It's a bit of a videogame lull right now. Been playing GTA and Mario Kart but after a few months of rapid-fire constant videogame buying there's not a lot of big titles coming down the pike. Here's what I'm anticipating right now.

1) Boom Blox. This simple little game became an insta-buy the moment I saw footage of people actually playing it. I can't wait to try and knock some stuff down in my Wii. I hope the rumored head-tracking is hidden in the final build!

2) De Blob. Another little game I'm really looking forward to. All the footage I've been able to find of it makes it look like a riot and plenty of anarchistic fun.

3) Strongbad's Awesome Game for Beautiful People. Episodic point-and-click adventuring using waggle on the Wii? I'm there!

4) Sam & Max season 1. I never played them on the PC, so the ability to download them to my Wii is highly anticipated.

5) Spore (PC version on my Mac.) I'm hoping the laptop I just bought had the muscle to play Will Wright's latest sandbox game. The scope and depth of the game make it look astonishing.

6) Fallout 3. I think of it as Sci-Fi Oblivion. Man.. makes my heart race just to think of it.

So, yeah, lots to anticipate there. And my Wii is going to be very, very busy. Can y'all think of any must-have titles I missed?

Kawakami Kenshin is BACK woohooooo. And Tatsunami got his first hit of the season! And naturally I was at work for the whole evening and just get to see this stuff on the news highlights. Also 18-year-old Yokohama rookie Ryoma Satoh hit four batters in four innings tonight and catapulted himself into the CL lead in hit batters. AND they're doing the web gems of the week now on Megaspo and I swear I was actually there for like half of these. SO awesome!

Today I thought I would have like 4 hours free in the afternoon between classes so I decided to bring my laptop to GEOS and try to get other things done during the day, except like a moron, I forgot that I'd need a 2-prong-to-3-prong adapter there. And as it turned out I also kinda needed to head home for another reason mid-day, so I ended up coming back to my apartment for about 30 minutes in the middle of the day, which was actually pretty nice, though I ended up dropping my laptop off here again then, and didn't get anything done after all. Sadly tomorrow my nice big expanse of free afternoon time just got chopped in half by having 3 classes added to my schedule tomorrow. Whee.

On my way back to GEOS, I was hit by one of my huge pet peeves -- people who make a big deal about Talking To The White Person In English. I mean, I understand that sometimes these people are just really proud that OMG they know a few words in English, and maybe they think it's Great Customer Service to do so, but really, there are a few main reasons this practice bugs me:

1) I don't WANT you to talk to me in English unless I specifically ask for it. Plus, in general, I can understand your Japanese much better than I can understand your poor English. If I talk to you in Japanese, just reply to me in Japanese rather than short-circuiting your little brain. It'll save us both a lot of trouble.
2) It's EMBARRASSING. The entire country assuming that You Have White Skin, Therefore You Can't Understand Japanese, is REALLY grating after a while.
3) Foreigners speak languages other than English, you know. White Skin does not mean Native English Speaker. I have half a mind to just bitch out the next person who treats me this way, tell them I can't understand English in Japanese, and start swearing at them in Spanish or something. Then at least they'll be embarrassed too.

So anyway, I went to get a katsu sandwich for dinner from Wako in Akabane Station, and I had to wait in line for like 5 minutes due to a fairly slow cashier guy. So finally I get up there and I say in Japanese, お持ち帰りで、ひれかつサンドを一つ下さい ("I'd like one hirekatsu sandwich, to go, please,") and he says in very thick Engrish, "Please wait one minute", gets out the sandwich... then tells me the price (399 yen) in the same slow stupid Engrish. I REPEAT the price in Japanese and put down a 500-yen coin, trying to signal "Stop talking to me in English, you retard", but it doesn't work, as he hands me 110 yen and says "Sankyuu berry machi."

Those of you who can do math will notice that the change should be 101 yen, not 110 yen. And actually normally I totally would go back and correct people for doing that sort of thing (I have done so several times in the past), but since the guy refused to admit that I can speak Japanese, I refused to admit that I can also do math.

Things I've done so far in my day-to-day life to try and save the planet:

1) Replaced all the incandescent bulbs in my apartment (and the front and back halls) with fluorescent bulbs. I dream of getting LED bulbs. Maybe if I had my own place I'd install all LED bulbs on tracks. Good pinpoint lighting.

2) Stopped using shopping bags. It's harder than I thought it would be to do this. I keep forgetting my shopping bags in the car or forgetting to bring them back down after using them. Making some progress though.

3) Unplugging power bricks for all my various chargers when they're not in use. And unplugging my spiffy new laptop when I'm not using it.

My biggest problems right now are our 12 year old car (not the most efficient in the known universe) and our oil heated sieve of an apartment. Both require much money to remedy.. but someday they shall be.

Anybody have any other easy-to-implement tips, or should I be more aggressive and look for something more life-changing to attack?

Okay, so my birthday seems to have ended with a SERIES OF HUGE FUCKING EARTHQUAKES. Jeeez. Around 1am my apartment started shaking for a few minutes, enough that I actually wasn't like "Must be a truck driving by on Sangyo Doro," but rather "OH MY GOD THIS IS AN EARTHQUAKE WHAT DO I DO??" So I've been freaking out at samuelp over IM for the last hour since he's the only person in Japan I know who is awake and on IM right now. Jesus that last one was originally ranked as a 7.1 but got rated down to a 6.7 so far. Still, holy crap these are scary, even though they are like 100 miles away. I'm amazed I haven't lost power or internet or anything.

As for the rest of the day, overall it wasn't anything special insofar as birthdays go. My best friend dvarin called me this morning, which was a nice surprise, and makes me think I should set up Skype so I can talk to people sometime. My dad also called, but he called while I was in the shower and I didn't notice until much later. And many people emailed me and/or commented birthday wishes on my last entry and you are all wonderful people and I wish I lived closer to you all so I could have a party this year :(

I have two major birthday wishes and no candles to blow out, so I guess they probably won't come true.

I went to work, and it was... work. I got sushi from Heiroku for lunch as I usually do on Wednesdays, and it was fitting for my birthday. I had decided last night that the rule for my birthday was just that I could eat as much chocolate and junk food as I damn well wanted to (since usually I try not to eat anything after I come home, and definitely not many sweets). So last night I drank hot chocolate and ate chocolate cookies and a chocolate bar, and today I got katsudon for dinner and bought a big slice of chocolate cake from the Ginza Cozy Corner bakery, and then I ate another chocolate bar when I got home. And now I should probably go back to eating reasonably again...

I was kinda hoping I might convince my 9pm class to go do something celebratory after work, but then the guy who is most convinceable wasn't able to come to class today, and then Yoshida had to talk to another one of the students about contract stuff, so... no luck there. I went to the Kawaguchi arcade and played Pop'n. Whee whatever.

The Fighters lost today and I'm angry at Nashida for leaving Darvish in as long as he did, but hey, the Dragons won AND Masa Yamamoto got the win! GO OLD MAN GO! ONLY 6 LEFT TO 200!

Oh yeah, funny conversation with the2belo this morning on IM:
[10:56] jankhater: happy birrrrrrrthdaaaaaaaay tooooooo yoooooooooou
[10:56] Deanna Rubin: thank you
[10:56] Deanna Rubin: hey, i am 31 now. like morino's uniform number!
[10:57] jankhater: bwahahahahah PERFECT

It is funnier in some ways that Morino is the poster boy for May on my Chunichi Dragons wall calendar, too. I was saying yesterday that also part of why I like him so much is that he looks more like ME than most Japanese baseball players -- big eyebrows, bigger nose, wider face, etc. It is kind of sad that I have a Dragons player that I love love love love so much though when I do not have a Fighters player that I love love love love so much anymore.

So Amanda is away not going to this concert today. And I have to say that it's very odd to have so much time alone here in the apartment. I've discovered that I have trouble sleeping without her here. I sort of catnap, half asleep.. Normally when I'm asleep and Amanda's not here it's because I'm napping between when I get out of work and when I have to go pick her up at the library. Maybe my body has made some adjustment to make my sleep when she's not here particularly light or something. Or maybe I just miss her.

I've been sort of puttering round the apartment today. Tired and a little punchy because I didn't sleep too well last night. I actually have been cleaning - not a normal thing for me at all. And I've been tinkering with our fitful internet, trying to figure out why our airport keeps booting us and locking us out, and why the cable modem seems to lose its signal for no apparent reason.

I can't wait to meet Amanda at the bus terminal tomorrow and bring her home. Oh, and Adric can't wait either. (Getting so much love from him!)

It's my birthday (May 7th) in 2 hours here in Japan. Yikes.

For my birthday, I am going to celebrate by... GOING BACK TO WORK!!111!!1!!1

yay.

Uh, so anyway... yesterday, Monday, I went to the Seibu Dump for a Fighters game. Sat in the outfield with a bunch of random people and cheered for the Fighters and they freaking lost the game 8-6 after being up 6-0 in the 5th. I swear to god Toru Hosokawa has hit 3 career grand slams and I have been there for two of them, both against the Fighters. Sheesh. Also learned new chance music. Learning new songs is good.

Afterwards, went to Tokyo Dome, got a ticket to the Fighters-Giants game on 5/26. The sign said, "Visitor's cheering section seats are sold out", so I went up and said "I know the visitor's ouenseki are sold out, but is there anything available near it?" and she says, "How many tickets do you need?" and I said "Just one," and she said "oh, no problem then, we just don't have two seats together" and sold me a ticket for visitor's cheering seats. Apparently they aren't sold out if you are alone. Or something. And afterwards I got some baseball cards because I am a dork, and in 5 packs got TWO signature cards, Takahiro Arai and Kensuke Tanaka. Great pull there. Ate kaitensushi at the semi-expensive place across from Suidobashi station, and then came home.

Watched Ainori for the first time in like two months, but I think I only actually missed like two episodes, but everything changed! They're in Ghana now, and apparently Danny retired and got replaced with some weird dude named Kousuke. And Miya looks like someone gave him a makeover, it's kinda bizarre. At least I find myself not wanting to punch everyone on the show anymore.

Also, I did laundry in the morning AND in the evening on Monday, because my dinner plans got cancelled. I wish I'd known in advance so I could have planned to do laundry that evening, but oh well, that's the way things go.

Tuesday, which is today, I went to Yokohama, and met up with Westbay and his (9-year-old?) son for the Baystars game. It was sunny sunny sunny and I had sunscreen on but I think I got sunburned anyway. Also, for a rare change, the Baystars actually won the game, and I did my "Takuro Ishii's biggest fan" act like I would normally do for Morino at a Dragons game, and then Takuro hit in the go-ahead run and was game hero. Go figure. I bought a Ishii #5 jersey after the game, too, so now I can be even crazier.

I got dinner at Mos Burger with Westbay and his son after the game. Not exactly a big birthday party or anything, but that's ok. Also he gave me the "sine-cosine-tangent" board he got signed by Katsuya Nomura back in March, since this is the first time I'd seen him since then.

( The Signed Cosine Tangent )

So I guess that was a cool birthday present!

Ugh, now I can't decide if I should go try to find a family restaurant or something open past midnight and go eat cake at midnight... or if I should just try to go to sleep early.

Just got done watching the movie version of The Golden Compass. Overall a fairly flat movie I felt. The moviemakers had to cram a LOT of info into a medium not best suited to it, so all the mystery and discovery of the book has been replaced by a voice-over and massive amounts of exposition dialog in the first third of the movie. So, for example, instead of Lyra figuring out over the course of her adventures what the Dust is and how it fits into the framework of her world she's conveniently told about it right at the start of the film. I was impressed with the job they did layering in the most difficult concept from the book - the notion of daemons which are peoples' souls in exterior form. Sure it was mentioned in the opening monologue, but they also managed to make it work visually, constantly reminding the viewer that every person in the world has a familiar animal with them at all times. My biggest complaint would be the action sequences. It felt as if the director saw the action bits as something that interfered with the plot: something best dispensed with as quickly as possible so as to get back to the storytelling. None of them take the time to get the viewer involved in any way - there is no ebb or flow to them, and they stagger ploddingly through some CGI before thankfully ending. (In particular the battle between the bears - which is fantastically rendered in the book and is sweeping, epic and full of dramatic tension - was dreadful. I don't blame the teams of artists that created it - it was beautifully rendered - but the awful pacing and directing. Ugh.)

So yeah, those were my biggest complaints... until the closing credits started. I blame Peter Jackson and Fran Boyle for the atrocious song at the end. They did it - with pretty good success - at the ends of the LOTR movies, and now Disney is trying to rip them off. Crappily. Really, really crappily. 'Let a seven-year-old write a poetic ode to Lyra and put it to lilting repetitive music.' seems to have been the direction the producers gave. I've heard it and now I can't un-hear it.

Thanks for the warning, Dad.

-Ta

I am unique in the world in that I am the only person who observes it from my point of view. This is a fact that has fascinated me practically since I was first capable of coherent thought. I remember lying awake at night as a young child (around nine or ten I'd guess) and trying to figure out where "I" was before I was born. Over the years my social awkwardness and unwillingness to do anything to conform to others had left me very much aware of, and proud of, my individuality. In all the world there is only one me, and I'm him.

However.. since I have as of yet not managed to change the world it seems a moot point. Why be the only me in the world if there's nothing particularly exceptional about that me?

I come to this thought tonight because I have reached that point in Mario Kart Wii where I am butting heads (and records) online with my virtual friends and many of my records are not top rankings. To put it shortly, there are hundreds upon hundreds of people playing Mario Kart Wii right now who are better at it than me. I have put in a couple frustrating hours today trying to beat the amazing records set on a couple courses by a fellow known only to me a The Caffeine Kid. He's roasting my ass, most frustratingly by more than five seconds on Mushroom Gorge. And after innumerable attempts I'm making no progress beating him.

It's beginning to look like I shall have to concede defeat.

Were it only in Mario Kart that I had this problem it would not be so existentially frightening, but as for practically everybody in the world I am not the best at anything that I do. And I find the fact of my inadequacy mediocrecy and redundancy deeply disturbing.

I need to do laundry and I have no time to do laundry. Argh. I mean I could technically do it now but my neighbors would probably actually bother talking to me to tell me it's too noisy and not to do it at night. Or more likely they'd call the police or the landlady or something and tell THEM to tell me.

Anyway, got up this morning, packed, etc, checked out of the hotel. Walked to Sapporo Station and found coin lockers and put my big bag in there, and then went off to the Sapporo Dome. I wore my new black Darvish t-shirt instead of my green Hichori t-shirt and it turns out today was some kinda Hichori day and I feel really dumb. The giveaway at the gate was a big paper origami thing to fold into a green Hichori #1 hat. I saved mine and didn't fold it, I think I'll try to bring it to Yakiniku Erika and give it to Hichori's parents.

I was sitting in the infield and the people didn't talk to me at ALL. Not even a curiosity, or commenting on "wow you can write kanji," but NOTHING. Bleh. So my conclusion is that really, the outfield is the way to go at Sapporo Dome. It really is the Brotherhood of Cheering.

The Fighters got their asses kicked by Masahiro Tanaka, the starter for the Eagles, and I kind of expected that to happen, and so did a lot of other people apparently -- the FIGHTERS fans were cheering him during his hero interview, because he became a famous high school baseball star playing for a Hokkaido team, and was a Fighters fan in high school even, so he's still popular up here, even when he beats the Fighters.

I got out of the stadium area as quickly as possible, which is to say, it took me maybe an hour total to get back downtown, maybe a little less. I found Ramen Alley and wandered through it, and chose a shop based on the fact that it had the most interesting-looking autograph squares to go through while waiting for food. (They had a few baseball ones that were interesting.) I talked to the proprietors a little bit. It's odd how EVERYONE in Sapporo tells me I'm really good at Japanese, when I know I'm really not. I guess there aren't a lot of foreigners there, maybe. But actually, anyway, the food wasn't THAT great. I had miso ramen and in all honesty, the ramen at Ohtori's down the street from me is just as good.

And then I went back to Sapporo Station, got my bag, (stopped in the Fighters Station store and did NOT buy the "Chori" wristbands -- I mean, it was cool that they were selling the exact model of wristband that Hichori wears, BUT they cost 4200 yen -- there's just no WAY I'd buy that. sheesh) got on a train to the airport, got through security, got on a plane, came back to Tokyo, etc. Only whoops is not stopping for omiyage outside security, because the shop INSIDE security was out of Shiroi Koibito cookies. Whoops. So instead I got these chocolate brick cookies instead.

I'm really exhausted and should sleep.

Tomorrow Seibu, Tuesday Yokohama. Wednesday is my birthday, and I have work, and no birthday plan. I suck.

Okay.. time for more ranting about my life. Let's see. I was last talking about videogames, yes? So I suppose the other thing that's been taking up massive ammounts of time in my life is work. Not surprisingly. What may be surprising is that lately work has been eating much less of my time and sucking a lot less. More behind the cut.

( more long-winded stuff behind a cut to keep your friends page from filling up. )

More soon. Ta.

Dude. Today it was something like 75 degrees F when I was waiting in line to get into the Sapporo Dome... and like 50 degrees when the game ended, and dropping.

Marui Imai actually had a bunch of the 2006 Japan Series Champions stuff marked waaaay down, like 500 yen for the commemorative t-shirt, etc. BUT I couldn't decide on a new jersey or new letters so maybe I just won't get any at all. I saw that the letters they sell are iron-on and now I'm not sure whether I would fuck up my jersey trying to put them on. Plus I had this brilliant idea to get Tadano #16 with the idea that if he flames out I can take 3 of the letters and turn the 6 upside down and make it into Oda #9 -- but maybe not with iron-ons. Eh.

I got to the stadium TOO EARLY if you would believe that. I thought the game was at 1pm. It was at 2pm. So I arrived at 11:10am and they were like "uh, you can wait in line here for when the stadium opens in 20 minutes..." and I'm just like "oops." The good part is, I was early enough to beg to get my picture taken with BB as he was escaping the waiting area, so now I have me with the old and the new Fighters mascot! Exciting!



I had an Inaba Bento for lunch. I wish I knew what half the stuff I ate was. Also before the game I got some goofy ouendan goods -- an inflatable pink finger-pointy hand for Kensuke Tanaka, a big green inflatable microphone for Hichori, and a shinsengumi flag in blue of the character 誠 for Kaneko. Who is still slumping. It pains me to see it.

People in the infield are NOT as cool as people in the outfield. But the Fighters kicked ass again and won the game something like 12-5. I even finally saw a home run, hit by, of all people, Chon-so Yoh.

Got stuck in the usual ridiculous clusterfuck getting the hell out of Sapporo Dome, and made it back to downtown Sapporo around 7:20pm; went to Marui Imai and bought the stuff I'd actually looked at that morning... and decdided against the other stuff. It was FREEZING out and my legs hurt so I took a taxi back to the hotel from there. It cost like Y850. Fine. Then I decided to go visit the Fighters Official Restaurant, which is in the Sapporo Ario mall, near the big Beer Museum which isn't open late enough for me to go to. Except it was going to take me like 30 minutes to walk to Ario, and the website said the Fighters restaurant stopped taking orders at 9pm, and it was already 8:20, so I was worried and took ANOTHER taxi to Ario. This one cost Y970 I think.

The Fighters Official Restaurant, IMO, officially sucks. The people there were fairly rude to me by Japanese standards, and the food is mediocre -- it's not even like special Hokkaido food, or special American food, or even baseball-related food or anything, it's just your average Japanese diner food, mostly featuring Japanese burger plates. Eh. The decor has various Fighters stuff and the tables all have Fighters baseball cards under glass plates but overall, I had a much better experience at Hillman's Hangout and the menu there was ninety times better and more interesting. So I'm going to go write a scathing review on my blog about it! Don't I sound like an internet geek now?



I guess the dumb part is, I could have had some "Sapporo Food" for dinner -- wandered down to Ramen Alley in Susukino or something -- but instead I wasted my dinner time with the Fighters place. Now, to be fair, I don't think I'd appreciate Sapporo food the way Japanese people do in the first place, and my purpose in coming here WAS to be a huge Fighters dork, but... eh. If I have time tomorrow after the game I'll go check out Ramen Alley. Hopefully. (It's at 1pm, my flight home is at 8:30pm... in theory if it's over by 5 and I can get back to downtown by 6, I would have time to eat and then haul ass to the airport, or something like that.)

The other dumbass part is that I tried to walk home, got lost, and ended up spending ANOTHER thousand yen on a taxicab. (Cabs are like these magic teleportation devices here, and they're EVERYWHERE. If you don't know where you are or where you're going, you hop in and tell them where you're going, and they take you there. Except you have to pay a ton of money for the magic.) So not only did I have awful food for dinner but I wasted like 2000 yen in taxi fees getting there and back. For the three taxi rides tonight's cost, I could have bought the letters to make a Kensuke #3 jersey. I suck.

Oh well. Tomorrow, Ryan Glynn starts for the Fighters, and Masahiro "Ma-kun" Tanaka starts for Rakuten, so it can't be all bad.