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I’m just waiting a few more hours until I head into the cold to line up at the nearby Yodobashi Camera, which is supposed to open at 9:30AM. I think I’m going to try and get there 2 or maybe 3 hours before they open. Why in the world would I spend a day off waking up early, if I go to sleep at all, to line up in front of an electronics store? It’s because Smash Bros X (Brawl in the US) is finally being released here in Japan.

I don’t think I’ve ever lined up for anything like this before; not for a video game, movie, CD, DVD, or concert. It does, however, remind me of that Saved by the Bell episode where they were trying to get U2 tickets or something and ended up being chased by gangsters. Of course the gangsters ended up being a hidden camera show – ha, ha,ha! Sorry…it’s late and I’m really tired.

I know I won’t get to have any adventures as cool as Zack and the gang did in that mall, but let’s hope the line isn’t that long. I checked at 9 and midnight tonight, and there was no one yet. There was, however, a sign showing where to line up, so I know they’re expecting people. Devil May Cry 4 also comes out today, in addition to some other ultra-mega-nerdy games that I don’t know about. Yes, there are different levels of nerdiness, in case you were about to call me a hypocrite.

Happy New Year to anyone who is Chinese, or I guess also to any non-Chinese who for some reason celebrates it.

You know those infomercials where they talk about starving children in Africa? I think over the course of the day, I ate enough to feed an entire village of starving children for a week, or at least a few days. The day started with some nice yakiniku (Korean BBQ) lunch with Yori, Matt, and Brian. This is the kind of awesome restaurant where you cook the meat on the table yourself. We went to the Chiba-Chuo branch of a chain called Anrakutei (安楽亭), which is apparently cheaper than Gyukaku but really good. They have cheap lunch sets until 5, so we each ate 2 sets. That’s right; 2 entire meals of yakiniku goodness. Each set came with rice, soup, kimchee, tofu, and of course a pretty big plate of raw meat. Absolutely amazing. It was relatively cheap, and we were all completely stuffed by the end of it. Also the restaurant’s sound system played exclusively American 50’s or 60’s songs, so we got to listen to stuff like Let’s Go to the Hop as we ate.

After playing some Resistance on PS3 for the afternoon, I headed into Tokyo to get some Chinese food for a new year celebration of sorts. Also because I love Chinese food. Now, to be quite honest, I was still absolutely stuffed from lunch, and wasn’t sure that I was even going to be able to eat dinner. However, after the hour-long train ride from Chiba to Yotsuya, where I was meeting Sunny for dinner, I was almost in some form of eating condition We went to this one place first, which apparently specialized in Shanghai crab dishes. While it looked good, I can’t really be spending 5000 yen on a single meal, so we decided to pass and went a few blocks down the road to a more local/less fancy Cantonese restaurant. This ended up being a good choice, because the food was really good. I’m pretty sure the place was run and staffed by real Chinese people; at the very least they weren’t Japanese. Their J-go wasn’t exactly perfect, and they were less polite with customers and stuff than Japanese people tend to be, at least in service situations. For example, when we showed up, the only table open in the place was in the corner blocked by two other tables. The lady went nuts, asking people to move and even really abruptly asking (more like ordering) one guy to move to the other side of his table. It was pretty funny, and made me feel like I was a VIP or something getting the waitress to rearrange the dining room so I could sit down.

Not only was the food cheap, but it was way good. We had like 4 dishes; a beef and vegetable, chili shrimp, chicken, and another vegetable dish that we didn’t really order but the pushy waitress I think assumed we wanted it after she kept recommending it. Either that or she just ordered it for us. Ah well; it was cheap and was good anyway. I don’t think I’ve actually had “proper” Chinese food for a long time, probably in St. Louis last summer. The most Chinese food I eat in Japan is ramen or fried rice, but it’s always more Japanese style so it’s not the same thing. I think I’m going to try and make a conscious effort to find some decent/more authentic Chinese restaurants or greasy spoon places here in Chiba. There’s apparently a dim-sum place here in Goi too, that I should try and find.

Anyway, I ate way too much today and spent a good chunk of yen. It was worth it though.

I was in Tokyo this past weekend for the first time in a long while. In Shinjuku’s Sega arcade, they had a location test (sort of like a beta test) for a new arcade shooting game called “2 Spicy.” Despite the somewhat tooly sounding name, this game was really awesome. It was a bit like Time Crisis, with an improved gun controller and foot pedals. You choose your character out of about 7 or 8, each with different attributes for attack, defense, speed, and zoom (for shooting). The characters all looked pretty cool, but seemed somewhat unoriginal. From what I can remember, there was a fat guy, a crazy Chinese girl, a skinny psycho guy who looked like Marylin Manson, average white guy with a super hairdo, and the guy that I played as, Alexander, a Russian guy with scars. And of course he was wearing a wife beater and cargo pants. I don’t even need to tell you their different attributes and I’ll bet you can guess them from the character descriptions.

Anyway, there is story mode and versus mode. VS mode was only 100 yen as opposed to the 200 yen for story mode, so I played VS. There were 2 machines set up together, and you can battle the other player. The setup seems smaller than you would expect, but each player has a sweet HD monitor that’s really close to your face. With the really colorful art style and the awesome next-gen graphics, playing this game was fun to just look at. Luckily though, the visuals weren’t all that this game had going for it. The play was actually pretty fun in VS mode; you are ducking behind some kind of obstacle like a car or a box or a neon light. You hold the gun up to the screen to stand up and you can then shoot. You use the left and right pedals to move, and when you point the gun away from the screen you duck back down again and also reload. The game was really fast paced and fun. You can either shoot the opponent directly, or aim for the stuff around them. When, for example, the car that your opponent is hiding behind takes enough damage, it blows up and does major “crush damage” to them. Since everyone has robot eyes or scopes on their guns, if you hold the gun in place for long enough, you zoom in and are able to shoot more accurately. You have to be careful though because when you’re waiting to zoom or are trying to aim for their head, they might hit you instead.

Apparently the story is set in the year 20XX, as all sweet futuristic things are. There is some kind of war going on with androids or cyborgs or something. Either way, you have a bunch of bad dudes shooting each other, blowing each other up, and jumping around all over the place. It was a fun game and I hope this game makes it to more arcades soon. It will give me even more reason to waste money at arcades in Goi and in Chiba. I ended up spending maybe 500 yen on the game in Shinjuku, playing through VS mode myself, killing some random Japanese guy who challenged me at the other machine, then again when he came back with a vengeance and neither I nor Blanchard could beat him when he used the fat guy with the shotgun. I will be back, guy with trenchcoat..

Official Sega 2 Spicy website

(Yes, I love that pun.) This past week was pretty much the same as most weeks, with the major exception being the huge purchase I made last Saturday during my lunch break. The Nintendo Wii finally was released in Japan, and I had reserved one at the Goi Laox, a Best Buy kind of store, so I was able to get it no problem. I’m glad I did, since both Laox and the department store Ito-Yokado were completely sold out of the systems by 2PM on launch day. Games don’t seem to be in any short demand though, which is good. I haven’t purchased a video game console in a long time, let alone on launch day, so I was pretty excited about getting home that night and playing this new toy. And yes, it was as fun as expected. Even playing it at E3 last May, and seeing commercials, displays, etc for it since then, having it in my apartment and being able to play it all I want was really way more fun than I even expected. The controls, despite being wireless and everything, are more accurate than you would expect as well. I bought Wii Sports and Zelda, both of which are awesome. Blanchard bought an extra controller that came with Hajimete no Wii (Wii Play in the US), so with all those games I’ve had something to further take away from my free time. I’ve played Zelda the most, and it really is a good way to kill 2 or 3 hours of your evening at a time, even when you don’t mean to. Well, I think that’s enough of a nerdy video game rant. If you like video games, I definitely recommend getting a Wii. It’s fun and cheaper than a PS3, and there are at least good games for it right now. I might end up getting a PS3 in a few years, but for right now, there aren’t hardly any games I’d want to play for it. That and it costs more than like 500 cans of Boss coffee.

Last night my entire school’s staff had a year-end/Christmas party in Chiba, which was fun because it was a good chance to hang out with my staff outside of work. We went to this Korean restaurant named Kim-chan which was really good. There was some Korean okonomiyaki/pancake type thing full of vegetables and seafood that was served on a hot iron plate that was absolutely amazing. I don’t remember the name of it, but it was definitely worth ordering again. The restaurant wasn’t super cheap, but it was way good. After that we went to Uta-Hiroba near Chiba-Chuo station for all night karaoke, which was awesome, but we were all exhausted by like 4AM. It was a painful walk back to the station and back home in the morning after the trains were running again. I came home and slept pretty much the entire day, and it felt great. Also finally figured out what I’m doing over winter break. I have a decent amount of time off (Dec 23-25, then Dec 28-Jan 4), but am not going back to the States this time. I wanted to at least do something, though, so I’m going with Blanchard down to kansai, the western part of Japan, for a few days. I haven’t been down there for a few years so it should be really cool. Definitely want to check out Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara. Shinkansen tickets are decently priced and I think it’s less hassle than getting a plane ticket, but I can’t help feeling strange about paying so much money to go halfway down an island that is about the size of California. Ah well; it should be fun.

This blog post has been a work in process for over three hours. I obviously didn’t write for that long, but I spent most of the past few hours watching a Japanese movie called Always: 三丁目の夕日 (English title: Always Sunset on Third Street) which is set in the late 1950’s in Japan. The film does a really nice job of recreating the look of what I guess that period in time looked like, and it was nice dramatic film that just showed the life of a bunch of people. I would definitely recommend watching it. Apparently it won a bunch of Japanese Academy Awards and did pretty well in international film festivals and such. Find it at your local Tsutaya, or on the bit torrent site of your liking.

And I leave you tonight with a nice bit of Engrish, found at a store in the Soga Ario mall. And no, it’s not really some dirty book, just whatever in the world the “Sendenkaigi Award Text” is. Still, it’s funny.

Very rarely does stuff here in Japan really stick out to me as “futuristic.” I think I’ve just become desensitized to it all, although I suppose in general things here are pretty technologically advanced when compared to back home in the States. That is, for the most part, because a lot of times, simple things (ie, anything that requires a form) generally take about 2 months on average to complete But anyways, Japan still has stuff like cell phones with video conferencing and voice-activated GPS, cars that parallel park automatically, and even toilets that play music and give your butt a shower. None of this is all that surprising to me. For the first time in a long while, however, this past weekend, I saw something that reminded me how advanced this small island nation really is.

It was a video game, although it wasn’t the PS3, DS, Wii, and of course not the X-Box 360. It was a game at the arcade from the popular Gundam series, this one called ガンダム：戦場の絆 (Gundam: Senjou no Kizuna), or something like Gundam: The Ties of the Battlefield. Oh, but this isn’t your average arcade came; no, not at all. This game lets you sit in a little pod and actually pretend you’re steering a giant combat robot. Sure there are a lot of games like this, right? Well, this pod brings on a whole new experience. First off, the place looks awesome. One of the arcades near Chiba station had the Gundam pods set up, and it was the most impressive set up I’ve seen in an arcade in a very long while. See the picture on the right? I nabbed it from the official website of this game. (For those of you who can’t read Japanese, it’s still worth looking at. Look at the main page and click on GAME to see some pictures of the pod machines and the actual gameplay.)
You can see on the right here the exterior of the p.o.d. (panoramic optical display) unit. There were 8 of these machines all in one section of the arcade, shiny and brand new. As you can see in the pictures, you sit in the pod, which is like the cockpit of a giant robot, and use the foot pedals and two control-sticks to move around in your Gundam and fight the enemies. The game is a bit like capture the flag, although it really is just running around shooting and slashing the enemies. It sounds basic, but the wrap-around screen and the controls really make you feel like you’re piloting a huge robot. Also, there is a headset in the pod that you put on, and you can talk with the other players on your team. You can plan your strategies and tactics this way, or yell obscenities when you get killed. Or maybe sing a song.

The game is about the same price as other high-end arcade games here, which is expensive by American standards, but the game is so fun it’s worth it. You also buy a Pilot Card which keeps track of your name, score, past battles, records, and points, so that you can keep playing to earn enough points to access more weapons, stages, and Gundam robots to play with. The card has some kind of re-printable surface on it, so everytime you update your card, the printed data on it changes. Really cool. Up to 8 people can play at once, in 4-vs-4 matches. Of course, if you just want to play with a few friends, then the computer players will fill in the rest.

This is seriously one of the coolest arcade games I’ve played in a while, and I don’t even usually like robot/run-around-and-shoot games. Also some sweet extras are the two consoles outside of the pod area, which let you insert your card to purchase new weapons, check our your scores, etc. The thing just looks really cool, with the most futuristic touch-screen interface I’ve ever seen. It seriously looks like something out of Star Trek. That’s it on the left there. There are also two huge plasma TV’s where you can watch people playing and also watch your battles after you’re done. Since you’re playing from the point of view of the cockpit, it’s really cool (and nerdy, I know) to watch the battle afterwards from a bird’s-eye view, and get to see yourself get slaughtered by the enemy, or maybe vice-versa.

So yeah, it is way nerdy to write an entire blog entry about an arcade game, but this Gundam pod game rocks and really reminds me that Japan is the world of tomorrow. I don’t know that much about Gundam, but it’s still fun to run around, jump on buildings, and shoot at the enemy robots. Also, it’s funny how into this game some people already are. There are teams of people who come to play this together, and they have maps of the stages beforehand, all scribbled on with their battle plans, etc. And no, these dedicated players (huge nerds) aren’t really college or high school kids. Most of the ones I’ve seen are salaryman looking guys still in their suits and ties, hanging around in the arcade at night living our their fantasies as Mobile Suit Pilots. I know I am.

After getting settled in the room and trying to coordinate with people on the computer with IM and e-mail, I met up with Bryan and we headed out to explore Shinjuku. This won’t be the last time I say it, but trying to plan things with people in Japan without a cell phone is one of the biggest hassles ever. You’re usually out for the entire day or night without coming home to use a computer, so cell phones make communication not only convenient, but possible.

We met up with Yuji at the Shinjuku East exit, after we waited at the East-South Exit for about 15 minutes. We’ve both been out of kanji-reading practice, so I say that mistake wasn’t really our fault. Anyway, we goofed around Shinjuku and Kabukicho a bit, which of course is the red-light district in Japan. That’s what it’s famous for. I totally forgot all about what is what in Shinjuku, so it wasn’t until we were already on our way that I realized Yuji had made us meet there, haha. We grabbed food, my first meal after coming back to Japan, at Yoshinoya, and oh man was it delicious. I think US beef is legal in Japan again, but they still don’t have just regular gyuudon. They had gyuuyakinikudon, which is pretty much the same though, so I had it and it was delicious. We went back to the station to meet up with Sunny and Joel. No one else really made it. Yuji ended up having to go back to his work, since he apparently kept the key to the entire building of where he worked. His boss was pissed. But either way, the 4 IES alumni walked around and we just decided to go into some bar to hang out since Joel had to catch a 2 hour train back to the other side of Chiba. We ended up going into some place downstairs in a building called the Hibiya Bar, which ended up being way swankier than what we were looking for. I guess it was just kind of fake nice, because there wasn’t much in it, and not a lot of customers either. The waitress seemed to be waaaaay to excited about this “invisible ink pen” that the used to write on a coaster. The pen had a light on it that let you see the message, and she was seriously about to pee her pants she was giggling so much. I guess she thought invisible ink pens were something gaijin never have. Well she’s wrong, since after paying 1500 yen to just sit and have 1 drink in addition to the mandatory appetizer Japanese bars love making you pay for, I stole her invisible ink pen. Oops.

After Joel and Sunny left, me and Bryan figured Yuji wasn’t coming back so we went to go walk around Kabukicho. We had no intentions of going to anywhere sleazy, but Bryan had never walked through it at night so we decided to see what was going on. This turned into us looking at buildings and laughing, at stuff like the building appropriately labeled “Crab.” The Nigerian street pimps were also out in full force. I think we had at least 5 approach us just as we walked around the street. The best part about these guys is that you can mess with them and they’re pretty harmless seeming, although I’m sure they’ve got ties to the yakuza who run these sorts of establishments. The last one we talked to approached us near an intersection and was like “Hey brothers! Final answer! I am the problem solver!” He was trying to get us to go to his bar, which was 10000 yen for an hour, all you can drink and all you can touch. Classy joint, right? Well since he liked us so much he was willing to cut the price down. All you can touch, you say? Yes, I asked him what you were all thinking. “Can you touch the girls ears?” and then Bryan asked if we could stick our fingers up their noses. I don’t think the Nigerian guy had any idea what we were talking about, but he probably assumed it was something more sexual than it was, and was just like “yeah, yeah, all you want!” You mean we can pick this girls nose all we want? Oh man that’s great. We asked him to wait at that intersection for 20 minutes while we went across the street to eat. He actually started following us across the street! Somewhere in there he asked where we were from, and Bryan said Germany. I wanted to see how far this guy was going to follow us in hopes of saving his commission, but when we were almost across the double street intersection, Bryan told him to buzz off. Fun times, messing with street pimps.

On the way back, we stopped in several arcades, the best find of which was an arcade version of Mario Kart! I’d never seen anything like it, it was great. Like the racing games you see in arcades, but it had awesome Mario Kart graphics, characters from Pac-Man, a camera on top to put your face in the game, and a big “ITEM” button on the middle of the steering wheel. This is what Mario Kart should always be like.

That was the end of the night. I got back to the hotel and was so tired, I went almost immediately to sleep. I’ll write the entry for Day 2 (today, Wednesday) later tonight. Now you’re all caught up on my Tokyo trip. I’m sorry these are so long, I guess I’m in writing mode.