Zzzz

Last weekend was a two-day rush visit to a joint Korean + Japanese Symposium on Computer Graphics Blah Blah, with students from both sides giving presentations about their research (in English). The first day was spent listening to these presentations all day long, then half a day of sightseeing the next day just before the plane left back to Tokyo (this sentence brought to you by the word “day”).

Organized by Ewha Womens University 🙂 😀 Of course the campus is a very happy place to walk around.

The first night, after the (boring) university-organized dinner, of course there had to be a second drinking outing, then a third (karaoke – all in Japanese, heh) and a fourth, with the Ewha students. 🙂 Got home at 5 AM and had to wake up my hotel roommate to let me in (ごめんなさい申し訳ないっすｗｗｗ） The next same day on the bus at 8:30 to go see Seoul Tower…. ughhhhh.

So basically I saw almost nothing in Seoul, so here are a few impressions.

• It is exactly the same as Tokyo except signs look like 한글 <– this instead of 漢字 this. Plus a couple of signs in Chinese (using hardcore traditional characters by the way, like 寫眞 for 写真) or Japanese (カラオケ)
• They speak Japanese in convenience stores. Feels like home except for the prices having bigger numbers. Same inventory too, pocky and shit.
• Drinks are cheap (Soju)
• Aluminum chopsticks
• No mention of Starcraft anywhere, not like I could spot it in all the moonspeak anyway. No Starcraft TV either, although the hotel did have AFN for the local military base, heh

So, um, yeah.

TGS was back in September but I forgot to write about it so here we go, fake timestamp ahoy.

It was flashy, crowded – but not as crowded as last year (when the PS3 + Wii dual debut hype supposedly brought like 200K visitors, compared to this year’s 60K, although I don’t remember the exact figures)

It was crowded enough to make demos impossible to try, waiting times being more than an hour for most games. The other main attraction was the Squaresoft Square-Enix Closed Mega Theater, with tickets being given away to the otaku zergrush first thing in the morning – not worth it for a couple of trailers that’ll probably appear on youtube in a week.

So nothing left to do but wandering around aimlessly, and going Booth Babe Hunting ™! I’m secretly convinced that all big trade shows are actually about girls in skimpy clothes. Also there were cosplayers, although it’s kind of a letdown since every second one was doing Cloud or Aeris… Boring.

…games? What games?

9000 hours in mspaint. also spoilers maybe

Out of PW1-3, the third one is clearly superior

I also played through part 4, this time all in Japanese. Slow reading comprehension is sloooow… But the game is pretty good, and it has gimmicky 3D parts now! Yay!

also every new post here has a record amount of shitty memes

So tropical typhoon #9 (“Fitow”, what a catchy name!) has passed Tokyo. My room is on the top floor in a building that sticks out one story above the neighborhood average, so it basically gets 100% exposure to the forces of nature. So I got to listen to howling wind and the sound of rain on the windowsills all night. Well, it seems to have gone now.

Speaking of rain, I noticed that the number of umbrellas I own has been steadily decreasing. Some seem to have been stolen, or left behind somewhere on purpose because I didn’t feel like carrying an umbrella around anymore. I think I peaked at around 7 or 8 (tempted to finish this post with bel air, but no), and now I’m back down to like 4 3 (one ruined by the wind yesterday on my way home, r.i.p)

Edit:

Fitow is the name of a flower found on the island of Yap in Micronesia, according to the Web site of the Hong Kong Observatory, which lists cyclone names in use in the Pacific.

– THE MOAR YOU KNOW

「富士山に 登らない馬鹿 二度登る馬鹿」

“You are a fool not to climb Mt Fuji once, but you are a fool to climb it twice.”
(for values greater than two the results are undefined)

Non-fool status achieved! 😀

It’s not a very fun climb; the top of the mountain is completely barren, nothing but rocks and dust and the occasional weed. Also, it’s cold if you stop to rest. At the top, the first things you notice are the automatic vending machines – selling drinks at 3-4x inflated prices.

The sunrise is… a sight to behold.

There are also hordes of other tourists, sheep guided tour groups and foreigners. It’s so crowded, the way up is basically a long line illuminated by flashlights, slowly moving forward, like a ghastly scene from some horror movie. The only thing you hear is the yelling of the sheep herders tour guides, giving important instructions like “be sure to drink enough water” or “we will stop for a short rest”.

Also I wish we had had time to go down to Kawaguchiko for a dip in an onsen, but the damn bus was leaving. Argh.

Short summer vacation is shooooort 🙁

Kobe (神戸) is a large port city just west of Osaka. It’s famous for its Western architecture, a small Chinatown and the ’95 earthquake.

Capsule hotels are… weird. No pictures, I was too tired and fell asleep instantly. They had a very nice onsen, though.

Himeji (姫路) has a beautiful castle that actually survived WW2 and has awesome castle grounds, it feels like the real thing. The town itself seems small, though, and all the shops were already closed by 8-9 pm, even on the main street…

Okayama (岡山) has a black castle that’s the evil twin brother of Himeji Castle. Too bad it’s just a reconstruction of the original. At least it has an elevator inside… Okayama also has Kourakuen (後楽園, not to be confused with the Tokyo subway station), which is one of Japan’s top 3 gardens. It really is beautiful. But the real treat was going back at night, when the whole garden is lit up for the summer, and they had some live shows from Okayama-based bands, too. The light-up was called 幻想庭園 (fantasy garden).

Onomichi (尾道) is a small town between Hiroshima and Okayama, and has like 25 temples and shrines and stuff. It’s also the scene for the 2005 anime Kamichu! Since it’s right along the way I had to visit.

Miyajima (宮島) is a small island close to Hiroshima, and it has the big red floating torii (大鳥居), one of Japan’s top 3 sights. The torii is nice but there are way too many tourists walking around. During the day, as the tide goes out you can actually walk down to the gate in the mud. The tide comes back in by sunset, which is wicked beautiful and I spent an hour sitting and watching…

Hiroshima (広島) is of course famous for obvious reasons. It’s a great city, feels big, it also has a nice and slow tram system. The A-bomb memorial is an eerie sight, but more than 60 years later there’s a quiet, tranquil air to it. The museum is very matter-of-factly and still thought-provoking. The Shinkansen trip back to Tokyo is an experience in and of itself, 800 kilometers in only 4 hours, with just a few stops along the way.

Posting from a net cafe in Hiroshima

Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki is おいしい

8/7 Osaka or Kobe
8/8 Himeji
8/9 Okayama
8/10 Onomichi
8/11 Hiroshima (Miyajima)
8/12 Hiroshima (looking around the city); Shinkansen back to Tokyo

(copy pasta from mixi

７日　大阪 OR 神戸
８日　姫路
９日　岡山
１０日　尾道
１１日　広島　（宮島）
１２日　広島　（町で観光）

)

Summer is fireworks season! We went to Edogawa to see the fireworks festival with about a billion other people:

Really fucking crowded

Seriously, some of those people claimed their spots days ago so it was a miracle that we could sit at all. It’s kinda scary to see the hordes of people and the long lines and the crowd-control police goons with megaphones who just can’t shut the fuck up.

But the fireworks themselves were beautiful, 1000 shots just in the first minute and 14k in total, real impressive. More than an hour long. The river bank at Edogawa is nice cause it’s pretty flat so it’s easy to see everything.

Edit: now with 100% moar web 2.0