Lena and the Beastly Weather

It was shaping up sooooo nicely, and then it had to get to doing snow and rain at the same time alternately with snow that's just really, really, really wet. :'( No walks for the Lena. Put some crimps in my shopping plans, but there was one day that was good enough to shop (my shoes are getting rather ragged, and I don't want to go for hours in wet feet, really).

I discovered that a tiny rice cooker that cooks only about as much as my pot on the stove runs some 50 dollars or more. I have decided that it is effectively not worth the money for a few more months of stay. I have also found that I can't seem to find VCRs. Maybe I am not looking in the right places.

The bookstore in Posful, however, did have all the Elfin Lied manga in stock. :D HUZZAH! I also got books for a couple of other people, and an idea for a book to get for someone else. Muhaha!

Katamari PSP

Went shopping yesterday, for food and to get Nacilik some books (which they are still out of, the rats). On a whim, I decided to see what I could find for PSP, and lo! Boku no Watashi no Katamari Damacy. Huzzah!

They emulated the control scheme of the PS2 games by having it still be a tank drive system that uses the buttons on the right and the d-pad on the left. My left hand's lack of skill at life causes me to have occasional moments of oops, but overall it is very nearly as smooth to use as the PS2 version. All your beloved wackiness is back, and this time you start levels by flying from a giant slingshot into the King's purple spandex-covered groin.

Not really, but very close.

I also have meat now, which makes me happy. Go meat!

Today I was gonna go to the Posful area and do some more shopping for various good things like those books for Nacilik and a rice cooker, but the weather was not good for keeping dry the socks of a walker with dying shoes, so... I didn't. Let's see how the weather goes tomorrow.

Computer Software of the Gods

Photoshop.

It's great. I fall more in love with it the more I use it. And I found out that I can set it to automatically open, resize, optimize for web, save, and close a whole folder full of files. Hallelujah! I still need to set the web site up myself (since FrontPage is the the Computer Software of the Devil), but that makes my life so, so much easier. Hallelujah!

Also, I went to buy breakfast this morning because I really wanted some curry, and there was an old man (I'd say 55ish or so) at the edge of the parking lot for the apartment building who was pissing in the grass. Not even hiding in a corner or anything. It was at the end of the fence, so he was visible from all directions. It was kinda weird.

What Do We Need?

More pictures!

...

T_T K, don't need 'em. But that is what we got. I finally figured out a way to get my pictures from cell phone to internet. Here are two:




Very cool Jak II box art (if a bit glared over) and the coolest pair of flip flops I have ever seen. Wasn't gonna pay 4500 yen (about $40) for them, though. Both of these pictures were taken in November in a shopping district far, far away.

Realizations of the Period

1) I don't look forward to resizing and resaving all the pictures taken with my camera. I just don't.

A Road to Trudge

:( Last night wasn't like the night before. It was cloudy and windy and cold. Today I really wanted to level my Bard in FFXI, so I didn't check.

On the plus side, I have finished the second draft of the scanslation chapter and should soon be starting in on redoing all of my pictures for re-upload to my web site and display. :'( OMG. So many pictures.

Helped Yuuko and the other people who want to go to Alaska with their English again today. We have played fun games the last few times. :D They are more comfortable around me, too. Today's lesson was about saying what time it is. I never realized just how many acceptable ways there are to say 2:15. Two fifteen, quarter after two, quarter past two. Then there is combining stuff like that with AM and PM and noon and midnight and...

Have you ever stopped to think about how crazy it is that we understand languages at all?

Victory and Doughnuts

The Victory: I got the first draft of the scanslations edit done. Huzzah!

The Doughnuts: So I wanted some victory doughnuts. I live pretty much right in between the two nearest doughnut shops, judging by the fact that it takes about twenty minutes either way. I usually go to the one over by Coach & Four because it's a prettier route. And that is the way I went.

I'll tell you what, I am so sorry I didn't have my camera.

The full moon and the stars are out, the temperature is perfect for a walk (just cold enough to see your breath), there was almost no wind, and the lake right across the road from the mini shopping district where the doughnut shop is is glazed over with ice still. Since it has been warm of late, the ice is reflective and was displaying a lot of color from the shopping district. So I ate my doughnuts by the lake instead of coming home to eat them while gaming.

I hope tomorrow is like tonight, so I can go take pictures. :'(

/Sigh

After playing around a bit with the web site and putting photos up... I realized I am gonna have to bite it and resave all of the pictures with thumbnails. It just ain't gonna work otherwise. Which means picture upload time is gonna take a while. >< I'm sorry. And I can't get to it yet because I am crunching on the scanslation project.

Blarg.

TV会議 / Ash

会議 == Conference.

This is, to say, that I got up early yesterday and went to Kashiwagi Elementary School for their last webcam (making the term "TV" misleading, but whatever) conference with Bennett Elementary School in Virginia. I thought I was gonna be helping with stuff, but I ended up as an audience member.

It was actually fairly interesting to watch. The two schools have been doing a pair project involving investigating the plant and animal life around their schools and reporting their findings to the other school. They took turns, each side doing 5-ish reports at a time.

The Japanese kids stood up in singles, pairs, or triples, had no materials, and recited memorized reports about the trees around the school and Lake Hattori. A Japanese guy in a business suit (who wasn't on camera; none of the adults in the room were, until the end) then read aloud a (sometimes slightly broken) English translation. His pronounciation was pretty good. Then the American students stood up one at a time and read their reports off a piece of paper and showed the Japanese students a picture of their tree via the webcam. A woman off view of the webcam then translated what they said into Japanese. This went back and forth.

I thought it was interesting to note the differences in each side. Memorized vs. not, pictures vs. none. Kashiwagi's webcam was superior to that of Bennett. Kashiwagi's was good enough to stand on a tripod and show all the kids in the room with a nice, clear picture while Bennett's was about the same quality as that of Nacilik -- decently clear if you have it at arms length or so and are showing 1-3 people. It was good enough to get a decent look at the tree pictures they showed us.

At the end, the students of Kashiwagi sang the Japanese version of the Do Re Mi Song from The sound of Music for the students at Bennett. The Bennett students were supposed to join in and sing the English version for the second verse with everyone singing both versions the third time around, but I am thinking they either couldn't hear the keyboard or the time lag was pretty bad, because they weren't in time. I ended up just singing the English with them the third time through. I was sitting behind the keyboard and could clearly see the music, but since I go to this school (every now and then, recently started) to help the kids learn English and learn about American culture, I just sang the version I grew up with.

Speaking of the Japanese version, Do is the "do" in "doughnuts"; Re is the "re" in "remon" [lemon]; Mi is the "mi" in "minna" [everyone]; Fa is the "fa" in "faito" [fight, as in "Yeah, you can do it! FIGHT!" not an actual fight]; So is the "so" in "aoi sora" [blue sky]. (I was gonna type out La and Ti as well, but have forgotten what they were.) One thing that was interesting to me was that Ti was pronounced "Shi". :O That one was a bit surprising. I would have guessed they would use "Chi".

Then the principals and vice-principals and coordinators on both sides said a little bit about how much everyone had loved the project and how they looked forward to doing it again and such. Then the thing was over, the 2nd graders went back to their classroom (more on that later), and the 5th graders got to taking down the webcam equipment and putting the desks and chairs and everything that belonged in the room back in place.

I talked to the guy who had read the kids' reports of in English. His name is Tetsuya, and he looked so familiar to me because I had actually seen him before. He's a friend of Mariko-san, and was at the School Festival Chakai that Sadoubu put on. He got to see me make tea. :D I hope I get to see him around some more; he's interesting to talk to.

After that I had to get home; I had received a piece of paper from the gas company the day before that I couldn't completely read (though I am getting way better at the reading of things; hallelujah! :D), and it had yesterday's date written on it, so I felt that I should go back home for whatever the gas thing was. :P Turned out that it was just the person coming by to tell me what my gas bill is for the month. The lady who comes around with the printer has to look at the meter just inside the door to verify that the bill is correct, apparently -- a fact I appreciate, to tell you the truth.


My Dear Friend Ash

So I was talking to Ash the other night and told him I was updating the blog again. He asked me to put something in the blog about how much I miss him next time I updated. I agreed. I was pondering what to write, exactly, and came up with this poem.

Special note to Ash: Reading this aloud and with drama makes it that much more fun.

Ash

I miss Ash
like I miss my Left Leg.

My Left Leg is still connected,
but back in 'Nam
I often wondered,
"Will we always be so?"

Were my Left Leg ripped from my hip
by a three-legged Ol' Bitty,
a thin tendril of bloody gristle
would retain our connection.

Ash and I are tight,
like me and my Left Leg.
I feel the tug of proverbial gristle --
stretched across the Pacific Ocean
in a gruesome display of friendship --
wishing Ash was by my side.

Realizations of the Period

1) For the record, Ash, I only come up with shit like this when you are involved.
2) OMG! I forgot to redo all the img tags on the early blog posts when I moved all my pictures to my web site. :'( Damn it, Chuck, why didn't you tell me?!

Casshern

My friend Mike comes back from the dead (which is to say he disappeared for four years, and with the last anyone had heard being that he decided to go for an extended walk Forrest Gump-style, we had all come to figure he might have died), and he recommends to me this movie, Casshern. Says it's like Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow, only good. I still haven't seen Sky Captain, though I would like to, but everything he's ever recommended to me has been to my liking, and this is no exception.

It's a Japanese movie (that is supposedly going to hit American theatres this year). This sci-fi story takes place in the wake of a nasty, 50-year, devastating war that starts in the near future. The environment is totally whacked now, and anything too far from civilization seems to face oddball mutation problems which range from going blind over the course of years to having strange growths. This eventually culminates in death, naturally. There's a scientist whose wife has been afflicted, and so he ends up getting funding for his research on a cure. Zoom ahead in time a bit, and lightning does some strange things with his experiment, launching the story into the real meat.

I'm pretty sure the plot has a few holes in it, but honestly, I was too busy being awed by the movie to be able to really analyze the plot. The combination of sound, acting, computer graphics, directing, cinematography, and costumes (color was a huge part of the visual impact) all combined to form some incredibly strong images. Many of them were a bit abstract, but I felt the abstraction added to the experience, especially in one scene between the main character and his girlfriend.

Between touching moments, silly moments, and shiny fight scenes, this movie is definitely one to watch if you have any interest in direction or cinematography. If you don't, you should still check it out; I don't think it's a move everyone will dig, necessarily, but it's certainly an interesting experience. After all, how many music video directors get to make their own movie?

Now I am gonna do some manga chapter editing. Whee!

Victory Calls My Name

And she knows that I cannot resist the insistence of her pull.

Which is to say that I have figured out how I am gonna put pictures up on my web site. With unabashed use of copy and paste, there will soon be a plethora of pictures available for browsing, with a great many of them having captions. Huzzah!

However, while the pictures and their captions will tell you about a good number of the interesting things I have been doing in the two months of not updating the blog, I don't have pictures for everything. Either I didn't have my camera, or I felt like I would look more touristy than I wanted to deal with, or whatever. So I will posthumously recount what I have been up to, starting with...

First Chakai of the Year

The kanji 会 is pronounced kai. It can be tagged onto any number of things to give the meaning "convention" or "meeting or "get-together." A chakai is a tea ceremony get-together.

The first chakai of the year is linked to the general Japanese thinking of the new year. When the new year opens, it is time to put the past behind you and look to the future. The first chakai of the year is thus the first chakai of a new round of life, and something to be treasured.

Through Ikushima-sensei (the tea ceremony club teacher), the club got five tickets to a beginning of the year chakai. I like going to these special chakai because I get to see varied methods and utensils for performing tea ceremony, so I chocked up (how do you spell that, anyway?) the 1000 yen for a ticket and met with Ryoko, Keina, Mariko-san, and another girl whose name I can never remember to walk to the Manabotto (the same building in which I had been to a prveious chakai and a shodou exhibit) together.

We got there about fifteen minutes after the chakai started; too late to participate in the first round of tea and first to arrive for the second round. Generally, for these chakai, there is a 4-6 hour span of time in which you come and get to enjoy the ceremony once per setup -- one traditional tatami room setup and one where everyone is sitting in chairs at tables, including the person making the tea. So we settled down to wait. A little bit of time passed, more people showed up, and I realized that although I had come in my best clothes (since Mariko-san had told me to make sure and wear a skirt) and the other girls had come in nice clothes, too... we were the only ones not wearing kimonos.

This didn't surprise me too much. Last time I had gone to one of these chakai, there had been few other women not wearing kimonos. This time, though, when we got into the tatami room where the ceremony was actually to take place, people were like, "Oh, you're students? With a foreigner? Sit over there, in almost the most-honored place, so you can see better." We really had almost the best seats in the room for watching what was going on. Being able to see what was going on well, I realized that not only were they all wearing kimonos, but they were all wearing expensive ones. The guys who had come weren't wearing kimonos, but their suits were obviously in the multi-hundred-dollar range. One woman showed up in a multi-hundred-dollar dress suit, at which point I knew for certain that my friends and I were horribly, horribly outclassed.

The people in the positions of honor asked a bit about me; where was I from, why had I come to the ceremony? I was in the tea club? Spiffy.

Then the tea ceremony started. It was a method I hadn't seen before. It involved an exceptionally large shelf, wider and taller than normal. There was also a container in which the water ladle (hishaku) sat, along with a pair of long-handled chopsticks that seemed to serve little purpose. It was interesting to watch, though. The equipment was all perfectly matched. Black was the base color for everything (except the hishaku, made of bamboo). Coming up from the bottom was a design of bright blue with gold inlays that looked like fish scales. It was really nifty stuff.

When the tea ceremony was most of the way done (most of the 30ish people had had sweets and drunk tea, and the tea-maker performing the ceremony was starting to clean the bowl), the two guys in the most honored position stood up to leave. This struck me as incredibly weird. And I was right. The first guy came over to say hi to me. Turns out it was the mayor of Kushiro.

Holy handgranade. :O

Did you know that Seward, Alaska and Kushiro, Japan are sister ports? I didn't. Not until he told me. Then he left. I assume the guy is a busy man, so it makes sense, but it left a small hole in the ceremony. Earlier, I had seen that the first two guys (which I now knew was the mayor and some kind of attendant) didn't really know what they were doing. They obviously hadn't studied tea ceremony. It had made me feel a bit better about the "horribly, horribly outclassed" sense flitting about my brain. But now, at the cleaning stage of the ceremony, the person in the position of honor was supposed to say some things, interact with the tea maker a bit. The lady who had been third place ended up taking care of that after a short apology for taking over with the two guys gone.

The rest of it went as normal, really. After the ceremony was done, everyone got up to go take a closer look at the decorations and equipment used (hot damn, there is some beautiful pottery and painting in some of the tea ceremony equipment). Then we went down two floors to a room with a chairs-and-tables setup and had more tea. That ceremony wasn't nearly as interesting to recount, though, so I'll just say that the tea was good and the cold water holder (mizusashi) for the ceremony looked like a bright blue bucket. It was rather cool.

After that, three of the girls went home, but I needed a kobukusa, a piece of tea equipment in the form of a special, decorated cloth about the size of an average piece of origami paper for the new method I had been learning. So Ryoko (who needed to go to the public library anyway) showed me where the tea stuff shop I had heard about was. When we got there, I realized that I had never been able to find it (and I had looked a couple of times) because the kanji were so expertly (meaning convolutedly) written that I couldn't read them at all. I got myself a nifty-looking, yet inexpensive, kobukusa, then headed home while Ryoko went to the library.

That was on the last Saturday in January. Stay tuned for more stuff as I get to it!

Realizations of the Period

1) I love Photoshop. It's such a good feeling to look at something you've edited in it and say to yourself, "I did that. ... Muhahahahahaha!"
2) I am looking forward to summer. It's gonna be both dark and warm enough for me to sit outside and enjoy the night for hours. Add to that the fact that I have a PSP with Lumines now? Hallelujah! Hallelujah.
3) Rice is tasty, filling, and nutritious. I can see why the Japanese people eat so much of it. I've started eating a lot more of it, too -- it's also easy and fast to cook. Toss something tasty in with it, mix, and you have dinner.
4) I am such a college student.
5) I went to Seicomart to get a new bag of rice, since I was running out, right? They sell like three kinds of rice. The packages are different colors, with different names, and the bags are transparent so you can see the rice in the same places. Looking at the rice itself inside the bags... they all look exactly the same. WTH?

So Much Seafood

So I have a PSP now. It's white, shiny, sexy, and is sitting next to the Suikoden I & II compilation and Lumines, and I have no time to play it, really. You would think that with it being spring break, I would have plenty of time. But I signed up with Goddess Miyaku Team around Christmas, and have a chapter to edit.

I have played a little bit (really, you can only work on photoshop edits for six hours straight or so before you need a break). Lumines is trippy as always. Almost everything in the menus is in English, which kind of surprised me. I forget, though: in the NA version, when you get a high score, do the bars on the side say "High Score?" or "Rank In"? If they don't say "Rank In," that is unfortunate, because the Japanese version does.

As for the Suikoden compilation, I am lazy, and just going to copy and paste the information I put up on the AllRPG forums:

I am not Ryan, but I bought a PSP and the Suikoden compilation (and Lumines, but that is off-topic) a few days ago. Haven't played with it as much as I would like due to other things needing doing, but here's what I have for you:

The main menu allows you to choose between S1, S2, and a gallery. I haven't really unlocked anything in the gallery, but the options are Sound Mode, Movies, Event Viewer, Endings, and Staff Roll. The first is listening to music, the last is credits. Those seem completely unlocked from the get-go.

Suikoden I's start screen movie has been revamped to be a lot more like that of Suikoden II instead of a run-through of parts of the game. The game itself seems to be exactly like the original. They adapted for the larger screen pretty well; if the map you are on is one that filled the screen (like the McDohl house), then they added tiles to the side to fill up space. In other places, you sometimes find your main character a little to the side of center screen in places where he was centered before, but it isn't bad in any way. Portraits are now to the side of the text instead of above it.

Suikoden II I haven't played (I assume you can load data :D), but the intro is exactly the same as before.

All in all, it's shiny, loveable, nostalgic, portable, and cheaper than buying either of the games for PSX on eBay.

EDIT: It is also still playable left-handed, for the most part, though with select too far away now, you need your right hand to go into the menu. I assume you will need your right hand to run, too, due to the fact that there is only one shoulder button on each side, but since I don't have a running rune yet, I can't say for sure. You can also use the joystick to move, but since you can't talk to people or activate anything from a diagonal direction, I find that more of a pain than it is worth.

After one guy posted something, I replied with this:

Have a couple of pictures, by the way. First one is my glorious, just-arrived-in-the-mail, unopened copy of the game, and the second is a picture of the UMD itself. I really like the UMD design.




It may be a ho-hum port, but I don't object to them doing that. If they port it to another system, I am guaranteed a chance to buy it if I either don't have it or in case my existing copy/copies get lost or broken or what have you. In this case, I don't mind the whole I-can-take-it-with-me part of the equation.

I also did a bit of shopping today. I am wondering if the bookstore is ever gonna have volumes 2-5 of Elfin Lied in stock so I can get them for Nacilik. While I was there, I looked at cookbooks. I found a beginning Japanese-style cookbook, which looked like a really good one. They also have a crazy selection of books aimed at being snacky-type food for drinking parties.

I have been trying to find stuff for Shannon & Bob in regards to rice, but it looks like the Japanese mainly just have plain old rice on the side with everything. That and have it in sushi. While browsing the cookbooks, though, I found some recipes that were made for rice cookers in a book on cooking for one person. Some of them involved adding stuff with the rice at the beginning, so that the taste of whatever soaks into all the rice. Some of these recipes had stuff like vegetables, others had ketchup. (o_O I have heard of ketchup rice before, but the idea never fails to weird me out a bit. I was thinking to get a rice cooker anyway, but now I really want one. Morbid curiosity says, "Try the ketchup rice!")

There were also recipes involving taking meat or fish and seasoning it (usually with a sauce), then wrapping the fish/meat in wax paper (with the ends twisted) or putting it in a ziploc bag on top of the rice to cook while the rice was cooking. It looks like you can do this with any kind of meat you want. I think the recipes were for making rice and fish and whatnot that go together.

Taste-O-Meter!

Tonkatsu Curry: 5
Breaded pork cutlet over rice with delectable Japanese curry sauce? Yes, please. More, please. More. More. MORE! MORE THAN THAT!!! ;_; Oh god! I'm ADDICTED!

Realizations of the Period

1) Do not judge a movie by its opening credits. I got Good Will Hunting to watch, then went o_O when I saw that it was written by Matt Damon and Ben Afflek. It was a really good movie. If you haven't seen it, do so.
2) No Japanese people my age seem to know how to make rice without a rice cooker. When I told Mika I don't have one, her face became so filled with "You DON'T?!" that it bordered on true horror. While eliciting that reaction was fun, it made me realize that there are rice cookers everywhere here.
3) It is cool to see the Japanese actors from Last Samurai on random stuff on TV here.

Life is Good.

I know that sounds like bull, but it's true. It's amazing what getting to talk to an old friend you haven't heard any news about in years can do for your mood. I was so full of energy when I found out he was still alive that I couldn't focus on my scanslation work. While that last bit was bad, I think it's a fine trade-off.

When I woke up this morning, I turned on the PS2 to do a bit of FFXI playing, then dragged the final folder of pictures into FrontPage to start uploading to my web site. Six or seven hours later, it finally finished. That is what I get for taking hundreds of pictures. I still don't know how I am gonna fit them on my web site, as it turns out that the way I handled the wallpapers I made back in the day was to have thumbnails, then link directly to the pictures.

And the more I look at those wallpapers, the more I want to cry about my utter lack of skill at putting them together. A couple of them are really nicely composed, but suffer from the fact that I just didn't know how to use Photoshop. ;_;

Pangalactic Gargleblaster! GAH!

So yeah. I am gonna do some scanslating now and work on the web site tomorrow. No FFXI distraction, since the problems with the credit cards mean that the credit card company refused to pay the fee for this month. Oh goody. :P But oh well.

Hail of Photographs

I have so many pictures. I have been uploading like mad, and I am almost done... but not quite. So. I paused a moment to DeviantArt-ify one photo and a digitally altered version of it. But that is only one of hundreds of pictures. How I am going to display them on my site is as yet unknown. The pictures are rather large, and won't fit into the normal layout I have for the web pages. (o_o)a Need to go brush up on what I did for the wallpapers I made aeons ago.

No PSP yet. Didn't really expect it, but I couldn't help a bit of hoping. *sigh*

Paid my rent today. My landlord is married, and usually his wife is the one I make payments to. Not today, though... dunno if she wasn't there or what. Paying him meant no chit-chat. :( I like my conversations with her. Nothing important, but always enjoyable.

Realizations of the Period

1) You know how sometimes a kid will take something and hit themselves over the head with it and go, "Ow," repeatedly? Japanese kids do that, too.
2) In losing weight, my butt has shrunk. I find myself stepping on pant hems even when the waist of the pants are properly seated.