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

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

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..

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!

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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！！