary Sync Pair, character-exclusive 5★ promotion tickets and event vouchers. Try to upgrade them to 5/5 20/20 as soon as possible and invest in their Sync Grids; they will be valuable assets for content clearing. Do note that exclusive materials such as Champion Spirit and Sync Grid expansion for these Sync Pair are only obtainable in event reruns, and hence event-limited.

​

EX Gear Type Chart

Note that these co-op stages only drop 2★ Gear as the highest rarity for their corresponding Gear Type. 3★ Gear is restricted to Type Gear Events and Pokémon Masters Day every month, and it can be obtained in the time-limited event shop and in the General tab in exchange for 3★ gear material co-op stage drops.

Stage	Gear Type
EX Brock	Grass/Steel/Rock
EX Misty	Flying/Fairy/Steel
EX Barry	Grass/Dragon/Water
EX Flannery	Bug/WateGhost
EX Erika	Fire/Poison/Ground
EX Skyla	Rock/Normal/Flying
EX Korrina	Fire/Fighting/Psychic
EX Pryce	Electric/Ice/Bug
EX Marshal	Psychic/Dark/Ice
EX Hau	Ground/Electric/Fairy
EX Clair	Dragon/Dark/Fighting
EX Janine	Poison/Normal/Ghost

​

In-Game FAQ

1. When is anniversary coming?

Half-year	28 February 6AM UTC
Full-year	28 August 6AM UTC

2 Why hasn't my Pokemon evolved? It's at Level [X]!
Evolution requires an evolution item available in the Training Area (Evolution Material Area). Upon earning the Evolution Materials, you need to go to the Sync Pair Stories to trigger the Evolution Story.
3. Should I save to do 11 multi-scouts instead of single scouts?
You can now get x11 units instead of 10, so yes, but we strongly recommend you to save gems for Poké Fair or Master Fair banners (which has a higher rate for 5★ characters).
4. How many gems are required to receive a Sync Pair of my choice?
36.600 non-paid gems (or 36.300 gems + 100 paid gems for a daily single pull), which is the equivalent of 400 scout points. Scout points do not carry over between banners.
5. What does [X]/5, [Y]/20, etc mean?
When you obtain a Sync Pair, they're at 1/5 Sync Move level. Rolling a dupe of that Sync Pair, or using a Move Candy will increase it by 1 level. 3/5 is the minimum for most sync pairs to complete their full Sync Grid, but some Poké Fairs have grid expansions that require their Sync Move to be completely maxed out at 5/5 for their full Sync Grid.
At the same time, Sync Pairs are at 0/20 Potential when they're just obtained. Giving Sync Pairs Powerups will raise their Potential and stats. When a Sync Pair is given 20 powerups, their star level will be increased. Getting a unit to 5★ 20/20 is mandatory for it to further upgrade to 6★ EX (if it has one).
6. How do I Unlock The Level cap of my units?
Training Area (Cap Unlock Area), (Cap Unlock Area 2), Exchange in the shop, Events.
7. Where do I get the manuals to level up my sync pairs?
Training Area (Level up Area), Exchange in the shop, Events, random drops in Trainer Lodge.
8. How do I get Sync orbs?
Training Area (Sync orb Area), Exchange in the shop, Events, Champion Stadium Master Mode (6K & 7.5K), random drops in Trainer Lodge.
9. What are Theme Skill and how do I get items to power them up?
Theme Skill is a new ability that raises the stats of your Sync Pairs if any of them has a common position, type, region, trainer group, or other features with another pair (or pairs) in the same team. Skill Spheres, which can be obtained in Theme Skill area and Champion Stadium Master Mode, are required to upgrade them.
10. What Lucky Skill should I roll for [X]? How do I get Lucky Cookies and Scrolls to unlock a Sync Pair's Lucky Skill?
Refer to Sync Grid Builds & Lucky Skills (by u/MomoSpark) for more details.
In general, the choices of Lucky Skills follow the roles of Sync Pairs:

• Strike:
  • Critical Strike 2 (3★ Crunchy)
  • Weathered Warrior 3 (3★ Deluxe) if used exclusively in weather
    • Boosts the damage of attack moves and sync moves but not max moves
• Support:
  • Vigilance (3★ Creamy), unless the Sync Pair already has Vigilance in their kit
  • Head Start 1 or Adrenaline 1 (both 3★ Deluxe) for -3 sync countdown acceleration
• Tech:
  • Refer to Strike if the Sync Pair's kit is Strike-based (e.g. Marnie & Morpeko, May & Swampert, P Serena & Whimsicott, etc.)
  • Refer to Support if the Sync Pair's kit is a tanker and/or a healer (e.g. Prof Oak & Mew, SS Leaf & Venusaur, etc.)
  • Head Start 1 or Adrenaline 1 (both 3★ Deluxe) for -3 sync countdown acceleration
• Sprint:
  • Head Start 1 or Adrenaline 1 (both 3★ Deluxe) for -3 sync countdown acceleration
  • Refer to Strike if the Sync Pair's kit is Strike-based (e.g. Nemona & Pawmot, Paulo & Lycanroc Dusk, etc.)
• Field:
  • Refer to Strike if the Sync Pair's kit is Strike-based (e.g. Victor & Spectrier, Variety Giovanni & Rhydon, etc.)

There are exceptions to some Sync Pairs. For example,

• Iris & Haxorous favours Lessen Confusion 9 (2★ Crispy) to increase DPS under confusion with Confusion Boon 5 in grid.
• Serena & Delphox and most other sleep-inducing units favour Troublemaker 1 (3★ Crunchy) to increase the accuracy of sleep-inducing status moves.
• Zinnia & Rayquaza can go for either Dauntless (3★ Creamy) to mitigate SP ATK debuffs after each use of Draco Meteor, or Weathered Warrior 3 (3★ Deluxe) to stack with her weather-based multipliers.

Lucky Cookies and Lucky Scrolls can all be obtained in Battle Villa (Single Player & Co-op), Blissful Bonanza, and Legendary Gauntlet. Legendary Gauntlet can provide unlimited 3★ Lucky Cookies as well as Deluxe Cookies exclusive to that mode after each successful stage clear, and their drop chance increases with longer win streaks.
11. What are the Sync Move effects of 6★ EX Sync Pairs of different roles? Who should I promote to 6★ EX first?
Each role gives different effects to Sync Moves when upgraded to 6★ EX.

• Strike: Sync Move becomes AoE. (Its power is not reduced against multiple targets.)
• Support: Sync Move raises sync buff by +2 instead of +1 when it is used for the first time. (Each sync buff increases damage output by 50%.)
• Tech: Sync Move power x1.5
• Sprint: Sync Move reduces the user's sync move countdown by 3.
• Field: Sync Move applies a field effect before dealing damage and extends its duration by 50%.

Support is usually prioritized for promotion to 6★ EX because its EX effect effectively doubles the damage of all allied sync pairs after first sync and is more widely applicable across most game modes, and the increased stats from raising the support's Potential greatly enhances its bulk to tank stages.
For Strike, if its kit has a very high DPS (e.g. SS Red & Charizard, Diantha & Gardevoir, etc.), or includes a powerful Sync multiplier (e.g. Steven & Metagross's Haymaker, Barry & Empoleon's Inertia, etc.), you are highly recommended to upgrade it to 6★ EX to apply the damage to all opponents. This applies to Tech as well, but only if the unit is a Sync nuker (e.g. Marnie & Morpeko, May & Swampert, etc.).
Since Field applies a field effect that can boost its own damage and potentially that of its allies as well, upgrading it to 6★ EX is also recommended. Sprint enables faster sync buffs and usually come with innate Sync Move multipliers like Tech, but its EX effect does not improve damage as directly as the other roles.
Promoting Support-type units to 6★ EX is not a must, but it's always an added bonus, especially if their Sync Move can provide any additional effects via passive or grid skills.
Always remember to upgrade Rosa to 6★ EX because the materials are obtainable for free.
12. Which Sync Pair should I use my candy on?
Refer to Which Sync Pair Should You Give Your Candy To? (Infographic) (by u/MuddyDummy) for more details.
Always save your candies unless the Sync Pair is exclusive to Seasonals, Poké Fairs or Master Fairs. Most Sync Pairs are usable at 1/5. You can always "accidentally" pull the unit you've been looking for from the normal pool, but you never know when limited Sync Pairs will rerun again. This may not apply to Sync Pairs that are your favorite.
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Common Technical Questions/Errors

Below lists all common technical errors you may encounter during the game, as well as how you can fix it. You are strongly encouraged to contact DeNA with any problems at [support@pokemonmasters-game.com](mailto:support@pokemonmasters-game.com) if any of these advice do not help.

1. Error 20103 — Please check your connection and try again: Usually caused due to lack of connection or sudden disconnection. Try playing the game in a place with more stable connection.
2. Error 10102 — An error has occurred. Restarting the game: This error is often triggered because it detects your phone is rooted, or that you are using external applications which allows opening multiple accounts on the same device. For rooted phone users, make sure you hide your rooted status.
3. Game crashed mid-battle: Restart the app and clear your cache. This option is available in the bottom-left corner of the title screen.
4. Does Pokémon Masters work on emulators? No. As of now, PM is not compatible with any of the emulators (including Bluestacks, Nox, etc.) However, playing two accounts on the same device is possible on Android by cloning with Island.

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Tools

• Events Countdown Timer (created by u/antocs, updated by Thunder#4694)
• PoMaTools (u/stdk12)

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Guides

• A Beginner’s Guide for Building Teams and Training Pokémon (u/Stitch426)
• Pokémon Masters: Tier List & Resources (PokemonMasters Guide Writer Team, Gamepress)
• Pokémon Masters EX: Datamine Analysis (PokemonMasters Guide Writer Team)
• Sync Grid Builds & Lucky Skills (u/MomoSpark)
• Eggmon Compendium (u/Zinfogel)
• Pokémon Masters Damage Formula (u/stdk12)
• More guides can be found HERE.

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Reminders

• To receive quicker response from other fellow users, it is strongly recommended to enlist your roster, Lucky Skills, Sync Grid builds and other information deemed necessary, such that you can be provided a strategic team with higher chance of success when battling.
• If you would like to provide images and videos, you may use external websites such as Imgur, Gyazo and Streamable to embed links.
• Do not force your own playstyle onto others as it is completely subjective. Different kinds of players, veterans and novices, casual and hardcore, may all share different opinions and playstyles. It is fine to give suggestions, but forcing your ideas and way of playing onto others is not something to be condoned here. No one's way of playing is completely right.