Back in the USA

Back from another trip to Japan. This time was a mixture of work and vacation, though primarily the latter. Worked for a day and a half, then had a little over a week to spend with family and friends.

My mom and step-dad were also in Japan, as we were there to "celebrate" the 1 year anniversary of my grandfather's death. He actually died in February of last year, but my grandma decided that February was too cold to ask everyone to come to Tokyo, so we waited until April. It was still pretty cold (in the low 50s when it's normally in the high 70s to low 80s) and raining, but better than snowing, I suppose.

After work ended, I spent a day taking a friend and her roommate around Tokyo. Y'all remember the half-Chinese girl I met on the airplane back in January? Well, she happened to be in Tokyo (though our trips only overlapped by a day or so) for the first time, so I offered to take her and her roommate around to see anything they hadn't gotten around to. So, we headed over to Asakusa (PGR fans should know what it looks like). We spent some time looking around the bazaar and bought lots of rice crackers and knick knacks for friends, then headed over to the docks to take a ferry over to Odaiba. We ended up taking the Himiko ferry, which looks like this:


It was supposedly inspired by Japanese anime. It was pretty nifty, but there wasn't really much to see from the ferry, so we just chatted the whole way. After we arrived in Odaiba, we realized that there really wasn't much to do other than go shopping (which they had already done), go to the giant Sega arcade "Sega Joypolis" (which we really didn't have time for), or go on the ferris wheel (ditto). So, we headed toward the train station and made our way back to Shinjuku.

After heading to the top of Tocho (Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building) to get a view of the Tokyo sprawl, we hiked all the way over to Harajuku, through Omotesando, then over to Aoyama in search for this supposedly famous vegetarian restaurant listed in the roommate's guidebook. She was vegan, which when translated into Japanese means "s/he who does not eat," so it was proving to be a challenge to find places where we could all find something to munch on. After walking around for about an hour and getting no help from the locals, we stopped by an AM/PM to ask if anyone in there had heard of the restaurant. Luckily, someone had heard of it, and told us it was right around the corner (which was on a *different* corner than the guide book had it listed on). We had just walked by that corner and didn't see anything... which was curious.

We headed back and took a good look at the little billboard outside that listed all the names of the restaurants hidden inside. There it was on the 1st floor. A quick look around the first floor revealed a Thai restaurant, a grill, a bar, and an empty room. Wait a second. I went into the bar and asked the bartender what happened to the vegetarian restaurant and sure enough, it had moved to the other side of Tokyo the month prior. Crap.

We ended up going over to an Italian restaurant and told the roommate "you're eating cheese pizza, dammit." The dinner was nice, but not amazing (though the funniest moment was when we tried to explain to the roommate that yes, Caesar Salad has anchovies in it, which she apparently didn't know). We moved on to a British pub in Shibuya and drank beers until about 3 am. Since all the trains stop at 1 am or so in Japan, we had no choice but to cab it back to our respective hotels. We headed over to the taxi stand next to the station and saw the enormous line of people waiting in the rain. We took up our place in line (since I've found that taxi lines in Japan tend to move at a decent pace), but after 30 minutes of waiting, we had only moved about 5 feet (there were still 40 people ahead of us). However, to keep things interesting, the drunken salary-man behind us decided to play out his dream of living out a Japanese drama and began to slam his umbrella against the sidewalk, all the while cursing his girlfriend. She tried to get him to stop, but he reached up and grabbed her by the collar and said, "Don't you tell me what to do!" She responded by grabbing his tie and pulling him up to her and said, "Who the hell do you think you're talking to?!" They of course stormed off in a heated argument, but at some point, he decided he didn't want to sleep on the couch and started trying to sweet talk her. She wasn't having any of that and last I saw, he was still begging and pleading as they rounded the corner.

Moments later, I noticed that there were plenty of empty taxis driving by the main road about 100 yards away, but none of them were turning into the taxi stand area. Funny. I ran up, flagged one down, and called my friends over. Took us all of 2 seconds to get a cab. Despite us shouting and laughing and making a big deal of it, *nobody* else left the line to come do the same. Damn Japanese and their standing in line.

Dinner with the extended family on the day of the grandfather-death-celebration thing was very pleasant. My grandma's siblings and their families all gathered, along with my grandpa's cousins. In fact, one of his cousins came that nobody had seen in close to 50 years. He told us the story of his life - everything that happened since they last saw him. He was a great storyteller, so it was amazing to hear: he had gone to war (WW2) and lead a squad whose motto was "nobody kills, nobody dies," he married into another family and inherited the family business (he was the 3rd son in his family and stood to inherit nothing), and made a name for himself in the field of architecture, etc. The most amazing part was how much he looked like my grandpa - they could have been brothers.

That evening, I went home with my mom's aunt to go see my baby cousin, who had just started school so was unable to come to the gathering. She was so excited to see me again (I had seen her on the Saturday before, where I gave her a belated birthday present - a custom Hello Kitty from the Build-a-Bear Workshop) that she couldn't sit still. After making it clear to her that I wouldn't talk to her until she finished her homework and practiced her piano for at least 15 minutes, she diligently went to work, after which point we spent the entire evening playing with little knick knacks and making up stories about epic battles between marbles and bottle caps.

Also had dinner with my mom's old high school volleyball team. It was great seeing my mom in that light... I could imagine what she was like back in her teenage years, just by watching her interact with her old friends. Even one of the assistant coaches showed up at the gathering. Despite being an older Japanese man, he was about 6'4 and had hands that dwarfed even mine (though my thumbs were longer, of course).

All in all, nothing super exciting about this trip, but on the other hand, it was fairly relaxing. Lots of eating, lots of drinking, and *lots* of walking. Fun times, but I suppose the fact that I'm there so often lessens the feeling that it's something special when I'm there.

Unspecific Randomness

I'm heading back to Japan (surprise!) next week, but this time I'll be staying for an extra week to chill with la familia. My mom and step dad are going to be there, and it looks like the step dad and I will be having a run of the town one night while my mom, aunt, and grandma go pamper themselves at a hot spring.

He expressed interest in hitting up some of the locales in Lost in Translation (he loved the movie), and through some searching (i.e. I googled it), I found the karaoke place and the club that they went to (the club with all the white globes with movies being projected onto them, not the strip club). Turns out that the karaoke place is just a generic karaoke box that's part of a chain of stores, but this one just happens to have a nice view of the city. I thought it was some upscale place, but shows what I know.

Sounds like my baby cousin just started her first year of school! Which means I won't have as much time to play with her, but hopefully she can still come out on the weekends and whatnot. I missed her birthday, so I will be bringing gifts this time around.

On a completely random note, this is very likely the most epic movie theme evar!!1!

Conan the Barbarian!!!!1!

While the movie certainly feels old nowadays, I still think it's one of the best (if not *the* best) fantasy movies of the time. Ahnuld's acting was lacking, as can be expected, but thankfully he was only given a handful of lines to say... which is what makes the director's cut of the movie a little more painful to watch. But still, that opening theme, plus a few others ("Theocracy" is one of my favorites... it's the one that plays when Conan and Subatai are running across the plains) really get me pumped up. Too bad the composer passed away, because I'd have loved to see him score a few video games.

Alas.

So, NiGHTS 2 and Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games have been announced. Interesting times. Mario and Sonic in a game together? Weird. Very, very weird. Personally, I'd have loved to see a Sega vs Nintendo all-out brawl instead of a sports game, but this will have to do. Still, some fairly big announcements from Sega. We'll see if the legendary status of NiGHTS has the ability to carry the sequel to success, despite having only had a very limited release the first time around.

Also, the fact that Rock Band can utilize the X360 guitar controllers for GH2 is cool, but unfortunately I have 2 PS2 guitar controllers. What's a gamer to do? I suppose I can just have friends get the other instruments, and I'll pick up the mic :D

Wii have liftoff!

Seppo's Wii has finally arrived! A big thanks to the boys and girls at Nintendo for hooking it up ;)

On a side note, I spent some time playing with another friend's Wii. Played a bit of Medal of Honor, then Wario Ware. Medal of Honor was... odd. Decently made, but the graphical difference between MoH Wii and, say, GRAW2 was painfully obvious. In fact, the fiance refuses to watch me play GRAW2 because it's too realistic, but MoH Wii was fake enough that it was enjoyable. However, as far as the gameplay goes, I can definitely see the pros and cons of the Wiimote. It was interesting to play Wario Ware (which was hilariously fun, by the by) because you actually get a kick out of doing the weird things with the controller. But with MoH, it grew increasingly frustrating. Every time my nose itched and I went to scratch it, my camera would go flying off screen. I would try to reload by flicking the nunchuck to the right, but it would spin me around 180 degrees (which is done by flicking to the left). Every once in a while, the camera would start to jump all over the place, likely the result of a bad signal from the controller, but it would always take a few seconds to recalibrate and figure out what happened.

All in all, I think the Wii has a lot of promise, once developers figure out a "visual language" to communicate feedback to the player, but as it stands, it's not that good as a straight replacement for a regular controller. Games like Wario Ware certainly take advantage of making the player do things that weren't possible before, but it has yet to be seen how far they can take that.