My friends held a Christmas Party last night at their home in Chiba. On the way there I met up with my friend Rod at Shinjuku Station. He had come in through a different direction and I had already passed through the ticket gate and didn't want to bother buying a ticket when we weren't going to use JR but some other line (the only other alternative to walking around to the other far away entrance in the cold) so I looked in my wallet and lo and behold I had two JR tickets from November. I tried the first unsuccessfully, but the next worked!
Having a PASMO or similar train card would have saved me the trouble of situations like this. When we finally got to Chiba I didn't have money on my ticket so we told a white lie and said we had come from Tokyo where we had transferred instead of Shinjuku, and I only had to pay like 7000 yen!
We met up with a friend there who is the girlfriend of a friend of ours back home, and then took a bus. I noticed when the doors of the bus opened the beep noise sounded like the pause chime in Super Mario Bros. 3 or other NES games, but I didn't mention it lol.
So finally to the party, we were greeted by the twins and their mom who wanted to practice English but we mostly talked in Japanese. The food was amazing, definitely 5 star restaurant quality. I ate and drank way too much and my head and stomach really hurt afterward.
Rod gave everyone CDs for Christmas. I got a Pretty Maids CD that I am listening to at this very moment. Check them out they're good!
Anyway... Rod, Takao, and a Japanese girl whose name escapes me (like usual) rode back together on Keio line.
I don't think they made the shuden (last train) because neither did Rod and I. We ended up going to our usual place Rock Inn Current but it closed early because it was the Emperor's Birthday. Then we went to Cafe Aya and waited until 5 am. Rod fell asleep in his chair near the end and I had tried to lay down on the cushioned seats but the store owner told me I couldn't and I said something like "nemui dakarayo!" Because im tired (you shithead)! Then I went home and passed out.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
Bounenkai
Tonight we had our bounenkai, which means year-end party. There are lots of types of these ~kai's such as shinnenkai (new year's party), sobetsukai (farewell party) , ect. Quite a few Japanese students joined us for the festivities including some students who will study abroad in CSU (California state) schools next year.
We went to an izakaya (Japanese style restaurant/drinking establishment) and drank and ate a lot. Everyone was getting loud and crazy towards the end of the mere two hours we spent there. Afterward we tried to go to some bars unsuccessfully, the waiters expecting loud, impolite gaijin (foreigners), a bad precedent set by the many rude foreigners that visit this country.
The weather was out of control and the wind seemed as though it would blow everyone away. My hands became numb from the cold and the rain poured down hard.
Everyone seemed to have a really good time like always and I got to practice my Japanese which is always beneficial-- it's the reason why I'm here more or less.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Adventures in Japan
This weekend I hung out with a Japanese friend, she had invited me to see Flamenco dancing. I accidentally went to Akihabara at first since her text message mentioned Akihabara and Nishiropi or whatever the place was called. Luckily it didn't take too long to get on the train going back the other direction.
The little bar was literally right next to the station, gotta love the trains in Japan!
The entrance fee was 2000 yen but you can get a "free" drink as well, so I got a beer and soon after the dancing started. The girls wore traditional Spanish dresses and had the clapping thingies in their hands and simultaneously tap danced while a man played acoustic guitar and another guy sang in Spanish. The audience was yelling "yaaaahiii" and all these words in Spanish. I was somewhat culture shocked seeing Japanese acting like Spaniards.
Another thing I noticed was that I was the only foreigner there and somehow that made me feel proud. The guy in front of me who videotaped the whole show asked me in Japanese where I was from and if I was a Spaniard, to which I replied that I was from America and spoke zero Spanish, only Japanese and English.
After we got out we went to a museum in Ochanomizu with my friend's two friends. There was a torture exhibit with iron maidens (iron maaaiden! excellent!! -bill and ted) and a guillotine.
We went to a shrine near Akihabara and I prayed to some god of business to improve my Japanese. On the toori (wooden Shinto gate) there was a sign displaying how to enter properly. You have to do a figure-eight around the posts in some overly complicated fashion.
Then we went to a maid cafe in Akihabara, it was my first time. There was a band playing near the maid cafe, a Japanese punk band I guess. There were tons of Otakus (Japanese geeks) clapping along. I wanted to head bang but I felt out of place already.
After quite a long wait we finally got to go into the maid cafe. Upon entering the maids say "okaerinasai goshujin sama" which means "Welcome back, master!".
I ordered tea which doesn't come with any special incantation, but if you order a special drink like a cocktail or something that requires stirring, the maid will say a rhyme and everyone has to repeat after her. "Moe Moe...Nyan Nyan..." It is basically gibberish meant to be cute. I got my picture taken with the maid we talked to.
We went to a Spanish restaurant afterward that was expensive but delicious. I didn't know what language to speak because my Japanese friends were speaking a mix of Spanish and Japanese and I'm not very good at either one.
All that adventuring made me pretty tired. The girl acting as our tour guide was also power walking everywhere to boot. The last activity was watching Christmas lights near Tokyo Dome. I want to go back there to ride the Ferris wheel and roller coaster.
Pictures (click for full view):
The little bar was literally right next to the station, gotta love the trains in Japan!
The entrance fee was 2000 yen but you can get a "free" drink as well, so I got a beer and soon after the dancing started. The girls wore traditional Spanish dresses and had the clapping thingies in their hands and simultaneously tap danced while a man played acoustic guitar and another guy sang in Spanish. The audience was yelling "yaaaahiii" and all these words in Spanish. I was somewhat culture shocked seeing Japanese acting like Spaniards.
Another thing I noticed was that I was the only foreigner there and somehow that made me feel proud. The guy in front of me who videotaped the whole show asked me in Japanese where I was from and if I was a Spaniard, to which I replied that I was from America and spoke zero Spanish, only Japanese and English.
After we got out we went to a museum in Ochanomizu with my friend's two friends. There was a torture exhibit with iron maidens (iron maaaiden! excellent!! -bill and ted) and a guillotine.
We went to a shrine near Akihabara and I prayed to some god of business to improve my Japanese. On the toori (wooden Shinto gate) there was a sign displaying how to enter properly. You have to do a figure-eight around the posts in some overly complicated fashion.
Then we went to a maid cafe in Akihabara, it was my first time. There was a band playing near the maid cafe, a Japanese punk band I guess. There were tons of Otakus (Japanese geeks) clapping along. I wanted to head bang but I felt out of place already.
After quite a long wait we finally got to go into the maid cafe. Upon entering the maids say "okaerinasai goshujin sama" which means "Welcome back, master!".
I ordered tea which doesn't come with any special incantation, but if you order a special drink like a cocktail or something that requires stirring, the maid will say a rhyme and everyone has to repeat after her. "Moe Moe...Nyan Nyan..." It is basically gibberish meant to be cute. I got my picture taken with the maid we talked to.
We went to a Spanish restaurant afterward that was expensive but delicious. I didn't know what language to speak because my Japanese friends were speaking a mix of Spanish and Japanese and I'm not very good at either one.
All that adventuring made me pretty tired. The girl acting as our tour guide was also power walking everywhere to boot. The last activity was watching Christmas lights near Tokyo Dome. I want to go back there to ride the Ferris wheel and roller coaster.
Pictures (click for full view):
Lexx
I've been watching this scifi show called Lexx, it has to be the weirdest show I've ever seen. It's really violent and has a lot of nudity and phallic references. It's kinda corny but it has a cool premise and interesting characters. I just finished season 2.
It's basically about this group of misfits that steals this super powerful ship called the Lexx which can blow up planets. All they want is to find a home suitable for their needs (ie sex).
The bad guy is really cool, his voice sounds like darth vader and he's a total badass.
Watch the intro to season 1 or read about it on Wikipedia:
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=Si67NV0saSM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexx
Some dude's review of Aptos Adventures DX
The following is a scathing review some guy wrote on the Aptos Adventures DX thread of my game on gamingw.net. Most of the people on there are very sad individuals with nothing better to do than play somebody's game, point out all the flaws and not mention anything nice, and then go back to playing World of Warcraft/Dungeons and Dragons/Insert really nerdy time consuming game of choice in here that they play because they live in their parents basements afraid of the outside world. I guess being a 40 year old virgin creates a blackness in people's hearts where they feel that just because a game doesn't meet their meticulous standards they have to derail it and call it crap just because it's not Final Fantasy 7-2 or whatever crappy game they are infatuated with at any given moment:
"Aptos Adventures DX is a modern-day "comedy RPG" set in a fictionalized Aptos, California. It is kind of like Earthbound, except shittier. The DX version starts with an ambitious claim:
Bug Free.
This is a horrible, horrible lie.
You are a high school student based off of the creator's persona, and are quickly drawn into a plot involving your twin brother's evil 10th grade physics teacher and some fat pink-haired alien. What exactly they are scheming really is not made that clear by the game; it sort of drifts from chapter to chapter without settling on a coherent concept, which could probably sum up the game as a whole.
Attempts are made at having custom systems, but everything feels like it was abandoned halfway through. I never encountered how to use the "suit system", hyped in the screenshots, during my playthrough. There are several ABS sections, but they are unsurprisingly clunky. Several party members are apparently available, but I only found the dog.
Game balance is mediocre. The touch-based encounters are irksome, distracting, and take far too long. Your normal attack does pathetic damage compared to your almost stat-independent special attacks, necessary to complete combat in a reasonably short time, which you do not want to use during the random battles because of their immense MP consumption. The lack of importance of stats effectively makes the already marginal gains from equipment negligible. Did I mention that you can very easily grind for the purchasable stat-improving items in chapter 2?
Afterward, I discovered that you can just play a silly weightlifting minigame to build stats even faster.
There are game-destroying bugs everywhere. During my playthrough, the engine quit in the middle of boss battles due to a trifecta of MISSING RESOURCES, UNREFERENCED EVENTS, and DIVISION BY ZERO. The "custom menu", which gives you the amazing plethora of options "GO TO REGULAR MENU", "CHANGE PARTY" (which you will only use twice), and "EXIT MENU", will freeze you in place if you were or are moving the slightest bit while opening it. I must have had to go back to the last save at least 10 times.
The game suffers from an oddly consistent "Hey! You're not supposed to come back here!" Syndrome, despite encouraging backtracking at multiple points. I saw the remnants of cutscenes and previous sections of the game at multiple points throughout; some of these situations turned the party invisible or through me back into an old scene.
What confuses me the most about this game is the target audience; for a game that will probably be enjoyed the most by a small clique of outsiders from the community, I had to enter the editor multiple times in order to progress.
The rather anticlimatic ending to this nonsense.
Demerits:
- - - Multiple game-crippling bugs, including easily avoidable missing resources and a really sucky custom menu!
- Several minor continuity bugs.
- A mandatory minigame which requires you to have a state-of-the-art computer to run at half-speed.
- - Utterly (probably unintentionally) incoherent storyline.
- Cringe-worthy humor. (Yet more asian stereotypes and gaybeams are not funny, and, no, you did not use them ironically.)
- - Game balance issues throughout.
- Sucky ABS sections.
Indulgences:
+ United Negro Gaming Fund Award for "Acknowledging the Existence of Black People".
+ Loaded with (crappy) content, including an attempt at a post-game.
Overall, nine scoffs."
What's a scoff? Is that like a cough?
Here at Tobin Industries we welcome constructive criticism and..... but it hurts! It hurts so bad! Mommy ow! Owwwwwwww!
"Aptos Adventures DX is a modern-day "comedy RPG" set in a fictionalized Aptos, California. It is kind of like Earthbound, except shittier. The DX version starts with an ambitious claim:
Bug Free.This is a horrible, horrible lie.
You are a high school student based off of the creator's persona, and are quickly drawn into a plot involving your twin brother's evil 10th grade physics teacher and some fat pink-haired alien. What exactly they are scheming really is not made that clear by the game; it sort of drifts from chapter to chapter without settling on a coherent concept, which could probably sum up the game as a whole.
Attempts are made at having custom systems, but everything feels like it was abandoned halfway through. I never encountered how to use the "suit system", hyped in the screenshots, during my playthrough. There are several ABS sections, but they are unsurprisingly clunky. Several party members are apparently available, but I only found the dog.
Game balance is mediocre. The touch-based encounters are irksome, distracting, and take far too long. Your normal attack does pathetic damage compared to your almost stat-independent special attacks, necessary to complete combat in a reasonably short time, which you do not want to use during the random battles because of their immense MP consumption. The lack of importance of stats effectively makes the already marginal gains from equipment negligible. Did I mention that you can very easily grind for the purchasable stat-improving items in chapter 2?
Afterward, I discovered that you can just play a silly weightlifting minigame to build stats even faster.
There are game-destroying bugs everywhere. During my playthrough, the engine quit in the middle of boss battles due to a trifecta of MISSING RESOURCES, UNREFERENCED EVENTS, and DIVISION BY ZERO. The "custom menu", which gives you the amazing plethora of options "GO TO REGULAR MENU", "CHANGE PARTY" (which you will only use twice), and "EXIT MENU", will freeze you in place if you were or are moving the slightest bit while opening it. I must have had to go back to the last save at least 10 times.
The game suffers from an oddly consistent "Hey! You're not supposed to come back here!" Syndrome, despite encouraging backtracking at multiple points. I saw the remnants of cutscenes and previous sections of the game at multiple points throughout; some of these situations turned the party invisible or through me back into an old scene.
What confuses me the most about this game is the target audience; for a game that will probably be enjoyed the most by a small clique of outsiders from the community, I had to enter the editor multiple times in order to progress.
The rather anticlimatic ending to this nonsense.
Demerits:
- - - Multiple game-crippling bugs, including easily avoidable missing resources and a really sucky custom menu!
- Several minor continuity bugs.
- A mandatory minigame which requires you to have a state-of-the-art computer to run at half-speed.
- - Utterly (probably unintentionally) incoherent storyline.
- Cringe-worthy humor. (Yet more asian stereotypes and gaybeams are not funny, and, no, you did not use them ironically.)
- - Game balance issues throughout.
- Sucky ABS sections.
Indulgences:
+ United Negro Gaming Fund Award for "Acknowledging the Existence of Black People".
+ Loaded with (crappy) content, including an attempt at a post-game.
Overall, nine scoffs."
What's a scoff? Is that like a cough?
Here at Tobin Industries we welcome constructive criticism and..... but it hurts! It hurts so bad! Mommy ow! Owwwwwwww!
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