unmei ka? iya..sadame

Wow, that was a long time

2006-06-28T18:40:00.000+09:00

4/25/06 was the date of my last entry, so that means I have about 420 days worth of life to recap. Let's see if I can do it in under five sentences:

--Came back to the warm weather of So. CA
--Worked some small jobs, eventually leading to a medium-size temporary one at a legal firm doing paralegal work (while doing freelance pieces for 1up.com and gamebrink.com)
--Explored the wild side of E3 as an official media journalist for 1up.com
(Picture: Me, some awesome friendly dudes from 1up, and Atlus's Kazuma Kaneko [2nd to last guy on right])

--Ate lots of good food you just can't get in Japan, missed a lot of good food you just can't get in the US
--Subtitled the final 30 episodes (out of 50) of the best TV show ever made: Eureka Seven for the good of the public.

Now I can actually restart my blog again without it confusingly jumping from the cold depths of Aomori Japan to the OMG IT IS HOT TODAY Southern California!

Oh and a lot of the old picture links have died because I had to delete stuff off my photobucket account many months back and I've been too lazy to re-up the correct pictures (if I even still have them ^^;). Might be good weekend project when I get some time.

Back...sorta

2005-04-16T23:52:00.000+09:00

See the animal in it's cage that you built,
Are you sure which side you're on?
Better not look too closely in the end,
Are you sure what side of the glass you are on?
See the saftey of the life you have built,
Everything where it belongs.
Feel the hollowness inside of your home,
and it's all...right where it belongs.

What if everything around you...isn't quite as it seems?
What if all the world you think you know...is an elaborate dream?
If you look at your reflection...is that all you want to be?
What if you could look right through the cracks...
Would you find yourself...find yourself afraid to see?

What if all the world's inside of your head?
Just creations of your own?
The devils and your gods all the living and the dead,
And you really are alone.
You can live in this illusion,
You can choose to believe.
You keep looking but you can't find the words,
Now you're hiding in a dream.

What if everything around you...isn't quite as it seems?
What if all the world you used to know...is an elaborate dream?
And if you look at your reflection...is that all you want to be?
What if you could look right through the cracks?
Would you find yourself...find yourself afraid to see?

--"Right Where it Belongs" from Nine Inch Nails' "With Teeth".

Well, the winter has ended (I think) and the spring starts next week or so when the cherry blossoms in Hirosaki bloom. So right now both the season and the life of JETs are in a transitional period. School has started but because of mandatory introduction stuff there aren't too many classes at the moment. So while it's nice to be teaching again there's also a lot of boredom afloat at the work place.

Wrote a review for Atlus' Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner 2. A game that's taught me a decent bit about buddhism and provided me with one of the most interesting stories that I'll remember for a long long time.

Mt. Iwake during the final months of winter.

Updates coming eventually

2005-02-12T17:52:00.000+09:00

Wow, it's a been a while since I posted anything. Guess I have the ever snowing winter to blame for my lack of time recently.

Anyhow not re-contracting, moving to Tokyo instead. I'll write more in a few days I guess.

時代の流れに、我らしか漂わない

2005-01-17T13:38:00.000+09:00

"In the current of an era, we can only drift along..."

Seems kinda of fitting for both the current political/world view, and the life of a JET ^^; With time comes change.

The long time avatar, DJPANDA (courtesy of Jungle Wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu)

has been retired and replaced with DJNEKO (courtesy of Moon Phase)

Another sweeping change is that I'm back in school again! Though this time from the teacher's point of view. I'm enjoying the start of up this quarter quite a bit as unlike my first quarter I actually no what's going on ;) Even the weather has been nice lately with sunny skies clearing away the snow a tiny tiny bit.

So as the invitation to stay another year here hangs around my neck, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about my future. But since I'm not sure where I stand on that yet, I'll just write up a bit about what's new and good in entertainment over the last month:

Films:

Haven't been to the theaters much. But I did manage to catch the limited showing of 雲のむこう、約束の場所　(Kumo no mukou, yaksoku no basho -The place promised in our early days-). The first full-length film from the one man animator Makoto Shinkai who made a name for himself with 星の声 (Hoshi no koe, voices of a distant star). Unlike Hoshi no Koe which was animated entirely by Shinkai (with a runtime of 30mins), this time Shinkai enlisted in staff members and spent 2-3 years to create a full 1:30min feature film. Like Hoshi no Koe, the art design and backgrounds are gorgeous and Shinkai's use of CG effects to work around a low budget are excellent. The voice acting is pretty good, though the use of some big name voice actors is questionable since it kinda kills the low-budget art house feel. The music done once again by his friend Tenmon is pleasant sounding. Yet overall the movie is a lot weaker than Hoshi no Koe or Kanojo to Kanojo no Neko (his other 5 min short film). The reason is simply that while being an excellent animator, his writing skills are at the level of a high school kid from the poetry club. While this works for short films (Hoshi no Koe took the idea of cell-phone e-mails in future space travel and the time-effect that distance brings), when trying to go for 2 hour films it has problems. Shinkai loves two things: Poetry & Hard-core sci-fi. So the plot comes off as a simplistic yet overly-explained (with all kinds of military/science scenes) story spotted about with random poetic breaks. Still an enjoyable film, but I can't say I didn't come away slightly disappointed. Especially as the trailer for the film was utterly fantastic :\ 3.25/4

In Kung Fu Hustle, the new film by Stephen Chow (Shaolin Soccer, God of Cookery, etc...), Chow once again plays the lead character in this action/comedy. Basically it was a good film with great cinematography, awesome action (though Ong Bak this is not), and some nice parodies. Unlike a lot of his other films that are based around bizarre off the wall humor, KFH relies more on parodies of everything from Gangs of New York to Dragonball. Personally I like his goofier stuff better but KFH was still worth watching even at 1000yen prices. 3/4

Checked out the live-action version of Cutie Honey directed by Evangelion creator/director Hideaki Anno. Anno has shown in his other dips into live-action that he is a very talented and artistic individual. So I was looking forward to what he would do with an anime->live-action film. Unfortunately the answer is "not much". While there are some nice moments from a visual standpoint, and the cinematography is rock solid, the main actress is the worst actress I've seen in film and quite possible the most annoying person ever. Besides that the film is basically just a theatrical ultraman type movie with people in rubber suits fighting. It's very tongue in cheek, and quite funny at times but in the end it's a very forgettable music. PS. The remixes of the main song do rock though ;P 2.5/4

Sekai no chushin de ai wo sakebu was the big Japanese film of 2004. When I first got here in July I noticed posters everywhere, in the winter theaters were doing special 2nd showings of it around here and, As the dvd release grew near I saw endless commercials on tv. So since the Japanese movie-goers usually have at least decent taste and the standard edition of the dvd was cheap, I decided to check it out. Hmmm...it was ok I guess. There wasn't really much that stuck out about the film. It was just your typical depressing "aware" style Japanese melo-drama. Nothing was really bad about it, but nothing was really great either (well I guess the main actress was pretty good). A decent watch 3/4.

Books:
Yep, would you believe it!? I'm actually reading :D

Miyabe Miyuki, a popular Japanese writer, was greatly moved by the 2001 PS2 game ICO (viewed by many as the greatest artistic achievement in the realm of games). So much, that he decided he wanted to flesh out the little bits of story in the game into a full novel, and thus the 600 page epic novel ICO -Castle in the Mist- was born. As a huge fan of the game I decided to pick up the book when I first arrived in Japan only to start reading it recently. I'm about 100 pages in at the moment and so far it reads quite nicely. The descriptive yet kinda of floaty and vague imagery of it mixed with the slower more relaxed pacing gives it a feel that matches the game quite well. At 97 pages in, the book is just getting to the opening of the game so it'll be interesting how it handles the actual game puzzle aspect of exploring the castle in literature form.

entry 1 - end, turn to entry 2

生き残った者が跡を継ぐ生き残ったものがボスの称号を受け継ぐ

2005-01-17T13:00:00.000+09:00

"The one that remains will follow in the steps. The one that remains will inherit the title of 'Boss'"

Games:

It arrived, it was finished twice, it was brilliant. Really there's so much that could be said about Hideo Kojima's latest masterpiece Metal Gear Solid 3 that I won't bother trying to start. While it was different than I expected, on my 2nd playthrough especially when I view it as what it actually is I came away more impressed than probably any game has left me since MGS2. Even the excellent Half-life 2 just can't stand up to the perfection of MGS3. I also read the 400 page collection of essays/interviews book that came with the LE and that only enriched my understanding and respect for how Kojima incorperated the issues that encompassed the cold war into his own spy story. 10/10

On a different Metal Gear related note. I put a lot of time into the PSP Metal Gear Acid (According to Kojima, Acid refers to melting away the fixed perceptions of the Metal Gear series). Though the game is done by a completely different staff than the MGS games and is now a turn-based, card-based, strategy rpg...it still retains the MGS feel quite well. The game is all about laying traps and sneaking around enemies and is a very fun cat & mouse chase done through a chess match style. The story is very MGish and is a very interesting serious mystery thriller. Change can sometimes be a good thing :) Not finished but so far a 8.5/10

Donkey Konga: Jungle Beat is an AWESOME AWESOME game. The game is an old school platformer (think Sonic 2 mixed with Super Mario World) that replaces using a controller and is instead controlled through the actions of a pair of drums (left drum, right drum, both drums, clap). Despite the unorthodox control scheme, it actually works like a charm! Within minutes the controls feel natural and the speed and level of the design is just fantastic. Consisting of 12 worlds (2 levels + boss) off the bat, and 6 hidden worlds (unlocking through getting high scores on levels) gives the game a good length with lots of replayability. One of the best platformers in ages and just a AAA game. 9.5/10

+

=
^____^

Gran Turismo 4 is same old Gran Turismo but with a really nice new physics engine that gives the cars an incredibly close-to-life feeling. With 50 tracks and 650 cars there's a lot of driving to be had when I get the need to drive on something that's not ice. The Logitech GT Force Pro wheel is a huge step forward as it's the first console wheel that allows both 900 degree rotation and TRUE FORCE FEEBACK. This really can't be stated enough, TFF is the coolest thing for racing games. Based on the amount of g-force hitting your car at any given time the wheel reacts as it would in real life. Just like in real life when you're on a bumpy road and you have to hang on to the wheel as it jitters around this does the same thing. In fact driving on Ice tracks in the game with an Impreza feels frighteningly similar to what I experience each day here in my Impreza. Hell, I'm even learning things about when to downshift/brake/accellerate on ice and dirt. The wheel and it's TFF will also be supported in the upcoming Enthusia racing by Konami which is going to be the first game to have a CLUTCH! It's too bad there's no wheel out there with an actual clutch pedal...yet :P 9/10

What I'm currently playing at the moment. Tales of Rebirth is the 3rd Tales of... game this console generation and like Tales of Destiny II it's pretty much an all 2D rpg. The Tales of... series made the transition to 3D with excellent results in the GC Tales of Symphonia, so it feels a little archiac going back to the 2D realm. That being said the battle system is still fun as always and the story is still dumb as always :\ While not one of the best rpgs I've played it's still fun and will keep me busy until the 27th when Resident Evil 4, Digital Devil Saga 2, Radiata Stories, and A.C.E. arrive. (Another Century's Episode. Super Robot Wars Banpresto teams up with Armored Core developer From Soft to make a crossover Super Robot 3d action game).

好きか嫌いか。。。そのどちらかでないといけないのか？

2005-01-17T07:20:00.000+09:00

Speaking of music, I've been listening to the new unlabeled Beck album and wow, really impressive. Pairing back together with the Dust Bros. has given it an Odelay 2-ish vibe. I'm hearing these tracks aren't even the final mixes and for just early works they are already fantastic. Can't wait for the full album in March.

Anime:

Just finished the 2nd and final season of Otogizoushi and boy was it terrible. Production IG did a great job at taking a very good Heian-era story and turning it into the world's most boring tale of reincarnation ever. I find it hard to believe the writers between the 2 seasons were actually one and the same. Season 2 was just so so stupid and boring...ugh. I'm just going to pretend there was ever a 2nd season.

Soukyuu no Fafner, a show that while not a ground-breaking show had great production values with a powerful and well-composed soundtrack and pretty good voice acting. The story was a bit weak and the series was mainly just an Evangelion rip-off...but the show was never 'bad' persay, and from a directorial point it was always a pleasure to watch so I guess I'd just call it popcorn entertainment.

On a more pleasant subject, Mai-Hime has gone into high gear as it gets a little past the half-way point. The show is Sunrise's big budget anime for at least 1/2 of 2005 and it shows. The quality of the animation is incredible and the action direction is handled with style. Tanaguchi Goro (Mugen no Ryvius, S.cry.ed, Planetes) is a "creative producer" on Mai-hime and it's really starting to show with how the series handles intense build-ups and just plain awesome pay-offs. With the cool GaoGaiGar-ish mecha designs, this is basically similar to S.cry.ed with girl characters and a little less badass-ness. The music by Yuki Kajiura fits very nicely with the high-budget everything else. Depending on where the show goes at this point, it could be one of the big shows of 2005.

So since Gundam SEED Destiny has managed to be not only the worst Gundam show ever, but even just one of the worst anime series in a while (doesn't look like it's getting better either. "Let's just fix the show by giving the main character a black version of Freedom" @_@)...I've finally got around to watching 1985 classic Zeta Gundam:

...and I'll be darned if it isn't as good as everyone's been saying. The 50ep epic is known by most Gundam fans as the best Gundam series to date. So far 1/5th in, I don't know if I can agree with that, but I can acknowledge that the series is damn good. Though my favorite mecha designs are from the 0083 OAV, the designs here are pretty solid in themselves. Can't wait to watch more :D

More snow

2005-01-10T15:01:00.000+09:00

Two weeks in Tokyo/Kyoto/Osaka was a nice time to relax...as is anytime you are not in Aomori ^^; Here's a rundown of the trip:

Akihabara:

Many trips were made to my favorite street in the world :D

My brother as he snaps a shot at the National Museum in Tokyo. Was a pretty nice museum though the focus was pretty broad and there wasn't too much that interested me (Heian era fan personally).

Our trip to the Palette Town of Odaiba! They had an interesting history of cars showcase museum at one corner which was a bit odd (50/60's american tv show footage running on screens behind the cars), but they did have a Dolorian! They also had a mall that was basically stolen from Caesar's Palace complete with the fake sky.

Located near the mall of the future was the station of the future. I think they're still working on getting the tech to live up to the name.

Cool store in Osaka. Otherwise I found Denden town to be pretty tiny compared to the massive Akihabara. Also checked out the Universal City Walk while in Osaka but the Wolfgang Puck's pizza was sadly still Japanese pizza ;_;

Some people will get this ;)

Asakusa during first snow in Tokyo! Looks a lot nicer with snow, though it was a bit cold. See I had thought it would be WARM in Tokyo compared to Aomori so I packed warm stuff...yet the snow followed me there >_<

Asakusa on New Years day. People lining up for Hatsumoude or first shrine visit of the year. Good weather.

"evacuation field" in Ueno...odd but pleasant.

This was standing outside the western art museum in Ueno.

and then I returned to the snow land of Aomori. Lately it's been snowing non-stop and the wind is pretty strong. Been going out once a day to knock the snow hanging off the roof down and dig out my doorway. At first dealing with that and digging out my car at the school daily was a bit daunting. But I've been improving my shovel skills and shoveling is getting fun! Only problem now is the wind which keeps changing directions while I'm shoveling snow off the roof, so the snow always seems to fall down into my face >_<

A normal street corner around here.

My car about 24 hours since last drive/cleaning.

20mins later, my car after shoveling out and cleaning. Now in drivable form!

The mall at night in the snow. That's not gas in the picture it's the damn snow flying around with the wind >_<

What I see doing the 15 min walk back from the school to my house each night. EVIL WIND. Seriously I like the snow but the wind is the worst enemy I have faced in my life.

My house after 30 mins of digging and knocking snow off the roof. The snow on the side has almost overtaken the fence around the yard. Can't even fit through the doorway as of today, so it's up and over the fence each day. Maybe I should just knock the fence down...hmmm..... ;)

Short delay

2005-01-07T10:08:00.000+09:00

Had a good winter vaction in Tokyo/Kyoto/Osaka with my brother. I'll have pictures up later, but I've been too worn out at home from shoveling and walking to really do much at the house besides lie down and watch movies in the evening. Expect a long real update this weekend.

snow

2004-12-22T13:33:00.000+09:00

And in ushered the new era....

2004-12-14T02:31:00.000+09:00

Too little time too much to say, but I'll just make it clear. Sony just came in an in 1 day set the direction of portable gaming for the next 10 years. The PSP is the nicest piece of hardware I've ever held in my hands and it does everything. Want to listen to your mp3s? Sound quality is equal or better than ipods. Store and look at your photos you've taken with a digital camera? Screen quality is amazing. Want to watch movies/videos? Works like a charm.

The interface is very user friendly and very capable and because the system uses Sony memory sticks, you can just pop them out and put them in computer to transfer files back and forth. There's even a usb hookup to connect straight to your computer.

Wireless Lan allows for both great multiplayer ability, but also soon it will be able to connect to the internet through wireless routers and you'll be able to browse and download stuff straight to your system. There's already an "online update" selection avaible in the interface so in the future they can update the firmware if needed.

Everyone in Japan wants one. If you take it out in public people keep coming up to you asking you all about it. Or on a train they'll move around to get a better position to look over your shoulder. You can't blame them, one look at the system and it sells itself. It's just utterly amazing.

People camping out overnight in Tokyo. For good reason too as the machine is selling on ebay and at all the import stores for ~$600 a unit ($200 retail here). I know a few people who picked up a few extra units to sell and have already made over a thousand in profit on them ^^;;

Ridge Racers is very very good. Excellent presentation, 24 tracks remade from all the previous RR games and 40+ music tracks also from the previous games. Control is great, graphics are 60fps and excellent and the music and sound is perfect. Add in 8 player wireless multiplayer and you have an incredible launch title.

Lumines is the new Tetris. Take a deep and new take on puzzle games, add in some of the best music you've ever heard that lets you add to the beat with your actions and you have the formula for the most addicting game ever made. By the creater of Rez (a game that combined 3d on-rail shooters with music), Lumines is a complete masterpiece. I must have put about 7 hours straight into this on the launch day and I really haven't touched the other games much as when your not playing Lumines you're thinking "why am I not playing Lumines right now?" :P

Minna no Golf Portable (known in the US as Hot Shots Golf). Only tried it for a few minutes but it's a solid entry in the best golf series there is. But between RR and Lumines I doubt I'll be touching this for a while.

Ok, will be back with real life in a future update.

Some big events, some small ones

2004-12-02T21:06:00.000+09:00

Well for about 3 days straight early this week it snowed. The snow was nice to look at and much more comfortable to live in than the heavy rainfall that surrounded it. Then after a few days I awoke one day to find that it was all gone just as quickly as it had appeared.

Currently it's nice and clear outside with decent temperatures around 3-4 degrees Celcius.

--------
Besides currently roaming the realm of DQVIII on my boat and hours spent with friends both near and far in..

..Half-life 2 Deathmatch (which rocks btw). Today marked another interesting game day in Japan:

Today was the Nintendo DS launch in Japan. Unlike the Dragon Quest VIII launch this time no one seemed to care ^^;; At the opening of the local store here in Kizukuri, there was exactly ONE person standing around waiting by the store. But then 2 mins before the store opened a taxi came and picked them up. During the first 10 mins the store was open about two people came in and bought a DS, but unlike the US where the system sold out real fast and is now hard to find, it's pretty much everywhere now in plentiful stock.

My first impressions of the actual unit were "Wow, what the hell prototype were they showing at E3!?" Basically the DS prototype I played at E3 in May was not very impressive or interesting so I'm quite surprised the unit turned out well. Here's a breakdown on my thoughts:

+The screens are nice size and good quality. BACKLIGHTING!!!!!!!! yay, even the GBA SP only had front-lighting so it looked nothing like this. I think the last system with backlighting was the sega Nomad but anyhow it makes everything look really good.
+The color pallette and resolution is pretty awesome.
+The speakers are nice and loud unlike every other home system out there. Awesome.
+Touch screen is pretty accurate and works well.
+GBA games look really fantastic due to the backlighting. But it's kinda annoying that they only use 1 screen so you have a dead screen the whole time.

-The sound quality is ok. Unlike the horrible sound of the GBA, it's even better than SNES/SFC sound (it has BASS!) but it's below N64/PS1 level sound. It's sufficient but with the CD/DVD quality sound of the PSP in a week it's nothing to write home about.
-The D-pad sucks. For some reason it's long and skinny like a cross which is a little annoying. Playing GBA games on it can be a little tougher to control than on the GBA.
-It's too big. Not when you're holding the unit necessarily, but the fact is that it doesn't fit comfortably in your pocket and if it does it's gonna pull your pants down because it's heavy. So unlike the GBA which you can keep in your pocket and pull out on trains, with the DS you've really gotta keep it in a backpack/bag.

Ok, now as for impressions of the launch games:

Sawaru (Touch!) Made in Wario: Pretty much the system seller here in Japan. Just as Mawaru (Twisted!) Made was a fresh take on mini-games using the motion sensor, here we get a new game of mini-games that revolve completely around using the touch screen. Really creative games and great 2d graphics show off the system well.

It's Mario 64 with new levels and mini-games. Control is wierd and I've found playing with the pen, though an awkward idea, works the best. Not much too say as I didn't mess around with it much but it's nice having Mario 64 since I never did get around to beating it at the Nguyen's house.

Kimi no tame nara shineru (I could die for you 'aka Feel the Magic' in the US). Another mini-game collection (mini-games are good when you're on the go). This time with stylish visuals and bizarre yet cool music. Seems fun but not as good at Made in Wario.

Mr. Driller Drill Spirits. Umm, it's Mr. Driller not much more to say. I mainly picked this up as the US version got screwed by having an entire story/adventure mode removed because Namco US didn't want to bother to translate it. Also the Japanese version allows 5 player multiplayer with only 1 cartridge something else the US version is lacking.

Band Brothers. This is basically a poor man's Beatmania where you can play any one instrument of a song in Beatmania style or you can have an 8 player jam fest where each person does 1 instrument and together you make a song. The main single player part though is just like Beatmania but the song list isn't as good. It does have some cool old-school nintendo medolies and there is a mode where you can write your own songs and then trade them with other people so they can try to beat your song. It also uses the built in mic. Supposedly you can just hum a tune into the machine and it will pick it up and write it into the correct sheet lyrics...ummm...yea....not having good luck with that so far ^^;; Still a nice little niche experimental title.

So that was the Nintendo DS launch. It came was hyped out with a bang and played out with a whisper. Seems like a solid fun system that is the successor to the GBA despite Nintendo saying otherwise. Now it's on to the PSP and seeing how that fairs.
--

Nothing says Japan, like national conformity

2004-11-27T18:28:00.000+09:00

Well just in time for the Dragon Quest launch, the weather became hell here as winds reached high speeds knocking things over all night Fri and as of now on Sat are still blowing pretty strong. Rain + Hail were pouring down all last night into Sat morning, and the sun was barely present. So I wasn't sure what to expect when heading to the store at 6:40am this morning but here is how it went:

6:45am, everyone is waiting in their car since the weather is terrible.

7am, the door opens and everyone rushes in.

The first customers of the day buy their games.

As I was leaving I would see car after car pull up and someone jump at. While it wasn't hundred's of people it was still pretty impressive to see the local folks braving the storm in the early morning to get their game.

Though I'll admit we Aomori folks didn't stand up to the Tokyo lines:

The 300 person line at 7am in front of Tsutsuya. More pics of the Tokyo lines can be found here.

The power of line-ups is strong in Japan at the moment. Thursday will be the line-ups for the Nintendo DS and then a week later on Sunday will be the line-ups for the Sony PSP. Hopefully Aomori weather looks more kindly on the game industry in the following weeks.

Towel

2004-11-25T22:36:00.000+09:00

So when I was at the Go!Go!7188 concert in Aomori city last night, I picked up a page of stickers from the buying area since they only had one shirt in XL (and despite Japan 'supposedly' being full of small people, I still where a M here just like I do in the states), and about 5 hand towels....

Hand towels are pretty popular items here in Japan as many bathroom sinks don't have paper towels so you must resort to flailing your hands in the air, your personal towel, or stealthly wiping them on the shirt of the guy next to you. So it's easy to understand why there are many hand towels for sale in Japan.

Yet I have to question the fact that every band/movie/tv show/game has their own hand towels. Now as far as I know the idea behind say a band t-shirt is that you want to express your interest in the band to others, in a way expressing yourself. So now when you go a buy a band hand towel it's kinda odd. I mean when you're in the restroom washing your hands with a bunch of other guys, are you going to be proud to be expressing yourself and your interests to the people around you? Maybe you are, but I dunno, it just seems like one of those things (logo hand towels) that people just accepted as being 'cool' without every thinking of the practicality of the items.

So besides noticing the large amount of hand towels for sale the rest of the show was okish ^^; The sound setup was pretty good and the band played well but they were playing like it was routine rather than going crazy and really getting into the music. This was pretty apparent as during the first 20 mins of the show the crowd was going crazy smashing into each other in a Japanese-toned-down-polite-mosh-pit (which in a place that only holds less than 300 people is still pretty good); Yet you could tell that the energy was from the fans who were excited to be there. At the 30 min mark the crowd really started dying down and by an hour in most people were just kinda swaying or standing still. If a band doesn't put their all into playing, the crowd won't be infused with energy. Basically all the bands I'd seen in the Arabaki show went insane on stage doing crazy solos, jumping around and stumbling into things, and screaming until their voice died. Besides the drummer, the 2 leading women in the band didn't even seem like they were breaking a sweat. As I teacher it looked to me like the lead singer, Yuu, was doing her "I'm taking a test and trying to remember all the answers from the book last night because I just want to pass this test and go home" face. They were times when the band really got into their songs and at those moments the crowd would react. But overall it was fun, but not a very amazing experience. It also doesn't help that the show was based around their new album which after hearing it live definitely is not the kind of music meant for live play. When they broke into a jazz/swing sounding song, this rock/punk audience was left standing confused as to what they were supposed to be doing. I guess I'd say the show was like a 3/4.

Last week I went to an ALT meeting in Hachinohe. As my first trip to Hachinohe I used the evening on the first night to go to the main Hachinohe train station and check out the area. Well after about 3-4 hours of walking I realized there wasn't much there and the actual city were stuff was, was near our hotel/meetings. Since the meeting was only 2 days and I had to do 4-5 hours of travel each way, I didn't really get much exploring done sadly. Maybe I'll go back again in the future, but it's not the most convinient place to visit money and travel-time wise.

New free mp3 is up at Hirasawa Susumu's webpage off his latest side project Kaku (Nuclear) P-model. Pretty entertaining, too bad you'd never be album to find this album in a store in Aomori :\ But that's what Amazon Japan is for! :P
You can get the song here: http://www.chaosunion.com/hirasawa/e/index.htm

On a sad note, I saw Studio Ghibli & Miyazaki Hayao's new animated film "Howl's Moving Castle". Why was it sad? Well in the past 20+ years I've enjoyed every film created by Studio Ghibli, yet now it seems like they finally did it. They made a bad movie ;_; Sure the animation is pretty, but the story is a complete mess. Character development is very weak and the story jumps around without ever giving much explanation. Couple that with an ending so awful that it's a slap in the face to all fans of the studio, and you have a movie that leaves you thinking "what went wrong?". Well the answer is probably not all that hard to find. For years on year Miyazaki has created great stories filled with likeable casts that have this magic Ghibli touch to them. Yet for the first time in his career, Miyazaki decided to try to adapt a novel rather than make his own story.

So I'd guess that the entire time Miyazaki was creating the script and storyboards, he was fighting between staying true to the book, and trying to make a Miyazaki movie. You see elements coming from his other films such as Nausicaa, Mononoke, Kiki's, Spirited Away; Yet the core story and characters just don't match up that well with the way he creates characters. I can see how when planning the film on paper it would've looked doable, but the fact is that the only way they could've made what they wanted is with an epic 3 hour film. Yet Howl's runs a little under 2 hours and thus feels like a whole lot is missing. It lacks the magic Ghibli touch, and is closer to a 2.5/4 than a 3/4 IMO and having to put 2.5 and Ghibli in the same sentence is a sad sad day.

--------------------

So after finishing Halo 2, Half-life 2, and Zelda: The Minish Cap over the last week or so it feels almost like the end of an era yet the beginning of a new one.

Halo 2 was a great improvement over the first game and it delivered intense combat, pretty decent level design, and a probably the best multiplayer you can experience online on a console right now. Yet I have to admit that despite playing it only a week ago I can barely remember anything about the game :\ All the cool moments were kinda of swept under the rug after experience Half-life 2.

Half-life 2 had a lot of expectations being the most hyped PC game since probably Doom 2. Yet for once a game really lived up to its hype and continued to impress throughout. The game has so much variety that it's always throwing something new at you to keep you from getting bored. The locations were gorgeous and huge, the combat in the later half of the game was pretty insane and kept you on your toes, the art direction was incredible with gorgeous textures and modeling, and even the music rocked when it was used. Plus the game was pretty long and satisfying IMO. On one hand it's kinda sad to see it end, but on the other hand this is only the beginning as this will be the game that the mod community will use as a base for pretty much all things great in the next 4-5 years. The physics system is just incredible and once a real multiplayer mod comes out, a lot of people will be showing up at work tired :)

Zelda was good as usual. I dunno, I've heard Zelda 3 A Link To the Past for SFC/SNES has aged badly and isn't that great of game anymore, but I still remember it being better than all the 2d Zelda games that have come after it. A few of the dungeons in Minish Cap were really impressive and only 1 really came off as average. Yet the overworld had way to much fetch quest stuff that just got annoying at times and hurt the pacing. It was a fun 8/10 game, but I'll look forward to the next console Zelda and hope it's more of a step forward.

So as all signs point to the Holidy season as already starting, we approach the biggest day in Japan this year. Christmas day? Nope.

Dragon Quest VIII is about to make headlines as the highest number of copies sold in 1 day of any game in the ENTIRE WORLD (which considering the population of Japan vs. US and UK is a pretty big feat) this saturday. The Dragon Quest series has been the largest franchise in the entire country since somewhere along the mid years of the series. In fact releasing Dragon Quest games once every 2-4 year became a huge problem for the society as millions of people would skip work or school on the opening day. So they kinda made an unofficial law that DQ games must be released on holidays or weekends. DQVIII is abiding by that law and stores are opening at 7am on saturday nationwide to sell the game. 2.5-3 million copies are being sent to the stores and everywhere is predicting 99% sell-through. I'll be there at 6:30am on saturday with my camera in hand to see how many people from the local towns will be fighting the freezing cold winds and lack of sleep while lining up at the break of dawn. Though I don't expect it the pictures to be nearly as impressive as the upcoming pics from the Tokyo folks, it should still prove interesting ^_^

So that's all for now until the saturday morning update.

Welcome back, Mr. Freeman

2004-11-16T22:07:00.000+09:00

Yeah, don't expect updates for the next week :)

taiyou no chikai umi no soko de hane wo hirogaru

2004-11-11T23:26:00.000+09:00

or in english "I spread my wings at the bottom of the ocean most near to the sun" one of many lines from the new Go!Go!7188 album "Ryuuzetsuran".

The album is pretty interesting as they went with a very non-orthodox style. Many songs lack a chorus, most songs break into long guitar/bass/drum solos, and the lyrics range from 'blah blah nature is dying, the world is losing color' to a song about Kunoichi (female ninja) written in old-form dialogue, to a song about growing up and realizing the world ain't filled with santa claus and feeling lost, yet realizing that there's still a lot of mystery in the world and it's not a bad idea to search for it. I can't say I'm completely satisfied with the album. It's a hard sell and even after 3 weeks of listening to it I can't really get more than a song or two on it. But I'm still looking forward to seeing them in concert in 2 weeks in Aomori. I found the website for the 'concert hall' that they're playing at and it looks like a tiny broken down home. The fire prevention people limit is 300 max, so I'm guessing it will be a really up close and personal show ^__^

One thing that's been keeping me from enjoying the Go!Go!7188 album as much as I could is the new The Pillows album "Good Dreams" that came out a week later:

A really good effort like always from the group featuring great music, poetic lyrics, and some fantastic vocals. After seeing them live in Sendai I'm really glad they are coming up to Hirosaki in february for the tour of this new album :D
----
So due to various personal issues and work issues I haven't had the chance to update this thing in a looong time. So now I'll play catch up :P

That's a pic of Ajigasawa near the train station. I took it when I accidently got on the wrong bus (was damn tired in the morning) and ended up far away from my work. I had to wait an hour or so for the next train back and then wait 2 hours for the next bus going to my work place :\ Problems with living where transportation runs only every 2-4 hours.

School has been same old same old. I had a chance to teach for the 2nd time at a Jr. High School by myself and it was a blast. One class was really tired from doing 5 periods of tests, so instead of having them do work I just figured I'd put on entertaining skits starring me, myself, and I while they practiced listening or slept. Worked pretty well I do think.

Next week is the mid-year seminar at Hachinohe. I've heard the food is good there so I look forward to the 2 day excursion. Though getting to the 10:30 meeting means catching the 6:30am train out of here that morning ^^;;

So here's what I've been doing the past 2 weeks:

I'm pretty confident in saying that Wong Karwai's 2046 is the best movie of the year IMO. The film was absolutely stunning. The story was WKW's most interesting well layered piece yet, the acting was top-notch with Tony Leung having quite a screen presence, and the music was so good I had to nab the soundtrack by the next day. IMO this film is built on everything he's done so far in career and really shows what an accomplished film maker he is. I can't wait for the dvd and I hope the Criterion Collection are able to put it out in the US :)

The title of the film "chi to hone" (Blood and Bones) is a saying that one's blood comes from their mother and one's bones from their father. The film is based on a novel about a korean man who comes to 1923 Japan in his young age looking for opportunity. The film then cuts to the man in his 40-50s and he's a burnt out evil bastard (played by Beat Takeshi) who is so self-centered that he destroys the only family he has. The film is directed by a Korean director who IMDB calls "The most prominent Korean director residing in Japan". Which is kinda surprising because one of the things the film completely avoids dealing with is the life of Korean immigrants in the first half of the 20th century. Just one of the issues I had with the film...in which there were many. The main problem is that the film never goes into how this guy filled with hope in 1923 became the person who is he is in ~1943. Thus we can never really see into the character (especially since Takeshi does his usually poker face acting) so the film basically just becomes an example of the Japanese 'aware' style (sad and pitiful) where we watch everyone live horrible lives and die one after another.

Game-wise I'd been spending the last 2 weeks with the fantastic Stelladeus for PS2. The game, written by one of the most famous Japanese fantasy authors (who wrote the Record of Lodoss novels), the game is filled with philosophical arguments, deep characters, and just really awe-inspiring writting. Even the premise for the story is interesting:

--A long time ago in the past a sea of white fog started approaching the main continent of the world. Everything the fog passed over would disappear. So people of the world became panicked as they feared the end. They started rioting and stealing and killing. Then one day a religion proclaimed that the sea of fog was God's will and that those who accept the "peaceful end" will go to paradise. Thus the chaos stopped and people were able to live normal lives; yet at the same time accepting that the end was approaching they lost all hope and dreams, they lost the will to live and became languid. One day a general gathered an army and began taking over the continent and killing all those who would do nothing with their lives. One day he comes into the main character's village...

The story then becomes a series of arguments about religion's place in the modern world, about how it can do good; yet if mishandeled can be terrible. It was a really entertaining piece and did a good job raising questions about society as a whole. Not too mention the gameplay portion was top-notch and the soundtrack was incredible.

Part2

2004-11-10T01:05:00.000+09:00

This post was actually so big I had to split it into 2 posts :P

(yes that's an official artwork by Nintendo :P)
Picked up the new Zelda game for GBA. It's the first original Zelda title on the system and visually it's on the level of the SNES/SFC Zelda III Link to the Past. The dungeons are very well designed and the music is good stuff. A little on the easy side but Zelda's difficulty has always been in it's puzzles.

Joined the Japanese clique of the few hundred people who actually own an xbox in Japan the other day. Mainly got it for Halo 2, but picked up Dead or Alive online since it's pretty and it's an online fighter :) The Halo 2 LE package came with a year Xbox live subscription so now I'm getting to see how good Japanese players play DoA and it's pretty fun. One thing is the Japanese players, unlike English speaking players, don't talk much or at all; whereas english speakers just shout random curses every 5 secs.

As much as I'm having a pretty good time at the moment with Halo 2 offline and online, the countdown is almost up for what will possibly be the greatest game ever created:

NOVEMBER 16th US Pacific Time it will unlock and many people in the world will be quite joyous.

Pre-ordered the DS (Dec 2nd) and PSP (Dec 12th) at my local WonderGOO. Though despite that they had a sign stating "Even though you pre-order we might not give you one. We probably won't get enough, so line up early on the day of release". Luckily PSP which will be the rare one for sure (especially since Sony is going to eat $300 loses on every unit sold...thus 'shortages' will happen for the first year or so) is being released on a sunday so camping out in the snow could be possible depending on the line and the weather. Now whether either system ends up being good is another question, but I'm more interested in the fact that both are pushing the handheld market forward rather than allowing it to remain 10 years behind current technology.

you get DS for innovative bizarre stuff like this:

and then PSP for amazing visual stuff like this:

Between both systems launching, the highest selling game for the next 5 years in Japan being released (DQVIII), Gran Turismo 4 (700 cars, 50 tracks, 96 songs), and MGS3 coming out this next month is going to be pretty crazy and that's just before Xmas trip excitement. Hmm, looking forward to it all.

Lastly:

Xenosaga the TV animation starts airing on Jan 1st. o_O? Yea I have no clue either, but it could be interesting.

PS. Roberto and anyone else I know who has Xbox live, e-mail me your tags so we can get some games in.

I want!

2004-10-25T21:12:00.000+09:00

Famitsu says it's made of rubber and has a soft, slimey feel
YES!

Earthquakes, Lightning, Fires, Father

2004-10-25T17:12:00.000+09:00

The title of todays post refers to the Japanese
saying that orders the greatest terrors of the world
to the Japanese people. Jishin (earthquake), Kaminari
(lightning), Kaji(fire), Oyaji(father).

...so if you've always wondered why a core theme in
the majority of Japanese cinema is about people vs.
their father, there's your explanation. <_<

Anyways Japan had some earthquakes and they were big.
Up in Aomori though you couldn't feel a thing and I
only found out about it because I was watching TV at
the time and all the channels were interuptted.
Between this and most of the typhoons missing Aomori,
I think we're getting some freebies to make up for the
fact that it's REALLY FREAKING COLD here already >_<
There's already snow up in the mountains and walking
back from the school late at night after parking my
car requires me to be fully outfitted with 3 layers of
clothing + gloves + headwear and yet by the time I
reach my place 12 or so minutes later I'm completely
chilled. At least my actual house is warm like a
toaster.

Last week was normal as usual. I've been working on
building my awesome futon of the future through
paychecks and am close to completion. Though I guess
there's a problem of if your bed is 'too' perfect
you're never gonna want to get up and leave.

An awesome awesome film was released last week on dvd:
Casshern.

Feature length directorial debut by music video
director and husband of Utada Hikaru: Kazuaki Kiriya,
Casshern again strengthens the idea that like Spike
Jonze, David Fincher, and countless others, the most
creative directors are coming from music video
backgrounds. Casshern is a comic book film based on
an old cheezy manga from the 70's. Kazuaki took full
lead of this project as he wrote, directed, edited,
and was the director of photography for the film.
Rather than doing as many comic book movies do and
telling one story of the comic, Kazuaki wrote a story
that basically covers the entire thing in 2:30 hours.
The result of this is a lot of time jumping, a plot
that asks you to accept everything at face value, and
a whole lot of confusion.

Going by the content of the film, it's easily a
b-movie. It has a subtle feel of the goofiness of
sci-fi manga in the 70s though it hides it well as the
film takes itself completely seriously. But what
makes this film noticable is that it's a B movie with
A+ style. Take the visual look of Amelie, Fight Club,
Requim for a Dream, Dark City, etc... and you have a
small idea of the visual settings for this film. The
settings are just incredible in their art and in the
framing and Kazuaki works with large amount of styles
to keep every section of the film looking like their
own music video. The color correction and costumes
are really eye-catching and the acting ain't too bad either.

Overall it's just a really fun ride with gorgeous eye-candy.
Most fun enjoyable Japanese film I've seen since the first time
I saw Versus.

Other noteable points from last week include finishing
up the Berserk: Millenium Falcon arc game which, as a
fan of the manga, was quite pleasing. I wrote up a
substantial review of it here:
http://forums.gaming-age.com/showthread.php?t=19671

I then moved into Paper Mario 2 which I'm finishing up
at the moment. Really fun gameplay and the dungeons
are top class, but the amount of dialogue (I'M SORRY
BUT OUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE...should not
take 10 speech bubbles of text to deliver) and the
most backtracking I've ever seen in a rpg make the
non-dungeon bits grating. Should have it finished in
time for Atlus's Stelladeus on thursday.

Macross Zero ended. Personally I've never been a fan
of Macross as planes with legs always struck me as a
dumb idea. I stuck with the Gundam stuff as they tend
to be based on Egyptian designs and ancient Egypt was
a cool looking place. Anyhow the OAV was alright, it
was a simple story with simple characters and by the
book "Love conquors all" theme [the Macross theme I
guess]. Much like director Kawamori's Chikyuu Shoujo
Arjuna, MZ is filled with the same old
environmentalism and the same ugly CG work and the
usual religous imagery. But despite all that, the
overblown really really overdramatic presentation of
every scene coupled with some beautiful music in
(latin? dunno) made it enjoyable to watch all the way
through.

Wong Karwai's latest film: 2046 opened at the local
theater on saturday and I've been kinda putting off
going to see it because the idea of reading Japanese
subtitles for 3 hours seems like more work than play.
But some of the film is in Japanese so it shouldn't be
'that' taxing...and it is Wong Karwai so the
cinematography should be brilliant. I'll probably end
up going tomorrow since Tuesday is cheap movie day for men.

Why the Japanese should stick to trains

2004-10-18T20:11:00.000+09:00

Ok, so I live in a town with a population of probably under 1000 in the general 20 mile radius. The streets are wide and straight and usually well lit and you are lucky to see another car every 4 mins.

YET..half the time I walk to school and back I see a crashed car and the police or ambulance taking care of it.

I find this very odd as driving here seems to be incredibly easy and painless. Now I don't want to make any sweeping generalizations like that Japanese people can't drive or inaka folks aren't that great of drivers. But rather I just wonder why the hell are all these people crashing and why does nobody seem to care that in a little tiny town the accident rate is so high?

Talking with a friend living elsewhere in Japan he recalled his experiences with Japanese drivers:

******: I saw someone in front of me just turn and plow STRAIGHT into a fence pole once
******: it was like WHAT DID YOU JUST DO

I mean I see people run red lights like EVERY 3rd LIGHT here...wtf!? At least I've learned that you drive really defensively here and try to not let other people hit you.

You also have to keep in mind that the speed limits here are SLOW. Normal streets are 40-50khm which is like 30-40mph. So you have to wonder if there's something wrong when a country where people drive 1/2 the speed as the people in the US, they get into just as many crashes...

And despite this I hear they're extremely uptight and prejudice against foreigners when trying to get a license @_@

-------------------------------
So the FMA Best Collection album came out and it has already broken some records.

It has remained the #1 selling album on the main music charts in Japan for 5 days now. The last time an anime soundtrack did that was Evangelion: Death OST which happened SEVEN YEARS AGO. To top it off the album is only 8 tracks and retails for 3500yen (~$35). So how did they do it?

Well first thing you notice is that it comes in a really big heavy box with nice art. Then you look at the contents and see that it contains:
--A music cd with all 8 OP/EDs for the show.
--A dvd with clean credit-less versions of all 8 OP/EDs for the show
--A cd booklet with all the lyrics and band info
--A dvd booklet with stills from all the OP/EDs
--A 100+ thick HQ paper guide to the entire series from ep1-51 filled with storyboards, art, and even english quotes which are surprisingly really well translated for being done by a Japanese company ("I, as one who acts upon the will of god, shall pass the sentence in his behalf").

Next you see that it will be discontinued on Jan 1st, 2005 making it a collectors item. Then you notice that the OP/ED's are by many of the bands with albums in the Top 10, and lastly you have the word of mouth from the show.

All that added up to setting some records, and depending on how long it holds #1 it may set even more.

Lastly to anyone reading this who is in Aomori-ken (or Japan in general) and owns a GBA. Go buy Mawaru Made in Wario!

There's not much point in me writing up a review when this man has done it already: MAWARU MADE IN WARIO REVIEW

The sensor the game comes with is just so so awesome. Screw VR glasses, screw steering wheels, screw the power glove, this is the most immersive game I've ever played. Physically moving my body around in circles (which isn't the 'correct asobikata' but it's the most fun! :P) is a blast and the game is just incredibly addictive and perfect for killing time anywhere. Every once and a while Nintendo hits out a winner and this is it for 2004.

I can't wait to hit in America

2004-10-15T17:56:00.000+09:00

More Jusco skies.

Elementary school in full song practice before their upcoming festival thing.

So this is mainly about the new season of anime that's begun airing.

Beck:

Story of a band coming together. I've heard great things about the manga and the animation, and music in the show is top-notch. Very entertaining and full off english conversations (in a bad accent way) since one of the main characters is from America.

Gundam SEED Destiny:

ZAKU are BACK THANK YOU GOOD SIR

So is the famous voice actor of Char :)

Whoever designed the colors on the new Gundam needs to be fired. Red is not for mecha.

But FREEDOM will return so all is forgiven.

The Count of Monte Cristo:

Gonzo's sci-fi adaptation of Alexander Dumas's classic novel. Kinda good at times, pretentious as hell and crappy most of the time. I'm gonna follow it cause I'm curious and too lazy to read the novel :P

I'm pretty sure Dumas didn't envision the count to be a blue vampire man.

...nor did he expect him to be driving a spaceship I expect.

Bleach:

Thank you Studio Pierott for doing a lame adaptation of one of my favorite mangas using bad artists and cheap animation.

Otogizoushi - Tokyo chapter:
Well it really isn't new persay. But Otogi was a story set in Heian Japan, ~1000AD. It was a pretty good show with a nice artstyle and classical music and dialogue. Then it kinda ended it's story at ep13, but there is an ep14! Well it's now 2004AD and all the characters have been reincarneted and meet up again. The first story did not end very happily, so the idea is will these people follow the same path and make the same choices again or will they people to break out of the circle of fate.

Hikaru 1000AD vs. Hikaru 2004AD

Tsuna 1000AD vs. Tsuna 2004AD
I give them a lot of respect for doing something original, interesting, and completely unexpected. Woohoo Production IG.

So now with the full season underway I'm following:
Fantastic Children - Still so very very awesome
Tsukiyomi Moon Phase - Kinda crappy, but very funny and I like the staff (Soul Taker/ Cossette)
Otogizoushi
Beck
My-HiME - My Highly-advanced Materializing Equipment. Sunrise's guilty pleasure show. Swords, Guns, Mecha, Magic, Romance, Comedy. But hey when you're Sunrise and make gorgeous animation even you're dumb mainstream stuff is enjoyable.
Keroro Gunsou - 2nd season of the Sunrise show about alien frogs bent on world domination except the captain is a Gundam plastic model otaku and won't leave the house. I approve.
Mahou Shoujo Tai Alice - Still running debut show by Studio 4C. Great Tim Burton style art design makes the show very much worth it.
SEED Destiny

Overall slightly more shows than last season, and just when the rush of xmas games is gonna hit ;_; Now is when 36 hour days would be good stuff.

At least I've got the 1000 kanji down pat at this point. So my next 6 weeks of studying for JLPT consists of making sure I don't forget what I've been studying lately ^^;;

Sendai and all that

2004-10-15T17:29:00.000+09:00

Well Sendai was a trip filled with some good and then a whole lot of bad to balance it out. Though for the most part the bad is derived from the weather in Japan which decided to fling a Typhoon at me for the entire time I was in Sendai.

Basically I took a 4 hour highway bus their on Friday night and it rocked. The seats were comfortable, the bus stopped every hour so you could get food, hit the restrooms, and with a good pair of headphones the time went by quite fast...oh yea and it was cheap :)

Unfortunately when the bus arrived it was already raining...something that would continue for the next 3 days straight. Navigating to my hotel wasn't too bad and after dropping off my backpack I checked out the locale.

The main shopping arcade which was long and pretty darn cool.

Shrimp Gyoza in a small gyoza specialty resturaunt! It was really really good. I need to see if I can find a place near me that makes this.

Yea I don't know either ^^;;

Saturday morning was pouring and I headed off to the concert. Seeing as I didn't realize there would be a TYPHOON I dressed lightly as concerts tend to get hot.

Walkin' in the rain.

Inside the concert area waiting for the doors to open.

The concert was actually really awesome as the place was small and I was like 10 feet or less from the stage. Though the sound really and I mean really sucked. They had the speakers up way too loud and just all the settings were off. Even when there was no music, the vocals would be distorted and crap. So after 5 hours straight of being near one of the speakers I pretty much lost all my hearing in my left ear for the next 2 days.

Of the line-up:

Ellegarden - Band was ok. They were easy to listen to because the music was A. Simple and B. In English. The singer was sooo born in America with Japanese parents as he acted American and his english was perfect. Basically they came off sounding like Blink 182.

Miceteeth - A 10 piece ska/swing band kinda like the Tokyo Ska Parada Orchestra. Good stuff and the singer guy seemed like either he was drunk or retarded as he was wobbling around the stage bumping into things and knocking them over left and right. Pretty good music though :)

Tsuji Ayano - This was one woman and her ukalayle (yea I can't spell it). She was pretty darn good and it was really nice.

The Piece - These guy's were assholes. They thought they were the Japanese Ramones, but they're weren't even that good. Just really annoying with mediocre music >_<

KT&T - These guys were awesome. They came out and just jammed hard rock for like 40 mins straight. They sounded kinda like Guitar Wolf but more rockin and less metal.

Straightener - I think these guys are gonna be big soon. They were very easy on the ears like Ellegarden but they had more substance to them. They seemed perfect for a mainstream audience and I see them becoming an Asian Kung-fu Generation in the future.

The Pillows - Totally rocked the show. Pretty much everyone in the audience was there for The Pillows, and there's a reason why. The energy and emotions they put into their songs when playing live is amazing. Just the experience of being in this crowd of complete energy was really moving. One of the best live shows I've been too and I was glad to find out they'll be playing in Hirosaki in Feb.

So after the show the TYPHOON 22 was in full swing and it was pouring hard and the winds were up and the streets were just giant lakes. So I had the fun of making my way 30 mins on foot back to the train station in the dark and watery Sendai Port (while not being able to hear much). So yea I got completely soaked and didn't have a change of clothes so I had to wear damp stuff the next day.

This resulted in me getting sick, spending the rest of my trip in my warm hotel bed resting and then being sick all week. So thanks to TYPHOON 22 my trip was very interesting @_@

Sendai just before leaving.

Birthday

2004-10-06T22:27:00.000+09:00

Had a birthday today.

Thanks to everyone who sent me e-mails are wished me a happy birthday.

Went and ate a lot of food which was ok. Then I tried pumpkin pie and was let down as soon as I unwrapped the foil to discover the pumpkin part was yellowish green. Tasted downright awful and more like Japanese bean snacks than any kind of pumpkin.

Other than that I presented myself with some new DJ Technic headphones. Now I can finally listen to music at home and get good sound ^__^.

All in all it was a pretty normal day. But I guess I'm a year older now so that counts for something. Anyways, this weekend will be more interesting when I go to Sendai and see The Pillows play live along with other pretty decent bands. So...

So the new season of anime has started. It's a lot of blah and bleh (Count of Monte Cristo futuristic Sci-fi remake >_< ). But one stood out as being quite interesting, "Fantastic Children".

Story of reincarnation over hundreds of years. Very nice music, great animation, good drama, all the makings of a good show. The designs are going for the retro throw-back look and it works great. Also the ending song is fantastic. Should be the show to look out for this season.

The world is fukanzen, thus utsukushii

2004-10-03T01:49:00.000+09:00

^________________________________^
An incredibly strong final episode. Wrapped up the series nicely and still set up the feature film. It really was a fantastic work with great directing, a strong script, powerful music, and a great voice cast. Pretty much everything the series built up paid off and the resounding themes of the series were carried to the extreme in the end.

Summer 2005 can't come soon enough :)

Woohoo

2004-10-01T15:31:00.000+09:00

Read an on-going transcript of the 1st debate while at work today. Nice to see Bush getting owned left and right by Kerry :) I heard from those watching it that it was even funnier with all Bush's 'ummm's and dead pauses thrown in.

Kerry: "The president said the enemy attacked us.... Iraq didn't attack us, Osama Bin Laden did.... "

Bush: "Look I know Osama bin Laden attacked
us..."

lol

Kerry: "you can be certain.... and wrong!"

yay

Looking at the CNN polls with Kerry winning the debate at 78%, Bush at 12% and 10% undecided hopefully this will turn some heads. Especially since this was supposed to be the strong debate for Bush. Though who knows how much effect this will even have on election day.

Lumines and some Wanda

2004-09-29T23:18:00.000+09:00

Well the Typhoon 21 will be here soon and the rain is already pouring. But by the end of the weekend it'll be gone and only traces like this will remain:

Last thursday was the trip to Tokyo which mainly went over well. After 7-8 hours of traveling I was walking the streets of Tokyo seeing stuff like this:

That's a new idea a cafe is trying. See they're putting their tables in the middle of the street with signs saying DO NO DRIVE INTO OUR CUSTOMERS or something like that. Unfortunately I didn't really see many tourists or locals flocking to the place.

Thursday night was get together with gaming-age people and others though. It was a good time for all and a heck of a lot of people (everyone in the picture only makes up about 1/4th the room which we entirely took up ^^; )

Friday was shopping in Akihabara for 8 hours :) Picked up a lot of good stuff, though the best thing I got was probably a set of 1st pressing FMA dvds vol.1-9. Vol.2 comes with a huge metal box to hold all the dvds, and vol.3 comes with a metal binder to hold all the notes distrobuted through the dvds. I won't name the price as it's too painful but I guess you could say it cost an arm and a leg (har har har ...gomen)

Also "THE ULTIMATE VERSUS" dvd. See Versus was made in 1999, then after it became this kinda cult classic (by people with good taste), director Ryuhei Kitamura decided it would be a fun project to get everyone in the cast back together, put on all their old make up and costumes, go back to the forest they shot at, and make new scenes to splice into the film. So the movie has a whole bunch of new cuts ranging from a new 4 sec shot of guy blocking a sword, to a new 3 min section added into the final battle. The result is kinda wierd but cool. The quality of the new footage is much better than the original grainy filmed on crappy equipment version so you can tell what shots are new pretty fast. The 2 dvd set also has a great making of the new footage documentary showing how everyone in the cast kept getting injured because none of them are professional stunt people, so during fake fighting they would accidently connect with the other person and injure them. The 2nd dvd is loaded with 18 mins of deleted scenes which rock (including more scenes to the monkey man's subplot during the final battle segment), a bunch of documentaries and a new mini-movie "Nervous 2" which deals with the monkey man dealing with his post-versus-ending trauam. Also everyone keeps talking about Versus 2 so it certainly seems like it will happen...maybe after Godzilla Final Wars?

Saturday was the show itself:

People on their way to the show.

Line into the place which wrapped around the entire convention center.

Some shots of a few booths. It was pretty dark in their and the men in suits were taking away cameras that got shots of anything that was "not to be seen outside this convention" so I didn't take many shots.

Hideo Kojima and military advisor Mori discuss features of the upcoming MGS3 including the bizarre Ape Escape tie-in where you have to rescue monkeys.

The show itself was ok. Nothing really stood out as amazing besides the new MGS3 trailer and maybe the 5 min spoilerfic trailer of the upcoming FFVII Advent Children film. Most interesting thing was probably playing Sony's upcoming portable 'jack-of-all-trades' handheld system, the PSP. Most of the software ranged from crap to average, but the new game by Rez creator Mizuguchi entitled Lumines left a strong impression on me.

The game itself is just another variation on a tetris puzzle game. But like Rez the music of the game is effected by everything you do in the game. So the game provides rhythms and you make the beats with setting up block combos. Even level adds another layer to the rhythm. This wouldn't have worked if it wasn't for the incredible sound system of the PSP. The sound quality was like watching a DTS track in a film with a high-quality reciver...in other words it sounded awesome. Considering that the current handheld on the market is restricted to below 16bit level of sound, this is a huge and very cool jump in that realm. The PSP screen was also quite nice, I really doubt this thing will launch for under $300 here, though if it does I'll be there on day one.

Wanda and the Collosi gets special mention just because it's the new game by the people that brought us ICO, the game closest to achieving the status of art in our society. There wasn't much to show of it yet other than that you play as a girl who must take down gigantic creatures by climbing them. The scale of the Collosi is perfectly crafted and their animation is very surreal. Indeed one to look forward to in 2005.

Sunday was trip back and catching up on saturday's missed FMA ep50:

Wow, was left pretty speechless.....1 ep left airing Saturday at 5:30am on Aomori TV. I give Bones credit for keeping the:
(curtousy of duckroll for the image)
...factor at an ultimate high for these past 2 eps, and I have no clue how they plan on closing this all, other than I doubt it will be a happy end.

Ending while still in the FMA mood, I'm currently finishing up the 2nd FMA action/rpg for PS2. Unlike the first game which was total crap and should never have been released, this is actually a decent (read 7/10) game with gorgeous anime sequences by Bones and a decent story to hold the somewhat limited fighting engine together.

On the road again...

2004-09-22T21:08:00.000+09:00

Well just doing a small update before I take off on my trip to Tokyo tomorrow.

Was packing and realized if I actually wanted to take a few sets of clothes for variable weather, my current little backpack wasn't going to survive. So I ended up shopping at the mall for a new bigger travel backpack. I got one for around $80 and though it's pretty nice and bigger than my previous one, I'm still a little bummed that it's smaller than my gigantor backpack I left at home :\ Well I guess if it first 4-5 days of clothes and trip stuff and I can still wear it on my back it'll be good enough for weekend excursions and I'll probably just stick to a piece of luggage for a week or more vacations.

Otherwise I think I have everything in order. Got my tickets yesterday for the trains and luckly I got to use a deal their doing for round trip Aomori -> Tokyo by bullet train for a little under $300 compared to the little under $400 it would've been. I guess the $100 saved can make up for my backpack. Gotta wake up early and do all the 'gas = off', 'money = in wallet' checking and then I'm gonna until sunday. I'll return with pics and stories after that so yea...

In the meantime I found this CLAMP Kiseki (miracle) magazine vol.1 came out today.

It's not much, just a small magazine that has a collection of CLAMP's various artwork and some new interviews with them, but the main sell is that each volume comes with 3 various nice CLAMP chess pieces. There will be 12 volumes total (1 a month) and then at the end a CLAMP chess board + box to hold all the magazine issues will come out and you'll be able to play chess with CLAMP characters ^__^ Probably not worth it in the long run but since the monthly issues are only $15 it doesn't hit your wallet hard and is worth it for any CLAMP fan in Japan.

Attempted to go to KFC, ended up in Aomori

2004-09-19T18:34:00.000+09:00

Week was pretty normal until friday came along.

Friday was the Junior High School's "enkai (party)". About 20+ of us gathered at some all you can eat all you can drink (tabehoudai, nomihoudai). Then we proceeded to drink A LOT of sake and eat much food. Suprisingly the food was really good and consisted of tons of normal stuff like Yakitori, fried squid, french fries, gyoza, steak, etc... So I was glad to take advantage of the unlimited food source. But all of us drank a bit too much and walked over to Karaoke afterwards where we drank and sang for a few hours of the night. The next day when looking at my cellphone I found these pictures from Karaoke although I don't remember having taken any ^^;;

Saturday was recovery and rest day. I mainly just caught up with the manga Deathnote by Obata Takeshi (art) & Ooba Tsugumi (story). Good stuff, though really really dialogue heavy which makes reading it slowww.

FMA49 "Beyond the Gate" was really good and gave enough hints so we can theorize on the big plot twist that will probably happen next week and explain the whole story.

really cool but fisheye-sugiru :P

At night I went to the late-night-cheaper movie showing of I, Robot. Overall I thought for a big Hollywood movie it actually turned out all-right. The story was interesting although tottered out near the end, and while I thought Smith's delivery made it seemed like he was reading off cue cards, the actual dialogue was cute and I smiled a few times. Lastly the special effects were really impressive. It wasn't a fantastic film, but I'd say it's better than any of the big budget Hollywood films from this summer or even this year so far, and also a far more enjoyable outing into the future than Speilberg's last attempt.

Sunday I felt like having some KFC so I decided to try driving to the next town over which is Goshogawara. Along the way I kinda missed the exit so I just kept driving...and kept going...and kept going. Passing lots of gorgeous scenery filled with cliffsides, tunnels (woohoo a 1st for me), lakes, and forests I arrived around Aomori (I think there is a faster way to get there, but that requires expressways which I assume you must pay for).

Driving in West Aomori was nice. You had wide roads most of the time:

Although other times the roads were small and the traffic sucks:

But all was good as I got to eat at a Bikkuri (surprised) Donkey resturaunt. There used to be one of these 5 mins from my old dorm in Nagoya so it was kinda a nostalgic experience. Also I give them credit for 3 things that stick out compared to the local food places here:

--Pepperoni pizza (I have yet to find a pizza place with pepperoni around here)
--Seasoned fries = awesome
--Huge sodas. The one in the picture is the regular size which is probably 2-3x larger than the average Japan regular size.

So yeah, it was as my friend John wears on his hat "Good Eatin'"

A few odds and ends pictures:

And then I went to Toys'r'us for the first time I think (maybe I've been in one in Nagoya, don't remember).

They actually have a pretty huge selection of games including some older rarer stuff. But it's all full retail price which sucks.

Though I did find "Shadow of Memories" for 198yen (~$1.75) at a Super Denkido. Probably the cheapest game I've ever seen, and I've heard it's a good adventure game to boot (by the person who just directed Suikoden IV). ^__^

When the kids sing out the future

2004-09-17T11:27:00.000+09:00

Tribute albums are always interesting to listen to. They let you hear different takes on songs you like, and they also give you a little insight into the bands covering them.

But doing a cover song for a tribute album is not an easy thing. On one hand you're supposed to keep the song similar enough to be recognized, but yet if it's too similar it's boring. So you want to strive for a unique sound of your own that still contains the energy of the original. What I would consider a good example of a tribute album is Take Warning - A Tribute to Operation Ivy. In that tribute album each of the bands combined their musical style with the feeling of the original songs.

Well yesterday Synchronized Rocks - A Tribute to The Pillows came out and I've been giving it a few listens and here's my thoughts:

1. Runners High by Straight Liner: Pretty good vocals and guitar, but the drum track is bleh. Also this falls into the 'sounds a little too close to the original' category. B

2. Funny Bunny by Ellegarden: I'm pretty happy with this song. A-

3. Tomoesato no josei Mary by The Piece with Kuhara Kazuyuki: Sadly I suck and haven't heard the original 1990 version of this song ^^; My pre-1994 Pillows knowledge is barely passable. Still it's a good song. B

4. Vain Dog (in rain drop) by Noodles: Good stuff, the original version of the song was already pretty good and I think Noodles do a good enough job on their take of it. B+

5. Kono yo no hate made by YO-KING: Original song was great, so it was kinda hard to mess up. If anything it just falls into the 'too close' sounding. B-

6. Carnival by Chikuzen Sato: Pretty good, though not amazing. B

7. Little Busters by Going Under Ground: Arghh, the original song worked because of the energetic shouting of the lyrics. This slower, softer, duller emo version of the song is really disappointing. Especially since it's one of The Pillows signature songs. C

8. Our Love and Peace by Salon Music: Awesome. The original song was pretty off-beat and neat so Salon music giving a grungy, electronical version of it is really a cool song. Probably the most unique song on the album. A

9. Hybrid Rainbow by Bump of Chicken: My favorite Pillows song so I was expecting a lot and while I think their version is a bit to similar, the vocals are great and the new take on the guitar riffs is nice. Overall a satisfying job. A-

10. Strange Chameleon by Mr. Children: I've never liked Mr. Children so it comes as no surprise that I find their vesion slow take on Strange Chameleon to be mediocre. C

11. Sad Sad Kiddie by "YUTA.TOSHI.CHIHO and JIRO'S SESSION (from GLAY JIRO)": Pretty cool piano take on this song. Very different feel from the original, although I don't think the original was that great of a song ^^;. B+

----
So overall the album is ok. Maybe around a B level though maybe a B-/C+ is more appropriate. The biggest issue is just that at least 50% of the songs sound way too similar to the originals and thus are not very interesting. Also the song selection is mediocre IMO. This is a tribute to the Pillows having been releasing music for 15 years, so why are 80% of the tracks from their 2-3 albums that were released between 1999-2001. The lack of early Pillows songs is dissapointing and the complete lack of ANY songs of Thank You My Twilight (their incredible 2002 album) really sucks.

In good news their new Album "Good Dreams" is gonna be out at the start of November. These days they're pumping out songs fast with an album a year plus an EP in the middle of 2004.

Speaking of music, lately I've been listening to Mike Park's "For the Love of Music". I've always held much respect for Mike Park, ever since I first heard his lyrics in Skankin' pickle, the weaving of strong political and personal feelings through music has always strongly impressed me. Then you have how he built up Asian Man Records and all his support for Plea for Peace and you see someone who is not only intelligent but who makes every effort to change things. So I've always enjoyed his work.

Anyways, I've always been in and out of music throughout the years. Sometimes I'd be listening to a ton of albums for 3-5 years and knew all about what every band I liked was doing, and then other times I'd kinda distance myself off from the american music industry. So I was kinda not paying attention in 2003 when this solo album by Mike Park was released. But before I left for Japan I realized my brother had a Mike Park cd I had never heard, so I started listening to it.

Here I am 2 months later and still playing it quite often. The album is fantastic. Though I wouldn't go as far as saying its the best work he's done, about 1/2 the songs are A++ and the rest are all still in the A range. The lyrics are moving and easy to identify with as always with his work, and the arrangements on some of the tracks (like the 1st track "I'm supposed to be there too") are beautiful. Another amazing effort by an amazing person.

BRAIN FREEZE >_<

2004-09-14T22:17:00.000+09:00

So Ghost in the Shell: Innocence came out on dvd today and I gave the film a watch in the evening...my brain still hurts :(

Basically Oshii managed to create the most difficult dialogue I've ever seen in a Japanese film. I don't think I'd be exaggerating if I said 50% of the dialogue is quotes from famous old literature or really old Japanese proverbs that all use the classical verb endings like 'arazu'. The other 50% is full of 6-8 kanji long technical and government terms. Needless to say I had to put Japanese subtitles on just to get any idea of what the hell everyone was talking about. Add in the fact that the film really isn't about a straight-foward plot but rather brings up themes and questions that you are supposed to ponder on your own, and you understand where my headache comes from.

Still from what I could make of it, it was a interesting film with some amazing scenes but I think it falls short of Oshii's live action stuff like Avalon and like the 1st GiTS film it's much weaker than the incredible GiTS:Standalone Complex TV series (including 2nd gig). The character designs, voice actors, directing and story in the TV series is just leagues above both films. Although to be fair, Innocence has almost nothing to do with the GiTS universe and Oshii could've made this exact same film about dolls on his own with different leads and it would've turned out the same.

One thing that was really helpful preface to the film was this review:

A couple of weeks before the release of Mamoru Oshii's eagerly awaited follow-up to Ghost in the Shell, the cult cyberpunk anime that proved such a key influence on the Matrix films, an exhibition entitled Dolls of Innocence opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. It showcased a number of works whose influence is heavily saturated within this second movie, including the twisted, disproportionate foetal forms of Hiroko Igeta, the grotesque ensemble of transmogrified bodyparts stitched together ad hoc by Etsuko Miura and the most crucial impetus according to Oshii, the heavily eroticised doll sculptures of German surrealist Hans Bellmer (1902-1975).

Walking around the Dolls of Innocence exhibition was a singularly disquieting experience. Looking about quickly, the forms of the museum visitors seemed to mingle indistinguishably with those of the figures they'd come to see. A closer glance revealed the crucial differences: gaping body cavities held bounded by wooden rib cages, limbs grafted onto torsos by crude epoxy ball and socket arrangements, and in many cases missing altogether. Whilst the figures looked lifelike, such lacunae highlighted the obvious: they were clearly not alive. Yet as their glassy eyes glared from frozen, expressionless masks at the visitors from every corner of the gallery, there remained the air of something conscious, something knowing about their presence. This is the essence of Oshii's new film: that whilst what marks us out as human is clearly tangible, it remains as impossible to pinpoint or quantify as such abstract notions as "innocence".

Much could be made of Japan's doll obsession. From its traditional roots in celebrations such as that of the Hina Matsuri (or Girl's Day) every March when families take out their ornamental figures to ensure the happiness and well-being of their daughters, to everyone's favourite synthesised pet, the robotic dog created by Sony known as the AIBO, the nation seems driven with this urge to reconstruct the real without having to deal with the messy parts. Who was it that pointed out that the geisha represented the ultimate desire to reduce a woman's role to that of a purely functional "living doll"? I even heard recently that someone over here had managed to build a life-size robotic female whose chest heaved up and down to emulate her breathing. It would seem that Oshii's vision of the future isn't so far off after all.

Innocence features a lot of dolls, and their usage within the format of an animated film raises a host of interesting questions as to the numerous levels of distinction that can be made between the authentic and the simulated. Strictly speaking, a doll's purpose is the representation of the human form. For all their strivings for realism, dolls are an abstraction in the same way that animation is an abstraction of live action cinema (which in turn is an abstraction of the real thing, reality, a theme Oshii explored in his previous anti-animation Avalon). In both, there remains the question of balance between the realistic representation of the object and the removal of those niggling, redundant details. What is stripped out, the mind of the individual human observer fills in.

Oh and I finished Dororo. Bottom line is it was great, full review by me is here.

Been a while

2004-09-12T17:08:00.000+09:00

Well due to the workings of the week, it seems like weekends are my safe haven for writing up stuff here. So expect most updates on sunday.

Breakdown of last week was something like this:
Monday - Goshogawara Japanese lessons. Very cool. All the english speakers got matched up with 2-3 Japanese speakers and then the Japanese people helped the english people learn Japanese. For the most part I just practiced conversation although one tough thing with normal Japanese speakers are that they don't know how they should teach you. Since we were having conversations at a normal pace every one and a while they'd throw out "use this instead of that" and I'd thank them, but for the most part we were just talking for an hour or so. Then when I asked the main guy in my group for some advice he said "hmm, sounds good but sometimes your speech sounds odd. Also you have a limited set of sentence connectors (which is a problem I have in english too)" Which was a helpful, but I mean just knowing I sound "odd" at times doesn't really tell me what I should do to fix it ^^;; I guess I'll just keeping having conversations with them and improving a little at a time if I can. For the last hour of the class, they asked me if I had any material to practice from. So I took out the somewhat new short story in the Kino no Tabi series by Keiichi Sigsawa entitled, "キノの旅 the Beautiful World -記憶の国 Their Memories-".

We started reading this together (with me reading and them helping me on the kanji I didn't know) but then every 1/2 page of so we would hit a kanji [i]that even they didn't know[/i]. At first they felt they were kinda surprised but as we started hitting more and more of these kanji they turned to me and said "Don't read this book, it's way beyond lvl.2 of the Japanese test and even hard for Japanese people to read". As much as I'd love to take their advice, since I want to be a translater in the future, I'm gonna need to be able to read stuff like this, so I'm gonna keep with it I do think.

Tues - Hmm, nothing much that I can recall.

Wed - Typhoon came and, unlike the previous one, actually did some damage. Nothing major around here but stuff was knocked around left and right. Wednesday was the day of the English Speech Contest in Ajigasawa and so with the power of the wind pushing us we pushed on to the speech contest building. The speech contest itself was pretty good and the english level of most of the students was pretty solid. Personally I think the way the contest was judged need a little work as some of the results were baffling. But everyone had fun and even the kids who lost didn't seem horribly heart-broken so all was good I guess.

The typhoon which was so strong it even knocked down a ummm....bus time-table thingy...

Ajigasawa's shore during the typhoon.

The post-typhoon-induced-ocean-waves were really amazing to behold. Beat the heck out of every other time I'd been to a beach. Seeing waves tall and fast crash one after another and wash up on shore was very cool indeed.

Thurs - Normal school day and then at night I got my car! Woohoo, being mobile sure is fun. The first thing I had to do was take a drive with my instructor where he yelled at me every 2 secs for not doing 'this' or 'that'. Basically it was like driving with your parents for the first time ^^;; After dropping him off and heading to the parking area somewhat near my home I was able to take a night drive to the local mall area of JUSCO and there I practiced my left-handed stick shifting and right handed signaling a bit. 4 Days later, today, I still need work but I've gotten pretty comfortable with driving around and not hitting cars/people/bikes/signs/animals.

A 1996 (or maybe '94, I'm still unsure) Subaru Imprezza 4WD. They did a good job fixing it up and cleaning it and the free cd player they installed is pretty nice.

Fri - Normal school as usual and then I picked up Sega's new game developed partly by RED entertainment (Sakura Taisen/Gungrave) and partly by Overworks (Shinobi/Kunoichi) called Dororo.

The story is about a man who trades the body parts of his unborn son to 48 majin (demon gods) in exchange for the power to conquor Japan. The baby is born and tossed down a river where as woodsman picks it up and raises it. The baby is missing 48 body parts and so the woodsman builds them out of wood for him (the manga was in the 1960 explaining the lack of science ^^;;), then the boy grows up and finds out that the 48 majin took his body and by defeating each one he will gain a body part back.

Adapted frin a 1960 manga by probably the most famous manga-ka in Japan, Tezuka Osamu (Astroboy, Metropolis), it features character designs re-envisioned by the author of Blade of the Immortal: Hiraoki Samura and monster designs by Mahiro Maeda (Blue Sub No.6, Gatekeepers, Last Exile, Animatrix short #2). With those kind of people behind it, it would be hard to go wrong. Well then again it is Sega and Sega these days is >_< Luckily besides some camera/control/hit detection issues the rest of the game is pretty fun. A good story told through many well directed cutscenes featuring the voices of famous seiyuu like Tomokazu Seki and Akio Otsuka; A large movelist that develops over time, tons of cool bosses (48+ !!); and for once a 2ndary character who doesn't suck. Probably my favorite Sega game since Shinobi or Kunoichi.

In all the time I've been in Japan in 2001/2002 and now I've never seen this in person once, even after many trips to Tokyo's Akihabara district. The box goes for about $180-200+ on Ebay and I was able to nab it for 7000yen (around ~$65-70). Now I just need to search for the MGS1 Premium Box while in Akihabara so that when I get my MGS3 box I will be complete! ^__^

Lastly for anyone who is familar with Berserk there is a new AWESOME trailer for the upcoming PS2 game. Looks like the game will be covering the manga from where the anime stopped (around vol.13) to where the manga was about ago (vol.26). The trailer features a new song from one of the greatest Japanese musicians ever Susumu Hirasawa. Link to trailer is here: http://www.gametrailers.com/gt_vault/t_berserk_jp.html

2-kyuu Kanji progress:

300/1000

Hmmm...

2004-09-05T13:43:00.000+09:00

So friday was a nice dinner at a Korean resturant with the Board of Education employees. I thought the food was pretty good (never really had Korean food before), and as long as I didn't ask what I was eating everything was fine :)

The thing about these work-group social get-togethers (referred to as an 'enkai') is that trying to find the correct degree of alchohol that should be drank is very difficult yet necessary for the foreigner living in Japan. For foreigners, the situation usual breaks down into 2 categories:

A. Foreigner A drinks too much and ends up doing Karaoke all night with his fellow workers, yet the next day cannot remember what he sang or how he arrived home.

B. Foreigner B drinks too little and ends up sitting for 2-3 hours at a table with a bunch of drunk Japanese who are yelling and laughing entirely in heavy accents so the foreigner cannot understand them and is bored out of his or her mind.

Neither situation is very favorable for the foreigner. So I guess the ideal is to hit a middleground where the conversatations are funny even if you don't understand them, yet you can still walk straight. Personally I think finding the correct level is quite difficult and thus I think despite having only been here a month I'm already over enkais.

Saturday was mainly sleep and rest day. Which I think is one of the best type of days there is. Recouperating lost energy and eating well always makes a nice day.

Music:

I picked up my tickets to the Arabaki rock festival in Sendai (October 9th) today. So far only 6 bands are known, the biggest being The Pillows. Yet going by the band list from the previous years it seems like there will be about 30 bands playing all day across 3 stages. This should be pretty awesome because A. It's 3 days after my b-day, so it's like I actual have somewhere cool to go on my birthday weekend and B. Monday is a holiday so it's a nice 3 day weekend trip to Sendai filled with a day of music and then a day or exploring, sight-seeing, shopping :P

Travel:
I have officially made my Tokyo plans for TGS weekend (Sept 23rd-26th). I'll be staying in the most ghetto hotel ever made but hey it's ~$24 a night in the middle of Tokyo so I can't complain :) Still need to book my Shinkansen (bullet train) tickets, but I don't think they'll be sold out.

Games:

Finished Suikoden IV during the weekend. Overall the game had some annoying issues (loading, crap ship control, encounter rate at sea), but the rest of the game was good enough to look past the flaws (something that near impossible to do with III). While at it's heart the game is still a simple rpg with a unique touch of gathering the 108 stars of destiny, the nicely written expansive world view that connects each of these 100+ characters and connects even to the other characters of the previous games is really what makes the game shine. I think it falls in the ranks as follows S2 > S4 > S1 > S3.

Next up on the rpg front is either Paper Mario 2 or Rockman (Megaman) X: Command Mission. But I think I'll take a few days of working on my SF3:3S parrying and KOF3D
juggling skills before I get into another rpg :P

Growing Up On a Couch

2004-09-02T16:23:00.000+09:00

Today I picked up a SD memory stick and a USB adapter
for it so I can transfer all the pictures I take with
my cellphone onto my computer. This is convienent as
unlike my bulky camera, I have my phone on my 24/7 so
I'll be taking a lot of pics with it. Sadly the
1.3megapixel camera with no flash has absolutely awful
image quality but if you scale it down enough it looks
decent I guess ^^;;

Yesterday was a pretty normal school day until 6th
period POTATOE PICKING :) Because the entire school
contains less than 100 hundred people staff included,
6th period is 'activity period' and it happens that
today was the day to pick the potatoes which they had
planted some time ago. Everyone seemed to have a
great time and I think it really helps the students
bond since they are so few and everyone knows each
other.

It's definitely quite a different experience than what I remember of school.

Not much else lately. Today was the 1st day of
"English club" which just consisted of a few students
interviewing me for an English newspaper they were
working on. I think the club will be great if I can
just think of things to do with it. My predecessor
used to teach them cooking and considering I can't
cook for the life of me I'll have to think of
something else that carries the English tag on it.

Tomorrow should be interesting as after work I was invited to go with the board of education to a good korean resturant in the next town over. Only downside is that I was told to bring between 3000-5000yen for the food which isn't even all you can eat nor all you can drink. That's a lot more than my 600yen hamburger combos ;.; Oh well I guess they pay us enough here.

Also school been pretty busy so my kanji studying still needs work:
Kanji down - 90
Kanji left - 910 :(

Waiting for you ('you' being the typhoon)

2004-08-31T14:18:00.000+09:00

Sadly I have yet to see any cows or tractors fly by yet. I guess I'll have to be satisfied with seeing a few plastic bags scuttle down the street. Typhoon 16 has begun, but as of now it's still warming up. Rain is pouring and the wind is pounding but overall I feel pretty safe inside my old rickety home. From talking with the other teachers it seems like flooding isn't too much a worry here, although "you're house may get a little wet" was told to me by one teacher. Hopefully that doesn't become the understatement of the year :P

Anyhow besides waiting at home hoping to see my first real typhoon, I don't have much to do so I guess I'll dedicate today as JLPT 2kyuu study day 1! Or in the Japanese style of making overly large banners for simple statements: 日本語能力試験二級一日勉強及び精神訓練第一日 (nihongo nouryoku shiken ni kyuu ichinichi benkyou oyobi seishin kunren daichi hi). Which would directly translate to something like: Day one of studying and spiritual discipline for the JLPT lvl.2 test.

Oh and here's the pictures from day 2 of the festival:

I love being a government worker

2004-08-30T15:19:00.000+09:00

So with the news that big typhoon 16 is going to be crashing through Aomori tomorrow, the school I'm at today has cancelled classes tomorrow and is telling their students not to go outside.

Meanwhile I call up my supervisor to see what's going on at tomorrow's school and he says they are following suit for cancelling all classes. So I tell my supervisor I'll call him when I wake up tomorrow (since he's helping me mail out the JLPT form) and he's like "Won't I just see you at the office?" and I'm like ".........." and he's like "Are you taking a holiday?". So I guess in the middle of the typhoon tomorrow I will be riding my bike to the Board of Education.

*Tuesday Edit*Though here at the BoE I've been told I can go home and sleep. So I'm doing real work for now but I'll leave after lunch. Being a public employee has never been so good.

Soko ni tateita

2004-08-29T14:56:00.000+09:00

Ah, relaxtion. No festivals, no work, no parties, just a day to relax and catch up on house chores and of course sleep :)

So friday went well and the flaming torches were not as bad as I imagined. As long as you kept them swinging fast you'd be ok. The only thing a little off-putting was how windy it is here and how much power wind has on the movement of flames.

So saturday was nice, long, and memorable. But instead of writing about it I'll do a pictorial.

The day started with me riding my bike to this Temple/house owned by the head of the board of education.

We then proceeded to make torches for the stage area:

Next we moved lots of wood, wires, and steel to the Jr. High school grounds and started building things. Kinda like shop class but on a bigger scale ^^;;

After that we returned back to the temple for some lunch and charm-making. We also got to make our own bamboo sake cups which would be for the post-festival party:

Returning to the high school we setup the flags:

Now with most of the place set up we went and watched the parade. The post-office hourse was a nice touch (keep in mind this was the horse fair festival which should explain the following pictures):

Not sure what this had to do with Horses, but Mr. Beer and Mr. Sake here seemed like they were having a good time:

After the parade we headed back to the school where all the parade horses were lined up:

Then the show started and we all shuffled to the school to change. See I hadn't realized beforehand that we were all going to be running around in the male equivalent of the g-string (think Sumo). Not too mention the wind was blowing strong freezing wind at us. But at least were able to wear pants + jackets to fend off the cold until the last minute. Here's a somewhat blurry shot of us all:

For the next part I don't have any pictures since I really couldn't take a camera while I was running around near-naked swinging two torches in front of the whole town. The town's photographer took a bunch of pictures and will be giving me some. But I'm not sure I want to expose myself to the internet like I did to the town, so I'll probably still leave them off ^^;;

Anyways it was a blast being out there. Before the event I felt a bit nervous but I think the utter freezing-ness that we all experienced after we took our clothes off really did a good job taking our mind off anything else. First me and 3 other guys lifted one of those platform things which normally hold statues, but this time had a miko (Japanese female priestess) sitting on top of it. We walked out slowly, did a full circle of the area and then set it down and let the priestess off. Following that we ran off with the wooden platform quickly and grabbed our torches and lit them on fire. The heat really felt good after freezing for so long and with all the town screaming and cheering it really got us excited. We ran and screamed and jumped around with our fire and then in the middle dropped the torches and ran to the front and threw our charms to the audience. Then we did some more dancing and ran back.

Next 2 of these guys got a turn:

Then finally they lit the manji on fire and started lighting the horses on fire:

We were pretty damn up close to the fire because we were behind the stage. Needless to say we had to avoid flying flaming projictiles (which was both funny as we'd all be running around and yelling "abunai, abunai" (dangerous, dangerous though if this was an american situation it'd be more like "oh shit, oh shit" :P). Here's a picture of us in the heat:

Lastly the fireworks started to go off:

During the commotion we ran back to the school and changed once again. We wiped off the face paint except mine wouldn't come off :( So let me go home and take a shower, yet it still didn't come off 100% and even now my eyes look kinda creepy :P After that I jogged back to the temple so we could have our post festival celebration filled with moderate drinking, much laughter, and an overall satisfaction that today was a very good day.

Then came the 10 hours of sleep which were wondeful ^__^
-----
Life:
Today I had my first experience with buying concert tickets in Japan. It's actually pretty nice since you just go to your local convinience store and use an automated machine. In my situation it was a little more confusing because through buying a cd single I got first dibs at tickets which were normally not on sale so I had to call a phone number and guess my way around an automated system to get a reservation # and then head for the Lawsons. But in the end I got my tickets and everything was good! Though concert prices are a bit more than I am used to paying the states (here they are around $35-40 US for even smaller shows [though I think they include a drink or two]).

Games:

Also to my unbelievable surprise my local we-don't-know-what-a-video-game-is videogame store, actually was partaking in the MGS3 pre-order campaign and had still had some premium box pre-orders left (take that playstation.com/amazon.com!). So in Dec I will finally be able to get my hands on a Japanese LE box (MGS2 LE and Xenosaga ep1 LE came out while I was in Japan last time. But even though I lined up in the snow the day they came out, no LE's were available >_< ). The MGS3 Premium box will have "...2 kinds of Deluxe Booklets, 1 Special Footage DVD, 1/144 scale Display Colored Model and the MGS3 game itself, all for 13,440 Yen" (www.game-science.com). Also for pre-ordering you get a free soundtrack cd now containing 6 tracks + 1 music video + 1 camoflauge for when the game comes out. The music is actually surprisingly awesome ('escape' is :D~~~~~) (I thought the MGS2 music worked great in game, but was a tad boring when listening to the soundtrack), though the Japanese version of "Snake Eater" is really really horrible :( Also Japan is too trusting of people in their society. In the US if free promo stuff is being given out for pre-orders, you have to put money down to prevent people from just going to 100 stores and getting a bunch of promo stuff and selling it on ebay. Here you pay nothing and you get free stuff. I guess Japan is a scam-free society @_@

Been too busy to play much this week. Tried getting some more time into Suikoden IV but I ran into a card-playing character, and I'll be damned if that wasn't one of the most addictive mini-games I've played. Leading me to 2 hours of doing nothing but playing cards ^^;

Also been messing around with King of the Fighters 3D which I still can't judge yet as it's just too bizarre to make heads or tails of the fighting system. But I can at least say it made a better transition to 3d than any of the other fighting series. Though wtf is up with Terry speaking in english. I want my "Barn knakuru" and "Are you ok? Basta woulfff!" :(

FMA fighting game was released but from what I've read it seems like the roster is really small. Guess I'll wait for Dream Carnival 2 like I did with Naruto 2 GC.

Oh and I don't play FFXI (still haven't gotten into the whole pay-per-month games) but their version of Bahamut is fucking gorgeous IMO. Having Yoshitaka Amano doing the art was such a good choice. I hope they get him again for a single player FF in the future:

Music:
I've been giving the GO!GO!7188 new single "Aoi Kiretsu" a few listens and well it's not bad. It's not one of their most distinct tunes, and it actually reminds me a bit of their 1st album stuff when they felt a little mainstream. Then again I think their more pop-punk stuff from their first 2 albums eclipses the grunge-punk off their third album so it might not be a bad thing. While the single isn't going to leave a big impression it doesn't perk my interest for their new album in October.

TV:
Haven't had a chance to watch anything :( I do have the new FMA though so gonna try to watch that tonight. Still need to catch up on the other Bones shows' Mars Daybreak and Kurau. I noticed at HMV that Ghost in the Shell:Innonce comes out on dvd in 2 weeks on September 14th. Personally I think Oshii is a fantastic writer (Avalon, Jin-roh, GiTS: SAC 2nd gig has shown me that) but an average director (GiTS, Avalon) but since he wrote Innocence unlike the first GiTS which he only directed I'm definitely looking forward to seeing it.

As close to Abe no Seimei as I'll ever be

2004-08-27T14:59:00.000+09:00

So yesterday after doing a few more introductions at work, I got picked up by my supervisor to get involved in day#1 of the actual 馬市祭り(umaichi matsuri). First we went to a park where a stage had already been set up with carnival like food boths forming a line on both sides down to it. Then we started setting up a few torches and ceremonial items for which people could put offers onto. Then we got suhffled to the house/kinda temple of one of the older residents of the area.

At this point my supervisor tells me to get undressed as I will be re-outfitted in proper clothing for the night. This proper clothing was basically an onmyouji looking outfit complete with the hat :) From there myself and 4 others dressed as shinkan went to a row of 5 seats and then sat down and made ourselves stoic looking. I had asked what we should be doing and was told that we just need to sit and stare forward. So that's what we did (well as well as we could, the bugs crawling on us were kinda distracting). Anyhow next an official comes out and reads an opening (there was a full crowd of people watching at this point), then they give speeches/light torches, then 2 guys in full cavemen-like straw outfits come out with wooden masks and spears and do a pretty cool dance. Finally people put offerings on the table and the opening ceremony for the next 3 days of this festival concluded.

Today is the 2nd day of the festival and while I'm just going to be practicing (with fire) in about an hour, fireworks were going off in the morning and I think will be continuing all day. Although because it's the middle of the day you can't really see them that well, but everyone is pretty lively here because of it.

Anyway, my supervisor snapped some photos of me in cermonial gear so once he burns me the pics I'll throw them up here. Until then you'll have to look at the above pic and then photoshop me in, in your mind.

Oh and I got my JLPT application in the mail so woohoo! I guess I'll be traveling to Sendai in Dec. to test if I've actually kept my studies up in these first few months.

Can the child within my heart rise above...

2004-08-26T09:46:00.000+09:00

Yesterday was the first day I got to interact with my students and all I have to say is...it was awesome!

I did my self-intro in three 9th grade classes and while the first one went less than stellar. The 2nd and 3rd ones were a blast. I've always been more of a fun over learning person, so the main part of my lesson was just to keep the kids laughing and keep them interested. I think it worked as it seemed like they were having a lot of fun and so was I. Did they actually learn any English? Probably not and they most likely think my brother lives in a recording studio built underground in a garden, but hey at least they know I have a brother :)

I gotta say though, knowing Japanese has helped me in the classrooms so much so far. I'll be doing one thing and then a kid shouts something in the back of the class in Japanese and I'll immeadiately reply back in English. This brings shouts of "びっくり通じたんだ！”(Wow, he understands!), which then led to certain kids in the front row having conversations with me while was giving my lesson. One guy asked me about coming to Aomori and music, and after talking with him for a bit (him Japanese, me English) he shouts out to the JTE "Look Sensei! We're communicating!". I dunno, stuff like that just made me smile.

So I ended the day covered in pink/yellow/white chalk from head to toe (I had chalk on my tie even ^^; ). But it was great fun. I also did some speech contest practice with this one student who is reading a story called "The little prince" which surprisingly shared very similar themes to Katamari Damashii [ http://katamaridamacy.jp/contents.html ] which makes me wonder if they were partially inspired by this story.

After school I went and did day of a three day practice for Kizukuri's Umaichi Matsuri. It's one of those festivals where an old chanting song plays and men and woman dressed as old shinto priests (神官) do a specific walk/run/dance with giant flaming torches. The women get to use one long bamboo stick so they won't burn themselves while the guys get to hold two short bamboo sticks you have to watch out not to catch yourself on fire. It was great when my supervisor started telling me about a Kizukuri local who burned his whole arm up good a few years back in this festival. The dance thing isn't that hard itself, except for the sections of "free tricks" where you're supposed to make up your own tricks with the fire. Also you have to hold the sticks outwards and slanted up or else the fire will creep up and get your hands/arm. Luckily we did not use actual fire this day, but friday practice and the actual event on saturday will. My supervisor turns to me and say "If you start to catch on fire, shout 'atsueeee'"

I tell him that if I catch on fire, speaking correct Japanese will not be the most pressing thing on my mind...

And Some Days You Feed on a Tree Frog...

2004-08-24T19:44:00.000+09:00

One thing that's cool about living up here is the irregularity of the weather. Cloud tend to always be passing by and usually at pretty fast speeds. Due to this you get 5 min weather spasms at times. It'll be a gorgeous clear day and then suddenly it'll start raining hard. But no need to grab that umbrella, because most likely within 5-10 mins it'll be nice and clear again and the puddles will evaporate. I mean I left my bike out in the yard for a weekend while a 'Typhoon' passed by yet when I came back the bike was totally dry already. It's actually pretty nice weather since I don't have to worry about being rained in all day, and it makes for good pictures too! :P

So today was first day of school for me. Being the 'I need to start off on a good note' person that I am, I woke up at 5:45am and got to the teachers room by about 7:10. I really had no clue when anything started except that I should be there by 7:40. Well nothing really started until about 8:15ish, but luckily there was another teacher there so we made small chat. One thing that caught me off guard was just how many teachers there are in this school. I mean I swear I said "Ohayou Gozaimasu" at least 20+ times. So trying to memorize everyone's names will be a fair challenge in these next few weeks, not too mention that I should probably get some omiyage stuff since I only have like 3 things left from America and that won't work for 20 people :(

Opening ceremonies was actually really cool I thought. At least it was quite a different experience than ceremonies in CA. I got called up and did a speech in shaky English and shakier Japanese which I think turned out ok...hopefully. One thing that didn't help was the principle introducing me as "This guy did 4 years of Japanese, and lived in Japan for 6 months. So he's great at Japanese!" Yea, and then I went on the stage and gave my speech in less than stellar Japanese ^^;;

Afterwards I didn't have any classes so they told me to just sit in the teachers room all day. Determined to not waste the entire day, I asked my main JTE if I could sit in on her 1st class to get a feel for how Japanese classes are. She agreed and I went to the back of the class and sat through it. Personally I had a blast :) I mean I guess it's because I'm still fresh out of college so I identify more with the student side than teaching side, but the class was a mess with people shouting out jokes all the time (which were often pretty funny :P ), falling asleep, and giving each other signals across the class. I mean maybe it will bother me when I'm actually teaching it, but personally I just felt the class was full of energy, lively, and most of all fun. I'd rather have a class where I can laugh a few times a period than a dry reading text one. Anyway's I'll find out tomorrow as I'm doing self-intro in three 3rd year classes.

I also practiced with a few students for the speech contest and while they were both good. I wondered why some of the 3rd years still choose to just recite a story rather than write their own. The two students I've met who wrote their own speeches just have a lot more charisma than reading out of a language book which doesn't even have the best writing in the first place. Still I'm really enjoying working with all the students on their speeches, and hopefully I'll be able to go to the speech contest and cheer them on.

Only thing that put a slight damper on the day was that I was getting up to leave at 4pm (school ended at 3:10) since I needed to go to the Board of Eduction, but the vice-principle stopped me and gave me this "We all stay until 4:45pm" speech. Eventually I convinced him that the BoE would be closed by post 4:45pm and he let me go, but I have a feeling he's not going to be very friendly about 'bending' the rules at times to help out.

As a side note. Metal Gear Solid 3 finally got it's Japanese date set through a slip on HMV's part. It looks like it'll be Dec. 2nd. And the regular edition will have this cover:

(I'm assuming the platinum edition will just be a big black box with the title like MGS/MGS2)

It's a decent cover I guess, but Shinkawa's already done a ton of cool art for the game like this:

and for the maybe 1 person reading this who hasn't seen it and even cares, there's a pretty new & good trailer from one of the German game cons. English dub of the trailer is here while the Japanese version can be found here

Cheers,
--David

Fool on the planet

2004-08-23T22:41:00.000+09:00

Well, today was the search for the ever elusive car. This is mainly due to the fact that despite the awesome speed skillz of my cheap basket-included Japanese bike, I will probably not be able to do long distance rides when the heavy poundings of snow comes in.

So going off a tip on a good deal, I got all prepared at the office to make the trip to Aomori by bus to check out some cars. The first step of this should've been the easiest one, I just needed to take a bus to Goshogawara the next town over. The people at my work told me where the stop was and what time to be there.

So inevitably I followed their wonderful advice and waited at the Uramachi bus stop and caught the 14:22 bus for the today. I didn't really think to look at the sign of where it was going because hey it was exactly at the place and time my co-workers said it would be.

At about 14:36 when according to my time table the bus should've been stopping at Goshogawara I noticed that we were somewhere that seemed unfamilar to me. Lots of trees and mountains, and soon I even began to see the ocean. Reality struck that maybe, just maybe, I fucked up ^^; So I got off at the next big landmark-life building (to make it easy to explain on a cell phone where I was) and it turns out I had gone to Ajigasawa which is the opposite direction. How did this happen I wondered?

Well later I found out that the bus stop near me is actually TWO bus stops. One on one side of the street and one on the other. They both share the same name and buses arrive within a minute of each other. The difference is that the buses on one side go in one direction, and the other side go in the other direction. Fantastic! Well it's actually not that bad of an idea, but it would've been nice if someone had pointed this out to me before I went on my small journey.

So I just went back to work instead and finished up the day. Luckily I did get free fresh squid dipped in mayonaise at Ajigasawa...

Though afterwork the night was pretty good as my supervisor stopped by telling me he had found a car at the local shop where a friend of his worked. It had holes in it, and was missing most of it's lights. But I got their word that they'll fix it up to brand new and evacuate all the gigantic spiders that were inhabiting it. So I think that deal will go through and in a few weeks I will be mobile at a speed more than 5mph.

Also did speech practice at Tateoka chuu-gakkou today. The kids there were even better than at Nishi chuu-gakkou. This one 1st year kid seriously fooled me into thinking he was American or at least had an English speaking parent. Turns out both were wrong and that instead his awesomeness is a result of going to private school to learn english for the last 3 years. Jeez, I really hope this kid wins the prize because not only was he good, but he really got into and was full of energy like someone on a TV commercial.

Tomorrow is the opening ceremonies for my base school of Kizukuri chuu-gakkou. Gotta be there in a suit at 7:30ish so I currently am trying to scrounge up some kind of a speech. Though I have no clue what happens after the opening cermonies so I'll just look forward to being very surprised and very confused throughout tomorrow.

Signing off,
--David

Didn't take any pictures today so I'll leave you with an image of the crazy Japanese dancing robot "Robosapien"

Pictures of my house

2004-08-22T14:23:00.000+09:00

Due to popular demand I am including pictures of my house. But since I don't want them crowding up the top, scroll to the bottom of the page to find them.

Because this blog thing can't hold all the posts I've made it kinda knocks the older posts away. So here's a direct link to the pictures:

http://bebpo.blogspot.com/2004/08/where-i-live.html

Smiling when your friends are watching

2004-08-22T12:28:00.000+09:00

*Trying a new format for a bit. Lets see how it flows.

Life:
So this past week has been pretty calm. On monday I practiced speeches with the Nishi-chuugakko kids and they really were pretty darn good. Tomorrow I'll be doing the same at Tateoka-chuugakko and it'll be interesting to see how the english level compares between the two schools.

After that there was the Aomori Orientation which was fun. Not much to say about it other than there was lots of meetings and a bit of drinking in the evenings. Only notable I did outside those two is going to an Onsen for the first time. The whole nakedness thing was kinda bizzarre at first, but more annoying was just hot fucking hot and steamy the indoor room gets. Being in there for just 5 mins made my head start to spin so I went outside to the outdoor onsen and that was pretty nice...until it started raining ^^;;

Movies & TV:

On saturday I rode my bike down to the movie theaters to see the new Naruto theatrical film. It was alright, but followed the usually TV series -> Movie adaptation were the story is pretty dumb and fillerish. Luckily the animation was nice and the characters are likeable so it was enjoyable. And it was here that I really started to notice the Tsugaru-ben stick out as kids were yelling throughout the movie in Tsugaru-ben and I really had no clue wtf they were saying 90% of the time. I guess it's time to buy that Tsugaru-ben dictionary.

I had seen Steamboy last week so I got 500yen off my Naruto ticket :) Steamboy was a good popcorn movie that could've been a great film, but the characters were all flat and un-interesting. Despite that the visual tone of the film had a unique and gorgeous style, and the music (done by westerners) was excellent. So if you just take it as a enjoyable saturday movie, it works quite well.

This weeks Fullmetal Alchemist 鋼の錬金術師　was pretty sad and cruel as usual. Yet at the same time it was fantastic and moving as the final plot points were revealed setting up what looks to be an amazing finale. It'll be sad to see the show end soon, but as one thing passes another arrives:

Games:

This week marked the finishing of the 1st game since I'd arrived in Japan, and considering how busy I've been it was quite an accomplishment in my mind :) Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner is a spin-off of the Shin Megami Tensei series which is original based on the Japanese Digital Devil Story/Megami Tensei novels. Good rpg about tribes in a mad max post-apocalyptic world trying to climb the tower to Nirvana. If you want a my full review it can be found here.

Picked up Suikoden IV while in Aomori (although the LE was nowhere to be found, so I just settled with the 1st print version with the clear case). About 5 hours in so far and besides the not so hot loading, the game is really great. The writing is smart and witty and it's even gotten me to laugh a few times already. I look forward to further time with it.

Manga:

Finished reading the first 3 available volumes of Shin Takahashi's new manga Kimi no Kakera. I still don't know what to think of it as it's trying really hard to be dark and depressing like his previous work Saishuu Heiki Kanoujo, yet at the same time the violence all seems to be the happy disney violence where no one actually gets killed. Also the main character is basically a Chise wannabe, but the problem is that a Chise wannabe doesn't make a good main character. They need someone who is actually pro-active to lead the story yet the only person who can do that in this manga is really neglected to sub-character level of involvement so far. Who knows though, the manga still seems early on, so it may pick up.

Quick! Before he forgets!

2004-08-22T11:16:00.000+09:00

*Note from now on I'm gonna start using larger pictures so it may look a bit awkward but you'll actually be able to see what's going on.

Ok, so a bunch has happened since Hakodate so I better finish up the Hakodate story. Basically day 2 consisted of checking out the Motomachi area which is one of the 3 sea ports that were first opened to foreigners in the 1850ish. It was pretty nice to see the roads made of stone and the various old buildings. Then I made the trip over to Goryokaku which is the site of the last samurai war in Japan and the final battle of Shinsengumi still alive after the revolution of 1868. It's now been turned into a park and has a great Shinsengumi museum.

The rest was mainly walking around getting lost for hours, and eventually finding my hotel which was along beach. Getting there at night it was interesting to see the Japanese kids lighting full blown fireworks into the sky one after another from the beach. Unlike the US I guess it's legal here ^^;

Yes, Trolleys! Pretty nice way to travel.

Cafe Shalom, I guess even the Jewish people were here!

Nice Requiem for a Dream-ish view.

Proof of western civilization

Proof that they didn't stay long enough

Morning Market: The place to be for fresh seafood

The gorgeous scenery of Hokkaido

Depite the long lines, Lucky Pierrot burgers still have nothing on american burgers :(

I felt sorry for the dog :(

If you're not a beer fan, even Hakodate Beer won't change you.

The empty beach of the Yu no Kawa area of Hakodate where the famous onsen is.

The tail of the great outdoors

2004-08-16T09:09:00.000+09:00

Over the weekend I took a trip up to Hakodate, located at the southern tip of Hokkaido.

At first I was really excited about the train ride from Aomori city - Hakodate city which goes through the larget underground tunnel in the world. I figured you would see the train submerging into the ocean like a submarine on one of those disneyland rides, and that inside you would see the ocean through clear walls and watch the sea life as you made your trip. But alas, that was not the end result. The train basically headed into a mountain tunnel and then pitch black for an hour straight and then you leave out of a mountain tunnel. What I had expected to be the coolest train ride ever, instead because the most boring one ^^;; Though the scenery coming out of Hokkaido was really nice.

One thing that stuck out as I passed the rural areas of Hokkaido on the train is that Hokkaido had actual roads! Like big roads made just like the ones in California. Even in the smaller rural areas with just farms and forests (of which there were many and they were awesome), big change of style from the roads in Aomori. But then again Hokkaido is not the poorest prefecture in Japan, so I guess they could probably spend some money on roads.

The station main area of Hakodate itself was pretty normal. It's a medium sized city with a population of about 300,000. From the station you can see the bay and smell the water which is pleasant. The bus ride up to Hakodate mountain takes about 20 mins and is really cool. Basically the city is built going up the base of the mountain with vertically angled streets like San Fransisco. Then about 50% up the mountain all the buildings stop and you enter the tree covered mountain. You can either take a sky tram up to the top from this point or take the bus. I was on the bus ride as I had arrived to late and the last tram had gone already. The bus winds in circles around the mountain with trees covering both sides of the view, then every wind around when the city comes into view the bus stops for a min and lets you check out the view. Arriving at the top you see the entire city glowing with lights. It really is an incredibly impressive view. Especially since it was a cloudy night and we were just above the clouds so you'd see them move really fast covering the view with a foggy haze on and off.

Afterwards I arrived at my business hotel which was actually quite liveable and quite cheap. The only problem I have with Japanese business hotels is the shower width is really really tiny so I kept bumping my elbows. Anyways, that was it for day1.

Hakodate Station's night rainy view.

A glimpse into the night view from Hakodate mountain

And the rest...

2004-08-16T08:55:00.000+09:00

Well...since things are moving forward at a rapid pace here I think I'll just sum up the rest of the past event highlights so I can move on.

Tokyo was well, Tokyo. Shopping in Akihabara was great (1000yen off every new game! [here in Aomori the best you'll see if 400yen off :(] and a wide selection of old LEs for reasonable prices). Also meeting up with some GAF folk was a lot of fun and everyone was pretty cool.

Aomori arrival was kinda a preview of things to come. The airport was basically 2 rooms. The arrival/bag pickup room,　and then the exit/entrance hallway. They didn't really have anywhere to perform functions, so we all just lined up in the entrance hallway and they read our names while we shook hands with our supervisors.

The first week was mainly adapting to the location. Finding food was especially difficult at first as if one were to make a walk around my entire town, they would normally think that no food places exist. Well it turns out that unlike most places where resturants would have a sign or maybe a picture of food in their window, here the resturants are basically just inside people's houses so you just need to know where they are. Luckily there is a Jusco/Aeon mall with a bunch of great Japanese/Italion resturants and a Mcdonalds + A movie theater + HMV for music + 3 bookstores + a WonderGoo store for games. This is all located between my town and the neighboring town of Goshogawara, and is about 20 mins by bike. Though once it starts snowing and the temperature gets below zero I'm not sure how that's gonna work.

The 2nd week was the Nebuta festivals and I got to dance around in the one in Aomori. Interesting, but the fact that me and some friends got lost trying to find where we left our backpacks for an hour; returned and everyone was gone including our stayover ride; so we walked the streets until 6am when the train station opened...yea that whole process kinda took some of the fun out of the night (or maybe added a bit in some ways).

Then there was a b-day party of one of the Goshogawara JETs. It was fun and I think everyone had a good time. It was good meeting the people who are the most local from here.

Kinda backwards in more ways than one

2004-08-14T01:28:00.000+09:00

Well because I didn't actually get my internet until 3 weeks into my journey of Japan I guess I'll start writing in reverse about the past 3 weeks and then eventually the future.

Not if that makes much sense, but hey it's what all programs do when you hit back from item 1.

So anyhow, one of the major events in Aomori Japan during the last week of July/first week of August is the Nebuta festival. The Nebuta festival is one where giant floats of famous Chinese legendary figures are made and then people hall them around all night while dancing the night away and playing a single tune repeatedly on their flute. Everyone goes all out on the float creation as many government sections or schools make their own. Aomori city puts on a big one while Goshogawara puts on a 立ちNebuta or a 'standing' Nebuta with tall vertical floats (see Hugh's pics of these at http://www.tamenobu.com )

When I was told that float after float was of Chinese heroes, I enquired with a Japanese couple about where the Japanese legendary heroes were. Their response? Long silence and then finally "We have...a couple" they replied. Though I'm not sure if they were counting Mario,Inuyasha, and Goku ^^;(not pictured but was in the Goshagawara Nebuta).

These pictures are from the Nebuta festival in my town of Kizukuri. A town where normally at 9pm on a friday you would be lucky to see 1 person on the street. But on the 3 nights people suddenly appear...though they all vanish by the morning after :

Thus Zarathustra spoke....

2004-08-13T16:57:00.000+09:00

Really don't have much to say here. Just testing to see if this thing works so I can get it underway before I take off for the weekend.

But in case it works I will strive to include a picture of a frog on my door handle
Why?..because everyone likes frogs

Where I live

2004-08-10T14:24:00.000+09:00

The outside of the house

The yard with my awesome slow-motion bike!

Approaching the rooms

Tatami room, AKA. STORAGE ROOM

The main living room

The Kitchen/Washing machine/drying line/trash room

Shower Room

Bed Room

The streets I live on

Finally a floor plan: