It's been a little over 1yr since my last update.
The azalea is coming along nicely. I didn't get much flowers this season. I had some deer nip almost all my flower buds. The branching is pretty much set. I just need to build the pads and have it fill in some more.
When I started the contest, I originally bought a Japanese container for it. But I'm leaning towards making one in house. Still two more years to decide.
Looks good! You have everything set up to try to focus on getting the foliage pads to be really dense. You could try some advanced pruning next year to see if you can get two doublings.