SwannerPeek's Tour of Japan

さよならと…

2010-08-17T04:13:00.000-07:00

Whistlestop

2010-08-17T03:14:00.001-07:00

Last stretch now, guys. Let's race through this so we can get to the grand finale.

Nagoya

Louise Ward, this is how much I love you:

That's right, I would risk my life fishing for plastic Magikarp to get you a birthday present! That's how much!

Anyway, now to establish a little context.

We set off Saturday morning, we being myself, Steph and the spirit of Mai (the real thing being unable to come due to illness). Shinkansen there, around 5000 yen. We'd originally planned to stay the night at Mai's, but being only in spirit her family didn't recognise her, so we were homeless. Instead we'd be travelling back that evening, once our day of fun had some to an end.

First things first, the Pokemon Center, and the video you saw above. Looks like Nintendo are really trying to get their unwanted 2009 merchandise off their hands. You won't see me complaining, though. After a quick lunch at a sushi place to get our plans sorted, we headed for the river and the Nagoya Tower, which is kinda impressive. More impressive was the Oasis 21 Shopping Center, with its garden on the roof.

Anyway, moving on, we went in search of a certain temple (name escapes me) as we were informed via seance with the spirit of Mai (incredible what mobile phones are capable of these days) that they did some nice traditional sweets. We didn't find any sweets there, but we sure did find something.

Could not believe my luck. Apparently by sheer coincidence we happened to turn up on the one Saturday of the month that these crazy people decided to run their cosplay meeting, coinciding with a traditional music exhibit (or something, didn't pay much attention to that bit). Sensational.

Getting hungry, and with the light fading, we made our way back towards the center of town and food. As was expected, Nagoya central was not the cheapest place to eat, but we did manage to find ourselves a great tofu place in a small shopping arcade near the station. Having had our fill, we went on home. Shinkansen back, 5000 yen.

Fukuoka

Steph and I travelled considerably further from home this time. But worth it, oh yes was it worth it. I would have travelled to the center of the Earth in order to complete my tour of the Pokemon Centers. And now I have; all across Japan there is no Pokemon Center I have not seen. It's a little sad, I must admit, not having any new surprises left in store. All I can do now is wait for a new one to open (unlikely). ...

So yeah, Fukuoka. The last Center stood in a quirky shopping center called Canal City, opposite the Ultraman shop. Though I was not taken immediately by its bright colours and funny music, there was one thing that could sway my opinion, and that was patrolling killer robots.

In-credible.

Ice-cream in some American place and then it was out again to find ourselves a place to stay (the Shinkansen having taken a good portion of the day from us that morning). This time our Manga Cafe of choice was semi-famous 'space create', and was not bad at all. Great showers, for example. Watched Spiderman 2, half of Japanese-and-not-subtitled Watchmen, and then it was to bed.

Next day was hot. Too hot. Not in the best of moods we set forth for the coast, not wanting to leave Japan. Our destination was 'Noko-jima', a small island reachable by 10-minute ferry, which was also far too hot. Could well be, though, the closest I will ever get to a bone-fide tropical island. It was that sort of heat, that sort of landscape, and boy did it make for some good photos.

And the bugs! Those things were nasty! Still can't quite tell what that black butterfly thing was; it was massive! And those ants... Normally I quite like ants, but they sure can do some hideous things to other bugs.

It was worth nearly dying. I will take the memories of Noko-jima to my grave.

Dinner back in the center, amidst the pouring rain, and then off to catch the night bus home. Not the most unpleasant trip home ever, thanks to a giant Pikachu plushy, but not something I would happily repeat.

What came next? Preparations for leaving. And then actually leaving...

Thanks for reading.

The Great Pokemon Movie Review Note -COMPLETE-

2010-07-10T23:30:00.000-07:00

Facebook don't put edits on notes up at the top of the list like they should, so I'm just gonna re-submit it here on the blog. I actually spent a lot of time on this, because I am unbelievably sad, so want it in an prominant place.

You may note down that I did it with 1 month and 17 days to spare. Far too easy, I think. So, here we go:

***

It is no secret that I think Pokemon is fantastic.

With today's class cancelled due to a typhoon (I love to be able to say that), I find myself with a lot of free time on my hands. Having decided to see all 12 Pokemon movies before the year is out, I'm writing this note to mark my progress, and to share my opinions about the films.

So, here we go.

Pokemon 1: Mewtwo Strikes Back - first seen 18th April 1999 (ish) - English version - Seen four times
Funny title, eh? It's thanks to Star Wars that we'd expect Mewtwo to want revenge for something that happened before the film starts, rather than for something that occurs before the opening credits as actually happens.
So anyway, genetically-created Mewtwo gathers together the strongest trainers of the land for a big battle, with the fate of the world at stake. Fun fact, obsessees like Andy and I who went for an early viewing got an Ancient Mew trading card, all written in code. I still have it, don't you know.

+ Soft, nostalgic memories.
+ Mewtwo is really cool, and has a fantastic English voice actor.
+ Mew is diabolically, terrifyingly adorable.
+ Some nice uses of CGI.
+ Team Rocket as Vikings. Has me in stitches every time. "Hey, they weren't Vikings!! It's Team Rocket!!"
+ WILL draw tears if not prepared.

o The Pikachu short beforehand is quite nice, and I think manages to get nearly every non-Legendary 1st Generation Pokemon in it somehow, but the scene change animations are Hendrix-level surreal. I'm really not kidding.
o Actually addresses the whole 'we will never mention this again in the actual series' problem that a lot of similar shows have. It's a cop-out, though.

- When Pokemon are showing up on the screen in the big machine, Team Rocket get one name wrong. Intentional? I sure hope not.
- Cheesy like nothing else. But... it's a Pokemon movie, so can you really deduct points for that?

Overall Impression: I love this film, it's a great one to watch if feeling down for whatever reason. One time I scoured the internet looking for opinions of this film, it's almost frightening how much flak it gets. But I think it's more about Pokemon as a whole than this film. Regardless... No, this isn't the place to bring this up, I think. Next film!

Pokemon the Movie 2000: The Power of One - first seen 3rd October 2009 - English version - Seen once
One of the few good names that these movies use, though unfortunately it's meaningless in the actual movie. Actually, Pokemon's all about teamwork and friendship, right? So the name actually makes no sense at all...
There's a storm whilst team Ash traverse the Orange Islands and they happen to end up on an island populated by crazy people. The crazy people tell him to go on a mystic quest to fetch some magic crystal balls. Meanwhile, an evil collector man goes after the 3 Legendary bird Pokemon, which destabilises the climate. So Ash and co. have to deal with that too. Another fun fact; you remember that Mew card I was talking about? It's in this movie.

+ First and foremost, actually addresses the whole Ash and Misty thing, which is very brave considering the controversy surrounding the franchise as it is.
+ Tracy has a couple of great lines, which is good because to me he will never truly replace Brock. Oh, and for those who don't know, Tracy is a guy. Yeah...
+ The three birds fighting is really quite cool. I'm sure they're not that strong in the games... Actually, I don't think catching them ends the world either.
+ Team Rocket are funny. And I mean actually funny, not just stupid childish humour funny. Well, I laughed.
+ I actually like the fact that the talking Slowking is just never explained. It's a bit of an unexplainable mystery thing.

o There's no Pikachu movie, to my knowledge. Take that as you will.

- Lugia has a really annoying voice. I cannot believe how annoying it is.
- Why, oh why, are villains always English?
- INexcusable use of 'Flying Without Wings' as the ending credits song. Thank you VERY much UK Localisation Team.

Overall Impression: Pretty good, certainly worth watching if you're into Pokemon. A little bit of a drop from the first, though.

Pokemon 3: Spell of the Unown - first seen 18th July 2001 (ish) - English version - Seen twice
I can't actually remember the second movie being in cinemas. Was I in an accident or something? Because I don't think I would have wanted to miss that. Regardless, this is the second film I saw (to memory...).
A little girl's dad, an archeologist, is spirited away by letter-shaped Pokemon, and is reported dead. The little girl's sadness stirs the hearts of these Pokemon, who give her the power to shape reality as she sees fit. As anyone who has seen The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya will tell you, this is a bad thing. Ash and co. have to stop it, because the police are obviously incompetant.

+ I do like the plot here. It's a bit deeper than normal, which I very much appreciate.
+ Team Rocket, my favourite characters, are on top form here. Even though they don't do anything. Meowth has the best line in the whole series.
"Here's a question I don't think I should be asking: do you think we'll get a bigger part in the next movie?"
+ Oh, on the subject of great lines, Brock has some of his own. His self-introduction is fantastic: "Hi there! My name's Brock and I want to be your boyfriend!"
+ Entei is in it and Entei is cool.
+ Totodile is in it, see above.
+ The battles in this are great. Really well animated and directed. Even Misty and Brock get some battle time, which is a rarity. I mean, they're rubbish, but even so.

o Again, the Pikachu short is sweet enough, but not brilliant. I guess seeing the Gold and Silver Pokemon isn't nostalgic enough for me, though it was pretty cool now that I'm playing HeartGold.

- The little girl is a little unrealistic in this one scene during the end credits, and it really bugs me. Either that, or there's a big plot point the movie just never addresses. A character getting resurrected is a big deal, right?
- I would have quite liked a bit more on the Unown, they're one of the few Pokemon with massive Pokemon universe implications. I was waiting for the scene where someone tries to communicate with them, but it never comes. Hmm, ah well.

Overall Impression: Second best here. I loved this film the second time I watched it, it's very well-made.

Pokemon '4ever': Celebi: Voice of the Forest - first seen 8th October 2009 (yes, today) - Japanese version - Seen once
Pokemon addressing deforestation? Whatever next! Nah, this is all a bit predictable now. Didn't see this one, or any of the others that came after, in the cinema.
An evil Team Rocket fellow (as opposed to our comically misfortunate anti-heroes) tries to catch Celebi, who can travel through time, by turning him evil with his evil PokeBalls. And this guy is really evil! His name is Vicious the Mask! How much more evil can you get! Anyway, Ash and his merry men happen to be passing through and decide to lend a hand.

+ I do love time travel as a concept, though this film is easy on the head and doesn't really use it to the fullest. I demand paradoxes!
+ Celebi, much to my surprise, is Mew-level cute, a state I once thought unattainable.
+ Suicune is in it. Suicune is quite cool.
+ Another tear-jerk ending.
+ There's a giant wood figure that Celebi once rides around in, and it's almost a mecha.

o Speaking of which, points for effort on the CGI front but it does look a bit tacky.

- The plot isn't really that engaging. I thought the same when I saw the first Sgt. Frog movie: it's really just a long episode and nothing is really done at all.
- Okay, when Entei turns up everyone's like 'Oh wow, it's a Legendary Pokemon!' But when Suicune turns up (randomly, by the way) nobody bats an eyelid!* What is it, Ash, Legendary Dogs no longer good enough for you?! I mean, he has seen an awful lot of Legendaries by this point, but to even have the audacity to give the poor thing orders is just ridiculous!
- Environmentalism has been done a lot of times before. Actually, the second movie was also on saving the environment, so they should have known better!

Overall Impression: A bit of a disappointment, really. I mean, Celebi is great, but there's no real attachment to the events going on, and Team Rocket are just pathetic compared to their usual hilarious selves. A good waste of time, but nothing more.

*Oh, just to clarify, Entei and Suicune are both Legendary Dogs from Generation 2. In terms of rareness, though, Suicune is slightly rarer, as you can't catch him until way later and he has some plot relevance in-game. Raikou, the third and final Dog, doesn't get a movie, but does get a spin-off episode.

Pokemon 5: Heroes: Latias and Latios - first seen 10th October 2009 - English version - Seen once
I never did catch Latios. Sucks because I had a perfectly good chance, if only I hadn't used my only Master Ball on someone else. Forgot who. I even used a Master Ball on Dialga once, that wasn't clever. Got me a Latias, though, who's... okay I guess. Never really used her after I got her. Oh well, she's there if I need her.
Anyway. A pair of Giovanni's Angels go to Pokemon Venice to activate an apocolyptic super-weapon. I'm actually not kidding. City guardians Latias and Latios ask team Ash for help, and being such kind souls they cannot refuse.

+ The most important point, I feel, is that the film accomplishes its duty to make some Legendary Pokemon cool. Latias and Latios are really awesome in this, very deserving of the title roles, even if they are slightly smaller than I'd imagined.
+ Latias' shapeshifting ability is a great idea, and adds a brilliant element to the plot. The last scene in particular is a stroke of genius, see a certain point made about Film 2.
+ The opening credits are really quite cool. Totodile gets some much-loved screen time, and there's some nice CGI used. A good opening.
+ Small point here, but I liked seeing Misty accomplish something on her own for a change, even if it had no bearing on the rest of the plot. She and Brock have had more than their fair share of failures to put more emphasis on Ash's successes.

o Team Rocket aren't pulling themselves back to their position as lovable villains. This makes me a little sad, as there was a time when I smiled if they so much as appeared on the screen. Not to say they're dull, there's a nice running joke about them getting wet, and Wobuffet is still very funny. They're just... I dunno, they could be a lot better.
o Both Latias and Latios look a bit like fighter jets, right? And I think they can learn the move Extremespeed at some point. So I was hoping that they'd do some kind of supersonic speed sequence at some point, just once, just to show they can. But they don't. It's not a big problem, but it's an expectation I had that left me a little disappointed.

- Latias is cute, Latios is cool, but my word do they make a lot of irritating noises! Sure, a sort of whale-cry type noise fits them well, but do they really have to do it all the time? It really grates after not very long.
- And on the same note, Espeon is so annoying it almost physically hurts to watch it. I'd always seen Espeon as this stoic, almost sinister Pokemon that attacks without moving at all. There's a sort of tiger-thing in some of the Final Fantasies that's the same; it has flappy ears like ribbons if that helps. But Espeon here is just... it's just infuriating to watch! Just... just shut up!
- Am I watching the wrong movies, or have they actually stopped making Pikachu Movies? I was actually quite looking forward to them! Maybe I should actually make an effort to buy the DVDs, rather than this odd form of borrowing that I'm doing. And I would! Actually, feel free to add that to any Christmas list if you're struggling, gift-givers!

Overall Impressions: I did like this film. It started really, really well, and it's just not on par with some of the others because it didn't keep up the quality throughout. Good film, though, make no mistake.

Pokemon 6: Jirachi Wishmaker - First seen 11th October 2009 - English Version - Seen Once
People of Earth! Run! Hide! Fulfill any last wishes you may have! The end is nigh...
The English version of the 6th Pokemon Movie contains Japanese!!
Perhaps this isn't as big a deal to you if you haven't really watched much of the series, but the English Pokemon got a bit of a reputation for attempting to convert everything into a form that kids in the west may be able to understand, to a degree that is really quite laughable. A famous example is Brock's rice balls, which in translation changed magically into any number of things that western kids might understand. Every so often the characters of Pokemon end up taking part in traditional Japanese festivities, but clearly any link to the real world is forbidden in the 4kids office, so these are fobbed off as crazy Pokemon world antics. So for them to take a Japanese song used in the end credits and, rather than make a new one completely, get an American singer to sing the lyrics in Japanese seems quite unlike them. Very unlike them, I'd say.
Regardless, this movie sees Ash and his friends, including debuting Misty version 2, travelling to a fair out in the middle of nowhere to see a comet that only appears once every millennium, and get caught up in a plot to dig out ancient star Pokemon Jirachi so Team Magma can genetically engineer a Groudon. I can kinda see why, Groudon is a really cool Pokemon. He has the ability to initiate Sunny Day simply by being on the battlefield, which creates a really terrifying Pokemon if you give him Solarbeam. But why-oh-why do they pass up the chance to get much rarer Jirachi? Jirachi has a move called Doom Desire, which is nasty as anything. I'm starting to think there are more differences between game-world Pokemon and TV-world Pokemon than I had imagined.

+ Quite a good plot, all things considered, and May gets off to a good start with an interesting side-plot about a wish she wants to make. What do you think she wished for? I have a pretty good idea.
+ Jirachi is pretty cool, too. Not quite Mew or Celebi level, but certainly along the right sort of lines.
+ And so is giant CGI-ish Dark Groudon.
+ James disses Jessie's hair. I was in stitches.
+ Oh yeah, and to go back to a previous point, the ending song is really quite good, in a sort of sentimental kid's TV show song way.

o The Pokemon voices are really starting to get to me. I mean, Pikachu can only say 'Pikachu', right? That's never really bothered me before, I guess because he says it in such an adorable way it's hard to get angry with him. But when you have Pokemon with names like 'Absol', 'Kirlia' and 'Espeon' it makes it really hard to tolerate the stupid noises that come out of their mouthes as the voice actors try their darndest (bless their hearts) to link together an audable name and a noise that might actually, naturally be made by an animal. Those three are some serious examples, heaven forbid they ever end up in the same scene as each other. I might go mad. But this isn't a true minus point, because every once in a while they get it right. The vast majority of the time it's because they said 'Stuff it' and got the Pokemon to just roar or something. Tropius, a fond favourite of mine, gets a bit of screen time here, and the noise he makes is a very funny sort of slurping noise that made me smile. Salamence gets a Godzilla roar, and Jirachi talks properly. I like Breloom's voice, as well, but for a different reason.

- If you call your son 'Butler', he is not going to grow up emotionally stable. Especially if he has daft purple hair. It's actually unfortunate that he doesn't have a proper evil voice in the scenes where it matters, it would have completed the package. But as he is, he looks like a stupid normal person rather than a proper villain.
- Max, May's little brother, is also really annoying. Maybe it was on purpose, but I sure know Andy wasn't that annoying at that age. He also didn't have such a ridiculous voice as Max's.
- I know for a fact that all the voice actors in Pokemon can sing, I've heard the songs. So why is it that when they limit themselves to 'doo-doo-doo' it just sounds pathetic? Ruined an otherwise really heartwarming moment. I mean, you can tell from the sound of the song that it's supposed to have words. So what, May never bothered to learn them? Sounds weird to me.
- Team Rocket do nothing.
- And one more thing. In-game Jirachi is caught by going into space as part of some kind of space travel program for world champion Pokemon trainers (I never got that far, so I don't know the specifics). So Jirachi is in space. So why on Earth is he found underground in the film? That's, like, the opposite of 'in space'!

Overall Impression: I actually quite liked this one. It had a better plot that many that came before, and was really very watchable. There are a few niggling little details that let it down, though, and these keep it from reaching the high position of 'similar to the first one'.

Pokemon 7: Destiny Deoxis - first seen October 17th 2009 - English Version - Seen once
So what Pokemon would you use if you went to the Battle Tower? Me, I'd use Sakyo the Last Resort Raichu. Well, he's still the Last Resort Pikachu at the moment, but only because Thunderstones are rare as anything. He's the Pikachu I got from the Pikachu event, and he's really pretty cool. Being a little baby Pikachu gives him lower stats than most, so he's a tricky fellow to use, but I have a wonderful mental image of him running around the battlefield with a baseball cap and a big rucksack, and when he uses Present he grabs something at random from inside it and throws it at the enemy. Sometimes it's a firework, sometimes it's a bomb, and sometimes it's a cake. And then when he uses Last Resort it's a bazooka. Just a little thought I wanted to share.
Ash and his lackies are in... a city I forgot the name of, but the pulling factor for this one is that its very high-tech. There's a Battle Tower, which is why Ash is here, but before they can do any decent fighting space Pokemon Deoxis shows up and starts wrecking up the place.

+ Deoxis is quite cool... but not Mewtwo-level cool. Nor Rayquaza-cool, and Rayquaza was in it.
+ Plusle, Minun and Munchlax, however, are simply superb.
+ Even Team Rocket start to pull their weight with a few good lines.
+ I liked the idea of Tory being afraid of Pokemon; we don't see enough people in the Pokemon world who don't like the little fellows. It seems a bit odd, you know? Like, some people here like ecology and biology and stuff, but not everyone. Even if you take into consideration that it's a lot cooler in the Pokemon universe, that still leaves a lot of people who are apathetic or that actively dislike Pokemon. So it was nice to see one.
+ The security robots were funny. Cheap laughs out of a robot that pulls funny faces when it asks you for ID, but laughs none the less.
+ And speaking of cheap laughs about funny faces, May's passport photo.
+ Oh, and when Ash and Tory are off to fight in the Battle Tower, I liked that I could really understand the excitement you'd feel in the same situation.
+ Oh yeah, and I also liked that at one point the Pokeballs shut down so they can't use all their Pokemon. It's about time they did things themselves for a change.
+ One more thing that I forgot until now. I'm sure this guy must have been a character in the show or something, but as a random moment this had me in stitches. There's a scene where a lot of people are trying to get on this one train, and you can see this guy standing on the platform with a rign of flowers round his neck. When he gets swept up in the crowd he goes "Yay! It's party time!" I had to pause the video because I was laughing so hard. Just who was that guy, he sounds a hoot!

o Here's something I've noticed. If I remember correctly, Ash gets shocked by Pikachu in ever single film. I think that's a funny little running joke. Until now, there's also been another one where Ash always jumps at forcefields. It's like the first thing he does, and it's hilarious. And though there's a big forcefield in this one, he does not jump at it. More fun facts about Ash are that he has dressed as a woman three times in the course of the show, and also as a fruit twice. He also always catches the crab-type Pokemon of each generation before most others, which if worded correctly is a fact that can be interpreted in a number of different ways.

- No stellar music this time, and usually there's at least one.
- The plot starts off well, but quickly grows a bit convoluted. By the end it's difficult to remember who the title role is, or was.
- Brock is... not good.
- The human side characters are mostly just plain annoying. Wraith especially. That kid deserved a punch.

Overall Impression: Pretty decent, but nothing spectacular. Actually, all of the last few have been pretty much the same: quite interesting but not enough to stand them out. Waiting for the next one to really leave an impression...

Pokemon 8: Lucario and the Mystery of Mew - first seen October 24th 2009 - English Version - seen once
I caught Articuno at Mos Burger today. It was so much fun I nearly shouted out for joy in the middle of the restaurant. It's a bit of a pity that my current team kick so much arse I may never get around to training Kunio like I'd like to, but that's life I guess. There are so many Pokemon these days it's gonna be impossible to train them all. Gotta stick to my favourites.
It's medieval-day at some old-style city, and Ash and the gang go for a ye olde Pokemone competitione. However, they soon get wrapped up in a mystery concerning a giant rock that looks like a tree and he legendary Pokemon who dwells within it.

+ Bonsly gets added to the 'Pokemon with Good Voices' list for his hysterical cries of panic.
+ I think I speak for nearly everyone when I say that we need more medieval Pokemon stuff. It's great to see that the producers thought to much about the Pokemon Universe that they have a whole history up for it. I loved seeing the Lord of the Rings battle with people in armour fighting alongside big armoured Charizards and Blastoises, it was awesome. We should have a spinoff about that. Oh, and while they're out making spinoffs that random people suggest, they should do my idea for a series about a trainer who faces up against Missingno and loses his memory, and has to go find it again, as well as the life he left behind. I said it first! It's my idea! You can't have it!
+ Crying Pikachu gets me every time. I think Pokemon should deal with death more often. Does kinda narrow down the key demographic, though.
+ Meowth gets a bit of decent screentime, which is good 'cos he's one of my absolute favourites.
+ I like that Ash wins a competition but actually rather wishes he hadn't by the end.
+ Oh, and Mime Jr. was pretty funny in the few scenes he had.
+ I liked the little Jirachi cameo in the credits, oh and speaking of which I liked the creation of a character song ala all anime on earth for Aaron and Lucario. Not a great song, but it's the thought that counts.

o Okay, Time Flowers are cool. I also like how they seem to record the background music of some of the scenes as well, thought that was a nice touch. Goes back to the whole 'I like things that are like the video game Baroque' idea (the anime Armed Librarians is also on that list, by the way). But are they really supposed to be so flipping common? They were everywhere! And not in fields, valleys or hedgerows, no. They were in really awkward places where flowers shouldn't grow but where plot occurs. "Oh hey look, guys! It's a deus ex machina- I mean Time Flower!"

- That Kim woman really got on my nerves. She's like all those people that seem to be better than me at everything without a bad side to balance the whole thing out. The kind of people I love to watch fail. Being a bit too honest, I think...
- The fact that Lucario has a voice and personality like a human really brought to light a bit of a problem in the English translations, and something not restricted to this film alone. Everyone refers to Pokemon as 'it'. Even walking, talking Lucario. It's pretty ridiculous if you ask me, when Ash tries to say something kind and heroic that comes out as 'It's always with me'. I thought these guys were meant to be your friends and not property, right? Kinda flies in the face of that. Incidentally, Japanese has no male/female distinction in pronouns, so they did actually have a choice when they did the dub.
- Similar problem to Deoxis here; without a proper villain the pace of the show plummets. There's nobody to hate in this film (except that Kim woman) so I can't really identify with the plot at all. Can't project, you know? No?

Overall Impression: Not as good as Deoxis, but still a pretty sweet film, so worth watching. Still holding out in that quality tranch, Pokemon. Come on, put your back into it!

Pokemon 9: Pokemon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea - first seen 6th November 2009 - English version - Seen once
Okay, so it's still about Ash. My bad. I just thought, y'know, with a name like 'Pokemon Ranger'... Ah, nevermind. In other news, I caught a Mewtwo the other day, which is good, but I also caught the flu, which is bad.
The last Ruby and Sapphire film, and also the film that follows some of the events of the Pokemon Ranger spin-off series of games. Guess they were feeling a bit inadequate alongside their monstrous mother franchise, and heck, the Pokemon Company has enough money to eat money for three meals a day and still not run out. Anyway, Ash and his now vocally deformed friends get lost in a "wasteland" (which is nothing if you've ever played a Fallout game) and meet up some swimming gymnasts and a girly-haired Pokemon Ranger with a girl's name, and get caught up in a quest to find a giant underwater temple using a certain mythical Pokemon. All in a day's work, eh?

+ Manaphy only says its name, but only at first. It was my delight to see a Pokemon rise forth from the slum town that is only being able to say you own name, and even manage a few laterals and voiced fricatives to boot. It's a very welcome change, even if you have to wade through a good number of times where he, y'know, only says his own name.
+ For a big, fat pirate, 'Phantom the Pirate' (imaginative) is a pretty cool villain. He has an undersea doom fortress, for one thing, and he also has a 'mecha suit'. A mecha suit!! How awesome is that!
+ And speaking of awesome, Kyogre's in this one, Kyogre being one of my real favourites, partly because I've amassed so many of the 'unique' Pokemon over the years. Doesn't do much, but he does blow something up with a laser that comes out of his mouth, which is more than a certain yellow mouse did this time around.
+ A mecha suit!!! I wish I'd thought of that!
+ Team Rocket are funny again! Celebrate! Not only is there a simply hilarious scene where the three of them switch bodies, but Meowth actually breaks the fourth wall twice! Twice! And good on him, I say!
+ Ash's heroism is, for once, actually pretty stirring. I was actually moved by his selfless actions, but this is me we're talking about.
+ For that matter, the whole over-arching plot is pretty moving, the whole Manaphy thing. It did a good job of making me sad. However...

o It's a Pokemon! It is not your child!!

- As I mentioned before, there have been some nasty cutbacks in the vocal department. Ash, Brock and James have all now been replaced by fakes, and though May, Max and co. still remain true to their roots the side characters have some pretty shoddy attempts at being endearing. Here are a couple of examples.
- "The name's Jack Walker. Please, call me Jackie." And why would we want to do this terrible thing? You're too much of a girly girl as it is without giving yourself a girl's name you big girl. Oh, and your intonation's well off for one particular line. You do know what's going on in the film, right? Because if you didn't that'd be pretty unforgivable, right? Right? Jackie?!
- "Would you care for a saaaample?" Not if you ask like that, you creepy old man.
- Ending's a bit abrupt, if you ask me.
- This is a big one. It should be no secret by now that I hate Jack Walker's guts, and let me tell you why. Pokemon Rangers are supposed to be this big, heroic, ecowarrior types, right? Saving Pokemon from evil people and natural disasters and stuff, and there's really nothing wrong with that. However, why-oh-why do they have to brainwash the poor little things with their psychic Beyblades to fulfill their missions?! At least Pokemon Trainers give them a little bit of choice in the matter, as episode 1's Pikachu showed. Tch, Pokemon Rangers. Load of rubbish.

Overall Impression: Ooh, it comes so close to being a 4, so very close. But there are some stupid things about it that cannot be forgiven. If it had just been The Temple of the Sea I may have been a bit more generous.

Pokemon 10: The Rise of Darkrai - first seen 14th November 2008 (ish) - English version - Seen once
And here we go into the realms of Diamond and Pearl. You know, Ash is a lot like The Doctor in that he has a different girl with him every season, and this film is the cinema debut of Dawn and her Piplup. Diamond was the first Pokemon game I'd really actually gotten into in quite a while, hence the lack of Sapphire Legendaries.
In a funny city with old-ish architecture and a massive clocktower, time starts getting a bit iffy, due to a cosmic battle between Pokemon of time Dialga and Pokemon of space Palkia. Ash and his friends have to play Pokemon dinnerlady and break it up. This is the start of a slippery slope, I feel. Once you get Pokemon of Time and Space there's not really anywhere left to go. Film 12 is about Arceus who, according to the PokeDex, in legend "created the world with his 1,000 arms". Careful now, Nintendo.

+ Dialga and Palkia are epic. I was rooting for Dialga, personally, but they're both cool. And the fights are superb. It was great to see a pair of Pokemon that, rather than ask for the help of humans, simply ignore them as they are beneath notice. That's how I see Pokemon, not some of the glorified plushies you see in these films.
+ Brock gets some good lines.
+ I really liked the fact that side characters get decent plots in this one. I actually liked them as characters because of it, even though we'll never see them again. The sort-of villain is an uptight Baron with the Pokemon Licki-Licki, which leads to some hysterical lines, and makes him fun to watch as well.

- This is a big one. Okay, the star of the show in this movie is Darkrai, as the title says. Darkrai had been mentioned in Diamond just briefly in a little side-quest to catch Lunar Bird Pokemon Cresselia. There's a boy in a certain port-side town having nightmares, who mumbles something dileriously about being watched by an evil presence he called Darkrai. Run off to an island and fetch a feather that gives him safe dreams, and he claims to not know what you're talking about. Gripping stuff! So I was really looking forward to seeing a bonefide evil Pokemon wreak a bit of havoc, especially one that allegedly gets inside your head. So imagine my disappointment when I see this film and the writers decide, of all things, to make Darkrai the tragic hero, the misunderstood loner who can't help but be hated for the way he looks. Oh boo-hoo! We have enough heroes, I wanted to see some more villains!
- On the subject, Team Rocket are downright dull.
- Never have I seen a better case for Pokemon to say something that isn't just their own name than seeing Galade try and communicate. "Galade! Galade Galade!" Shut up!

Overall Impression: Did not like the real plot to this one bit. Darkrai was a disappointment. Having said that, Dialga and Palkia exceeded expectations and were great to watch, so maybe this counts as a good film. I'd watch it again, let me say that.

Pokemon 11: Giratina and the Sky's Bouqet - first seen 7th November 2009 - English version - Seen once
This may well be the last review for a little while. Movie 12 stopped being in cinemas literally the day after I arrived in Japan, so there's not much hope for a swift DVD release. Still, I'll be sure to rent it out when it does appear, with my lovely Tsutaya rental card. In the mean time I need to come up with some other stuff to do with my remaining days stuck at home. I already know one thing I'm going to do, and that's go stiiiir craaaaaazy!
Ash and his friends are doing idle, meaningless things, when they are pulled into a conflict between our world and 'Reverse World', which, would you believe it, is a reverse version of our own world. They also have to get little grassy hedgehog Pokemon Shaymin to a field of flowers to join up with friends, or else it will be doomed forever to be a social outcast, or something.

+ The thing that really struck me about this film is that the special effects are just phenomenal. Seriously, it's such a huge step up from the other films its almost like it was done by a whole different team. Even things like swarms of Magnemites, glaciers and trains (even trains!) looked spectacular.
+ And hey, speaking of Magnemites and things being awesome, Magnezone is superbly cool. Really brings the Pokemon to life, where before I didn't really care about it. Other cool Pokemon to turn up in this movie are Dialga, Giratina, Land Forme Shaymin (Sky Forme... not so much) and to a lesser extend Regigigas, who kind of let himself down by not talking in an awesome robot voice like his lesser siblings do.
+ Zero's a great villain, even if he was a little bit shallow. I liked his motives for being evil, and loved the ways he carried out his plans, like with Mecha-Giratina. That thing was crazy cool! He was unbelievably emo, but I think we can forgive him that. I mean, Reverse World is pretty awesome; who'd not want to protect it?
+ As I think I may have just said, Reverse World is pretty awesome. It's done in a really great surreal way that makes every shot look like it's been drawn on top of a work of art. It's doubly awesome with snake-like Sky Forme Giratina flying around in it.
+ To go back to a previous point, Land Forme Shaymin was a real breath of fresh air (oh, how I make myself laugh sometimes). Up until now all the Legendaries have either been nastily apathetic, cruel or cute and playful, and so it was really good seeing Shaymin, the so-called Gratitude Pokemon, being a real spoilt brat. Her fights with Ash were truly funny, and I always thought it a shame when it transformed.
+ The Professor's backpack that seemed to contain nothing but spindly robot limbs that could do stuff for him. That was cool.
+ I couldn't help but notice the quality of voice acting has jumped up a significant degree. Ash's voice actually suited him, and though Brock's still wasn't perfect it did the job okay. Good work, 4Kids! And that's probably the last time I'll say that.

o A couple of noteworthy Team Rocket lines, but nothing really stand-out.

- You may have read through all of the above positive points and thought 'Hey wow, sounds like he really liked this movie! Maybe he'll give it a 4 or higher!' Well, put that thought out of your mind, because I'm about to show you why this movie will not rise above a 3. The plot to this movie is great, but is executed poorly. At the very start, with Shaymin mucking about with Team Ash's pancakes, and after Giratina and Dialga have a bit of a scrap, I was ready to put the film into the same category as the 3rd: film's that come close to being as good as the first one. Unfortunately, somewhere in the middle of the team's first expedition into Reverse World the plot slows down and down, until by the end I was really begging it to end. After setting up climax after climax, only to try and outdo the last one with another, it made each seem cheap and meaningless, and so there wasn't really a proper climax at all. Pokemon 1 had a very clear climax to it, somewhere to which the road led, but 11 just didn't have that. And that is a bitter, bitter shame.
- Also, Sky Forme Shaymin was frankly annoying as anything. Like, so annoying I couldn't believe it. It had a stupid voice, and an irritating personality. And it was because of that that I truly didn't care when it left on its magical journey to wherever it was it was going. Really contrasted with the sad goodbye in 9, which was done well.
- Okay, so you've heard of Suicune. There's a guy in Crystal and the latest series of games that blabs on and on about him, so it's kind-of fair. Rayquaza's big and makes a lot of noise, so I can see why you may not be massively surprised to see it. But Shaymin?! Really?! It's the Mew of the DPP Generation, and even some dense tourist on a train has not only heard of it, but know exactly how it evolves and attacks?! Why should that be the case?! It's called a Legendary Pokemon for a reason, people aren't supposed to believe it actually exists! So why does everyone know about it?! Huh?!
- I see they've just done away with the Ash-gets-shocked-by-Pikach

u gag, as well as the Ash-ignores-logic-and-jumps-at-a-forcefield one, and this is a real shame. It was nice to have a bit of an inside joke that I got, made me feel special. Tch, nevermind then.

Overall Impression: So very close, Pokemon, I can see that you are learning. But you still need to try harder! If Ash is meant to save the Pokemon world, he can hurry it up!

Pokemon 12: Arceus and the Jewel of Life - seen 13th November 2009 - English Version - Seen once
Okay, whut? I arrived in Japan 3 months ago, and at that time the Arceus movie was just leaving the cinemas. So that means 4Kids had no more than 4 months to find and acquire the rights to translating it, then actually translate it, then release it in cinemas, then for Cartoon flipping Network to put it on TV. 4 months?! And yet it took how long for them to bring Super Smash Bros Brawl to the Wii? Darn sight longer than 4 months, I can tell you. So anyway, this'll be the last Pokemon film that I'll be reviewing for a little while, as the next one isn't out yet. I fully intend to watch that one in the cinema, too, and get myself a Pichu or two. Those little guys are hard to get in HeartGold! So I was hoping for something pretty epic to bring this quest of mine to a conclusion, and also to lift my spirits because I still have swinub flu. Yeah, that was on purpose.
The epic battle for space/time leadership comes to a head when Arceus decides he'd like a shot at it as well, and also quite fancies getting a bit of stone-cold revenge for some bad things done to him in Pokemon Ancient Greece. Ash and his friends have to go back in time to sort things out. Yeah, back in time! I was excited! Should I have been? No, is the answer.

+ But let's start with what was good, and there were a few things. As with movie 11, the quality of the special effects was superb, and it really helped make things good and epic. And that's really what it needed. I mean, this film has... hold on, let me start a new bullet point.
+ This film has time, space, some sort of Reverse reality and a whole new created universe fighting eachother for all kinds of reasons, so epic-ness is pretty much a necessity. And they do pull it off. Dialga is epic because he sends people back in time. Palkia is epic because he shoots massive lasers out of his mouth. Giratina transforms into stuff. Arceus is just... brilliant. Blowing stuff up with meteors has never been cooler. As a little point, Dialga and Palkia are acquired around level 40, Giratina at level 70, but Arceus comes at level 100. So it's perfectly understandable why he's able to just blow everything else out of the water, especially considering his little plate ability. He also looks epic as well, the design team outdid themselves when they were making a really alien-looking Pokemon, and his voice is pretty awesome as well. They even got his attitude right, to an extent. One of his best lines is "How pitiful." when he hears of what's-his-face-Grecian-dude's big plans for the land. Cold, just how we like our Legendary Pokemon.
+ And to top things off, the plot is right on the money for a change. There is one problem, and the climax comes when the heroes take direct measures to solve that problem. That's all that's needed, nothing more. So the films becomes easily watchable. And I was really pleased to see that, as the plot to this one is one that I would love to see done well.
+ And I also like that there were lots of Generation 2 Pokemon running about (especially my beloved Totodile) to commemorate the soon-to-be released HeartGold and SoulSilver.

o So then I must like this movie, yes?

- No. I don't like this movie. There are a number of reasons, which I will get to in a little while, but the most prevalent one comes first, and in lovely rant format.
Nobody, NOBODY, gets Arceus' name right! Nobody! Not ONCE! Say it to yourself, just now. How do you think it's supposed to be said?
If you said 'ar-kee-uss', then you are just as bad as 4Kids!! It is NOT Arkeeuss, there is no reason why it should be!! A 'c' there becomes /s/ when it's followed by a vowel. No room for discussion.
But no, not everybody is a linguist, it's not surprising that some people would mistake it, as some of you may have done. And that's fine... I guess. I mean, this is just a matter of opinion, isn't it? Maybe it's me that's wrong. I mean, Pokemon is originally American, right? So there's nothing that exists out there that tells you what the actual pronunciation is outside of these films, right?
Wrong!!! DEAD wrong!! All it would have taken would for 4Kids to dig down into their cavernous pockets and pay someone who can read Japanese (like, oh I dunno, ME!!) and look on the Japanese Wikipedia page for the pronunciation guide! Or even better, just play the game! Japanese uses a phonetic alphabet, so even a 3 year old could tel you that it is NOT Arkeeuss!
It's Ar-say-us, you muppets!!
AR-SAY-US!!
Get is right next time!!

- So that was reason number one. Let's move on. Reason two is that they feel they just have to squeeze all the Legendary Pokemon they can into the film, so Heatran makes an appearance. Heatran turns up in Diamond and Pearl in the middle of a volcano at level 70, so he should be this massive brute about Giratina-strength. But instead they fob him off as this chump mook Pokemon that gets mind-controlled into doing evil. Don't get that. Well, there's one possible reason for it, and that's that you only ever see him some 4000 years in the past, so maybe after getting beaten up by a Pikachu of all things he runs off to his mountain and trains for the rest of human existance and ends up as the Legendary we see in Stark Mountain. Still, bit of a cop-out if you ask me.
- And what was up with that woman's eyebrows? They were massive! Great, furry Caterpies, they were. And her boyfriend's hair, what a joke! Someone with that hair and the name 'Kevin' does not deserve such a cool hero voice. Apologies to Kevins of the world. I'm just saying, is all... well watch the film and tell me what you think.
- All the characters, and I mean all of them that weren't Pokemon, were dull as the day is long. I didn't care for any of them, not one. Good thing this film had bits where Pokemon did stuff away from people, like had epic battles in the sky or Solid Snake-d through a temple to free their idiot trainers.
- Wow was the plot close to being interesting. They have to go back in time and change events so Arceus doesn't end the world, that's such a good plot! Pity it's not done properly. They were going to change the future, they really were, but then...
Ah, this next bit's a spoiler, so don't read on if you actually want to watch the film properly.
Let's take a look at this new timeline with regard to Arceus' memories, shall we? So back in Ancient Greece he gets thoroughly betrayed by some people, but then everything is put to rights by a little dude with a Pikachu, and all is well. But then, 4000 years in the future, he turns up in our world and, obviously because he's FORGOTTEN that the Jewel of Life has already been returned, starts throwing a hissy fit and blowing stuff up, and even beats the other time/space Pokemon within an inch of their lives, but then miraculously remembers everything just before dealing the killing blow, and puts everything back again. Yeah.... Not sure I like that much. Oh and while we're in spolier land, where there are no consequences to actions, you see that bit where Arceus remembers everything and it zooms into his eyes where the memories flash up? Well, yu may have noticed that the background was a sort of flowing static, not unlike a certain glitch Pokemon. That would have made this whole point defunct, if the reason Arceus was blowing up the place was because he was actually Missingno and was just acting crazy. That would have been PERfect. I would have forgiven them anything if they'd put Missingno in the film. Even getting the key Pokemon's name wrong.
- Ended too fast, too. It just sort of stopped. Like this paragraph.

Overall Impression: A very clear indication that a lot of the time 4Kids just don't do their research. This film had a lot of promise, and didn't meet expectations. They should make more of a thing about Ash having this big destiny, if you ask me. Do that, Pokemon, and then come back and try again.

Pokemon 13: 'Phantom Ruler Zoroak' - Seen 10th July 2010 - Japanese Version - Seen once
So much for originally published details, eh? In the place of my beloved notch-eared Pichu I got myself a shiny Legendary Dog, and mid-film Nintendo saw fit to give me a Celebi for my troubles. What does that have to do with Ho-oh and Lugia, you ask? Nothing. Not one thing. That's what. I am reminded by this film of the second in the series, where although it was clearly an original 150 film there was still a massive part played by Generation II Legendary Lugia. This is pretty much the same thing, nothing but a hype-fest for September-released Black and White (fill out my survey!!).

So, the plot. It's actually a very interesting one this time, with a multi-billionaire capturing the mysterious Pokemon Zoroak as well as it's friend, pre-evolved Zoroa. Turns out he wants Zoroak to act as a scapegoat in order to fulfil a vision of the future. Oh yeah, did I mention? He can do that. See into the future, I mean. Ash, Brock and Dawn, along with regular Pokemon allies, see fit to intervene, because, I kid you not when I say this, they want to watch Pokemon play football and the evil scheme meant the game got postponed. Real role-models, those guys.

+ A lot of good things to say here. Let's start with the big one: the new Pokemon. So in the very beginning we had Mew, who wasn't really comparable to other Pokemon. Then it was Celebi playing the Legendary Mascot role, and he was a little pathetic. As was Jirachi. As was Manaphy. Shaymin bounced back and forth between being pathetic and annoying. And now we have Zoroa, and Zoroa is, at long last, starting to turn the Legendary Mascot role around. He may not be the strongest Pokemon on the block, but boy does he have heart to spare! I don't mind sharing that I was deeply cynical about Zoroa's introduction into the cast: he was kinda cute, but not really, and I really didn't see the point of him. Surely we have other Dark-type Pokemon that can do the same job, and Dittos can transform just as well. But I was wrong, I hold up my hands and loudly proclaim that. Zoroa is great. It's the voice that does it. Zoroa's growl is one of the cutest things I've ever heard, but it's his voice (whoops, spoiler: he's telepathic) that really wins me over. It's cute and kiddy, but so very cool! He talks like a little gangster! 「おいら、強いぞ！」I love it! Steph also made the good point that he's pretty weak, and quite arrogant, but he makes friends very easily and once he does he protects them vehemently. Which is good, because Celebi is back and as pathetic as ever, despite being just as cute.

+ Zoroak too, though not being a favourite by a long stretch, was another cool Pokemon. The noise he made as he transformed was ace, and his Dark Pulse Plus, or whatever it was, was brilliant.

+ The time travel aspect returns and I must say they actually do a pretty good job of it this time. The villain, I'm afraid to say I've already forgotten his name, has a great psychotic streak, all thanks to his future sight powers, and they make the right decision to stick with the 'time is unchangeable', something that I so wish they'd done in that horrendous Arceus incident. Celebi jumps through time a little too, but it's not the focus of the film, though I do like the sort of 'just don't touch it' feeling behind the time ripple thing he uses. Makes it big and unseeable, kinda like the Dialga and Palkia fight that had been the focus of the films up until now.

+ Piplup still rocks hard. The poor little guy...

+ Skiplooms are cute too; how did I not notice?

+ Some great CGI here; that giant plane was awesome. Almost as awesome as it was when it got blown up by Entei. That was REALLY awesome.

o I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the inclusion of the shiny Dogs in as characters. Feels a little too much like some kind of marketing ploy. Y'know? Why else would they be given out as preorder gifts if they weren't in the film for some reason.

o Pokemon Football? Really? I mean, the World Cup was a big deal, but to bring it into Pokemon? If I want to see flashy, anime football I'll watch the new Inazuma Eleven movie (coming out in December). The one thing I did like, though, was that teams were only the different evolutions of different Pokemon, rather than a mix. Though surely that would mean Team Kangaskhan would need one heck of a handicap, and Team Eevee would destroy everyone.

- Team Rocket have officially fallen from grace. They did nothing in this film, not one thing. They didn't even say their stinking motto, which they were cheeky enough to change so now I can't say it with them. All they did was chase the main characters around and make helpful comments like 'Zoroak sure looks powerful'. Shame on you, guys. Shame on you.

- No theme tune. I'm surprised this bothered me as much as it did, but I'd have really liked to hear a Pokemon theme song whilst Ash fought someone, just like always. I guess it helps link the films to the show a little more, though we did get so see him give Soul a bit of a hiding in the intro. That was pretty cool: Soul came at him with a Donphan, which if you'll remember was the first Pokemon Ash had to battle in the first movie. It's no wonder Pikachu just one-shotted the poor guy, Donphan is old hat.

- Arrow-pattern suits.

- Why does every pretty woman working for an evil genius have to be an undercover reporter (hey, wow, the spoilers just keep on coming!), huh? I liked this one more than the others, but I'd still have liked to have seen something a little more original, like she was secretly in love with the villain or something. Or secretly in love with the goon, that would have really got me going!

- And that's another thing: if the villain saw in the future that she was gonna betray him, why didn't he stop her? I mean, she really didn't do squat to help, but he could have locked her away or anything! C'mon, dude, what's the use of Mystic Eyes of Future Perception if you're not gonna USE them! And hey, while we're on the topic of plot holes, why was the whole city evacuated but the elderly couple in the flower shop allowed to stay? What kind of police service is Jenny running?!

- That purple-haired magnet girl, just who was she? And why was she so annoying? Was she really needed at all??

- Abrupt ending is abrupt.

Overall Impression: I actually really liked this. It was full of heart, and honestly had me interested from start to finish; time most definitely not wasted. The new Pokemon far exceeded expectations, the characters were still fun and lively, and the whole thing came together as a worthy addition to the plot.
Final Score: 4/5

Pokemon 14: Title Unknown, 'Black and White' (2011)

All we know is what we saw from the teaser trailer at the end of 13: this film will include rocket foxes and tesla dinosaurs. That's all we need to know, right?

If there are any more announced, I may add them on. Hope you enjoyed reading my scandalous opinions about a series of movies for children. I enjoyed researching, and writing about them, and I do proudly proclaim how much I like Pokemon! Regardless of whether Pokemon are really 'psychic' and thus not suitable for kids, or whether it's just a big, commercial, moneymaking machine, the heart is in the right place and that's what I really admire about the show.
Thanks for reading.

Pete Day 2010

2010-07-10T05:46:00.000-07:00

It's been over a month now since I last posted here, and boy has it been a boring one. There has been so little to write about it stings a little when I think about it, and I'm sure not one of you would have appreciated a long string of entries talking about how studying is rubbish and how I like sleep. But now, at last, I have something proper to talk to you about, and hopefully now that we've reached the final stretch (...) there'll be plenty more to talk about as I hurry to tick off the last of the Japan-bucket list.

So now on to Pete Day 2010, which in the true spirit of Pete-based holidays extended well beyond a single day. The following account takes in last Saturday and yesterday (Friday). I also contains no photos, because the places I will be talking about were not places that photos were generally allowed. Also, I am an idiot and left my camera in a station locker on one of the days.

So, here we go, time for Pete Day 2010.

Cats...

Osaka is home to, I am told, about twenty cat cafes spread out across the city, and being the feline enthusiast that I am it would have been simply heresy for my to skip out on the opportunity. The cafe Steph and I went to was called 'Neko no Jikan', literally 'Cat Time', and sat in the middle of the American-themed district a little west of Shinseibashi, one of the big shopping areas. Leave station exit 7, we were told, head south until you hit the Apple Building, take a right and it's on your left.

No, Google; no it isn't.

We spend a good hour in the pouring rain looking for this one shop, which when we found it was actually pretty easy to spot, but it looks like the twisting side-streets of fake-America do not enter into Google Maps and as such it became a huge ordeal. By the time we found it at long last I was tired and angry, and in much need of a cat to hug.

Neko no Jikan is a really nice-looking place. Wood furnishing on every last inch of space, really nicely designed. And to top it off the whole thing is just a giant cat playground (that's a giant playground for cats, not a playground for giant cats) with scratching posts and things to sit on as far as the eye can see. The residents of this particular cafe numbered about twenty, though not all were present on the day. Most were a funny breed I'd never seen before, and angry-looking puffball breed of cat with thin tails that end in a pom-pom. Anyone got a name? There was this one that I swear looked exactly like Samuel L Jackson.

Anyway, it was 1,500 yen entry (it works like karaoke, so by time, and Steph and I were on free time) which also got us one drink. I never knew honey in tea made such a difference. But yeah, the focus was the cats themselves. Plenty of them were more than welcome to be petted and stroked, but a lot would just wander off if you tried to touch them. I must admit, it wasn't the nicest of feelings, getting rejected by these little guys after you spent so much money to play around with them. On leaving the place a while later, Steph and I agreed that if that had been a hostess bar and the women had acted like that, we'd have asked for our money back.

Not that we were going to a hostess bar any time soon, you understand.

Maids...

What we WERE going to, however, was a maid cafe. The real deal, just like on the the news. Our destination was mel Cafe, a cafe just off Den-Den Town, Osaka's technology district. Again, a well-made place, with some nice decorations and apt, mansion-esque music playing in the background.

Now, it's clear to me that I had something of the wrong impression when I was looking up these places. It had been my understanding that a maid cafe was a place of minor-level debauchery, where you essentially pay to oggle young women in revealing clothing. This was far from the truth (of this cafe, at any rate) and it was clear from the start that the real maid-work that went on came from the maids being just very friendly with you. On entering the cafe we were greeted by one woman who, when we mentioned that we wanted non-smoking, enthusiastically proclaimed just how relieved it was that we spoke Japanese, as she spoke not a word of English. The outfits, as well, were not to my expectations, and looked just like something you might actually have worn to do housework at some time or another.

As expected, however, the prices were slightly steeper than your usual cafe. 700 yen got us a sizeable drink plus a cake, so I don't think we were ripped off at all. Really getting into this ice coffee lark, by the way. Over the course of our time there we were talked to about exchange student-dom, and got to read a magazine on maid cafes around Japan (thereby proving correct my hypothesis on at least some maid cafes being the aforementioned debaucherariums). It was actually a lot of fun, with the staff being super-nice the whole way through, and the whole atmosphere being incredibly relaxed and a lot of fun to be around. We got waved on our way and off we set.

Everything else...

Not much else to say here. Got a walk down Den-Den Town, which is always fun, BUT...

...Joshin Gundam's no longer exists. I was heartbroken. Now it's nothing but a run-of-the-mill Joshin Kid's Land, with a floor that happens to be Gundam-themed and have a Gundam hand coming through the wall. Sucks to be a Gundam fan, and so much for my hopes at finding a remote-control Haro... Did get myself a Master Grade Zaku II to celebrate my last trip to the Gundam shop, as well as one sweet as anything t-shirt.

Also missed TWO opportunities to head to the wonderland that is Sweet's Paradise, both times due to my slow window shopping.

There is just one last thing to add, and that's that today Steph and I went to see Pokemon the Movie 2010, today being its release day, and now I will return to my review post to fill you all in.

Other events worth looking forward to hearing about are trips to Nagoya to see Mai in a couple of weeks, a finale trip to Lake Biwa with the church group, a trip to Fukuoka to see monkeys and end my grand tour of the Pokemon Centers, and naturally a host of other farewell parties.

Now, if you'll excuse me, thinking about the end has me made a little sad.

Thanks for reading.

-----

あのね、時々でね、「戦場の絆」とそのプレヤーたち大キライよね。

Yu.I.Nyan

2010-06-06T00:31:00.000-07:00

So I look at the timestamp for the last post and realise that it's been a long time since last I wrote anything for the blog.

Sorry about that.

But I do have some good stuff for you today. For you see, although it is now about three weeks late, today I will tell you about Team Pete and Steph's trip to Kobe.

There it is, look.

Anyway, as you can probably see, the day was hysterically, abominably hot, and so upon meeting Connor at Sannomiya Stationwe decided to head north, to Shin Kobe, and the cool shade of a nearby mountain. Apparently there are supposed to be wild boar in those parts, though we didn't see any. We did, though, see three waterfalls. Here's one.

Next, not wishing to take the subway more than was necessary, we made our way south into the foreign district of Kobe. By foreign, I mean that it was where all the filthy gaijin such as yours truly used to hang out back in the day, and as such there as a definite sense of trying to replicate that age-old 'foreign flavour'. Not a Japanese thing in sight. Wishing to delve deep into the depths of Kobe life, we decided to sample some of this flavour, starting with a British House.

Really reminded us of home. It had been too long since last I set eyes on something as commonplace as a suit of armour... The house itself was supposed to be a copy of one Sherlock Holmes' own house, and as you can imagine film merchandise was flipping everywhere, but it was still an interesting place to visit. It had two bars! Two!

Next on our little tour was the mysteriously named Ben's House, which offered not a single mite of information about just who this 'Ben' person was. We can tell you this, though: Ben was the most horrible human being on the planet. Stuffed hunting trophies as far as the eye could see, I had no idea hollowed-out elephant's feet could be put to so many uses. And what was his bedroom like? It had only been stolen piece by piece from some poor fellow living out in the forests of Africa, bed and all! This guy was a real piece of work, let me tell you. The last stop on the tour was a Panama house, which offered nothing in the way of Panamanese language translations, which was simply outrageous. Apparently people from Panama like boats and tiny Japanese houses.

Grabbing lunch at a nearby bakery, we headed to the harbour. Some interesting stuff to see on the harbour, including a section of road from Kobe's last big earthquake...

And one incredibly camp boat...

Kobe sure does have everything. The harbour was also the location of Connor and Pete's Epic Pokemon Battle. Maybe that's why I've taken so long to get all this up, maybe I was stalling because if I ever talked about it I'd have to mention the fact that I lost.

Garchomp, next time you see me, you'll wish you hadn't.

Got a bit of minor revenge, though, with the level-capped double battle, but when it comes to a pure, one-on-one battle I still need a bit of training. Next time, the result will be different.

On our way back towards the center of Kobe, we passed 'Harbourland', a cheeky little plastic amusement park, and in true tourist fashion we paid it a visit. Pretty run-of-the-mill, all things considered, though there were a couple of sweet highlights:

As you may have guessed, the ordeals of rolling around in giant balls left us tired and hungry. So, after passing by the arcade so Connor could win himself a Chopper hat, we made tracks to Fisherman's Market (right? Not Fisherman's Wharf? I can't remember...) which did fish and chips. Not real fish and chips, mind you, but it was a pretty close approximation. It was also superb.

By the time we left it was dark, so we took a stroll along the waterside to take in the night-time sights. Fire-jugglers, the Kobe Tower or whatever it calls itself, oh and that camp boat turned up again. Honestly very pretty stuff. Next was karaoke in the entertainment district followed by bed. Well, I say bed...

Actually not the worst night's sleep I've ever had. The matting was pretty soft, and I found myself easily able to get a few hours of solid sleep. What I was disappointed with, however, was that I had clearly overestimated Japanese manga cafes as being veritable shrines of online gaming and comics, and Manboo only lived up to one of those things. The computer was honestly a pile of junk compared to the shiny obelisk that was the average Japanese computer in my mind. The internet was slow, barely fast enough to catch the latest episode of Angel Beats, and there was not a single internet game installed on the stupid thing, except some kind of stupid board-game thing. I have higher expectations of the big cheese of the manga cafe world, Popeye, when I go there for a critical few hours at some point.

Anyway, then it was Sunday, and Kobe Matsuri time. If anything, Sunday was even hotter than Saturday, and this did not do my energy levels any favours. Nor did all the loud noises and people in bright costumes for that matter.

I honestly had no idea Kobe was a big samba city. No idea at all... After getting some Taiwanese icecream followed by some Japanese pasta, we looked around the city for the best part of the day before setting off back home to Kyoto, tired like nothing else. And we had school on Monday, too. Not the best of moods that night...

And that's it, really. Sunday wasn't really all that eventful, it was just a long day of samba-watching and being tired. But still, all things considered, Kobe rocked hard. I'l look forward to going there again some other time.

Thanks for reading.

...

Oh, and if you're wondering about the weeks in between, nothing really happened. A few essays, some speeches, and the culmination of a soap opera. Nothing worth mentioning.

***

日向、お前は本当の男だ。２Ｄじゃなかったら、お前の手を握る。

Smorking Labbits - A Tale of Tokyo

2010-05-06T05:42:00.000-07:00

And now your patience will be rewarded...

So yeah, back from Tokyo the other day, and finally found myself a spare breath with which to scratch out an account of what happened over those fateful four nights in Nishikawaguchi. The trip, for those of you who didn't know, was Team Korea's latest outing into the world of domestic travel, and saw us spending our Golden Weeks in Japan's capital, visiting touristy spots and fellow Edinburghers.

As you may have guessed, I didn't die.

So anyway, one of the big milestones the trip signified was my first outing on a Night Bus, that dreaded chariot of the devil, and I can tell you now that it's almost as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Almost, but not quite. I have never been a good sleeper on moving vehicles, the train ride between Maizuru (right?) and Otaru being the one exception. So no sleep for the wicked this time. It was fun, though, in a weird sort of way, and I enjoyed my hell as best I could.

You see the state we were in when we arrived? Nah, I'm kidding.

So we arrived at Shinjuku Station at around 5.45am, and set off in search of something to do before Tokyo opened. Breakfast (carton coffee is niiice) and subways lead us to the Imperial Gardens in the centre of town, where Steph and I slept on the grass and Mark did... something majime, can't remember what. Lunch at Freshness Burger, and then it was off to the Pokemon Center for a bit of giddy, gleeful nostalgia. That was where we picked up tickets for the movie (just a couple of months now) before setting sail for the hostel.

JGH Tokyo is a nice little hostel in a place called Nishikawaguchi, which we later found was a Red Light District. No kidding. It's small, and the rooms reflect this smallness, but cosy, and the beds are comfortable. One problem we faced was that there are often only limited walls between rooms, so noise travelled very easily. Why that Danish fellow was screaming "Gluttony! Gluttony!" at 8am the next morning is beyond all of us. It also seems that Australians do not appreciate deep, late-night discussions. Which is a joke, really considering how flipping loud they saw fit to flipping snore!!

Tch...

Next day was, you guessed it, Saturday, and a trip to Kamakura. Present members were Team Korea, Caroline and Jan, Laura and Claire, as well as Laura's parents. Nice place, if you didn't know already, and the weather was spectacular.

And now, Live on the scene as it was on Saturday, here's a special news report from inside Buddha:

And it's back to the studio.

Following that was a trip to the beach, something I haven't done in years. Big sights included some little hawks grabbing food, Anpanman in the sand and a dead husk of a pufferfish. After that was some awesome tuna mayo crepes before heading back to Caroline's for a nabe party, which went exceptionally. Those on the receiving end of Claire's drunken messages to my friends via my phone, I am deeply sorry.

Getting tired...

Sunday was Yokohama with Claire and Laura, and let me tell you that is one superb place. More mayo crepes, Yellow Submarine, and quite possibly the greatest arcade game ever conceived.

Other things of note in Yokohama, excluding stellar stress relief games, were another Pokemon Center, a ferris wheel and moonlit waters. The weather, if you're interested, was simply spectacular, and only saw to invigorate the city with a further burst of life and energy. The place was packed to the rafters with kids out in the amusement park, or fellow tourists, or any of a huge number of people, all enjoying the sun. Yokohama was a spectacular place, and one I would love to return to some day.

Pity they weren't serving Fish and Chips that day, though...

Monday, our grand finale, saw Steph and I set off for Odaiba with Tokyoite Natasha. Best way to get to Odaiba is via a monorail, which is WAY cooler than any measly subway, and was the first of a plethora of things that, when all put together, make Odaiba a truly science fiction city.

Looking out at the cityscape from the flat pathways on the riverside it is difficult to see yourself in the present day at all, a thought that is further enhanced by the presence of Tokyo's Teleport Station.

I kid you not! That's exactly what it says! I hear, though, that rather than being a fantastical place of instant transportation it is just a train from Odaiba to Shinjuku and back again. And this was not the only disappointment Odaiba had in store for us...

I WISH it was the real Pallet Town! I WISH! Instead, this shopping complex held yet another ferris wheel (pretty much a must have for such a picturesque area) as well as an Italian buffet, a car exhibit and some hula dancers. After taking in the seven colours of Fake Pallet Town the three of us met up with Odaiba resident Haruka (whose parents, wouldn't you know it, live in Edinburgh) and off we went again. This time we stopped by a place called... uh... D- something. It was some kind of amusement complex, with Sega's theme park Joypolis (would have KILLED to go there about seven years ago), a fitness complex, a retro Showa village and a replica street of Hong Kong. It was quite something, each floor holding something a little bit weirder than the last. From there Steph and I bid our farewells and set off for where the rest of Team Tokyo awaited in Harajuku. Dinner was quirky DIY okonomiyaki in a little backstreet, gallery-esque restaurant, and was superb fun.

The bus back was more tolerable, we all being a little bit dead from the week's endeavours, and I think I may even have been able to sleep a little bit. Wasn't deep sleep, I should be so lucky, but it helped pass the time. Arrived home on Tuesday morning at around 6 o'clock, at which point we went our separate ways and slept.

And that's it. All done. Tokyo complete once again. And, until the return trip via Narita it'll be the last time I'm there. It's a stupendous place, Tokyo, though honestly exhausting. How Team Tokyo puts up with it week-in-week-out is beyond me.

Now I commence being annoyed at Blogger for not handling my videos with due care.

Thanks for reading.

***

ボルテッカーだ！！ピカチュウの最強の技！神戸のコナーめ、負けるの準備をしろ！！

Aikawarazu

2010-04-22T03:51:00.000-07:00

Have I got a story for you! Gather around and have a listen.

So today was the day I was supposed to meet with my latest student (number 2, or 3 if you still want to count that one who stood me up) and the plan was to meet at 6pm on Thursday at the corner of Kitaouji and Kitashirakawa. The text I was sent, I have it right here, said the following: "6 on Thursday is good for me." Now, this guy (I still don't his real gender, name, age, occupation or anything) was using some seriously good English in his texts, so I didn't really expect a great deal of trouble.

Here's the first hurdle: there is no Kitashirakawa in Kyoto. It was with some hesitancy, therefore, that I arrived at plain, old Shirakawa, and crossed my fingers. I was 15 minutes early, and it was raining. And I didn't bring my umbrella, 'cos I was sure my hood would be fine. And I'm sure it would have been, for the 15 minutes I intended to be there in the rain.

30 minutes past, and I grew anxious. I texted the guy, asking if I was indeed waiting at the wrong place, and waited. 15 more minutes later and I went home. It was there that I got an email asking why I was there at all, as the meeting wasn't going to be for another 2 weeks.

...

Turns out when he said '6 on Thursday', he thought I meant 'Thursday the 6th', which would be the day Golden Week ends. So, wet and sleepy, I made dinner and resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't be making any additional money for a little while. I'm actually quite happy about what happened, to be quite honest, as it's been a long, long week and I'm really very sleepy. This extra rest (or, in this case, time spent reading over the articles for Humanology (made-up name)) really did me some good. Also means I have no work looming over me so I can enjoy my planned no-work Friday to the fullest.

So yeah, that's my story. Honestly don't know who was at fault, and I'm beyond caring.

Next up, the second season of Swanner goes to School.

It's nearly been three weeks so far, and they've been full, exciting weeks. Just not really full of the sort of stuff you'd be all that interested in hearing about; grammar particles and the like. Though I will have you know there have been some pretty soap-opera-esque things flying about. That's all I'm saying.

So, a rundown of classes. First and second periods are reserved for language classes, as per usual, except this time around there's always one period of grammar and one of something else. Monday and Tuesday are reserved for reading skills, Wednesday for writing, and Thursday and Friday for speaking. I actually prefer it this way; it breaks up the mornings nicely into more interesting chunks, doubly so as we actually get two teachers for the morning classes this time. Returning special guest stars are ace-of-spades Takada on Monday 2nd (a great place for him, acting as a sort of Monday gloom buffer zone) and not-cool-enough-to-be-given-the-name-of-a-playing-card-but-still-pretty-cool Tsukiyama on Wednesday 2nd. Other than that it's all New Challengers, none of whom I actively dislike which is a superb thing to discover. Well, give it a few weeks and we'll see how I feel.

Bonus classes this semester are the unavoidable JLPT Seminars, this semester I rose from B to C, as well as a supplementary 'Intermediate Grammar' course which is essentially the same thing. AND, you will be I'm sure ecstatic to hear, I can actually take my Manga class this semester! So far it's not been eye-wateringly fascinating like I'd hoped, but it has been easy as walking with cake. I mean, one lesson (usually 1 and a half hours) was a 45 minute tour of the Museum. The first of 3 such tours over the semester. And they're giving us credit for this? The last two are both Bruce White courses, the guy who gave us Intercom B last semester. Both are pretty much the same thing, but with slightly different nuances, like certain Japanese grammatical structures I'd care to mention. Tuesday 3rd has been dubbed Humanology (real title: What makes Humans Human), and is a small class of mostly Shugakukan residents. Tuesday 5th is Identology (real title: Divisions of Culture in Society) and is a much bigger class of Californians. The latter I'm likely to drop (huge apologies to Bruce if this is where you heard it first!) just because by 5th on Tuesday I find myself dead. Like, seriously. Also, the courses don't really slot together as nicely as a lazy student like me would like, so I think only one would be better than both.

That's it for class. Homework's been improved (in that there's the same amount of it but it's, y'know, better) but free time has been utterly devastated. However, tomorrow is the first meeting of a cool-looking English Workshop Circle that I was invited to, and I seem to have time for that. Also, there is always time for anime. Letter Bee, you cheeky muppets!! Oh, and I heartily recommend these first three episodes of the stunning-looking Angel Beats.

Was there anything else? I don't-

Ah! Golden Week!

Plan is, from the Thursday night to the Monday morning we're gonna head to Tokyo (that's Team Korea plus Special Guest Star Jess (maybe)) and spend the time in an interesting (and cheap) ryoukan just off the circle line. Really, really looking forward to it. Plans so far include a day in Kamakura (where we can, I hear, get inside Buddha's head) and a day in Yokohama (where we can, I know, visit another Pokemon Center AND a Gundam-themed bar). Lor comes down with her folks on the Thursday after (i.e. the day I am actually supposed to be meeting anonymous-eikaiwa-san) so it's gonna be a good couple of weeks!

Related plans for long weekends to come include Fukuoka, Nagoya and Hiroshima (the first two containing my last, final two Pokemon Centers) which all sound superb.

Phew, wore myself out a little bit there...

Thanks for reading.

***

俺の場合は相変わらずけど、マーシア君はいつも変わってる。シルクちゃんにもアーケヂアにもあのルーパスの奴にもシャウトアウトだ！

Creap

2010-04-05T02:17:00.001-07:00

Okay, long time no see!

A few things to catch up on, but not a great deal, considering the huge time we've had free since Korea. Things have been pretty slow, with Hanami season now at its height, but on Wednesday the term starts anew. I guess that's the main thing I'm gonna talk about today.

So, this term I've been placed in proficiency level 5, two higher than last semester. Exactly as I was hoping it would be, so that's good news! Also in my level are the other members of Team Korea, and we even managed to place in the same class by... complete, uh, coincidence.

*ahem*

Extra classes for me will take up Monday and Tuesday afternoons: new seminars for the JLPT (which starts its brand-new system this year) and supplementary grammar courses, along with a new Intercom course and an anime and manga course! That's right, this time the dream becomes reality! On top of that I have two English students to teach on certain evenings, so I'm going to be earning some money as well! Everything's looking up Pete!

I'd still rather not go back, mind... This holiday has been su-PERB, and I'm going to miss all the time spent travelling around or watching films at ridiculous-o'clock. I'm NOT going to miss spending all that money, though. Seriously, ouch.

I... can't really think of what else needs saying... Like I said, a bit of a slow few weeks.

Ooh, we went to Himeiji Castle a couple of weeks back! That was pretty good, though I can't quite see what all the fuss was about. It's not the biggest castle in Japan, nor is it the whitest, nor the most important historically. Himeiji Castle is famous because it is the castle-i-est castle in the whole of Japan. I took a grand total of one picture, having left my camera's memory card at home, but I daresay another member of Team Korea took some beauts. Steph's got a stunning set of pictures regarding a chance meeting with Winston, the all-time best cat in Japan. Seriously made up for all those dumb, scaredy cats that run when I get near. Watch the photo albums for that!

Last couple of Sundays (not counting yesterday's Easter Sunday) have been Team Korea outings too, with the Team setting course for Osaka in search of the rumoured Jesus Life Church. We didn't realise when we were going there, however, that participation first requires that you defeat a grand and noble task of actually finding the place. Each week the venue changes (each week!), so regular watching of the website is in order to see which of the plethora of tiny, insignificant train stations across Osaka is this week's. As you may be able to gather, neither time were we able to locate the place, not even after the service had long since concluded, and I for one have given up hope. My loyalties will lie with the Doshisha Church!

Ah, right! There're a bunch of new guys starting their years here now! Among them are some ace new additions to the Shugakukan squad, such as Steph's school friend Jessie. Shout out to you all, best of luck for the new term!

That's it, that's everything I can think of.

So yeah, now I'd like to talk a little about some anime.

With the Spring Season just starting, the Winter must draw to its inevitable conclusion. Since Korea we have seen the last of Kobato and Armed Librarians, two of the three shows I was keeping up with. The third, Letter Bee, has more to go, with last episode's preview making it look like the end is gonna be a good one! Kobato ended rather well, in true CLAMP rose-tinted style, though I would have liked something a little more epic. Something big and loud, something not so... CLAMPy. Armed Librarians was looking stunning right up until the very last moment, but the last episode was something of a disappointment. All it really ended with was a chance for each member of the cast in turn to show off a bit, so the actual plot ended up being mired somewhat beneath chest-beating and meaningless fights. Still loved the show, but I'll now be less sure about getting the DVD.

And that's it! I'm making Omrice, so I'll speak to you some other time.

Thanks for reading.

***

タワータイクゥゥゥゥゥン！！てめえぇぇぇ！！何者だ？！　

Two Halves - Same Coin, part 5

2010-03-11T06:49:00.000-08:00

Final chapter today, hope you're ready for it.

I'd like to start with a message to the Polish tour group that were with us in the DMZ today:

"What part of 'do not take pictures unless told that you may' do you not understand?!

What part of 'do not look back and keep moving until you have entered the building' is beyond you?!

Do you not feel a sense of urgency, perhaps, when armed soldiers tell you that you will face criminal charges if you do not comply?!

Consider yourselves lucky those illegal photos you took were the only things you lost, and not your cameras or, I don't know,

your lives!!

Grow up!!"

That's it.

So as you have no doubt gathered by now we have successfully entered and then left North Korean soil in the form of the DMZ, and I can report that it was an excellent experience. So massively tense it was unbelievable, but totally worth it to get the proper experience of the state of the Korean War which, I can tell you, is still going on.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the last stretch of South Korea before everything blurs into shades of neutrality. The DMZ extends across over 200km of land, spanning the whole of the Korean Peninsula, and 4km north-south, with 2km of North Korean land and 2km of South Korean. Within that are two little villages, one for each side, who farm the rice and ginseng fields and don't have to pay tax or anything. Obviously I'd much rather be showing you pictures of the place, but as my rant may have mentioned a lot of photos were simply banned outright, so I'll have to describe.

Which reminds me, we were told why jeans were not allowed as well and it's pretty funny. The jeans in question are that faded sort, the one with all the holes in it, as apparently the officials are afraid that the North Koreans will take pictures of you in your tattered jeans and use it as propaganda, saying that the south is so poor that its residents cannot afford to fix their own clothing! We laughed at that.

So yeah, first stop on the tour was an observatory/museum a few miles into the South, which told us about what we suspect (and they had to stress that a lot of it really is 'suspect') about life in the North, as well as the details of the war. We had lunch there; more bimbibap. Not that I dislike the stuff, its just the only thing I can say is proper Korean food that I've eaten here, and that's not a great thought. Also ate a raw clove of garlic, which I regret.

For reference, the woman at the front is Michelle, our tour guide, and the others are Polish. Thought you'd like to know.

Anyway, from there we went off to Panmunjeom and its Joint Security Area (JSA). It didn't take long, just a single passport check and we were into Camp Bonifas. A slideshow briefing told us more of the war and what we could expect in the JSA proper, and we were escorted to the facility by a stern-looking Korean officer with a Californian accent. The JSA is a bunch of buildings in a little compound, conveniently colour-coded. Blues are South Korean and... unpainted are North. We were warned beforehand not to "fraternize" with the North soldiers, and the whole time we were there we had them watching over us from their concrete fort in the north of the compound. Very unnerving, it really showed just how tense this whole conflict has become, with both sides watching each other, waiting for the other to make a move.

There you go, that's a lot of the compound right there.

That was the main brunt of the tour, with the rest simply being a coach ride to the gift shop. There was one very interesting bit in the JSA, though, and that was being shown the conference room used by both sides for negotiations. Like the JSA itself, the table in the center of the room was split in two, but it was the only place in the whole world where civilians were allowed into North Korean military property.

So yeah, I have actually been to North Korea. Stood with one foot in each, as a matter of fact.

Sorry if that was a bit short, it is late and I have a bunch of people trying to get me to concentrate on assisting in the construction of a fictitious universe.

Thanks for reading. I did not die.

Two Halves - Same Coin, part 4

2010-03-10T08:04:00.000-08:00

Let's get the bad news out of the way first: there was no trip to the DMZ today. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was because of this:

That's right, North Korea was closed due to bad weather. It's difficult to be angry, though, as we did get to chat with the lovely Japanese (yes, Japanese) staff at the travel office, and meet our tour guide for tomorrow, when we shall try again. I'm pretty confident this time.

So, today started with breakfast at Starbucks, Pourtoi bakery and Doughnut Plant in that order. The latter was a particularly good find, with doughnuts the size of your head and muffins like great volcanoes on sale. I had a cream cheese... thing, which was exceptionally nice.

Good stuff. Next we moved on to the tourist information booth we visited last time, eager to find something to do with our vast expanse of free time that preferably took place outside of Seoul for a change. The result was a trip to the Traditional Korean Village, Asia's Black Country Museum. The way underfoot was sludgy and slippery, and there weren't many people there at all, but that's their loss as the place looked simply stunning.

The place was much bigger than I'd thought, almost an amusement park in fact, with its own restaurants (about 5 of them) and souvenir shops alongside the preserved 19th Century houses. The actual exhibition (I guess you can call it that) was actually really good, and you could go right into any of the buildings and take a snoop around. There were also funny animals, which always wins me over. The souvenir shop was also a hit, surprisingly, with almost over-eager staff members ready to sell you pretty much anything. Picked up a Western rifle that shoots rubber bands and a present for a certain someone to celebrate a certain milestone. Naturally, the rifle was a present to myself. There's also one ace picture of Steph and I in traditional clothing (Mark's yellow belly got in the way of a full Team Korea photo) which shall be viewable the moment one of us finds a scanner.

Next we set off to Meong-dong once again so I could buy shoes. You should have seen my poor Shoe Zoners, sodden the whole way through; it was a sad sight indeed. But I can't much complain: I now have my very first pair of Converse, which makes me cool! Right? I'll tell you what is cool, though, and that's that they cost a mere £20. Aw yeah.

In the end we spent upwards of two and a half hours on the subway, having gone the wrong direction a number of times and in the end resolving that it was simply less hassle to just go the full loop round. It is now 1.30am, and we've not been back that long. But the fact that the trains were still running at that hour is praiseworthy, as is our new Korean friend who wanted to ask us about why we came to Korea. You wouldn't get many Japanese people doing that, I don't think; I'd certainly have real difficulty mustering up the courage.

Tomorrow is the DMZ, honest so another early start. Expect lots of pictures of stuff that isn't North Korea. Other plans include the evening service at the world's largest church. After that, though, it's back home to Kyoto on Friday, and one early flight.

Thanks for reading. This time it may really be my last.

*****

秋のアニメシーゾンはもうすぐ終わります。残念ですよね？確かに、面白いと思うシリーズが三つぐらいだけあるけれども、バントラーの終わりを楽しむつもりです。そして、「こばと」もおもしろかったから、最後のエピソードを見たいです。

ピート、がんばります！！

Two Halves - Same Coin, part 3

2010-03-09T07:09:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'll admit it, we didn't do a great deal today. Over half of the day was spent searching for the flipping USO, a problem which could have been solved a great deal faster if Seoul only had one Outback Steak Restaurant, and not three. THREE!! How many do you need?!

So, let's do this one step at a time.

I woke up at an okay-ish time of 10, yet waited around for 2 hours for Bill and Ben to wake up and get ready to go. In that time I researched our biggest and most dramatic plan for the week: visiting the DeMilitarised Zone (the 'DMZ') on the border between North and South Korea. After attempting to call the USO, the company the runs the cheapest and widely regarded as 'best' tours, and getting an angry Korean voice instead, we set off to search for it ourselves. Breakfast (in a way) at Dunkin' Donuts and then off the the City Hall where the maps said it should be. Only it wasn't, obviously, because there are too many Outback Steak Houses in Seoul. In the end we asked at one of the multitude of Tourist Information booths around Myeong-dong and were off to Itaewon (self-described tourist trap) where we managed to find it without much hassle. Really nice place, the USO, with massive leather chairs and a big screen that shows CNN and stuff. The staff were ace as well, though it didn't change the fact that you need to reserve about a month in advance rather than a couple of days.

On our way to Itaewon proper to grab dinner we passed the Korean War Museum. It struck home, I guess, just how little I know about these two countries and what they went through, and I have since decided to learn all I can about what happened. The Museum, though we didn't go in, is a very impressive building, and even without going in there's a massive amount to see.

We moved on, as we were famished by this point, to Itaewon. The sight of so many classic foreign chains on one street was pretty mind-blowing, I can assure you, but we silently agreed to attempt to be more adventurous and ended up in Curry Town. We, and nobody else, not one soul. It seems Koreans must eat dinner later than we western infidels, as from when we arrived at 6 to when we left at 7 not a single person came into the shop. I had a fish masala, incidentally, which was super-nice but for the mountains of bones I had to extract from it.

Then we went across the road for dessert, to a little pie shop run by a Frenchman pretending to be an American. Good prices and incredible pies on sale, there, and milk that didn't taste like Japanese milk.

Ooooooooooh.

Eh?

Anyway, by then it was snowing, and we headed off to the alleged Tourist Information booth in Itaewon to seek out DMZ tours that weren't full up. And that's literally all we had to ask for. We're on the tour tomorrow. Incredible. There were slight hiccups involving a supposed 'Dress code' which stated no denim, but according to the tour guides on the phone it wouldn't matter so long as they "didn't have holes in them". Well, whatever they say. They'll be the ones keeping us out of firing range, after all. Another thing they mentioned was that one of the tour spots (which include war bridges, monuments and, most impressively, North Korea itself) would not be available due to "military troubles". Sounds exciting, huh?

On the way home we checked out a massive book store near the palace. Mark got a Rachmaninov CD, Steph got some CDs of some Korean prettyboys, and I got 5cm per Second. I tell you, cheap-tastic this country is. Cheap as chips.

Need to be at a certain hotel at 9am tomorrow, which may not be possible for Tweedledum and Tweedledee, so I may get some sleep. That or stay up aaaaaaall night beefing up Ushiro the Venusaur, which is also possible.

This may well be the last entry I make, so thanks for reading.

*****

あぁ、腹減った！！ダンキンドーナツのキムチクロケを食べたい！

以上！

Two Halves - Same Coin, part 2

2010-03-08T05:18:00.000-08:00

Today's adventure began with breakfast: a nostalgic trip to Dunkin' Donuts right near our local bus and subway station. The selection is pretty, actually very alarming, with cheese and garlic doughnuts alongside the more traditional iced ones. Cheese doughnuts are an unusual taste, I'm sure you can guess, and not one I really got used to, but it was the experience that counted. From there it was off to the palace, or so we thought.

Due to feeling financially vulnerable, we decided to head there on foot, about 5 kilometres of Seoul's charming skyscraper forest, in an attempt to save money. It shall not be my fondest memory of the city, let me tell you. Street after street of concrete, noisy drivers, incomprehensible signs and construction works. Ooh, were there a lot of those.

Fortunately it was not the only side that Seoul had to offer, and having reached the City Hall and acquired a map or ten we finally got through to classmate Miji, who with her infinite kindness and compassion decided to show us around her city. From Meong-dong, a bustling shopping street, we headed towards the mountains in south of the city and the many monuments, museums and embassies that were situated there.

By this point we had forgotten about lunch and were feeling pretty hungry, so Miji took us to a secluded little eatery near the war memorial, a place that served almost exclusively vegetarian food. It was nice to have choice. My meal was soba noodles with 'bibim', vegetables in spicy kimchi sauce, and was exquisite. We also partook of Korean spirits before leaving, and thanks to my two years of training I was able to impress the Koreans in that department.

By this point it was getting pretty dark, so we went down to the picturesque riverside (site of nonsensical monster movie The Host) for a stroll. It was intensely cold, but the view was pretty spectacular.

It may not sound like we've had a very full day, but I can tell you now it felt like at least a week's worth of stuff. All that walking, all those monuments. And only 10,000 won spent. Result.

Thanks for reading. More again tomorrow.

*****

韓国人は優しいですね。ミジさんとソールを歩いていて、時々道を知らなくて人を聞くけど、いつもその人は優しかったです。そして、帰るあいだにパンやに行って、無料なクリームパッフをいただきました！本当に優しいですね！

Two Halves - Same Coin, part 1

2010-03-07T07:18:00.000-08:00

Today I came to Korea.

Now, having never been to Korea before, I was a little lost at what to expect. To be quite honest, up until fairly recently I guess I didn't really believe that Korea was a real place, just some made-up fantasy kingdom out there to the east. The idea of going to Korea felt a little like going to Neverland; it still hasn't really sunk in.

But you'll be pleased to know that Korea did exist, and that it's really not that different to Japan. Enter a shop and the 'keepers all call out a cheery 'Welcome', you press the button on your table to call service and pay at the register at the front of the shop, combinis exist. It's just that all of these things occur in a language I haven't the faintest knowledge of. Well, perhaps not so faint any more; I have a notebook with phrases that might come in handy, and its not so hard to pick out key words from the people that talk at you.

But all is not pleasant and green in this funny country. When I came here this morning... scratch that, yesterday morning, I emptied my Japanese bank account on the belief that I could probably stretch that last 20,000 yen over the week, especially if the accommodation was a mere 3000 yen. Dear, oh dear, oh dear was I wrong. In a horrifying twist, it turns out the quoted price was the cost of the room per day, and that in actual fact the fee took about 90% of my lovely new money away from me. I currently have 2,000 wong to my name, that's about 200 yen, which is about £1.75. Fortunately, I still have 2 friends to mooch off of and the potential for more money to come flooding into the bank as soon as Shinkin get themselves in gear and give it to me.

Y'know, stuff here ain't as cheap as I thought it would be. Vitamin Water is about twice as expensive, for example, though Coke is about the same. Pepsi is actually slightly cheaper than Coke here. Donuts are cheap, mind, about 100 yen each. Pizza Hut (yes, yes. Western food. I'm beyond caring) still set us back about 4000 yen, so it's not all a land of value as I had been told. The people are nice, though, honestly so, and don't shy away from foreigners like the Japanese tend to.

Here's a video.

Airports are the same, you see.

The guest house is real nice. It's just a big house with a bunch of rooms, with the three of us in one of the slightly bigger ones. Everything's a bit faded and peeling slightly, but the atmosphere's genuinely nice. It's a nightmare to find, though. Here's another video to demonstrate:

The whole way we were convinced we were gonna get led down some alleyway and mugged. But we didn't, which was nice. Sometimes friendly gestures are exactly what they seem.

Well, I have a headache now. May not be sleeping for a while, don't feel like it.

Thanks for reading. Praying for better news tomorrow, when we scavenge Seoul for cheap things to do.

*****

問題ある。昨日カイオーガを探して、捕まえて、グラードンをダヤモンドから送った。二匹とオーキド博士のラボを訪ねて、ホウエンの幻のポケモンを見せた。その後、緑の玉をもらって、レックーザを探せるようになるとおもった。でも…　「どちもゴールドかシルバーからのポケモンじゃなければ、続けない」と言われた。

オーキドやろう！！

Shrine Maidens in drizzle cause Fatal KOs

2010-03-03T00:44:00.000-08:00

Not a great deal to talk about, to be quite honest, but I've got a but of time on my hands and am feeling productive, so here's a short update on the last week.

So this time last week was a massively successful film night. And the Nabe! Wow, was that something special! Not content with the standard Nabe formula of 'put vegetables and oil and stuff in water and boil for a while', Sara, Mark and I took it upon ourselves to revolutionise the age-old Nabe formula.

Behold! Is it not the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?! It was worth the minor burns and potential for insurance-voiding fire to get it cooked, because wow was this thing good! All four of us struggled to finish it!

The film night itself was epic on the scale of nothing you will ever have seen. We'd all brought films to watch, though we never expected to watch them all. We got through about half of Princess Mononoke before we had to leave the common room as they were locking up, then continued the night run with Reservoir Dogs, Howl's Moving Castle and Serenity, the one film of the night I had never seen before. Must say it was quite good, and definitely fulfilled its purpose of making me want to watch the show. Let's just say, though, I was not surprised when I heard it was done by the same guy that did Buffy. I'll say no more. Sara left us early the next day, and we accompanied her to the station and to get breakfast from the bakery. Oh, did I mention we also bought Lawsons out of Big Thunders? I still have the box.

We returned home and, not wanting to end just there, watched the first Lord of the Rings film, with the intention of watching the other two some other day. We were really starting to fall now, but with intense perseverance we were able to get through. And then, hitting the second wind around lunch time, we decided to finish the set. McDonalds for dinner and back home to sleep at 10pm.

I've still not fully recovered.

And I'd better hurry up too, as the second night is on tomorrow, with special guest star Ben. The theme is aquatic this time, with Finding Nemo and Megashark vs. Giant Octopus on the cards, as well as Totoro and, if we can, some of the films from my 'Films Pete really should have seen by now' pile that we didn't hit last time (The Green Mile, Fargo, Enter the Dragon, Good Night and Good Luck).

What else? Oh yeah, Laura and Caroline came down from the capital to see us, which was fun. Went to Kiyomizu, Fushimi-Inari, Nijo Castle and the like, which was all good fun.

Oh yeah, I also got a job. Go me. Doesn't feel like it just yet, as the students are yet to come a'calling, and I've got Korea on Sunday so won't be available then.

Yeah, Korea. No excuse for not knowing now, eh? Finally had to accept a pitiful defeat and draw some money from the savings, something I was hoping to avoid. Can't be helped. And, I mean, it's Korea!

In other news...

Did anyone see this week's Kobato? I know I shouldn't have been surprised, but I really was. I mean, come on CLAMP, the series is over! Stop chucking your beloved Tsubasas all over the place and make some new characters!

Also gonna finally watch the last episode of Kara no Kyoukai today, which I absolutely adore at this point. The music is particular is simply spectacular. A little cliche-ridden to get it to the leaderboards, and that last episode felt a bit pointless. And that crazy high-school student eating a guy at the end? Cheers, ufotable, lost my appetite for a long time after seeing that.

Right, that's all I can think about for now. Gonna go yaki some soba.

Thanks for reading.

***

フシギダネ…ゼニガメ…ヒトカゲ…みんなゲットだった。子供の頃の願いが満たされていた…

じゃ、次はジェネレーションV！

Paper forms and verb forms

2010-02-22T01:10:00.000-08:00

Another blog entry so soon after the last, what IS this world coming to?

Let's start with yesterday's church, which was especially good for a number of reasons. Firstly Mark wasn't there (I kid! It's a joke!). Also the preacher this week, to my utmost surprise, was female. I guess I'd just assumed that with the traditional setting and traditional hymns, Doshisha church's beliefs would be likewise somewhat traditional. But no, nobody seemed to have a problem with the woman, though I still can't remember her name. She gave an interesting sermon on the tenderness of the Holy Spirit, linking Jesus' torment in the desert to her own long-suffering allergies. It was easily understood, too, as she was using more conversational styles of Japanese that I was used to from lecturers. Also met another Christian fan of Gundam, which was simply superb. He likes Zeta and Wing, and was interested in hearing what I had to say about 00. Next week is udon week, so I hope to meet the guy again. Can't remember his name, either.

So today was important for two things. Firstly I was going to get my form (Urgh) handed in that states that I can get back into the country after leaving for Korea in March. Second was dissertational research.

The form in question looked almost identical to one I handed it not too long ago, the form for working part time with a student visa, so I assumed the procedure was the same. Collecting together my passport, alien card, student I.D. and the form itself, I cycled off to uni to hand them all in. I first cottoned on to things not being right when I gave the woman at the desk my form, and she looked at it blankly and asked 'What is this?' You should know, was my desired reply, you gave it to me on Saturday! After handing it round to seemingly everyone in the whole office, it tagged to someone that they don't deal with them, you have to hand them in at the Immigration office yourself.

...

So off I went, map in hand, to find the Osaka General Immigration Office (Kyoto Branch), which was apparently on Marutamachi street, east of the river. No problem, I thought, cycling off to the riverside, extra-specially nice in the spring sun. Did you know there two Marutamachi's, parallel to each other? I guess they wanted to save time in naming the streets so thought 'Hey, it's practically the same road!' So after walking down past the Kyoto City Hospital, which incorporates the Kyoto University Medical School so is massive, I realised my mistake and headed south by one to get to the desired street.

The Immigration Office lies of the fourth floor of a bigger building. Handing over my form to the woman at the desk (who spoke unnaturally quickly), I was told that it would cost 3000 yen to get the thing processed. Not that surprising, I had been told about this before, so I fished into my wallet for the money. But oh no, Japan wouldn't make it so simple for me. On seeing my actions, I was told that I can't actually pay with money.

....

Holding tight to Ticket No. 29, hoping beyond hope that it didn't get called before I got back, I rushed to the thankfully close post office to get a stamp. A stamp!! And with that I could pay the form fee. The people at the stamp shop, by contrast, were very nice, and even gave me some discount vouchers for the duty free shop at Kansai International as thanks for buying their stuff. And when I got back to the office, I found that No. 29 would never be called, because I first had to put the form, stamp attached, into the box at the desk. And they neglected to tell me this... why?! I had to watch someone who knew what they were doing (somehow) do it first before I realised!

So that's that sorted. Now I can leave Japan and still get back in again.

So there's this building called a Daikyoukai (lit. big church) right near the Immigration office. Looks Buddhist, but I really couldn't tell. And there were people living in it. For the life of me I could not fathom such a building's purpose. Was it a themed hotel? I had no idea! I spend ages walking around it out of simple curiosity (and hoping to put off the next task on the list) and could not find out what the people in the building were meant to be doing.

Anyone know what this is? Please, tell me if you do.

Okay, so the big challenge of today. I cycled off to Shimogamo Shrine, the local one, with my new dictaphone, and started asking people what 'Praying' was. I think it went quite well, all things considered, and Shimogamo is a much better place to spend 5 hours standing around than a lot of other places I could mention. I was also blown away by just how nice everyone seemed to be. Well, maybe not everyone, but enough to make it count. The first woman I interviewed, for example, could not have been more helpful, and used lots of lovely keigo for me to analyse when I don't feel so sleepy. There were a lot of similarly kind people around, but I couldn't interview them all. People with cameras, I decided, were out, because they obviously weren't just here to pray. Same went for couples (and why is it that shrines are big date spots, huh? Why aren't cathedrals the same?) as they may have influenced each other's choices (plus I'd feel like a third wheel). So I was targeting the people who went in without any kind of photo-taking device (which made me look like a thief), and anybody who bowed on their way into the shrine complex was a dead cert for interviewing. Oh, and these people were clearly out of the question:

What I found is that people DO use keigo when they talk about Shinto gods, which is helpful, and have some evidence to back that up with. Not enough, though. Not quite. So tomorrow's task will be the same as today's: find a shrine and quiz the occupants. Hopefully now that I've mustered up a bit more courage I can save a bit more time. After that I'll move on to Buddhist temples, and on Sunday do the same at church. The I'll get to writing the thing, which I'm looking less and less forward to. Say what you will, Miriam and Mits, I'm not convinced I can get all 8000 words written on just this topic. But hey, I'll give it my best. Maybe if I quote enough other people it'll rack that word count up.

Until tomorrow, then.

***

あぁ、結婚したいわぁ！＜３

Take those eggs back in time to before the expiration date; that way they're good to eat.

2010-02-20T00:13:00.000-08:00

It's still the holiday, folks, and that means I haven't been doing much. But I have been doing something, I haven't been completely wasting my time away. Although some days that's exactly what it feels like.

A beautiful example: Yesterday I took my brand-new CV, a gorgeous sight to behold, and stuck it in an email with something approaching a cover letter. That email was then sent to a company that will remain nameless, because this anecdote does not turn out well for them. I cannot stress enough how many times I checked, double-checked and triple-checked that email (actually it was just one of each); I even sent it to myself once just to make sure it would come through alright. Then, at about 1 o'clock in the afternoon, off it went to, hopefully, my new employer.

So imagine my ballistic rage (the guys on MSN at the time shouldn't have to) when, at 10 o'clock at night, I thought I'd just have a little check in the inbox, just to make sure, and found a new email. And email that I had written just that day! My own email! Attached to it was a brief message from the anonymous internet postman telling me that the email address I sent it to did not exist, and though it would ishhoukenmei try and send it again every few hours it wanted me to know chance of success was small. Small like my patience!

What kind of stupid company, one that prides itself on communication skills none the less, attaches the wrong email to their help wanted ad?! Not just that, to their own flipping website?! Or maybe this was just some elaborate hoax set up by the Osaka Immigration Center, get me enticed by a great-looking job teaching kids English for 4,000 yen every hour and a half, and then remind me that, as a gaijin living in Japan, good things are not allowed to happen to me.

Needless to say, new offers have been sent out, and I sit and wait for the inevitable, familiar voice of the postman.

So that's an update of one of my Big Spring Responsibilities, now the other one. I'm actually quite happy with how the dissertation's going, at the moment. After three solid days (minus the time I spent sleeping until the mid-afternoon, you understand) of reading through often quite interesting linguistics papers on audience design and the role of keigo in style-switching, I was able to write a full 1,200 words of introduction that I am very pleased with. It's a wonderful feeling, knowing it's two weeks into the eight-week holiday, I've only spent a week working on it (if that), and only have 6,800 words left.

Mind you, now comes the really tricky bit, and the reason I was out on my bike for about five hours. I was dictaphone shopping, you see, and those things are both difficult -

Just been invited to a movie night. Sweet!

- both difficult to find and crazy expensive. What kind of hedonistic moron would buy a dictaphone for forty thousand yen? Forty thousand! For that I could pay the rent, health insurance and phone bill for a month and still buy a copy of Heavy Rain on the PS3 (a console I don't have, but would be seriously tempted to buy for that gorgeous-looking game). On the other hand, it's still only half of JASSO for a month, so maybe I shouldn't be the one complaining. The other end of the spectrum was a two thousand yen model which was essentially useless, as the files were recorded onto the 'phone and stayed there. By which I mean you couldn't put them onto the computer. And as the board of markers for Honours Linguistics dissertations is sure to want proof that I really did go and make a royal fool of myself for the purposes of linguistic science that's not going to help one bit.

Not that it really mattered anyway, as Bic Camera had none of them!! Seriously, the whole lot sold out! What is this, buy-a-dictaphone... no hi? What are all these salarymen going to use them for? Ridiculous, I tell you. So I've just now made my own Amazon.jp account and ordered a nice, little middle-ground 'phone (something called an Olympus Voice Trek V-22) for five thousand yen (two thousand cheaper than Bic Camera would have had it for), and in true Amazon tradition it tells me it will arrive tomorrow. Which is Sunday, so I do doubt that. But the range of options for Japanese Amazon really did have me impressed. You don't need to put in a credit card number, you can opt to pay for it at an ATM near where you live. The same goes for address; you just have to put in a Lawson's near you and they'll send it there instead. Incredible.

So I won't be making a fool of myself until Monday at the earliest, which is actually a bit of a shame as o-Hi-sama was out in full this morning, and I can think of no better conditions to be harassing the local populace in. However, church tomorrow, and I'm hoping that resident linguistics lecturer Rie-san will be around so I can offload a few questions. Like, can I record some church-goers praying? Don't know how to say that without sounding like a bit of a nut, so I guess there's no helping it. As they say here in Japan, there is no ginger.

There we go, the two Responsibilities. I could feel a lot worse about where everything's going at this point, so I can be thankful for that. And besides, it's the weekend! What better time to do nothing than now!

And what a great time it is for we slackers! Heard of Google Wave? Louise sent me an invite not long ago, and that is one clever piece of kit. It's like an email, bulletin board, instant messaging thing, and it's also a lot of fun. Louise has big plans to run a Dark Heresy game over it, which I think should work stupendously. Also, I still have my eight invitations left, so anyone interested form a line and get your begging faces on.

Another fairly lengthy use of my time recently has been a not-that-recent anime, but one that I have neglected to check out until just now. It's called Kara no Kyoukai, and easily ranks up there as number one most brutal anime I have ever seen in my whole life. It's also the latest attempt by a studio to borrow the incorrect chronology method of arranging episodes from Suzumiya Haruhi (film out soon and I can't wait!), but pulls it off very well. It pulls a lot of things off very well, for that matter, especially episode previews. This show has the very best episode previews I have ever seen, they're just beautiful. Pity I really don't like the main character, but Kokutou makes up for her so it's still good.

And then there's a free, online farming game. I know what game you're all thinking, but you are wrong. This is a game called Mabinogi, which is easily one of the most popular online games in Japan at the moment. It's the one in all the internet cafes, anyway, and has its own magazine. Typical fantasy setting puts your dude into the shoes of pretty much whoever you want to be. Mercia, for example, is a swordsman who moonlights as a lute-player and sheep-shearer. You get experience for fighting, but also for composing, setting up camps, collecting eggs and sewing pretty patterns into clothes. Pretty much everything. Due to not playing it at the right time I am yet to see all that many people online as of yet, but I'm enjoying what I've played so far. Let's just hope it remains free when my character gets to old age and dies (does actually happen) and I need to have him reborn. I'm guessing not.

That's it. Pretty uneventful holiday, and that fact grates on me quite horribly most of the day, but I'll fight through that feeling. That and the bouncing emails, invisible dictaphones, complicated dissertation topics and not having a pen. Seriously, where did all my pens go? I'll just step out and buy some more.

Thanks for reading.

***

もうすぐ、レッド君。もうすぐ。そして…

倒す！！

The Frozen North, final

2010-02-15T20:34:00.001-08:00

Okay, so this isn't as punctual as the others. But in my defence, there really isn't a great deal to talk about. Certainly aren't any photos or videos worth showing, at least not from my camera.

Day 4, the penultimate day, was spent doing absolutely nothing. I beat the Elite Four three times that day. Three whole times. That is how little we did. On top of that was dinner at Victoria, a mostly-steak-serving family restaurant with an infinite salad bar, and a snowball fight. There really isn't anything more to say.

Day 5 was the last day, and we were all up early to see Steph off as she left for Tokyo to see her family. With a lot of time to kill before the ferry at 10.30, we split up to go and find something to do again. Mark and I had tempura, then did a trawl of the bookshops of Otaru in search of postcards. I'm sure the others did interesting stuff too. We met up again at 3 for karaoke at the quirky-looking Thriller Karaoke, which was notable for its funny decorations and incredibly cheap 50-yen-per-half-hour price. A lot of fun was had, followed by dinner, again, at Victoria, and then it was off to the terminal. I can report that, due to fairer weather, the boat trip back was incomparably better than the trip there, and it was even quite fun. The maids even managed to rip the mansion into Hell to save it from the explosion caused by a 200 foot tall alien. I also watched the first Pokemon movie in Japanese for the first time ever, which was quite an experience*.

We arrived back in Kansai at 9pm, where we walked to the JR station nearby and caught the last train bound in the rough direction of Kyoto. Unfortunately, the subways having finished about half an hour before we arrived, I was forced to walk the I-don't-know-how-many kilometers back from Nijo Station in the west of Kyoto city center, to the Shugakukan in the north east. It certainly did NOT help that I took a wrong turn right at the start and ended up going south for a good distance. This is what I get for picking the closer but unfamiliar station over Kyoto's distant familiarity. Anyway, it took 3 hours and 2 Big Thunders to get home, by which time it was practically morning and my feet hurt.

The next day I awoke at 3pm with a text, then must have fallen asleep again, and woke up for real at 4.45, 15 minutes before the vital ATMs shut for the day (ridiculous, right?). Waking up to see the sun set is a very scary thing, let me tell you. I also watched the second Pokemon movie* and played Elona for a fair while. Then I went back to bed at about midnight.

So yesterday was an actually eventful day, with coffee at Starbuck's with Mai (where I learnt she was getting a part-time job as a cospla- I mean, as a shrine maiden), followed by farewell karaoke for Angela. Seriously fun stuff. Then we had dinner at Mumokuteki, the vegan restaurant in Teramachi, which was just superb. Thusly we saw the end of a long era.

And now it's today. Plans for today are limited, being pretty sleepy, but crucial. I need to find a job, for example. It seems to me that all of the part-time English teaching positions around here require full degrees before you can even apply, which I guess is what Dina was talking about at the CELTA interview, but if a whole bunch of other Edinburghers have found such jobs without needing a degree then so can I. I need to save money for the sorry-I-was-ill-and-couldn't-visit trips to Kobe and Tokyo. Other plans include research for the linguistics essay, which I now finally have time to start properly. Not feeling good about it, though, as collecting the data is going to be one nasty job. I mean, how do I go about getting recordings of people spontaneously using keigo in some kind of religious discussion? The Christian angle is going to be a piece of cake, as I already know what the result is going to be, but finding practicing Shintoists and Buddhists in a country where the two religions have become cultural icons to the point where even non-believers worship is going to be tricky. Current plan is to buy myself a dictophone (a cheap one) and ask random temple-goers a couple of questions. What those questions are, though, I don't really know, as it's going to be hard to get questions which don't frighten them off, but still get them to use their language naturally. Ever tried asking a Christian to explain their faith? Explaining something like that is not easy, so I can't expect it to be different here. With the data in hand, though, actually writing the essay shouldn't be too hard, so long as I have lots of sources to back up my wild claims. And that's today's job.

But first, lunch.

Thanks for reading.

*Okay, now this is what I really want to talk about today: the differences between the English and Japanese versions of Pokemon movies. I've seen two now, and they've been impressive, but the one thing that has really struck me is that there is not some massive leap in quality between the 'clearly inferior' English and 'astronomically superior' Japanese. What I really found surprising is that I actually prefer the English versions.

I know! Weird, right?

That's not to say I was disappointed with the Japanese films. Let's start with the first film and go from there. Oh yeah, there will obviously be spoilers here.

Pokemon: The Movie (劇場版ポケットモンスター)

The most notable difference here is the introduction. In the original film there is a fifteen minute introduction in which a biological sample of Mew is found, and some scientists work on cloning it. What we don't see in English is that the project is headed up by a scientist who is hoping to clone his own daughter, who died not long before, using the same technology. So we get this lovely scene where Mewtwo, still an infant, talks with 'AiTwo', the scientist's cloned daughter, and the three starter Pokemon in a telepathic, dream-like conversation. However, one by one the clone system fails and each of Mewtwo's new friends fade away, leaving him alone and confused.

The rest of the film is identical plot-wise, and this raises a number of questions. What point did that introduction have if Mewtwo never once mentions it, and though it may have been the driving force behind his change of heart that link is never clearly seen. It makes what was a very touching scene into something unnecessary. Of course, I may just be saying that because I hadn't seen it before, so know that it makes sense without it. Perhaps if I'd seen AiTwo in the beginning I'd feel differently.

There are a number of other little differences between versions that have an impact on the feel of the film. A lot of the jokes that are in the English version are changed or removed completely in Japanese, and there are a few that I just didn't get in the original. It makes it a little more serious, which isn't always what is needed. When it turns out that the vikings that were rowing you to a mysterious island were in fact Team Rocket, you wouldn't be that scared. I mean, it's Team Rocket. They dressed up as vikings, for crying out loud. Oh, and speaking of Team Rocket's blunders, you may be interested to know that they do NOT mistake Scyther for Alakazam in the original, that was the translator's error. I do like, however, their 'Who's that Pokemon?' lines, which are spoken a lot closer to the series' lines, and this makes it a lot funnier.

Music changes a great deal between the two films as well, even in really small ways. Mew's theme in English is a lot different to Mew's theme in Japanese (can't find an example), and I much prefer the English version. It really gives Mew this sense of being something ethereal, whereas the Japanese song (you'll have to take my word for it) is a lot more about Mew being mischievous and less about him being a rare Pokemon. If that makes sense... Another big difference in terms of music is when the Pokemon are all fighting their clones, and it's all very sad. In Japanese you get a song that you'd expect for a normal battle, rather than the slushy song you get in English. Not sure which works better here, but I can tell you that Ash getting turned to stone is FAR sadder in English than in Japanese, and I think the music plays a big part in that.

I do like both versions of this film, but I prefer the English because it seems to have more spirit. As Louise said, it's like the translators have takes risks and tried to put their own slant on the events, and in this case it is a slant I appreciate more.

Pokemon: The Movie 2000 (劇場版ポケットモンスター　幻のポケモン　ルギア爆誕)

This will be a lot shorter, as there are far fewer differences in this film. The most important point I can think of is the quality of the voice acting. Lugia, Slowking and the Collector all have much better voices in Japanese than in English. I seriously could not take Lugia seriously in English, and it was good to see him with something of a darker, more monstrous voice in Japanese. Thinking about it, that's kinda the only major difference between them, without me going into overall differences between the two series as a whole.

Okay, now I'm really hungry.

-----

幻のポケモン、ミュウ。不思議で、伝説のポケモン。レッドの時を覚えると、ミュウの不思議さがかっこかったと思った。でも今、ミュウがいて、もうすぐポケモンマスターレッドを勝負つもりだ。

それも不思議だね。

The Frozen North, part 3

2010-02-10T19:29:00.000-08:00

Day three saw the group divided. Ben and Angela were intent on skiing that day, and so they departed early for the ski resort near Otaru (which I think is famous for something) and the rest of us headed for the aquarium. After discovering a few kilometers down the road that it was NOT in walking distance, we bused down the remainder and arrived.

It's been a long time since I've been to an aquarium, so I may be overreacting to what is pretty standard fare, but wow is Otaru Aquarium awesome!

Highlights (and I'm only doing highlights 'cos we're, again, a bit pressed for time) included an Edinburgh Zoo-style penguin walk, dolphins, noisy otters and Doctor Fish in a tank that you could put your hand in. One of the strangest sensations you can experience, having tiny fish eat the dirt and dead skin cells off your hand, and it was hilarious!

We moved swiftly on at around 2.30 to Sapporo, leaving Sara and Harry to sort some stuff out back in Otaru, where we waltzed over to Freshness Burger for lunch. Those meticulously earnt respect points quickly drifted away on the breeze when it became apparent that they were out of tofu, but I thought the fish burger* was amazing as well. From there we took a roundabout route back the way we came to a huge BookOff just south of the Sapporo Tower, and spent a long time there browing through manga and cheap CDs. Spend 200 yen on 2 manga to keep me busy during the boat trip home: one Shin Megami Tensei manga starring a guy with a nose you could skewer cocktail sausages on and hair that belonged on one of those long-haired rabbits, and also a Persona manga following some of the events of Persona 2 but with different characters. First impressions make them look pretty good, we'll just have to wait and see.

At around 7 we moved on to the shopping area next to the station, and one of my prime visit targets: the Sapporo Pokemon Center. According to Ben that place had changed location about five times in the last few years, but I thought this place was a really nice location. The layout and decorations were all top-notch, and it was right opposite and arcade which was a stroke of genius. Just as planned, I got myself something to celebrate the trip: the first four Pokemon movies... on DS! Like, a little DS video player with the 4 movies on a mini-SD card! The sound quality is top-notch, and though the video quality isn't perfect it still does a stellar job. And now I can finally watch the Japanese versions of the films, and some of the best at that. On testing it out on the opening sequence of the first film, it is clear that 4Kids made some pretty massive changes to the plot. They neglected to mention, for example, that the scientist in charge of the Mewtwo Project was actually using it as a test to see if he could resurrect his dead daughter. Pretty incredible stuff for a kids' movie.

Anyway, dinner at Capricosa, Starbucks, and then the train home just before midnight, where we spent a few hours in the room watching the winter olympics.Then sleep.

Today's plan is to defeat the Champion (that guy and his Dragons... so annoying!!) and just take it easy. Plan is to go drinking tonight, provided we can find somewhere in sleepy Otaru. Really hungry right now, though, so that takes first priority. I'm also pretty annoyed, as the internet appears to not exist anymore, and the computer is insistant that it never existed at all. This little guy is great, but wow can it be a pain when it comes to the internet. I think there's some program on here slowing the poor guy down, need to find what. So for now I am typing the rest up on WordPad and will copy/paste it back on at a later time.

Shall write more later.

Thanks for reading.

*I am well aware of the irony of enjoying a fish burger right after visiting an aquarium.

The Frozen North, part 2

2010-02-09T16:04:00.001-08:00

So, day 2.

Today's big adventure saw us taking the trip down to Sapporo, one of Japan's big 'semi-capital' cities, to see what all the fuss was about. Initial plans the night before had us getting up by 12 so we could catch the train fairly early whilst still giving us enough time to sleep. Things didn't quite turn out as good as we'd planned, but at least things still happened.

So at 2 (...) we left for the station. Ride there was unseemly and not worth talking about, save to mention being able to hear the infuriating sound of someone snorning, but not being able to see where they were, giving the whole thing a rather creepy feel to it.

Sapporo is very different to Otaru, we could see that as soon as we arrived. Sure there's snow, and sure it's a lot more snow than we're used to back in Britain. But be it the meticulous cleaning of the big city, or the presence of concrete, or whatever, there simply was not a great deal of snow actually on the ground. It was still cold, mind.

AND there was definitely enough snow for the city to become Yuki Matsuri HQ, which was the main reason we were there.

So, quick lunch at Freshness Burger (something tells me we'll be returning) and it was off to see the ice sculptures. I don't know what it is, but sculptures made of ice are just not as impressive as those made of snow. I think it's because ice looks like glass, so I get suspicious that it wasn't quite as difficult as it perhaps should have been. Regardless, I was not as enthused by the big ice fish and people as much as I was by the little stick men and their snowy houses back in Otaru.

However, there was one sculpture that turned the whole thing around for me:

Wherever I go I am blown away by Japan's fascination with Gundam. It is no exaggeration to say that I have caught something of their contagious enthusiasm, and this sculpture was a real blessing on my robot-addled mind. I am told in certain authority that there is something else I really need to see but didn't have time to, and shall update you on that when next we speak. What this sculpture also did was give me the name 'Gundam Bar Jaburo', which was enough to get me all giddy with excitement. Found out just now, though, that Jaburo is in Yokohama. Then again, so is another Pokemon Center, so maybe a trip out there would be worth it at some point.

Next was a trip on a ferris wheel, something of a big-city tradition.

And moving swiftly on, as we're due to head to the aquarium soon and both Blogger and Windows Movie Maker are being a real pain*, we saw some snow sculptures. Be aware, one of these photos is sickeningly sweet and may turn your stomach.

Then there was sushi and a train ride home, along with a promise to return some other time to finish off the sights. Not much else to mention. Team Korea had adventures in the snow, but that's a story for another time.

Today, as I said, we're off to the aquarium first, followed by Sapporo, whilst Ben and Angela go skiing.

Apologies if these reports are a little more brief than usual. You'll just have to ask me in person, eh?

Right, breakfast.

Thanks for reading.

*I'll stick the videos up seperately later on, I haven't the time just now.

The Frozen North, part 1

2010-02-08T17:45:00.000-08:00

By reading this I hope you can assume from the get go that exams are over, we arrived safely in Hokkaido and there are no new funerals to attend.

What you cannot assume is that everything went according to plan, which is probably a good thing for you as it makes the blog that much more interesting to read. That thought in mind did not make it any less fun to experience, however.

Boy, was I in a good mood after filming that! Such a novelty experience coupled with the adrenaline rush of overcoming an obstacle of Herculean proportions made for high spirits.

But that is where the fun stops.

I hadn't been on a boat in about 13 years, mind, and the weather conditions we not tip-top to say the least. Which is my way of saying that I got seasick. We all did. Every last one of us. It was horrific. 20 solid hours of nausea, groutch and unenthusiasm. Even the second Gurren Lagann movie (which is so-so up until the end in which it excels itself by staying true to its word and defeating the impossible, making the end even more epic than the original) was insufficient. Everything eventually ran out of batteries, sleep was brief and intermittent, mealtimes were awkward and for the most part unwanted and Maid RPG was comparatively flat. Those 20 hours were the worst in my entire life, I reckon, worse even than that time I worked in that festering cesspit of a catering agency which shall remain nameless.

But that is all behind me now. We're here! We're in Hokkaido, in a little town called Otaru where we will spend the morning and night of each day of this coming week. And it's brilliant! This is the sort of snow I have been dreaming of since I was little and any amount of snow at least felt like this.

The place is ice-sculpture heaven. It's really got that Lapland feel about it, and most definitely not in a cheesy way. It's like everybody chipped in and made little sculptures wherever they thought they would fit, it's staggering. There's also a Karaoke box called Thriller Karaoke which looks fantastic!

Most of yesterday was spent drifting about in lethargic nausea, so there's nothing really else to say at this point. Today we're going to Sapporo (35 minutes by train) to see the REAL Yuki Matsuri, which we are told is far more impressive than sleepy Otaru. Other plans for the week include a winter aquarium and skiing.

I'm very hungry. The so-called free breakfast that the hotel was supposed to supply was not free, after all, not free at all. Breakfast will be left up to us this week. That's a bit of a bother, but not the worst thing that could have happened at this point. And for that I am thankful.

Anyway, I'll just wait for the video to finish, upload it and be gone. Thanks for reading!

-----

ﾚﾎﾟｰﾄします。これでチームはレベル６０以上で、デルビル以外イリートフォーを戦われます。そして、ミュウもレベル６０にあったので、パワーがすごくて、ちょっと怖いです。
昨日、レッドに会いました。それは本当の怖さでした。これは地球の中で一番強いポケモントレーナーで、僕がフランスで失われたレッドです。戦えなかった．．．

One million guns

2010-01-15T00:57:00.000-08:00

Hands up, who likes exams?

To be fair, the exam season here is far less stressful than anywhere in the UK ever had been. A single week, two hour long exams each day with a third hour-and-a-half one on Friday, and after that we're done for the semester. It also helps that the term has been split up very neatly, with a schedule telling us exactly what we need to revise for each exam.

And then it's off to Hokkaido! 5 days in the wintery north celebrating Yuki Matsuri and looking at clock towers. And if that weren't enough we'll also be riding on a boat for a good chunk of the time, something I haven't done in a fair while. A boat!

So as you may expect there hasn't been much happening lately, with the exception of my watching my bank balance slowly fall, like a bus ful of gold tipping over the edge of the Italian coastline. Job-hunting season is almost upon us, and it's about time I dusted off those CELTA skills and put them to good use. But not yet, I think, not until the exams are over and we have 2 whole months of nothing ahead.

I'm trying not to think of the Linguistics long essay...

Oh, but speaking of which, a hilarious thing occured to me the other day: I don't actually know where my pen drive is! Hah! And in a hysterical twist of fate it happens to have all of the Intercultural Communication essays that are due in on Monday on it. You know, the essays I didn't back up onto the hard drive because I was too busy pitting armies of small robots against each other? Those ones. After scraping together the printed copies I DO have I have decided that I need to rewrite 3 of them: two that I have given in and not received back so expect the worst, and one I don't know the title of. I'm sure I wrote it down here somewhere...

But enough about that, that is a problem for tomorrow. And today is Friday, that glorious day of celebration. And though having had no Mondays for a long while now I can't say I've worked THAT hard, I think I do deserve this weekend. No solid plans for it, just how I like it.

Okay, so there's only really one event that I need to talk about, and that's the third trip to Osaka. This time our focus was old and rustic Osaka Castle, and new and shiny Den Den Town. The trip also marked the start of my interest in panorama shots.

Like that. As you can see the area around Osaka Castle was beautifully green, far removed from the hustle of the shopping districts, and the park was a great place to walk. Huge, expansive pavements made the whole place seem quiet and peaceful, and the castle itself was a real sight to behold.

Surrounding the castle was your run-of-the-mill over-priced Japanese food (got heartburn off a takoyaki, won't be eating those again) and street entertainers who all do the exact same tricks. I'm not even kidding. The castle itself was very impressive, with a look through the castle's turbulent history and that of its founder. We also tried on some clothes, and discovered that boxers are cowards.

Next was Den Den Town, and along the way I'm sad to say that we lost Ben. He was a good man, and will be sorely missed. But, forging ever onward, we had a look around the many different shops along the road, and though heavily tempted by much I'm pleased to say I emerged from our trip having only bought Time Crisis 2 and a spare gun. Oh, the things JASSO pays us to do.

So yeah, not a great deal to talk about, really. Other things that have been happening include the start of the Winter Anime season, which looks a little drab to be quite honest. One thing that really has been sticking out so far, however, is spritual successor to superb gangster anime Baccano!, Durara!, which takes place in the apparently very trendy Ikebukuro in Tokyo. Having only passed through Ikebukuro on my way to more exciting places (or so I thought), I am unable to confirm whether there really are men who can lift entire vending machines like nothing, nor whether crime-fighting headless bikers really do exist. Can maybe a Tokyo student help me out?

Now I'm going to draw some maps.

Thanks for reading.

'Tis the season, and all that, part 2

2010-01-08T19:41:00.001-08:00

And we're back. Starting to get worried about that video in the last post, it works fine on the computer... I've got one in this post as well, so I'll cross my fingers.

Tokyo, then.

Shinkansens are really quite immense. The fact that we got to Tokyo in 2 hours is a pretty amazing feat, isn't it. We were met at the station by Yujiro, my good friend and fellow ex-Hermit's Croft 5/2-er, who had very kindly offered to show us round the city. After an actually very nice meal of cold soba and tempura'd vegetables we set off to our first stop of Roppongi, where we would be staying for the duration of the trip. Roppongi's a pretty interesting place, everything is western and expensive, but it was a nice place to be. The hotel was modest but comfortable, and very close to the metro station. Took me a little while to get my head around there being a subway, metro and JR set of lines, but I think I had it by the end. Dumping the baggage in our rooms we set off to Harajuku and Meiji Jingu.

That place was so busy. So very, very busy. Harajuku contained the most insane number of people in one place that I have ever seen, all of them hunting for clothes, crepes and stations that would get them to other, equally crowded sectors of Tokyo. What was even more startling was the difference between the main street's busy frantic energy and the stillness of the little shrine we found in the center of Harajuku, practically devoid of life. If you're interested, my luck for the year ranks 4th out of the 5 possible outcomes, which translated as 'okay luck'. Take that as you will.

Next was Shibuya, which was right nearby, and almost equally busy. That place is a warren, let me tell you, and finding a simple cup of coffee became a terrifying challenge very quickly. Fortunately Dad's heart was already warmed by the fact that there was a Topshop on one of the main streets, so he could go one without one for a little longer. After wandering around for a bit we decided to head back to Roppongi and take in the sight from the top of the tower in Roppongi Hills, which may be the tallest building in Tokyo for all I know. It certainly felt like it. Ascending 52 floors in 30 seconds was also pretty entertaining, it was like taking off in a plane. Unfortunately, to actually see the sight we had to buy tickets for the art museum just above it (why the art museum, which didn't have windows, was above a viewing platform of Tokyo from a great height I will never understand). The art museum was... well it was an art museum. And I hate art museums. Especially this kind, this modern arty, 'ooh look how daring we are being' type of museum that ends up just being creepy. Always reminds me that I don't get modern art, and that makes me apathetic and resentful. Plus half the stuff didn't even look very impressive; I could have easily made it. It was kinda balanced by the immense view of Tokyo, though, and it was truly immense, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

All that was left was to have dinner at Wolfgang Puck's, interrogate Andy over the private details of his girlfriend and go to bed.

Now, the next day had me off on my own, meeting up with Natasha in Ueno and checking out things in Tokyo that were worth checking out. Ueno Zoo, for example, was really pretty good, and it was a long time since either of us had been to a zoo so it was a great trip out. Highlights included the Red Pandas, Galapagos Tortoise and this big, dinosaur-era-looking bird whose name I forgot but whose Japanese name means 'snake eater bird'. Here are some pictures:

After that we decided on visiting the national museum, only to find it shut, and so headed to the pond to find a Flea Market that met there every once in a while. The sort of stuff on offer was really hilarious; Natasha bought a golden tyrannosaurus, and I was severly tempted by a Renaissance pistol and Russian military helmet. We also spent a good time listening to the swansong of a lighter with Chairman Mao's face on it that played the Chinese national anthem when you opened it, except the batteries were all but dead and the result was actually quite tragic.

Afterwards we JR'd our way to Akihabara's Electric Town, which was something else. SofMaps as far as the eye could see! We spent a bit of time in the arcade beating up a Taiko machine and shooting terrorists in a very un-PC way, before checking the shops. Finally saw a Gamers that was at least big enough to be called a proper shop but... uh... Let's just say the first floor was littered with the sort of things I wouldn't be caught dead buying. Things like that were hanging from the ceiling, the walls, built into pyramids on tables in the middle the floor... It was actually a bit disappointing in the end, as the rest of the floors were nothing more than what you would find in a normal anime merchandising shop, such as the Animate across the street. Also bought crepes at a shop that looped its own jingle continuously from morning to night, causing us to bring the sanity of the poor girl who worked there into question, and looked at more action figures from dated children's shows than I care to remember. Also bought a PS2 game at a cheap second-hand game shop. More on that later.

The next morning I spent alone, seeking out the Tokyo Pokemon Center near the port sector of Tokyo. That place is pretty difficult to find, let me tell you; it's a sizable shop but is on the second floor of an office building and is hard to spot unless you know what you're looking for. Ended up with a little Pikachu (first new product of the year) and a pair of t-shirts that were on offer sporting the second generation of Legendary Pokemon. Also headed off to a place called Nakano Broadway, a shopping center that apparently dealed in geek-oriented things. I'm sure it would have been great had everything not been closed until 12, and as I needed to meet up the the family at 12.30 for a last lunch together I didn't get to see anything. I did get to play Gundam: Kizuna again, though, first time in a long while. The Zaku II Custom is a beautiful machine, let me tell you.

A solemn lunch at First Kitchen followed by a tearful farewell at the front of the hotel. It was great to have my family here, and I look forward to my return to the UK now more than ever.

Then it was off to Roppongi Hills' Toho Cinema to watch Avatar with Natasha and Natasha's housemates: Antoine, Michel and P...Pilie? How do you spell that girl's name? Anyway, I'm not going to spoil the plot for anyone, but lets just say Avatar pays more than a passing resemblence to more than a few films I could care to mention. It looks stunning, but the graphics are often invisible behind a thick fog of cheesy cliches and unlikable characters. It was okay. Still, didn't matter, because it gave us something to talk about at the izakaya afterwards. And also at the Ruby Room, a live music bar which had some pretty good acts and was pretty good fun. It showed Fantasia behind the bar, and this film is creeeeepy. Do not want. Anyway, more teary farewells as I left for Roppongi and my last morning in Tokyo.

And that's it, really. My family holiday. It was amazing, I must say, through and through.

So, other news. The day I got back I got a text from Mark planning a karaoke trip that evening, which I was really up for. Unfortunately, due to limited numbers we switched plans at the last minute to instead go and see a film, which at my behest ended up being Macross F. I was so looking forward to seeing that film, but... urgh. It looked good, and the music at least sounded good, but they didn't have to change the whole flipping thing! Again, don't want to ruin it for anyone, but certain important scenes are left out or changed dramatically. Like the very last fight! My all-time favourite bit and they turn it into this stupid music concert thing! Inconceivable! I tell you, I'm not going to plan on seeing the second one. I'm also starting to have growing doubts about the Nanoha movie, which still looks great, but if they do the same thing there and remove some of the stupendous fight scenes to make way for Nanoha voicing her desire to make friends by beating the living daylights out of them I will not be happy. I want lasers! That's all I ask for!

Term is officially underway, but so far I've only had 2 days of it. Monday is also cancelled thanks to coming of age ceremonies, so a group trip to Osaka is in the works. Really looking forward to that!

That's it. That's all I have to say. Thanks for reading!

-----

昨日の新年会は楽しかったぞ！学生も先生も楽しがった。それも、よっぱらいイイさんはいつも面白い！
皆さん、今年もよろしく！

'Tis the season, and all that, part 1

2010-01-08T17:40:00.000-08:00

I want snow! Why is it not snowing?! Where is all my snow?!

In Nagoya, that's where.

Seriously, I travelled through Nagoya twice over the last week and both times it was a veritable winter wonderland, but you get into the city boundaries and, oh! It's spring!

I want it to snooow!!

So, where did we get up to last time? I think I'd done Christmas day, right? I guess that means the next thing on the list is the family visit. I was down at the station bright and early on Sunday to await their arrival. It was chilly, but not cold, y'know? If it was cold maybe I would have felt a little more Christmassy... Sorry, I'm labouring a point.

First lunch, though for the poor guys it felt more like dinner, here in Japan was a firm favourite of mine: inarizushi and kitsune udon. But jet lag, and not the friend of unfamiliar eating techniques, did rear its ungly head and despite valiant efforts it was not a wholly appreciated meal. No matter, there were lots of times to try Japanese food, and plenty of cheap Italians if that didn't work out.

Let me see, what did we do first? Well, obviously first came checking in to the hotel which, let me tell you, was posh-central. I mean, it had its own waterfall! The rooms were pretty standard, I thought, but you did get a lot more channels on the TV than Shugakukan gets. There was even a golf channel. Talk about high-class entertainment, eh?

So for a first day's activity we went for a stroll around the nearby areas of Shijo and Sanjo, via Teramachi. Didn't really do much but wander that day, as everyone was pretty tired by everything that had happened and were more than happy to just look at stuff for an afternoon or sit in a Starbucks. Dinner at Saizeriya (I knew it...) and an early night.

I've just wracked my brains for about 10 minutes and cannot for the life of me remember what we did on Monday. Sleep, most likely. But Tuesday did actually involve doing something, and that something was a trip back to Fushimi Inari. Skipping out the fiasco of my inability to buy tickets properly (stress of having an audience, I swear) the trip turned out to be very good, even if there was not a cat to be seen the whole time. Maybe they had all gone to Ueno to hang with that cat biker gang I was told about. Regardless, everyone was suitably impressed with the tori and the subsequent view of Kyoto, even if climbing a small mountain doesn't do much to help the recovery of jet lag. Dinner at Capricosa (not even surprised...) and an early night.

Wednesday was a proper shopping day, which left Andy and I to wander about Teramachi for 6 hours, with me showing him the shops that I love and him managing to find reasons to dislike each one. He wasn't impressed with Yellow Submarine, wasn't impressed with ABC Mart, wasn't impressed with SofMap, nor with Kinji... He was impressed with Book Off, but it did shatter his dreams of finding a cheap manga to take home as a show-off-to-my-flatmates present, as the choice is just mind-boggling. Oh, he wasn't impressed with Steam Detectives, either. What he did do, though, was find me a clothes shop called Right On that does some pretty excitingly cheap clothes, and also beat me in one of our two games of Tank! Tank! Tank!, which is still a stunning game. I want to fight those giant buildings, though, the ones on the intro!

Thursday was New Year's Eve, if you remember, and so we decided to do something cultural. Arashiyama's bamboo forest is certainly very spectacular, even after already seeing it once, though I think I prefer it at night. Green tea ice cream is also just as good a second time. That night we planned on finding a shrine and witnessing a Japanese New Year, so with a recommendation from the hotel we set off in search of Mibu Shrine just a little way from Shijo. It took us a while, but we did find it in the end. We didn't get our supposed free sake, though...

And now it's 2010. Good stuff, eh?

Friday saw us attempting the impossible with a trip to Nara to see the big shrine gatherings for the New Year. The train was eerily quiet that day, but we were reassured when we arrived in Nara proper and saw the crowds, many equipped with arrows, symbols of good fortune. The deer were nicely tame that day, as well; almost too tame, I found when I attempted to get rid of the last of my deer-sembei and got mugged by the things. Seriously, the number of people was pretty staggering, hundreds of them lined the streets and queued at the more popular food shops. There was also a sighting of the first 'Happy Bags' of the year; bags of unsold stock that shops sell off at random to people willing to pay a bit less than the retail price. I got a BB gun that doesn't really work and a Stitch-themed notebook. Not a bad haul, I thought.

Saturday was Osaka day, and another day of swimming through a sea of people, this time shoppers. First port of call was obviously the Pokemon Center, where I picked up another gift for Louise and got really excited. There was a New Year thing going on here, as well, and in a Crystal Dome-style challenge I won myself an Entei keychain whilst the family watched with a mixture of pride and concern. Andy was keen to explore the Umeda area, so we seperated and went off in different directions. Mum, Dad and I went to the highly recommended Den Den Town, the supposed 'Akihabara of Kansai' and home to Gundam shop. And WOW is that place incredible!

Can you see it? It's the one with the giant Gundam painted on the side! I was *this* close to buying a ZAFT Uniform, but instead settled for a Super Gundam (Master Grade) and Geara Zulu (High Grade). The shop also had an actual size fist of a Gundam punching through the wall, which was superbly impressive, but unfortunately came with a sign that asked me to not take a picture of it. Tch. Other highlights of Den Den included Kid's Land, an 8-storey shop of all things kid's might conceivably want. Action figures, models of pretty much everything, RC vehicles, t-shirts with slogans from anime on them, a whole floor of frighteningly realistic BB guns... it was spectacular.

On Sunday we set off for Tokyo, and I'm actually going to leave that for a second post, as this one's getting pretty long and I feel like splitting the two trips up.

Thanks for reading.

Let me just take your Pokemon for a few seconds...

2009-12-25T07:40:00.001-08:00

Apologies in advance, as this is another catch-up entry. Lots to talk about.

Further apologies as I've just given up trying to put videos in this entry. Too big a file perhaps.

Starting with the most important: my birthday!

Yay, I'm 21!

Feel the same as I did before, though.

It would have been pretty silly to not at least try to do something on my birthday proper, but we ended up having something of a preperation-party the night before, with a meal out at I-forgot-where. I do remember, though, that it was great! Honest! The birthday itself was even better. Huge and endless thanks to all those who wished me well, I really felt closer to home than I have in a long time. Special thanks to my fantastic parents, who got me a digital camera that is FAR superior to the camera on my phone! Admittedly a sharp memory is better than the phone camera, but this is new one really does a stellar job! As I'm about to show you...

Not right away, I'm afraid, as I foolishly forgot to charge it for the birthday proper. The birthday proper was bowling at Sanjo's Round 1 amusement center, which came heavily recommended by Ben for having a game machine that he really likes in it, and it turned out to be a really cool place with a shoe machine and everything! Seriously, you pressed the button and shoes came out! It was way cooler than it sounded.

Forgot how much I suck at bowling, by the way. I'm sure I've done better in the past, maybe what few skills I had have been dulled down by too much Wii Bowling, which had me believe I was some kind of child prodigy.

But let us not dwell on that! Mark even got a chance at getting us... a free game? I can't remember, and I'm not sure they mentioned, but it involved getting a strike on one specific roll. The lot next to us got it, but we didn't get... whatever it was. No hard feelings, anyway.

Then we went to this parfait shop just down the road, which was pretty spectacular. They really did have the biggest parfait I've seen yet, there was a notice next to the model in the window that if you wanted it you had to order a whole seven days in advance so they could get it ready! Seriously mind-blowing parfait. The one I ordered was nothing to be sneered at, though, a caramel one with, I think, cheesecake in it? Argh, fuzzy memories. It's been one heck of a busy week.

Now, it was also assumed that we should do something with the class too, so we had plans to get to an izakaya on Friday. Only... those things fill up fast. So, apologising to the class, we rearranged for Wednesday and planned a different, non-class party on Friday instead. Karaoke! Yeah!

Thursday, and here come the photos by the way, was a trip to Arashiyama with Polly, a quaint little village that became something of a tourist attraction. Mark, Steph and I headed out there in the evening, and fought the cold to visit the little village.

The place was all lit up like a Christmas tree, and was actually very pretty. A bit less quaint than I was expecting, though; we were practically herded as a mob across the bridge that joins the two sides of the river which probably has a name but I never learnt it.

More shots of the riverside, there. There were huge floodlights set up along the shore that shone various colours of light onto the mountain that gives Arashiyama it's name (lit. 'storm mountain', and as I mentioned to Mark I'm SURE that's an attraction at Alton Towers). The effect was really good, but difficult to photograph properly as the floodlights really made a glare and a half. After wandering along the shore for a little while we headed for Arashiyama's famous bamboo forest, which was packed but really quite stunning.

Really pretty stuff. After getting a little bit lost we headed for the station again (which, by the way, is really rustic and unique) and grabbed dinner at a small, traditional place which was cheap enough, and had some brilliant food on offer. We also picked up some recommended tea-flavoured icecream, which was brilliant.

I also caught Latias, the cheeky little blighter.

Friday was karaoke day, and was really just as good as we expected, i.e. very. Any night that involves the words 'ringo', 'mogire' and 'beam' in the same sentence is a good one.

Yeah, that kinda summed it up. Afterwards we all headed for a sushi restaurant just around the corner, which... well, I'll let the video explain:

I feel betrayed, even now. Was able to quickly cover up the searing pain in my heart, however, with cheap cheesecake that came on a minature Shinkansen.

Nice restaurant, that.

Next important event on the list was my class birthday party... Heh. Turns out by the time we got to arranging an izakaya everywhere was full, and the staff unwilling to listen to the curious questions of gaijin. I swear, the nerve of some of those guys. "Nope, can't do it. Nowhere can do JUST DRINKS." Way to cover your xenophobia, Kyoto Izakaya network. Tch.

Anyway, the plans changed to Shakey's all-you-can-eat pizza, and the number of guests dropped from 30 to 8, but it was a stellar time regardless. I just feel bad for poor Ii-san... we were trying to wake him up for 15 solid minutes. No pictures here but I'm sure Steph has a fair few.

Okay, and then it was today. Which is Christmas day...

This look like Christmas to you?! No! It didn't to me either! It wasn't even that cold! It was the warmest day we've had in a fair while!! Argh!

I don't mind telling you that I am more than a little angry at just how un-Christmassy today has been. They tried hard enough, with daft costumes and decorations and what-not, but neither Osaka nor Kyoto had even a lick of proper Christmas spirit, and it really stung to see that. A few things were able to raise my spirits, though, as it was actually a very nice day that I will remember for a good long while.

Sorry for those who don't appreciate this Godsend of a plastic model shop, but this really, really boosted my spirits. So much stuff, it was like wading through a sea of Minovsky Particles, beam sabres and Colony Lasers. It was heavenly. Didn't buy anything, mind. I'm still searching for a High-Grade M1 Astray model, and am quickly starting to think that maybe they don't exist...

After dragging myself from the beauty of the Yorodaiba 5th floor we had lunch at a really nice okinomiyaki place before setting off. First stop was the Toho cinema to check film times for our planned trip there later in the day, and then off to another heavenly shop.

Let me assure you, this place is great no matter how many times you visit. Don't let Acca's expression fool you, we all enjoyed ourselves, especially me! Bought myself a little Latias and Latios to commemorate the day.

After that we had a bit of a wander while we waited for it to get darker so we could get back on the ferris wheel to see the city at night. As we waited, I happened upon the arcade in the same place as the cinema, and spent a bit of time watching people far more skilled that I play very silly video games. Hats go off to the couple playing House of the Dead EX, who got very far and thus must be highly compatible. Louise, we need to play that game some day! But that brings me onto a very real observation we all made today: Osaka is teeming with lovey-dovey couples, and it makes me sick! I know this country isn't trying to rub my loneliness in my face, but it was seriously getting on my nerves! They were, like, everywhere! Just... everywhere!

Anyway, we did indeed get on the ferris wheel, but unfortunately there were 5 of us there that day, and only 4 seats in a ferris wheel cabin. It was pretty much unanimously decided that male and female segregation was the best plan of action, and Ben and I had a very manly, macho ride in a ferris wheel that was way better than the girly girls' car and their girly Arashi music.

Okay, that first video has been uploading now for about half an hour. I don't think it's going to fit, y'know?

The film we saw in the end was Nodame Cantabile, the first part of the last section of the live-action drama version of a musical romantic comedy about music students. Luckily for me the plot picks up right where I left off, and was actually a really fantastic film despite not having subtitles or anything. Don't really need subtitles to translate two women shooting fireballs at each other in central Paris.

And now here I am, writing a blog at 2.30am and really starting to feel tired. Tomorrow I search for the hotel the family will be staying in when they arrive on Sunday morning, just so I know where it is. Really starting to look forward to that now, especially now I have homework out the way.

Anyway, I'll give the videos a bit longer, and maybe give up, but you don't really need them anyway. You have my beautiful text to describe it for you, after all!

Thanks for reading, and have a very Merry Christmas.

Ths is hear

2009-12-14T03:44:00.000-08:00

Embarrassing Moment #...8? I think so.

It finally happened, I finally fell into that moat on the side of the road that goes past the Palace Gardens. It hurt, but not that much. To be fair, I was attempting to swerve to avoid an elderly gentleman and went too far, and got a surprised look for my trouble. But the cheeky ojiisan didn't have to go back to get around the metal barriers between the pavement and the road, ans walk past me on the road itself like I was some kind of contagion. That stung. My DS lite, however, was completely unscratched, despite flying a few feet onto the roadside. Bless its little heart.

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In case you don't know, I turn 21 in... 3 hours and 10 minutes. I've been trying to make a big thing about this fact, as I'd rather such a momentous number did not pass by unheeded. So now you know. Current plans for tomorrow are to eat dinner, go bowling and eat parfait after lunch, though what order they occur in and when they occur at all is still a little up in the air.I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank God that my birthday landed on a half day, which is one off being a free day, and so a good day to have a birthday. Do have a small kanji test on Wednesday but... Nah, I'm beyond caring. I won't have that test until I turn 21, after all.

So, things that have happened. There are a lot, I have to say, as I have been slacking a little in the writing of the blog and current events backlog to a very eventful weekend-before-last.

So as the videos you may have seen on Facebook show, Friday night was a trip to an izakaya down on Sanjo for a drink as part of Level 3 - class 52. I didn't end up mentioning that I was in class 51, and nobody seemed to mind, so that was good. Good food and drink on offer, too. Can't remember the place's name, though.

I'd like to remind Fumi that cannibalism is outlawed in pretty much every country.

Then it was the weekend, and a trip to the busting trade city of Osaka, as of then unvisited. The party consisted of myself, Mark, Steph, Angela, Ben, and guest-starred Ben's friend Billy. After an early meeting down at the station, we all kintetsu'd our way to the central station (about 45 minutes) and started to search. We were searching for our first sight of the day: the Osaka Pokemon Center.

And what a beautiful haven that place is.

Unfortunately the video, for some daft reason, doubled up on itself, and so extends beyond the Facebook upload limit, and the video also contains stupidly added footage of me buying Louise's Christmas present. You'll have to take my word for it, I think. I'm going to be in the Tokyo one early January, so I'll be sure to get pictures.

And then it was off to explore the rest of Osaka. For those who don't know what it looks like:

This was taken inside a ferris wheel that was place precariously at the top of a shopping center, and I think offers a great view of the city. It's all buildings, to put it simply, but it's very nice.

Other places of note were another shopping center with a superb roof garden*, a river surrounded by towering neon skyscrapers...

...and The Lockup.

Now, when you think of prison, you don't immediately think of good food and fine service, I'm sure, but this is what The Lockup, a prison-themed restaurant, was offering. The izakaya-style tables were each in little cells with bar doors, and the waitresses all wore police outfits or stripped uniforms. The food was similarly themed with jelly eyeballs on offer, takoyaki that come in batches of 6 with the catch being that one of them is 'poisoned' (i.e. really, really spicy). Oh, and there's a show, too; a show that a gleeful Angela told us was really, really scary, and all the Satoshi hats (which, by the way, look immense on me**) in the world could not defend me from my own cowardice.

When the zombie santas started fighting in the corridor I knew it wasn't as scary as perhaps it had been advertised. But it was outrageously funny.

Anyway, having missed the last train home thanks to lingering too long on desert and paying the bills, I made my way home on a borrowed bike and got a well-deserved rest. No, I did not have any nightmares.

What's next?

Okay, making a huge, uneventful leap forward to the following weekend (i.e. last one), we went off on another magical journey, this time back to Nara to meet up with Laura who was there visiting with her friends from Sophia Uni in Tokyo. Being a much soggier day than before the deers were taking shelter beneath trees, but we still have an ace time. We did, after all, finally get a chance to see Todaiji:

That place is huge!

Also wandered around Nara Park some more, seeing a Celebi shrine that did NOT take Laura forward in time, and then I got my hair cut. And then we went home, with the promise of seeing Laura the next day as she travelled to see Kyoto.

The next day arrived, and Laura came to Kyoto. Church in the morning, which was about the importance of cooperation, and then off on a whistle-stop tour of good things to see in Kyoto.

Well...

We saw SOME of them.

...

We went to the Manga Museum for the day...

But that place is great! Though they didn't have the elusive manga to the video game Baroque, they did seem to have everything else, including an exhibition on the ongoing rivalry between weekly magazines Shounen Magazine (School Rumble, Negima?!, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei to name three) and Shounen Sunday (Urusei Yatsura, Cyborg 009, Ranma 1/2 to do likewise) which was pretty interesting even if my lack of knowledge on earlier mangas made me feel like something of a pretender. We also got our caricatures done by a training manga artist, and wow:

Special kudos to Mark's picture, which looks so much like him it is in-SANE! To even manage to get our clothes right! We were all massively impressed!

Then we had an infinite cake buffet in a VERY posh hotel just opposite the station, and spent the rest of the afternoon in SofMap, where I may well be returning tomorrow to pick up an iPod nano (Green).

After bidding goodbye to Laura at the station, we started on our next big adventure: the last chance to see the Kobe Illumination before it ends for the year. Meeting up with Stephanie where we parted ways with Laura, we took the underground to Karasuma, then the Hankyu to Umeda, then the Kintetsu to Kobe. And by this time it was nearly time for the lights to go off, which we have previously Wikipedia'd as 10pm. So, a hasty dinner of tempura and raw egg (...) and off to the streets of Kobe, where we happened upon Deus Ex Akka who guided us the rest of the way. Then we saw the lights... I advise you watch to the end of this one, if none other, as it's quite funny what happens:

Curse you, Wikipedia!

Anyway, we got back at very late o'clock, and then it was off to bed for me.

And now it's... 2 hours and 20 minutes to my birthday.

I'm glad I've caught up, that's a big pressure of my mind. Now all that's left in exam season, Society essay and Linguistics dissertation...

Good job getting so far! Thanks for reading!

*

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じゃ、何を書きたいかな？
えーとっ。
ああ！アニメ！

今シーリーズを３つ楽しんでいる。「てがみバチ」はファンタシーの郵便局についてアニメで、心の銃があって、すごく面白いだよ！ギーシュは特に面白い！それで、「空中ブランコ」は偏心な精神科医についてだ。ちょ現実離れしたけど、素晴らしいアニメだ！最後は「戦う司書」で、魂の本を守る司書についてアニメだ。アックションはすげえ！

Two warriors stand on the brink of battle, because the players that chose them thought they looked cool, or maybe because they've picked them before..

2009-12-03T22:53:00.000-08:00

So maybe I should tell you what happened over Doshisha Eve, eh? Bet you were all wondering, after all. I'd also just love to get you the pictures of the Nara trip, as well as everything that has happened since but...

My stupid phone, for all its beautiful swivel screen goodness, will not accept ANY microSD card in this whole country, making my pictures stuck in the veritable bog that is the Sony Ericson W64S or whatever it is.

Until that time, I'll try to describe as best I can.

So to combat the most important matter first, yes I did really, actually have swine flu. I have also only just today finished the mad form scramble that was required to tell the teachers where I was that whole week. Only just. The stupidity of the matter boggled my brain. I still have a copy of the doctor's form if people still don't believe me.

Now, the week off. Starting with the earliest event, Tuesday afternoon, I dashed like a, well, an over-enthusiastic foreign langauges student to pick up the PS2 at GEO I had my eye on, as well as 2 games. I'll get to the games in a minute, so let me just say this.

The PS2 is a beautiful, beautiful machine.

Say what you like about it being a little outdated, it is staggering. Simply staggering. I was playing it into the small hours of Tuesday night, and then after some sleep the early hours of Wednesday morning. I have since collected 2 further games to add to the collection (they are so cheap it makes me cry sometimes) and will now talk about them. I enjoyed the Pokemon fiasco so much that I'm going to do a quick review of each, but feel free to skip if you have no interest, as Yahzee proved that reviews are usually only any good if the reviewer hates the game. I'll say this first, I hate none of these games. I love each and every one.

In order of which I played first:

We Love Katamari
Quite possibly the simplest game ever devised. The Katamari franchise, as you may remember, has you rolling about big sticky balls picking up smaller objects to make the ball bigger, all in order to complete some megalomaniacal request from some eccentric member of the general public. One of my personal favourites so far was a mission set by a lonely dog who has no friends, and asks you to go get some for him, so you roll up the whole zoo. The whole thing!

There is a lot of text in this game, which is quite possibly the biggest (and only) drawback, as a lot of it is not only in Japanese, but in weird Japanese. It's a weird game, so it makes sense, but it also makes my head hurt. Having said that, it is the only game I can think of during which I was aware from the mission start to the mission end of how much outrageous fun I was having rolling this ball around town. It's a staggeringly fun game. I've also had the privelidge of multiplayer, which either has the two of you competing to make the biggest Katamari in either a bedroom, a city, or across the face of the planet (rolling up countries and mountain ranges), or cooperatively controlling one Katamari between you. Competetive mode is hysterical, as if you ger yours big enough, you can roll up your opponent, forcing them to wiggle the analogue sticks around as they frantically try to free themselves.

The music is fun, the graphics simple but effective, and the gameplay is just incredible. Superb game.

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny: Rengou vs ZAFT II Plus
Never gonna get used to that ridiculous name. I'd actually played this game before, its still making a highly successful tour of the arcades after all, but this version differs a great deal from its joysticked cousin. It's a lot harder for one thing. The premise is simple: you pick a robot from the Gundam SEED series and a pilot to go inside it (you can even choose yourself, if by yourself you mean a faceless mute with your name) and are set off with an optional wingman to blow up the enemy and his wingman more times than they blow up you.

The choice in this game is pretty shocking. I haven't counted, but there's somewhere in the region of 30 Mobile Suits to choose from, and 30 pilots, though the pilots only really choose what it sounds like when you get blown up. Each suit has up to 5 weapons to use, with many needing a very specific touch to get the most out of them. Buster Gundam and the Zaku Warrior, for example, have giant beam cannons that require a charge-up; GaZOuTs can transform into tanks; Destroy Gundam is about 10 times the size of any other suit and can shoot lasers from its fingers, or just shoot its hands off altogether. That one's a bit of a cheeky one to pick unless you don't mind going up against everyone else in the game.

Action is fast and frantic, and a great deal of fun. Even when I got shot in the back however many times by my own teammate and his stupid rifle, it was still a hugely fun game. Mark and I did actually lose track of time when trying to think up new canonical (or not) combinations to try out. Can the two evil masked characters beat TWO Athrun Zalas? What if Team Athrun were in small flying battleships?

Superb game, even if single player can get a bit frustrating when the AI gets cheeky. Seriously, sometimes the odds stacked against you are just stupid, but because the game assumes I'm Japanese it thinks I can do it nice and easy. Think again, Bandai. Regardless, stellar game (no pun intended).

Super Robot Wars a3: To the End of the Galaxy
Quick description of the game series that was made especially for me. Every played Final Fantasy Tactics? Or maybe Disgaea? It's the same thing. You have a small team of plucky individuals with names, who have to go up against a big, evil force and their army of weaker individuals without names. The quirk behind SWR is that all of the characters in the game are from famous super robot mecha animes such as the Gundam universe, but mostly older series such as King of Braves GaoGaiGar (hahahaha!) or the Mazinger meta-series. Move you r guys and attack if you can, then the enemy moves theirs, and you keep going until everybody's dead.

One of the initial drawbacks with the series was that I had absolutely no idea what, say, a Steel Jeeg was, or why I should care about it, and as this Steel Jeeg was a very famous character in 80s anime-loving Japan he had his own huge plot arcs that I wasn't very interested in. But let me tell you this: I now love Steel Jeeg, and his crazy eye lasers, his drill hands and his ability to fight even when he's just a floating head. That is the true power of the Super Robot Wars series: the power to instill the passion of ages into people such as myself who have never seen a Jeeg Beam before.

This goes especially for GaoGaiGar (hahahaha! Such a daft name!) which has a penchant for overdoing things. The last mission I played, for example, was the awakening episode for comedy character Mike Sounders XIII, a sort of lovably dense robot in a flying rubber ring who occasionally switches over to English (or an approximation thereof). He was appallingly weak in the missions beforehand, but in this one he unlocked a new set of powers which had him multiply himself, transform, and then pull a giant robo-Gibson Flying V guitar out of seemingly nowhere, and rock out to the extent that lasers come out of the moon and melt the enemy robots! I was gobsmacked! The battle animations for this game are just... they're just works of art! I will never get sick of watching a Goldion Hammer. And the best is yet to come, as I still haven't acquired Gunbuster, which can create black holes and destroy worlds, the Eva series, which have human souls and end up ending the world, or Ideon, which has a megalomaniacal entity with a God complex living inside it, and ends up ending the world. I'm looking forward to a game in which the world could potentially end three times.

And now for the newer games:

Sengoku Basara 2: Heroes
For those not familiar with the Sengoku period of Japanese history, I'll quickly explain in very simple detail. When the standard system of government collapsed in, I think the 1600s at some point, the position of Ruler of All Japan was open for the taking and literally anyone was fit to take the job. This lead to about 50 years of fighting between everyone in the whole country, every last person, until some bigger and stronger people became generals and took over. The Sengoku Basara series attempts to recreate this intense period, and poses a number of 'what-ifs', such as 'What if instead of Honda Tadakatsu being just abnormally strong, he was a giant robot?'

Gameplay is a direct copy of Dynasty Warriors, another set of games set in ancient China, in that your one guy goes up against the whole army of another character, and has to charge his way through torrents of enemy soldiers only to find a fair fight in the guise of the level's boss. The characters and their equipment level up the more you use them, and this carries over across the whole game, so in multiplayer you can show off your giant golden thunder drill to your friends. And wow is multiplayer fun! There's no real competetive element to it, you tend to always be on the same side facing off against one, probably very scared boss character, but there's a sense of competition in that whoever deals the final blow to the boss gets all the experience and money him, which is usually a lot. It's also stunning to watch both characters pull off their final attacks together, especially with Honda's being this giant laser. Gosh Sengoku-era Japan must have been a fun time to live.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
Now, let me just get this out of the way first: I do not claim to be that good at the Metal Gear series. I tend to rank at Elephant more often than not, and have only ever barely scratched the surface of MGS2, having only finished it once. So to all of you who insist of belittling my skill level, shut up. Sure, its very impressive taking out an enemy soldier with your bare hands, distracting him with a poisonous animal and then using the opportunity to push him off a bridge or something, but sometimes shooting him with a tranquilizer from range is just more sensible, you know?

Anyway, quick explanation. Metal Gear Solid puts you as legendary spy Solid Snake as he attempts, time and time again, to blow up giant nuclear robots called Metal Gears. The main body of the game focusses heavily on stealth, and at the end you are rewarded for not being spotted very often, or not saving often, or not killing many people. These rewards, by the way, are one of the best elements of the game, ranging from a tuxedo that makes you look cool, to a device that turns you invisible.

Snake Eater has Snake in the jungle, and adds a lot to my beloved MGS2. You have to eat regularly, for example, and can trap most anything to eat (though you may need an analgesic soon after) or to use as an aforementioned distraction. You need to do this often, as well, as when Snake gets hungry his tummy starts a'rumbling, and that's a dead giveaway if you're hiding in a cardboard box.

A lot of fun to play, despite initial frustration. As Noah said, you need to have fun with the game, so its best not to worry about high scores and so on until you finish it the first time, at least. Wise words.

And that's it.

Other than that there's not been a massive deal going on. Doshisha's Cultural Festival was the same week at the PS2, and was a lot of fun, even if many of the stall vendors were so enthusiastic it was difficult to say 'no'. The phrase 'I'm full' was a life-saver. There are pictures somewhere, I'm sure, but not on my phone.

Which, by the way, has just decided to accept my microSD. Expect another entry in just a little while featuring pictures and videos of something. Something interesting, I'm sure...

Anyway, thanks for reading!

***

ら・り・る・れ・ろ

わはははははっ！　逃げられない！
スネーーーーーーーーーク！！

There and Back Again

2009-11-20T22:35:00.000-08:00

Deepest apologies for not having a post in about a week, but to be fair...

I have been doing NOTHING this past week. Nothing at all.

So perhaps yu can forgive me for not drawling on about how rubbish it is to be ostracized because of swine flu, or how great Z Gundam is, or how much I'd like a Japanese PS2 (Tuesday is not far off now...).

But now I have a few things to talk about, and we shall start with the most important, I feel. For on Monday I had to return to the doctor's to get myself rediagnosed, and it was quite possibly the very best example of why Japanese beaurocracy deserves a firey grave.

So, as I knew that they would be dishing the things out, my first port of call was the Health Center for the University at Muromachi Campus a short walk from Imadegawa so I could get that precious doctor's note. I risked not using my mask, as I was feeling fine, and went up to check. Turns out the doctor wasn't in (I'm starting to sense a pattern) so I was asked to go back to where I was originaly diagnosed and ask for a rediagnosis. So, on the bike and off to that other hospital (still can't remember the name) which was packed wth early-morning sickies, and was as such as far removed from the quiet efficiency of the out-of-hours clinic as you could get. After searching about for a main desk-looking place, I decided to follow the paper signs for the worryingly named 'Influenza Corner' and see what they could do.

I was convinced that I wasn't supposed to be there pretty quick, as the Influenza Corner was a shabby-looking room with no medical equipment, just a bank of computers and some guys in glasses who did NOT look like doctors. Regardless, I took a seat and told them my story. There were confused looks and hesistant questions, and at one point one passed another a note that clearly said 'What do we do?'. In the end, I was led by one of the bespectacled chaps to what turned out to be the main desk (which I later learnt, as with many of the desks, changes places throughout the daylike the stairs of Hogwarts).

So anyway, from there I was asked again for my sob-story, issued a patient's ID card and asked to wait. I was only there for about 10 minutes and a short form that asked for the usual stuff before I was handed a folder of files (the majority of which had nothing to do with me, I reckon) and asked to take the perilous journey to the unknown second floor via the escalator. There I handed the forms to the second floor main desk, and was asked to wait. At one point a nurse came over and asked me to check my temperature with a handy electro-thermometer (35.3, a bit on the cold side) and then led me to one of those machines that takes blood pressure, where I was strapped in. This is bearing in mind she may have had nothing to do with my case, and was just trying to speed things along, so when I heard the PA thing ask for 'Mr Swan to come to diagnosis room 1' I was a little alarmed, as not only was I busy, but with each passing moment the pressure on my arm was tightening. Turns out it only takes a couple of seconds, so I took the receipt the machine dished out and headed to the room.

In the end the diagnosis was no problem at all. They didn'd even have to stick the nasty spike/cotton bud up my nose; the friendly doctor just seemed to take my word for it. I was issued a clean bill of health, or rather would have been, except this was Japan, and so issuing anything is a task of marathon proportions.

So here's what happened:

The doctor showed me the form I would be receiving on screen (and it was a form, one filled out by the doctor), and Chris Tarrent-style informed me that they didn't want to give me that. At least, not until I'd paid for it. Paid?! Tch... Still, I was in no place to argue, and it was a mere 1,200 yen so I didn't mind much. It was that or never go back to school, after all. I was given a receipt for the form and sent down to the payment desk on the first floor, which that day at that time was at 'number 5', as opposed to '6', where it would be over the lunch period, and '8' where it would be after. I wish I was making this up.

So I handed the receipt to the people behind the desk, which took 3 minutes due to cue, and was then asked to sit down while they got things ready. About 4 minutes after I was handed a bit of paper with the number 219 on it, and asked to wait for my number to be called at desk 4, which was handily just next to desk 5. Heaven forbid I was there in the afternoon, I may have had to trek across the whole building! Waiting for 219 to come up cost me 30 minutes, which got me a chance to sent Pyotr through the trials of the Pokemon Stage at the Battle Frontier. Then I was indeed called up, and was given...

another bit of paper. This one had to be sent to the payment office at desk 3. I swear...

Anyway, I shuffled on over there, where I was queuing a little bit before I was asked to actually pay. And here's the part that cracked me up once I was out of earshot:

The form cose 1,200 yen, but the receipt for the form, the one I got from desk 4, cost an additional 200 yen. If the doctor had sent the form to the payment office, I could have gotten it for 1,200 as I was promised, but because I had the audacity to move some of their paper for them they charged me an additional 200 yen as some sort of transport fee. That I had to pay! The transporter!! Ridiculous.

And let's just go over the paper count just quickly. The doctor gave me a receipt, which got me a paper with a number on it, which got me another receipt, which got me the form I wanted. The doctor's was a form for a form for a form for a form. That's a 4 Form Combo! I love Japanese beauracracy.

But we're not done yet! Oh no! This Form to the Power of 4 was for the Doshisha office to prove why I was not in class over the last week, so I went to hand it in on Tuesday at lunch. And like Frodo with his magical ring, I expected something of a rest for finishing the trials that brought me to this point, but the Rivendell that is the Nichibun center was not happy with just that. I needed to collect teacher signatures MMORPG style to proceed, which needed to be written on their own special form... And the really funny thing? I needed one signature, thus one form, for each lesson I missed.

Sixteen forms.

Six-

-flipping-

-TEEN!!

That's Sixteen Form to the Power of 5s! It's like some kind of equation! I have now completed a massive 5 of these magical pieces of paper, leaving me 11 to finish before Doshisha Eve, which by the way is impossible, as White-sensei is not in this week, so I can't get his signature. So stupid.

Uuuuurgh....

Okay, so that's the worst of the report over. The rest of it is sunny sun sunshiney, to quote a popular song. Catchup in class was not that bad, considering. The worst of it comes when I ask Tsukiyama-sensei on Monday when to do my as of yet unfinished grammar tests for the last 10 topics. But I won't worry about that just yet, not when I've got a weekend to relax in.

Oh yeah, we also did karaoke last night. It was pretty cool, with Mark and I doing a staggeringly awesome Take On Me, to name just one song.

And today I bought a PS2 game. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a PS2 yet, but seeing as I'm going to be lugging the thing home on Tuesday, clutched to my breast like an infant, I don't want to additional weight of the game I'm going to be playing on it added on top. Oh, and an extra controller and memory card, which I also got today. The game in question, if you're interested, is We Love Katamari (or Minna Daisuki Katamari Damacy) which looks to be a superb game, and a perfect choice of first Japanese game to play on a Japanese console because it is really, really weird. For those not in the know, Katamari has you attempting to replace the stars in the sky that were destroyed by your overly eccentric father (who has a Christmas Cracker for a head) by rolling stuff from across the Earth into big balls, which can then be thrown into the sky to fill all that empty space. Stuff like pens, chairs, people, buildings, clouds, mountains, other planets and eventually the Sun. This is the second game in the series, which boasts more challenges and co-op as well as competetive multiplayer. Looking forward to it.

And on the topic of games, because I just so love talking about them, I've also gotten myself addicted to a beautiful little roguelike on the computer by the name of Elona. Elona is a fantasy roguelike that was originally Japanese, so there are a few translation errors that can be easily overlooked, because it looks great. It's the graphic style of the Ragnarok Online franchise, if that helps. The best bit, I think, is the alias generator for your character, which puts together random words to make a heroic-sounding name like 'Daft Rapier Pete' or 'Ray of Gay Jay' (that guy cracks me up). So that's how I've been wasting my time.

Oh yeah, and I also got demoted back down to B Rank in Gundam Kizuna. A Rank is a distant dream, it seems; a dream populated by people who spent too long playing this game. People the likes of which I will probably become, eh?

Oh, and I also now have to write a progress report for my Linguistics dissertation (due start of 4th year first term) which I have a grand nothing on as of yet. Well, got a few things to talk about, so I can probably make a fair attempt. But still...

And in a little while I have to go meet Oota-san, who wants to study in Edinburgh and wants to know more about it. Think we'll go to that Tai restaurant that I so enjoyed last time. And tomorrow is, I think, a nabe party which should be a lot of fun. They probably think I'm dead, after all. Best to show them I'm not.

Anyway, now I have a headache, and am a little bit hungry. Hope you all had a better couple of weeks than I did, and are having fun doing... whatever it is you're doing. Like dressing up as cleaning utensils, if word on the street is to be believed (you know who you are).

And one last thing: My phone now will NOT let me send photos across, so be prepared for a picture drought.

Thanks for reading!

***

カラオケで「さよなら絶望先生」の歌を歌うのは楽しいけど、すごく難しいよ。おかしいリリックがあるだから。
でも、たのしかった。
♫　オーレのねだーんを…だーれが決めた？　とーらやヒョウがぼくーらの心にも！♫

Should have listened to Astro Boy.

2009-11-06T20:38:00.000-08:00

So that's it, then. I have become another case in this year's pandemic, and am thoroughly, thoroughly annoyed about it. I feel rubbish, and without school for 10 days I am going to probably be behind and bored stiff. This is without a doubt one of the worst things that could happen right now...

That aside, I thought I'd let you in on how I came to know that I had swine flu. It's an interesting tale, let me assure you, and says a lot about the Japanese way of doing things.#

So I felt a little under the weather four days ago. The morning was absolutely fine, but I found myself being a little sleepier than usual towards the end. I was going to get an early night but instead took up Ben's offer of helping him, Els and Ollie make dinner (okinomiyaki). Never had shrimp before. It was alright, I guess. By 9 I was really lolling, and not in the ha-ha way, so I went straight to bed. No problem, right?

The next day I felt a bit worse. In class I was very tired and impatient, and a bit bunged up. Not a fun lesson. But still didn't think anything of it. Just a cold; people have them all the time, especially now that the season's changing.

Things really started to get bad two days ago, with random chills despite wearing three of my own layers as well as Jason's jacket when he took pity on me. He also gave me one of his virus masks, which I have been buying for myself since. The chills have pretty much stopped now, but I still sleep with a ridiculous amount of layers. My appetite's also improved now, which was also on the down that day.

Yesterday I was feeling a little bit better, and so took up the guys' offer of going to see the film Kaiji (looks like a cross between Deathnote and YuGiOh) that evening. A man can dream, right? After hearing that Aaren had become a confirmed swine flu patient I got a little bit nervous, and then Weezy drove the proverbial stake home by ordering me to the doctor's. And I'm glad she did, looking back. Anyway, before I went to the doctor's I decided to check the University website for what they were saying about the whole thing. A handy PDF asked me to call a handy phone number, and though it was a little late I found myself talking to the Imadegawa Campus main office. After relaying my fears, the woman on the other end gave me another number (I still don't know where for) and told me to call them, so I did. The people on that line asked me for much the same information as the first one, and then gave me a bit of advice. Sweet, golden advice I was oh-so happy to receive. What was this advice, you ask?

Go to the doctor.

Tch. Those wasted combined phone calls cost me about 400 yen!

Anyway, all the hospitals were shut, and since the flu isn't an emergency I couldn't just barge my way in. So today I got up at 8 (on a Saturday... *sob*) and cycled my way down to the University health center (open 'til 12), hating every fogged-up-glasses-because-of-heavy-breathing-reflected-through-stupid-flu-mask rotation. There was a sign on the door saying something about influenza, so I got out my DS and spent 10 painstaking minutes translating what turned out to be instructions for people who might have influenze: to not be there so they don't infect people, and instead to call the center up.

I honestly couldn't believe it.

Fortunately my disbelief was rewarded by a small sign on an intercom by the side, telling me that, if I had influenza, I should press the button and wait for help. I was then told by a nurse on the other side of the intercom that the doctor wasn't in today, so I would have to go to another hospital.

...

Managed to save herself a lawsuit (I kid) when she was brave enough to venture outside of the barricaded health center reception with a map to show me the way to the teaching hospital about 10 minutes cycle away. She even parted with a touch on the arm and an o-daiji ni, which was very touching, even if, now that I look back, it sounded an awful lot like a final farewell.

So with 2 hours left before that hospital closed, I made my way over the hospital, and my goodness was it confusing. It's a hospital for uni medics, so contains classrooms and stuff as well as all the normal wards and things, and this made it a nightmare to traverse. Here's a little hint: just because something that looks like a reception is staffed by people that look like they might be intelligent, doesn't mean either of those things will be true, nor does it mean they will know where influenza gets diagnosed. The North Entrance's 'emergency measures office' didn't know (what if I had the black death, eh? Think they'd know then?), the East Entrance's finance claims office didn't know. After trekking about the building for about an hour I eventually found the security office (got such a shock when I put the kanji on the sign into the DS and it came up with 'Marine Corps.'), where a friendly grey-haired man directed me down a darkened corridor to the one reception area still in operation during what I discovered were the off-hours.

So now for the actual diagnosis.

I was asked a few standard questions about my lifestyle (smoking and alcohol and stuff) as well as the symptoms I was suffering from, and then they took my temperature and complimented my kanji. I was at 36.6 celcius, if you're interested, which is a bit above normal. Then the kind doctor stuck a nasty long cotton bud right up my nose and into my brain, or so it felt. Then he checked my eyes, mouth and heartbeat, and then I had to wait outside for a couple of minutes before being told that I was positive for what the computer called FluA, and which he said meant I probably had swine flu. The probably burnt that exam room after I left.

Speaking of which, I then had to pick up some medicine to lower my fever, and some extras to reduce nausea if I needed them. They'd better be the best flipping pills on Earth, because they sure cost me it. I've been told to come back in 3 days if there's no change, but this is apparently very unlikely.

So I just got off the phone with the main office again, who said thanks for letting us know, and please don't come near us. 10 days off school for my troubles, which is 2 grammar tests I'll have to do some other time. Hoo-ray...

No letters today.

Thanks for reading! If this is the last post I make, know that I regret nothing!

***

でも、日本は豚がないでしょう？京都で見なかった。ほんとに怖いか、このインフルエンザ？
じゃ、僕がある１０日のあいだ、何をする？寮を出ることはダメだから、たくさんできないが、アニメを見られる。いいな・・・
でも、つまらなくなれるね。

Sue Donym and DeNymrods

2009-11-03T23:26:00.000-08:00

I'm afraid this may be something of a dull entry, as au have seen fit to make me pay to have my photos transferred conveniently between phone and computer, and so I must now attempt the arduous process of putting each file onto the SD card and taking them across myself. I have never successfully done this before: it takes several hours for each file.

Wonders of modern technology, what a joke.

Plus I'm ill.

Where did we leave off? No matter, I'll just start with the earliest interesting thing I can think of.

On Saturday, being full of the spirit of TGIF, Mark, Angela, Ben, Stephanie and I all met up in distant Mukaijima for a cook-off. Everyone made a dish whilst there; Angela made a salad, Stephanie a spagetti dish, Mark cooked some fish and Ben was late and so didn't make anything. Can't blame him, though, he was on a noble quest to get his friend a preordered ticket for the Nanoha movie.

I made mash.

But what mash it was!

It had vegetables in it and everything.

We were whiling away the hours at Mukaijima for quite some time, for it was a very nice place. Pity it's so far away, really. Also played a couple of games of Gundam War against Mark and Ben. Mark was finally able to defeat the forces of Zeon, as I knew he would some day, yet was defeated by Ben, who was then put in his place by me, and thus the cycle continued.

There was a lot of interesting stuff happening, so I'm sorry if I miss some stuff out.

Sunday was Aaren's visit to sunny Kyoto. Hah, 'sunny' Kyoto. That makes me laugh even now. It rained the whole time. Stupid, stupid climate! Regardless, Aaren took us Fushimi Inari, which he had visited some years back, which was really interesting. It's the shrine with the 1,000 gates, for those that know it, and we walked most of it. There are some great pictures, honest... There were also some very cute cats, but in Japanese tradition were all very shy. Except this one cat, and that was somehow worse, as I actually felt bad about stroking it in its apathy. After that it was off to Teramachi (that blessed covered shopping street) where we had lunch at First Kitchen.

Never been there before, but I'll be going back. The fish burger was easily a dreary third behind the mighty Mos Burger andMcDonalds, but the chips!

Oh, the chips!

50 different flavours to choose from, no joke. The cheese chips were spec-flipping-tacular, as were Mark and Aaren's BBQ chips, and that was easily enough to dry our spirits.

Next was SofMap, where I decided I needed to get a new iPod at some point to replace the senile figure of my current Shuffle. In the however-many years I've had him, his capacity has dropped from an astronomical 520MB to a frankly microscopic 485MB, and it does show. No, it really does. Plus, he forgets which songs in the playlist he's already played so will loop certain songs indefiniately until you put him out of his misery. Got my eyes on a nano, going for 14,500 yen, the same price as a PS2 (Doshisha Eve fast approaches), but there's no rush.

Namco Wonder tower next, where I was pretty much forced to play Gundam: Kizuna*. And I'm glad I did! 6 suits taken out over the course of the two games, and not one death. That was enough to not only double my overall score, earn me 2 new titles and a Rick Dom, but also pushed me into the A-Rank weight category, where I am sure to be blasted to pieces more times that I care to think about. Then we had a Tekken 6 spurt, where I met the wrath of a girl with pink hair who turned out to be a robot with rocket wings and chainsaw hands and explosive limbs.

(*This is a lie.)

Phew.

Now for Tuesday, which was Culture Day and so a day off. The cook-off crew decided to go to not-too-distant Nara, a cultural place if ever there was one, famous for giant wooden temples and deer. And what a place! Despite getting lost on the way to the park (which covers almost half the city...) we saw deer enough to last a lifetime. And the funny things would eat right of your hand! Again, there are pictures. They're simply everywhere, and not that fussed about getting stroked. Also, and I'm not sure how this came about, a lot of them have learnt to bow to accept food. They were bowing! It was fantastic!

Oh, and Todaiji was quite good too, even though we missed the opening times and couldn't see the inside. But Steph and Angela bought a Dragonball for my birthday, so all was well. But seriously, so tired after that.

Probably a precursor for today's disease, that fatigue. Also, today came with a nasty surprise: they'd switched the order of the next kanji and grammar tests, which meant the grammar test I'd spent ages revising for is now on Monday, and the kanji test I frankly neglected is tomorrow. Load. of. rubbish.

Also forgot to but the washing in.

Urgh.

And on that note, Letter Corner.

Today's letter comes from Weezy back in Leicester, who asks: "What happened to the Japanese translations of your posts?"

Yeah, thanks for reminding me.

I'm pretty sure I covered this in a previous post, but writing in Japanese is by no means easy, and by the time I've thought up everything I've lost the inclination to write it all again. It takes forever. But just for you, I've decided to add a short bit of Japanese at the end of each post from now on, something I didn't mention before, so you have something to practise your reading on.

Hope that's sufficient, it's all you're getting.

Thanks for reading.

***

高田先生、聞こえるか？テストの日を変えることは楽しいか？サープライズテストも好きか？
じゃ、教えさせて：
留学生はこのものが大嫌いだ！！
それも、お前が大嫌い！！
高田先生、アホウ！！
以上！

Actually, I quite enjoyed that.

"Stop thinking sleeping and start thinking baseball."

2009-10-26T04:47:00.001-07:00

What a crazy Monday.

But before we get to that, there's the small matter of the weekend to cover.

So Saturday wasn't a particularly eventful day. Took the opportunity to travel out to Teramachi (along with, it seemed, every other gaijin on the course) where I followed Polly's advice and found my way to a big used clothes shop called Kinji. And what a delight it was! 2 parkas, 2 hoodies, 2 otaku shirts (plaid ones) for 5000 yen (about £25). THIS is the sort of money I'd like to spend on clothes all the time, not the nonsense shops are charging nowadays. Plus I hear the exchange rate is improving these days.

Then, unable to resist, I played my second game of Senjou no Kizuna. Wow is that game fun, but the inevitable is starting to eke it's way into reality. Blown up twice, I was, with only one kill to my name in both games. Still, that was enough to push me up to Rank 3, as well as earn me a Zaku Mk I suit to try. Quite like my Zaku II, though, so I'll probably stick. Then it was to Book Off to get the second volume of Steam Detectives for 105 yen. A good little book, that, though it bears a few too many similarities to Batman for my liking. A young boy loses his parents to the criminal underworld and vows revenge, lives in a big house with a basement filled with gadgets and a butler who knows more than he lets on, fights costumed villains every week in clever ways. Very suspicious. Also got around to watching the next Pokemon movie (Lucario and the Mystery of Mew) which was pretty good (check Facebook for a review).

Now, Sunday, and the day of the softball game. I must admit, I was not looking forward to making a fool of myself. The service was taken, much to our surprise, by the leader of the youth group, the theology student who greeted me on day 1, and he did a good sermon. It was on Acts 6 1-17, and the importance of prayer. Mark and I found we could understand more this week, though maybe he'd simplified it for our sakes. Wouldn't put it past him. Then it was off to the manse for a quick lunch of udon, then down to the Gardens, kit in hand. My fears were then confirmed: these guys didn't know what softball was, or how it differed (at least in my mind) from baseball.

So we played baseball instead.

I'd like to get into that game if I could, I found it a lot more fun that football has ever been. The Japanese players showed off their skills at their national game, but not to the degree that it was humiliating. Mark did especially well (curse his eyes!). All in all, a wonderful experience.

Afterwards Mark and I walked the short distance to Teramachi, as he was keen on seeing a couple of the places I had discovered the day before. We had taiyaki (fish-shaped sweet bread and bean curd, superb) and then went to a little shop on the 4th floor of the tower block called Yellow Submarine, a card gaming and boardgaming shop. Both days it was full of people, a group of about 15 gathered in the far corner to play games and be frivolous, so it was a great atmosphere. Popular card games, as far as we could see, were Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic the Gathering (to a lesser extent) and a game we hadn't seen before called Gundam War.

We now both own a starter set. It's a fun-looking game, as well, and plays remarkably similar to Magic. You use Generation Cards (GCards) to deploy units, fire one-shot Commands or long-term Operations or bring Characters to the field. Rather than elements, as in Magic, you have 7 Nations with 7 colours to choose from, and Generations for each. Blue is for the Earth Federation, Green for Zeon, Red for Neo-Zeon, Purple for Freelance (stuff like Celestial Being from 00). You then get Brown for the repressed underdog characters (e.g. G Gundam's people), Black for characters forced into conflict (e.g. V Gundam's lot) and White for characters searching for ultimate peace (such as Gundam Wing and Gundam SEED), or something like that. Each colour has strengths and weaknesses. Turns out my lot are Green, lots of weak units that deploy cheaply and quickly, and Mark's are White, expensive but powerful. Looking forward to our first proper battle tomorrow.

Right, today.

Nothing special to day about language class. It was on causatives, for those who care, and was actually very straightforward. But after lunch came InterCom, but much to our surprise it seems White-sensei had forgotten. No explanantion. He just didn't show. No complaints here, gave us time to do homework and revise for both tomorrow's kanji quiz and Wednesday's grammar test.

Culture class was equally bizarre, as I had forgotten that it was the scheduled Aikidou lesson. A lot of fun that (I was picked for demonstrations twice...) as it actually doesn't hurt much, and gave me lots of chances to practice stage-falling. I'd like to get into it if I wasn't so lazy and didn't want to hold up a job as well in the future. But no, that was a nice surprise.

Afterwards Mark, Stephanie, Angela, Ben and I went off to find dinner and, after some debate, settled on Mos Burger. Happened into Tsutaya on the way back, a local bookshop chain (I wanted to check their Gundam War card prices, turns out they don't do them) and was coerced into getting a rental card after seeing the ridiculous range of CDs on offer. For 1330 yen (£7-ish) I got the Gundam 00 soundtrack, the Shin Megami Tensei soundtrack, the Super Robot Wars alpha 2 soundtrack and JAM Project's 2nd Best Of CD overnight, which are now all on my harddrive. Heck, we're allowed! Will be going back there later!

So here I am, taking a break between kanji revision sessions. It's looking... okay for tomorrow, but it's difficult to get confident after... last week. Gotta do the best I can, eh?

No letters this week.

Thanks for reading!

Twas two, for the price of one

2009-10-23T08:58:00.000-07:00

Embarrassing Moment #6

You'll have to wait and see.

-----

Got a lot of ground to cover here, so bear with me.

Okay, so Thursday was a big day. Still heavily in a slump over the return of Friday's grammar test (do NOT ask), I needed something to pick me up. And the city of Kyoto was happy to oblige, with not one but two festivals in the same day.

First up was Jidai Matsuri (literally, Era Festival), a celebration of Japan's vibrant history in the form of a procession through the city of people in period costumes. The event started at the Imperial Palace at 12, and carried on until about 3 or 4 when the procession entered the Heian Temple on the other side of the river.

So, right after class, I searched in vain for the others before setting off by bike to meet with the front of the procession at Kyoto City Hall. A lot of this will be in video format today, and here is your first. As with, I think, all of the videos, I've tried to give a running commentary, but the camera hasn't really picked up my voice very well. Sorry.

Gets cut off right as I insult the No Show Trio, ironically because I get a phone call from Mark. At this point I am told that they were waiting for me (yeah, sure, bet they brought their unicorns and flying pigs with them too) and had since left for the Imperial Palace, where they were watching the later history bits of the procession. With plans to meet at Himatsuri that afternoon, the parade continued.

As it turns out the time periods are a lot longer than I thought, so Heian continues for the duration of all of these videos. There are photos on Facebook of... the next time period, which has a very different style to it.

Yeah, don't really know what that was...

Then something interesting happens, and I JUST miss catching it on camera.

And that's it. There were more time periods to see, I'm sure, but I had homework to do, and I needed to prepare for the second festival of the day:

Himatsuri. Literally translated as 'fire festival', this yearly festival takes place on Kurama, a mountain in the far north of Kyoto. I met up with Cosmopolitan at Imadegawa and we all got the too-small train to the too-far-away mountain, by which time night had fallen.

There, if you were able to spot it, was our first fire of the night. By the end, I was glad to be rid of the stuff. We gathered together briefly to think about what we would have to do to get to the main event stuff. The answer was walk uphill through the town of Kurama, practically ablaze, for 30 minutes, amidst what call only be described as a throng. Here's the next part.

As Sam pointed out, there were babies holding fire. We would see lots that night. We would also see lots of tourists and hear lots of megaphones. Still don't know exactly what the people were shouting, and would be shouting all the way up the mountain, but I'm sure it was something about power or heat or something. Anyway, next part:

You can't really tell all that well, but that black stuff you see? Those are people. They were everywhere, it was as much a test of agility as a festival.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was Embarrassing Moment #6: me falling into a 'hora', a watery moat thing on the side of the road. It's dark, so you can't see it, and neither could I, but it was there. I guess that was my punishment for making a Dark Heresy joke. I liked that the crowd was pantomime-trained enough to gasp dramatically on cue, and also well-mannered enough to laugh at my accented Japanese.

Oh, and by this point Sam and I were well and truly seperated from the rest of the group. It would turn out that pretty much everyone was in the same predicament, and when we got to the top the others arrived in small clusters. Still, we did manage to meet up with Takuya and co. on the way up.

And that's festival 2. Up at the top, incidentally, were tents which sold beer, takoyaki (fried balls of octopus, really rather nice) and nekoshippo (literally 'cat tails') sweet pastry in the shape of, would you believe it, the tail of a cat.

Then we went home. That took about 2 hours. Incidentally, I hear Mark, Stephanie, Angela, Mimi and someone else made it too, but didn't get as far as us. Their loss, I guess, though it did mean I missed out on seeing a friend from church.

Okay, what next...

Ah right, today.

Oh no wait! In my rush I forgot to talk about Wednesday's meal! As nobody felt like cooking Wednesday evening, Mark, Angela, Stephanie and I all went out to Shijo to get dinner at a proper place. In the end we went to a French restaurant that Mark and co. recommended.

And they did fish and chips!!

And they were actually good fish and chips!!

Best meal I've had in ages.

Anyway, today.

Today was Friday, obviously, and with it came the weekend. And a very much awaited weekend it is too. Truly very happy to have the week finished. But there's something else I really want to talk about.

I got my JASSO money today!

Mark and Stephanie went to the office to ask for it directly, and were surprised to find it was there waiting for them. They phoned me, and I went to get mine, impatiant at the lack of phone call that should have told me where it was. After asking behind the desk, they said that yes it was right here, and were more than happy to hand it over.

Two hundred

and forty

thousand

yen.

That's over £1,200.

All in one go.

My wallet was near breaking point.

And they expected us to spend it wisely?!

Hah!

Finally got a chance to see the legendary Bic Camera, which is every bit as impressive as I was told, and celebrated our new found money with 750 yen of Hi-Zack Mobile Suit kit (that's £4, not bad eh?). Then it was off to the station underground for dinner, where we had big bowls of noodles followed by pitchers, yes pitchers, of parfait.

And now here I am. Zack is finished and standing beside the Gespenst, I'm typing this, and tomorrow is a free day. Unless Ben remembers we were going to Kinkakuji, which I doubt, as we've not discussed it in a couple of weeks.

Then it really is church softball the next day.

And that's me.

And now it's time for Letter Corner!

Today's letter comes direct from Mark: 'So when are you thinking of getting you Japanese PS2, eh?"

A very good question, and one that you may have answered yourself. Up until now-ish I'd thought that it would be great to get a Japanese PS2 in Tokyo, the heartland of technology. But thinking about it now I'm not sure it'd be all that feasible. I mean, I'd have to carry it with me on the Shinkansen, not to mention the subway on the way TO the Shinkansen, with all the kit and everything. Doesn't sound safe, or fun.

But on Wednesday Patricia gave us leaflets about all kinds of Kyoto stuff, and one was a flier for a Duty Free Technology shop, allegedly on the south side of Teramachi. Worth a look, methinks.

Now here's problem two: if I get a Japanese PS2 now, I will undoubtedly fail my next test. And I don't want that. But Mark has pointed out that November holds the Doshisha Holiday, which gives us Wednesday to Sunday off at... some point. And that would be perfect. Sounds pretty good, eh? That's when he might be getting the PS3 too, which means we'd have a funky gaming holiday planned. I like the sound of that.

Right, it's 1 o'clock and I'm shattered.

Thanks very much for reading.

Glyde, ikimasu!!

2009-10-17T02:41:00.000-07:00

Embarrassing Moment #5

And I was doing so well. Actually collided with a young woman on my bike today. Didn't see her as she came out of her doorway and clipped her as I passed. It looked pretty painful to me, but she didn't seem too fussed. I guess I have to thank anime for my ability to reflexively apologise profusely, but I don't think it quite worked, as when I asked if she was okay, she responded by throwing my question back at me. It was pretty awkward. Then I did the whole one-handed-prayer gesture and rode off. It's times like this I wish the Japanese were a bit more aggressive. It'd have felt a lot better about the whole thing had I received some kind of reprimand, as I'm pretty sure it was my fault. But no, just an awkward, worried smile, and an apology. Stung more than any blow.

-----

Two posts in one day, eh? Lucky you.

I quite firmly don't believe in karma, but if I did I would say that the reason I had such a rubbish encounter was to balance out the fact that I finished another life goal today.

I played Mobile Suit Gundam: Senjou no Kizuna at the Namco Wonder Tower.

Not familiar with the name? No matter. Just watch this trailer and you will understand why this was such a big deal. It's in Japanese, but you shouldn't need to know any to appreciate it.

See?

Admittedly it was a bit pricey. You have to create an account first, which costs 300 yen, and that gets you this lovely pilot ID card:

This one tells me that my name is Glyde, I'm a... umm... I think that's 2nd Lieutenant, and that I'm fighting on the side of the Principality of Zeon. I've played once, and have 240 points to my name. Pretty cool stuff.

The game itself is a work of art. Here's the waiting area which is stage one of the playing process.

You've got a row of seats to sit on and watch the games currently taking place. Standard matches are 4 v 4, with 8 v 8 for the better players. Being an absolute beginner, I was in a 4 v 4. There were 8 machines in the Tower, but the games all play over the internet, so I was with 3 other complete beginners who also picked Zeon against a team of absolute beginners who picked the Federation. Being absolute beginners, we got suitably weak machines to play with, and because we were all so poor at playing barely anyone got killed. Except a guy called 'WILLSON'. I dealt with him.

Sitting in the cockpit it a terrifying, yet awe-inspiring experience. The guys at Namco have done everything to try and get it feeling like you're in a Mobile Suit, and the pulled it off spectacularly. You get 2 games for 500 yen (about £2.70, didn't I say it was pricey...), and each game lasts until a team wins or the 5 minutes of game time runs out. It was time out on both occassions, so winners were picked based on damage caused.

You get 2 levers with a number of triggers, and 2 pedals. Left lever controls melee combat, right controls ranged. Left pedal jumps, right dashes. The levers also control movement, and work in the style of Virtual ON or Katamari games. That is, both levers forward to go forward, both back to reverse. Both left to strafe left, and right for right. Left forward and right back is a rightwards turn, and you can guess the rest. Oh, and if you pull the levers away from each other you lunge forwards in a tackle.

I take pride in coming out as the top player on both occassions, I'll try not to let it go to my head! Don't worry, when I'm playing the game in a few months time I'll be having my pride handed to me on a silver platter by 10 year old boys and 30 year old salarymen alike. Regardless, I adored playing this game, and it was well worth the money spent.

Having said that, I think I'll wait until the JASSO fund is confirmed or denied before I do go back. And when I do I want to take friends. I know Mark will play, at least.

Whilst in town I also finally picked up a phone strap. Or rather, I picked up a couple of little Felynes from Monster Hunter on the PSP and realised they didn't have a strap attached so I bought one seperately. Finally I feel like my phone is complete! I also searched until I my vision blurred for the Baroque manga, to no avail, so decided on starting a new series I knew nothing about. Took a while to pick a book that looked like it would appeal, and finally settled on volume one of 'Steam Detectives', an old Jump manga about, well, steampunk detectives. It looks really cool, and all the books were a mere 105 yen (60p) so it may well end up as a good series to follow.

That's it, I'm tired and hungry. Tomorrow is church softball, so look forward to that. I don't know if I am... heh.

Thanks for reading!

The part of show where Pete comes out and sings... a geeky song

2009-10-16T20:00:00.001-07:00

Went to karaoke last night, as I may have mentioned. Much bigger group than I was expecting, it had grown from Mark, Stephanie, Angela, Ben and myself to include Mae, Sarah, Ekka (did I spell that right?) and Angela's friend C...Caitlin...? It began with a C, or rather a /k/. Umm, sorry.

But memory loss aside, I can tell you one thing, and that is that karaoke

is

awesome!

Managed to complete a couple of life wishes that night by singing Tears by X Japan, and the Mikuru song from Haruhi Suzumiya in front of people that now think a lot less of me. I'd do it again, though, make no mistake. Other highlights of the night included a group rendition of Take On Me, Mark's falsetto in the Eurithmics and Ben's... umm... interesting choice of songs by a band aptly called Massive the Hormone. Heard of them? Then you'll know what I mean.

Don't want to upset any balances by putting up videos of some of the songs (oh, they DO exist), but here's a video of us going home at 1 in the morning, tired and with sore voices.

And now it's the weekend! Yeah!

Unfortunately, though I had planned to go out and wander the city center today it's started raining, so I may have to rethink. Oh, and Aaren couldn't join us today, due to pressing workloads (I can sympathise). There'll be plenty of other chances, I'm sure.

Also going to watch Pokemon movie... 7? Or am I on 8 now? It's Lucario and Mew, I believe. Been enjoying this little quest of mine, think I should make a habit of writing down my thoughts on films more often, remind me why I bothered watching them in the first place.

In other news, JASSO money is still a very real possibility. I apparently will be contacted some time next week when they've found out where it all is. But all is not well in JASSOLand, for news from further afield (i.e. Tokyo) is that JASSO money is being cut as of now, so the money we get here will be ALL we get. Mark and I have heard no such thing from the office, but alongside Nicole's story of last semester's students just not getting JASSO at all it's a tad worrying. And apparently they can do that, 'cos they're the government and it's their money anyway. Though, to be fair, that's a little bit like coming to the airport as we arrive with a squad of shiny new Gundams and saying "Greetings, travellers! These are your new mobile suits, and you will need them to navigate the fierce battlegrounds of life in Japan! You may find yourself presed between alien invaders, corrupt governments and your own friends betraying you, but with your new suits you'll be more than well-enough equipped to- Oh, sorry, I've just been told we actually don't want to give these to you. Nevermind. Umm, best of luck!" and then leaving.

Tch.

And now it's time for Letter Corner!

Today's letter comes from Home, nicely enough.

"What are the brakes like on your new bike? Are they like the European ones where you have to peddle backwards to use them?"

No, they are not. Thankfully these brakes are the normal sort. However, I can't speak for the rest of the nation's bikes, as I was told by the woman who sold me the thing that the brakes on mine are different to the others. Didn't say why, I didn't really care. I'll check.

That's it. Thanks for reading!

Not 'notte', 'nonde'!

2009-10-14T03:55:00.001-07:00

It did it. I finally caved.

I bought a bike.

Didn't take long, either, and it was wonderfully hassle-free. I'd forgot how fun an experience riding a bike can be, along with forgetting how to ride the thing in the 5 years since the last time I'd tried. But it came back fairly quick, after a couple of hours between classes riding up and down the riverside and through the Imperial Gardens (never again, that place is burst tire heaven), so I should be set for using it constantly from now on. Pretty tiring stuff, though, particularly at night when you've got to peddle harder to power the headlights. I also managed to bump into a bush and accidentally bump into a pedestrian on the way home...

I also may have accidentally signed to say I received JASSO money when I don't think I have... Quite worried about that.

I mean, it's kinda their fault. They should know that putting a form in front of me and saying 'Sign.' will be enough to make me do it. That's right, they didn't tell me what it was for until afterwards. And I know that won't hold up in court, but it makes me feel better. Cheers, Nichibun office. I really want that money, though, that's 2 months' worth plus flights and stuff. It would have been nice, y'know? And maybe I'll still get it. It was due in my account yesterday, anyway, so maybe its making its way slowly through the system and into my paybook.

Wishful thinking?

And Patricia's talk in Japanese Society about Japanese officials screwing over gaijin for the simple fact that we are gaijin really didn't help, either. Way to boost my confidence...

But that doesn't matter! Because on Friday is a day of sushi, karaoke and overthrowing the government (not my words), which sounds awesome. And Saturday Aaren should be coming, finances permitting, and even if not I'm still planning on riding down to Shijo and searching the colony of bookshops for the Baroque manga. I'm looking forward to it. And Sunday is softball day down at Doshisha church (please come!!) which can at the very worst only be slightly humiliating.

Oh, but there's Friday's test to plough through first. Speaking of which, today's test went really rather well, and I think I only missed 4 or 5 this time. I was slow and careful, so they shouldn't deduct points for handwriting this time.

I'm SHATTERED...

Oh, and I made another, more successful okinomiyaki tonight, which was nice. Maybe that's what made me tired. That and riding a bike for, like, 3 hours today...

Well, I'm out of things to say.

Thanks for reading.

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan.

2009-10-13T03:00:00.000-07:00

In continuation to last entry, I want to talk about how today went. In short, better.

Let's start with the big one, that test. I started the morning actually feeling quite positive, and this only grew when, 5 minutes before the start of class, Takeda-sensei came in and informed us that, due to a mix up, the second half of the test was on stuff we hadn't learnt yet, so hadn't been marked.

Result!

The bad side to this is that the grades we got are now in some way tainted, which me means we have to take the test

again

on Friday.

...

Oh no! we though, This means a kanji test on Thursday followed by a grammar test on Friday! But worry not, we were told, for this had been taken into account! For 2 tests in 2 days was surely too harsh, Thursday's kanji test has been moved

forward

to tomorrow.

...

Guess what I've been doing tonight.

In summary of other events, I got those 5 blasted tickets from that blasted machine (which didn't get fixed until lunch time! Hah!) and paid my fee, which I learnt is for the year's handouts. Fair enough, I think. Class today was pretty easy, but also pretty boring. I finished my essay, my longest yet. I actually tried looking for a specific manga in the Book-Off, and didn't find it. Bought myself another PSP -> USB cable 'cos it seems like I left mine at home, and downloaded demos of Patapon 2, Locoroco 2, Gundam Battle Universe, Prinny: Can I be a Hero? and Yggdra Union, and nearly bought a 600 yen copy of Baroque Syndrome, until I realised the kanji don't have furigana so it's be nigh impossible to read. This is Baroque, we're talking about, the game that had us decending to the bottom of a tower constructed in our minds whilst fighting monsters created of our innermost desires taken shape so that we can fire a gun that shoots bullets that a made from creatures that are the embodiment of pain to destroy the Absolute God who has gone mad and remake the world according to the whims of a blonde-haired bishounen with wings. I'm guessing the vocab will be a bit tricky.

Now I'm going to kill another Khezu, watch some anime and go to bed. Early one tonight, I think. Too much rice today.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

Gaaaaaaaan.

2009-10-12T02:37:00.000-07:00

I apologise in advance if this post is something of a rant. I have not enjoyed today, and am intent on telling everyone I know about it in a bid to make myself feel better. Just warning you now, you might want to skip today's entry if you want to preserve those rose-tinted specs of yours.

So, here we go.

I regret saying anything along the lines on 'My course is easy' now that I've seen the results to last week's Kanji test. Okay, I may not have quite got what I wanted there, but that's no big deal. I work hard, and I'll improve.

But it really gave voice to the doubts I've been fostering over the last two weeks. I've felt so dense lately, like people will call my name and I won't even notice, or I'll have to have instructions repeated because it takes longer to sink in. And this is in English. I mean, I've done flipping '~n desu' constructions before, so why is it so hard now?! Why could I get it then and not now?!

Today's grammar test was a bit of a nightmare, too. It wasn't a straight 'here's a chapter, here are some questions on it' quiz, they were being sneaky and hiding the right answers in far from the obvious places. One question was about keigo, for crying out loud! We haven't done that yet! I gave it a good shot, but it really threw me, and as you may have gathered I'm feeling a bit vulnerable these days so it had double the effect. It was super effective, you might say. Yes, I'll get Pokemon in anywhere.

What really didn't help is that today's Physical Education Day, or something, so every school that isn't Doshisha (it seems) had the day off today! And look at that day:

Look at it! Look! It's beautiful! How on EARTH is this fair?! We get Typhoon day off, but when it's a day we might actually WANT off we have to sit in a stuffy classroom and go over transitive and intransitive verb charts!! What are the government doing?!

I am NOT happy about that.

But it only gets worse... Well, it kind of goes up a little bit first. InterCom had us watching a film that was sort-of funny, but was all in Japanese so not only did I feel weak as I watched the smiles of the people around me who got the Japanese word-play jokes, I felt weaker the more I had to try and decypher the ridiculous turns of events, and now I have a splitter of a headache! Culture was, y'know, normal, with a brief outline of the big Japanese festivals, such as the Daimonji one which I don't get to see 'cos it's at the start of term so I'll be in Edinburgh by then... I was really looking forward to taking a picture of the big kanji for, ironically, 'big' on the mountainside, putting it on Facebook and captioning it 'Charizard used Fire Blast!!' There'll be other chances, I daresay.

Then we started to go home, and this is where the fun really starts. Signed in as normal, and found a piece of paper in my locker that asked for 2,500 yen to pay for the start of classes. But they don't want it in cash. In a stupid, MMORPG-quest way they will only accept payment in tickets. TICKETS!! What's wrong with money?! And there's only one machine in the whole university that dispenses these golden morsels of education. Luckily it was close by and so I decided to get it over with. In goes 500 yen, out comes one fifth of my education in tickets (you see, yu can only buy 500 yen tickets, so I'd need 5). Easy, I thought, and put in 1000 yen to get the remainder of the tickets.

Blasted machine ate my money!!

Ate it!!

And I don't have it anymore!!

Big error message on the screen asking (I found out after checking with the DS dictionary) for technical help from a member of staff! Gives me a contact number, which was very kind of it.

Stood there like a muppet for THIRTY LONG ARDUOUS MINUTES while the phone rang and rang and rang and DID NOT GET PICKED UP!! What are they doing?! Gone home?! What if it was a real emergency?! Huh?! Like a bomb or something?! What then?!

Utter stupidity...

So I lost my patience and went home. And did my homework. And now I'm really not happy.

Well, I feel a little bit better now.

What I don't like about all this is that all of the things I praised Japan for now get flipped on their heads. Good-quality technology? Yeah, sure. Cheap video games? Still true, but it's salt in the wound to think that I just LOST half a copy of Dissidia Final Fantasy. One 15th of a PS2. Gone. Not coming back.

I can't help but feel, in situations like this, that God is trying to teach me something, and I believe now that He's telling me to stop being so miserly with my money. Need to try using it a bit more, though obviously on worthwhile pursuits. There are parables about that, you know. Tonight my life might be required of me, and what then?

Well, no need to be so morbid. Actually, on that note, I may as well talk about church yesterday. Which I went to alone. Cheers, Mark, you nanakimono. Seriously, though, a good service on Matthew 22:15. 'Give to Cesar what belongs to Cesar, and to God what belongs to God.' Well, I just gave the state of Japan a thousand of their precious yen, so maybe I've learnt something after all.

Sunday was quite nice, actually. Took the opportunity to Hunt some Monsters (bagged a Khezu! Yeaaah!) and sit by the riverside and take some photos of the usual Sunday crowd that gathers there. Here they are, look.

There's an embankment in the middle of the river where it joins together near Imadegawa, and you get a lot of people crossing the river via the stepping stones to bask in the sun. I'll try it some day, but I was afraid of inconveniencing the swarms of kids.

There is a river under all that grass, honest. Oh, and here's something interesting. You don't see many homeless people in Kyoto, at least not where I go, but almost every bridge has a veritable shanty town constructed from wooden poles and blue tarpaulin under one section. It's quite a sight.

So after all that I felt a little calmer. I also ended up watching episode 274 of Pokemon as well. I tip my hat to you if you know why that's an important episode, and I heartily say that it was definitely worth seeing. Very well done, though they could have strung the important part over a full episode.

And now I get to eat. Spagetti sauce tonight, simple and good. And then I'm going to watch episode 2 of Letter Bee and fall asleep, which I'm really quite enjoying so far. The whole heart-gun thing reminds me of Baroque, as does the world it's set in to an extent, and I loved Baroque a lot. Need to find and buy the manga for it. And any sequels. Ah, wonderful, nostalgic memories.

Right, food.

Thanks, honestly, for reading. Back on track next time, I assure you.

Gouzen Kousen!!

2009-10-06T03:58:00.000-07:00

My hand's all better now, thanks, though there's a nasty red mark there. Made today a little tricky, my right hand was at about 60% efficiency.

Didn't stop me finding THIS:

Yes! 20 yen cheaper than previous records! And now I know where it is!

Anyway, a little bit to catch up on, so here we go.

Church on Sunday was on Matthew 19, or was it 20? The parable of the workers in the field. You know, 'the last shall be first and the first shall be last'. This sermon was a bit easier to follow, but then again I was told by a new friend in the church that my Japanese had really improved in the last 3 weeks. That was awful nice of her! There was supposedly a meal of udon at 1, but translation difficulties got in the way and so we couldn't find where. There will be other week,s and week after next is softball (repeating the call-out to anyone who can play!!) so events list is still full.

Monday was a KILLER. I mean, wow! Never had such a nasty headache in my life! Following on from last week's '~n desu' lessons, and that's not my strong point, so I was really trying hard to get it all in. I think I'm there now, and just in time, as tomorrow we move on to our next topic: verbs of giving and receiving. This, at least, should be a bit easier.

Then we had Japanese Culture, and a lesson on the history of Doshisha and its founder: Joe Neesima. And I'm sorry, but...

...duuuuuuuuuuuull.

Heard it ALL before, in the opening orientation meeting no less, and I honestly don't think Mr. Neesima and I would get on at ALL. I REALLY didn't care.

Sorry, Doshisha, but the spirit of education is lost on me.

THEN there was the mountain of homework.

Uuuuuurgh.

But I don't care, because today was easy as pie. No homework save yesterday's essay ('What does your position in your family say about how you interact with others?') and some done-before Kanji, and tomorrow's looking up. Got a sweet new bag, too.

Makes up for not getting to do karaoke because SOMEONE didn't check his phone.

I'm not bitter.

Oh, I'm watching (not that you may care) Umineko no Naku Koro ni at the moment, the new series by Higurashi's team. Another horror mystery thing, with a creepy kid and a distorted view of character deaths. Looking good so far. Oh, I'm also trying to watch all 12 Pokemon movies before New Year's Day. 1, 2, 3, 10 are down, the others are soon to come.

And that's it.

Thanks for reading!

Pikachu Day 2009

2009-10-03T02:50:00.000-07:00

Up good and early today, yet despite my doing this every day for the last week and resenting it each time today it was a far easier task. Because today I was getting a Pikachu with Last Resort.

Met up with Mark down at the Karasuma Oike platform, where we took the Tozai further than I'd ever been before: the terminus at Uzumasa Tenjingawa. From there we crossed the street to the Uzumasa Ranzan Station, a much smaller affair than I had imagined. It took me a little while to figure out that we were on the right side, and that we paid as we got off as if we were on a bus. The train itself was a quirky little thing, a cross between a small train and a tram, but it travelled at a fair speed and we were at our destination in no time. It did not take long to figure out that 90% of the people on the train were heading in the same direction.

From the station near the film studio where the event was being held, we followed some Nintendo-brand clothing-clad guides (but who didn't give us gaijin a map because obviously we didn't possess the Japanese required the follow the big black arrows...) as well as a growing stream of people to set 1, and the start of the queue. Getting to the end of the queue took us another 5 minutes.

I have never seen so many DSs in one place. This is us at the far end of the queue. From here it took 2 hours to reach the front, so I felt sorry for Dan and Greg who turned up later and had to start their queuing much further back.

Well, not that sorry. I was too busy negotiating the terms of exchange of Pokemon with a 10 year old girl called Nihiro to really care.

The Wireless Union Room was packed to the infra-red rafters with Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold and SoulSilver players, it was difficult to move without some random fellow called Kyousuke or Theo or something asking for a trade. I got 2 new Trainer Cards today, people I'll never see again but will hear the exploits of in the game's TVs.

Trading with Nihiro got me an Aerodactyl (lv 25), Macargo (lv 52, stronger than anything else I have at the moment), Omanyte (lv 20), Anorith (lv 20), Cranidos (lv 20) and Cricketune (lv 25), traded for Bellsprout, Machop, Paras (she was well excited about that), Spinarak, Drowzee and Wooper. A good deal, I thought. You have to bear in mind that she was on Pearl, so the original 150 were out of reach for her until today. She showed me her fossil collection, she had quite the obsessive streak.

Pikachu was obtainable in the queue, a cute little Lv 30 fellow with Last Resort, Thunderbolt, Quick Attack and Slam (I think, haven't tried it out yet). He's coming with me to Victory Road.

Here's the front of the queue.

By the time we got in at just about 12, there was still no sign of Polly. Still, she had said to go in and not wait for her, and by this time we were very eager to see what was going on. Just inside we got a little exhibit on the history of Nintendo, with cased Famicoms, Super Famicoms, N64s, Wiis, Gameboys all the colours of the rainbow, and walls of the cases of the classic games that made Nintendo famous.

Good, nostalgic stuff. The exhibition was indeed small, and soon it reached into the main event. On the immediate right was the Pikachu corner, of sorts, which had a woman handing out cardboard Pikachu hats on one stall and a download corner for the PokeWalker's Yellow Forest course. Didn't take long to grab a copy of the course (and a hat) and move on.

The rest of the corners were taken up by game demonstrations for Pokemon Scramble on WiiWare (like an action-based RPG thing with super-deformed legendary Pokemon), Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics, and one corner for both Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit Plus, each sporting a Nintendo staff member with a placard happily telling us that we should be expected to wait more than an hour for any game. Thoughts of gaming were put on hold, however, as we were taken in by the stage on the far side on the hall with the Pokemon Sunday logo on a screen, as well as a short podium with 4 DSs on it. We were told during our chat with an anonymous staff member (y'know, the kind in RPGs that only repeat one thing over and over) that at 1 (it was now 12.30) Pokemon Sunday would put on a show and ask some of the kids in the audience to have a four-way battle using pre-set Pokemon. Sounded like fun, and we didn't really want to be in a queue when that started up, so we took our places near the crowd waiting for 1 o'clock.

Oh, Pokemon Sunday is a weekly 30-minute program that has seasons on during big Pokemon events such as the release of HGSS. We found out today, much to our amusement, that it airs on Thursday afternoons.

The show started promptly at 1, with a highly enthusiastic Nintendo representative greeting the crowd as a part of Pokemon Sunday, and then we watched an actually slightly creepy trailer for the show. By that I mean that there was a really creepy Pikachu-dressed person in it. Creepy.

Anyway, 2 of the show's mascots turned up soon after; Lucario and Sableye. This was one of the things I truly wanted to have on camera, but we were told by the signs everywhere that we weren't allowed for some reason. Didn't stop everyone else in the whole entire crowd, though! And so it didn't stop us either.

The cameraman's backside, however, did stop us. Like how it looks like I've put together the guy in the middle of the 2 pictures? So not intentional.

The photo on the right shows Team Lucario going up to start the game. A father and son team, and the one I hoped would win. Let's see, their Pokemon were Chikorita, Slowpoke, Phanpy, Farfetch'd... umm, and 2 others.

Team Sableye was a pair of brothers who picked the same Pokemon as their favourite, and who had obviously done this before because they won with a decent degree of style. Not very enthusiastic about it, though, a trait I've noticed about most Japanese kids of a certain age. Anyway, they had Hoot-hoot, Teddyursa... and some others. I honestly can't remember.

Just to point out, I would have been more than happy to go up and participate, but it is a kid's game. And the prospect of fighting a towering gaijin like myself may have been too much for many kids, especially if Mark and I teamed up.

I'm going to put up a couple of videos of the match, but they're not great. First the camera on this thing isn't that good, and also it's on sideways...

Sorry. But I think you can get a good idea of how it worked. You may not be able to see, however, that it was awesome to watch. The sound quality was perfect, and the tension was actually pretty impressively high. I could watch Pokemon battles like Dad watches football, I think.

With the stage show over, we decided we were far too hungry and tired to stand in line to play the games, so headed out to grab some food in the cafeteria next door. More kitsune udon for me, thanks. I could, and may well, live off that stuff. Whilst eating, Polly showed up. Turns out she overslept. Huh.

Anyway, with the Pikachu Event over we decided to head to Polly's to see what it was like, then check out the nearby temples. Polly lives in International House II, owned by Ritsumeikan University, and its a nice little hotelly place that apparently lets the bugs in.

And what bugs they were.

We had been enlightened in an earlier conversation about the horrors of bugs in NW Kyoto, and the centipedes especially. Apparently there's a big fuss over centipedes that get into rooms through windows and bite people in their sleep. The pain has been likened to getting stabbed by a cigarette end, but constantly until you get the thing to let go, done by crushing the head and boiling the rest of it. Apparently. Let's hope I never have to put that knowledge to use.

Oh, but we did see one. Here he is.

This is at Nanniji Temple, a big temple about 20 minutes walk from Polly's. A nice place with some truly great architecture. Pagodas and the like. Here, I made this Cloverfield-esque video to show part of what we saw.

From Nanniji it was off on the bus then the train home, where I now learn that Mark just got SoulSilver. A bit late, my friend, but better late than never. Church tomorrow, nothing special there, and then a free day to relax ready for another week of work. Apparently there's meant to be a nomikae at 7 tonight but... it's 7.45 and outside is silent. Huh, another unfulfilled promise.

Anyway, that's me. Thanks for reading.