Natural Trick Photography

This photo was absolutely by freak chance. I had a glass with water to the level in the photo from yesterday morning, and then last night I had 2 lemon wedges from a Sonic slushie that I randomly threw into the glass. And this is the way that they naturally landed, I found them so aesthetically pleasingly arranged that I had to take a picture, so... enjoy!

Robocco (aka - Beerbot) In Action!

Robocco came yesterday and apparently wasn't cold enough to dispense drinks until today. ^^; Yes, the robot will not dispense drinks until the temperature inside is around 40 degrees Fahrenheit. If you try and make it pour one before the temperature is correct, it will tell you politely, "The temperature isn't correct, please wait a while." Ah even Japanese robots are polite. I've posted a few videos of him pouring, the american cans are not the right size so he has a little problem opening them sometimes. I'll post one full video of a successful pour later.

AHHHHHHH! BEERBOT'S HERE! (aka Asahi's Robocco)

Oh my god, my beerbot has finally arrived! AHHHHHHH! The first thing I did after unboxing him was to take pictures. Actually, no the first thing I did was hug him, then pictures, heeeee. ^___^; わい！わい！

ebay いっぱい・・・

My eyes are blurry from computing all day. Here's some eye candy, rearranged the bulletin board to have more Geass and Lucky Star, and Bamboo Blade just because Kawazoe-san is just so damned cute. Finished watching Geass R2 the other day, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. The end of a lot of anime ends up ambiguous or ridiculous. Aside from the stupidity involving the emperor and Lelouch's mom, I really liked how things came full circle. Have a Guren SEITEN on preorder now, I really want a Lancelot, but I'm curtailing all purchasing activity in favor of saving to get out of podunkville and gloriously move abroad. Lot's of flowing thoughts today, I really want to go and write some more of my book. Perhaps I'll go do that now.

One of my Favorite Scenes From Code Geass R2

Heart Karen ^_^

Taco Rice

From Kirainet recently, apparently there is Mexican food to be had in Japan! I had heard that it was very rare to find a Mexican restaurant in Japan. But, originating from Okinawa of course, some brilliant chef has made taco rice, much like omurice, a fusion of Western and Japanese cooking. I could eat omurice everyday for at least one meal, it's so good with ketchup! Anyway, the original article is here.

Kouzuki Karen

Birthday present 2 of 3 from Laura was this surprise restock of Kouzuki Karen from Code Geass. I loved this series when I started watching it and normally it takes FOREVER for me to get through a 25 episode commitment. However, I plowed through that and ended up at episode 13 of R2 as of today. This series is probably the best I've seen in a while, I dare say it exceeds even Gurren Lagann. =P It's very engaging, and it's quite a departure from the fantasy, fluffiness and gay guys that CLAMP usually tosses out. That's not to say that I don't like CLAMP's other stuff, I always loved Card Captor Sakura, Tsubasa, xxxHolic, R.G. Veda and just about anything else by them (sans Legal Drug of course, ugh what a turd), but this is way above and beyond their usual plot structure.

CharaHobby Melissa Seraphy

Got this from Yahoo Japan Auctions through Goody Japan. She's a CharaHobby special edition, that comes with different faces, a different base, a cape and a crown. She's super cute.

Beat Blades Haruka

Got this from my friend Laura for my b-day along with two other figures. I normally don't get random figures from random series and I've never actually encountered this series anywhere (and found out that it was hentai, so that explains that), but Laura was pretty geeked about how she looked and her flowing scarf, and I liked how she looked.

Chizuru-chan!

Bought this on a whim, and I'm glad I did. Kotobukiya's movie and comic book figures are usually excellent, but I never really thought much of their anime figures until I bought Tamaki Kawazoe from Bamboo Blade a few months ago. Then the other day I saw that the Kotobukiya figure of Minamoto Chizuru from Kanokon was released on Hobby Search, so I picked her up. She arrived yesterday and I figured I'd post a piccy of her. Her shirt is semi-translucent and the attention to detail is awesome. Her finger and toenails are all painted painstakingly, her eyes (both sets) are gorgeous, her hair is awesome and she comes with a satin pillow to lay on.

I'm Lazy

So lazy as a matter of fact, that my new figures are overrunning my already full desk. This is why I need more space.

zomg Phatty Lewts

Figma Kagamin looking really cute. I thought I wouldn't like her that much and would just be buying her for the sake of "completeness", but she's grown on me. The Hiiragi twins actually look a lot better than Konata, which is just a shame.

Yoko by Eye-Up, whom I've never heard of before this and the 1/7 Kamina they made last month. She's really gorgeous, and such a good sculpt, but the first thing everyone notices is her mouth. I have a piece of 2-D art that she's based on, and the mouth looks good to me by comparison. Everyone else seems to hate on it.

*berates self for using WoWspeak* So yeah, I feel that no time soon will I return to blogging. I've sorta lost interest in Danny's site because pretty much everyone there just wants to look at 2-D tits and well, 3-D tits, and that was my main motivation for writing. (The site's general interests, not tits) Secondly, I still have piles upon piles of things to sell off on ebay. Interesting side note: I did have someone from China try several times to spoof my info by buying a crappy SNES game I was trying to unload and then insisting that I "join Paypal" and even sent me a spoof e-mail from "Paypal". I got a few new things last week, or two weeks ago, or something.

Still On Break...

Yep, still on break. A birthday gift from a friend:

Mugen PeriPeri

All the fun of repeatedly opening cardboard boxes over and over again (note the redundancy). From the makers of of Mugen PuchiPuchi and Mugen Edamame. Ripped off from Japan Probe.

私のプライベート・オーシャン

Got this beauty in the mail yesterday, figured I'd start making video posts of things that actually move. You can hear House in the background! Enjoy!

Hiatus Updates

So I said I'd post my contentions with ebay and it's denizens, and I'll recount two stories I can think of off the top of my head, here. One will be etched in my memory forever just because it's so ridiculous. I had posted an auction for a Marvel Vs Capcom advertisement, desktop mini-standee thing, and also a guidebook for the game Dark Cloud 2, each with a $2 shipping cost attached. An irritant wins both auctions, I hear nothing from him after sending him an invoice. Six days or so pass with zero contact, and I send another invoice with the requisite $4 shipping. So I get a reply asking why I'm charging "double shipping". dot dot dot. . . 2+2 = 4 does it not? I think that $2 per item is more than generous, and so apparently does the post office which wanted $6.85 to ship both items first class. So this person fights tooth and nail with me to get me down to $2 shipping, which, I don't care about the two damned dollars in the first place, so I just relented. As I mentioned, the post office wanted $6.85 shipping, and I wasn't about to eat $5, so I sent it media mail (it was a book, after all) for $2 something and he'll be waiting like 2 weeks for it. The "twist" if you could call it that, was that the fellow in question has a store on ebay. Upon looking through the items he had sold in the last 15 days, many were up over $100, however there were TWO World of Warcraft sealed limited editions that sold for $850 a piece, and this guy was getting pissy over $2. Two items of the more than 20 or so in the last half of a month brought in $1600 and somehow my $2 charge for shipping is crossing the line.

The second is a blanket thing more or less, with one example that sticks out. A person from Mexico won an auction I had up for the GBA game Sword of Mana, and basically demanded that I give him a tracking number for his package. He paid $10 for the game and $4 shipping. People want insurance and tracking and magic flying puppies for $5 shipping with no compromises and then bitch when you can't provide it nownownow, and that was the best example I could think of.

Anyway, I got more schwag over the past few days, picture at the top of the post. The Yoko oppai mousepad has softer, erm, "wrist rests" than the Doki Doki Majo Shinpan one I just sold.

Hiatusness

So I've been on "hiatus" for approximately 16 days now. This is due in part to the fact that I'm lazy, but also because I've been liquidating a lot of my old junk on ebay, and it's a very time-consuming process. One would think that ebaying just involves putting an auction up and then sending off packages, but there are a lot of (potentially obnoxious) steps in between. I plan on leaving this country within the next 4 years, and for the next two I plan on being very busy. So while my job is still relegated to the back burner and I have oodles of freetime on my hands, I figured I'd go through all of my old crap that I don't want anymore and sell it all off. This plan works two-fold: for one, I'll get a lot of money off of this (I've made $1000 in about 4 weeks' time and I've not even made a dent in the pile of crap that I have to get rid of), and when I finally do decide to move -- whether it be to Japan or New Jersey -- I'll have gotten rid of the lion's share of stuff that I would have otherwise thrown out, instead of shipping it or putting it on a moving truck.

I also redid some of the living space, evidenced by the picture above. Later I'll post some of the worst moments of the last month regarding my flirtations thus far with ebay.

今日の読み物 (Today's Reading)

Here's what I'm reading today. Ranging from the most elementary of manga, Yotsubato!, what's considered to be the first novel ever written, Genji Monogatari, or The Tale of Genji as it's known in the West. I'm not that far along in Genji yet, but it's enthralling for something that was written in the 1100's. Yotsubato! is about a girl named Yotsuba (get it?) that is 5 years old and misunderstands the simplest of things, making for interesting situations. It isn't clear where she's from, but the series makes it out to be like she's foreign and "Tou-chan", as she calls her dad, adopted her. It's an adorable series, and Yotsuba is an absolutely endearing character.

Cutest Commercial Evar

Quick post. I just had to share this, because it is impossibly cute:

My Really Awful Musha Keroro Modelling Attempt

Took some pictures of the model of Keroro that I completely ruined, in this case it's Musha Keroro, musha meaning warrior, in this case a samurai. I attempted to spray him with gray primer, which didn't work, so I used paint thinner to remove it, Then I attempted to paint him using Testors, which ended up being way too dark a green, and also glossy, and also lacked the proper mixture in the pot which made it way too thick. In short, he was looking like garbage before I really did anything to him that would bring him a step closer to completion. So, instead of going out and buying white primer (which, I didn't know you could actually use the kind in the large spraycan, I thought model primer was special and no shops around here carry white model primer, ah well live and learn) and redoing it that way, I ended up just using old Gundam Markers to paint the whole thing plastic-raw. As expected, the details look good, but the large patches suck hardcore. Going to buy another from HLJ and some white primer, and have a go at it again. I really like this model, it's $5 and they make these like, eternally compared with completed PVC figures. In dim lighting he actually looks pretty good, but as you can see, the flash brings out the flaws -- a lot. By the way, this took a grand total of about 3 hours.

Yoshizaki Mine Designs a Character for Soul Calibur 4!

Separated at birth?

One of my favorite manga creators of all time (I'm not going to say mangaka, because I really like the anime version of Keroro Gunsou, but not the manga version, however he DID create the characters, so...) and pre-Keroro, famed ero-bishoujo artist, Yoshizaki Mine, made a character for Soul Calibur 4! I'm pretty happy about this, except for the fact that I noticed purely by the features of said character. Not only does she share part of her name with a pre-existing Keroro character, Angol Mois, but her outfit and weapon are largely the same as Mois-dono's. For those of you that aren't familiar with the Keroro universe, Angol Mois was sent to earth to destroy it but finds Keroro and company there and stops her mission when her "uncle" Keroro expresses his like for it, as well as their need for conquering it intact. Angol Fear (the SC4 character's name) has differences, though. Namely being black, having white hair, a palette-swapped outfit of gray, and bigger breasts which I'm sure were included just to take advantage of SC4's advanced physics engine.

Real Life Shishio Makoto

Does he not look a lot like the Rurouni Kenshin villain, Shishio Makoto?

Stolen from Japan Probe:

A monk in Niigata tried to beat some hornets with a homemade torch, but ended up burning down his temple:

The 41-year-old tried to burn out a hornet’s nest on top of a cupboard in his temple in the central Japanese province Niigata with a home-made bamboo torch.

However, the cupboard caught fire as the angry insects defended their home and attacked the scared priest. The fire soon spread to the rest of the building. While the priest only suffered light burns, the temple burnt down completely.

As you can see, the monk now has minor burns covering much of his face, giving him a creepy appearance as he explains the situation to the press. He says that he had not been expecting the hornets to go after him, and their sudden attack shocked him into dropping the torch and starting the fire that eventually burned down the temple.

First Squad: WWII Soviets vs. Nazis Anime

Found this gem via Japan Probe, that found it on Japanator:

First Squad is made by the Russian-Canadian collaboration known as Molot Entertainment. It is being directed by Yoshiharu Ashino who also directed Tweeny Witches’ and Mind Game. World War II anime are always super, and this one is extra great because it takes place on the Soviet side of the conflict. Nazi’s have dug up and resurrected crusaders to fight for their cause, and the only thing to protect the world are a bunch of Soviet teenagers with special powers.

It looks pretty good, although the stills seem a little less impressive than the trailer in motion.

わいわい！ヨーコさんが来た！

Woot, finally got the Sniper Look Version of Yoko today in the post! She's a Wonder Fest original limited edition, and she looks great! I have like four more Yoko figures coming down the pike in the next few months, I wonder if I'm developing some sort of problem... ^^; More pics to come once I unbox her.

Otaku Wear!

Was folding laundry and after the article last week on Danny Choo, about "Are you a proud of being an otaku?" I wanted to take a picture of all of my anime and Japanese culture-related shirts. So without further ado, piccage!

Engrishy Bento

I got these bento at a local Japanese grocery store like 7-8 years ago, and I use them to keep extra figure parts in, mainly. The lower one actually has pumpkin and melon flavored Kit-Kats in it. ^^

A Very Detailed Report of What Japanese People Eat For Breakfast

On What Japan Thinks, they've posted a very detailed report of whether Japanese people eat breakfast everyday, when they eat, what they eat, if they don't why they don't, et cetera.
I personally think that "drinkable jelly" is gross as hell, our local Japanese grocery store carries coffee jelly on occasion and it's nasty. As well, プリン, or pudding, Japanese pudding specifically usually looks appetizing, but is often bland and has a weird texture. In my experience at least. You can read the insanely detailed, translated-into-English report at What Japan Thinks.

Kinnikuman 29th Anniversary Crazy Goods

According to Oricon, for the 29th anniversary of Kinnikuman in Japan the ultimate collector's item is going to be released: a Kinkeshi figure made of gold with a crystal display base/case. I guess they're trying to target the nostalgic, rich otaku set. Is there a nostalgic, rich otaku set? At any rate, the figure will retail for 49,350 yen, around $450. Normally the Kinkeshi toys are made of polyvinyl chloride gum.

Via Japan Probe.