Dragon Quest 9 in the Inaka

 Gaming, Japan  No Responses »
Jul 112009
 

I done got DQ9!
Dragon Quest 9 released today to much fanfare and crazy long lines, if you’re in a big city in Japan. For the rest of us in good ol’ Nippon not so much.

I can’t really blame people for thinking all of Japan is Tokyo. Most Japanese just think of New York or wherever they may have visited one time when we talk about the States. So I tend to not get to annoyed. Of course there is good fun to be had in the shocking of systems when it comes to what people tend to think about things. Stuff? What’s the vague word here to use. Anyway. So today when I saw people begging for line-up photos for Dragon Quest 9 I decided to oblige.

Yep. Big line out in front of the Lawson’s where I reserved my copy. Actually, the guy in front of me also was getting a DS game along with his coffee and breakfast but since it was wrapped up in plastic perhaps he was picking up his copy of Hayarigami 2 DS: Toshidensetsu Kaii Jiken a few days late. Yeah.

So no big lines, no girls dressed like Dragon Quest characters, no meeting Yuji Horii1 but I did get the game really fast. And breakfast at the same time! What convenience.

Game is pretty damn good, by the way.

  1. Creator of Dragon Quest [↩]
 Posted by revenantkioku at 5:56 pm

An Excellent Idea for Japanese Students on a Mac

 Japan  11 Responses »
May 272009
 


To toot my own horn very vigorously, something clicked in my head the other day and my enjoyment of browsing Japanese webpages has improved tremendously. I had seen all the pieces before but the puzzle finally was solved.

Basically, it was to set up a mouse button that when clicked opens up a drawer attached to the window that shows definitions for whatever word that may happen to be highlighted. I believe this should work in many applications but having it in Safari is more than enough for me, at least.
Continue reading »

 Posted by revenantkioku at 7:10 pm

Laziness

 Gaming, Japan, Musings  No Responses »
Apr 072009
 

I threw Snatcher into my Saturn and began to play. I was sitting at my kotatsu with my DS prepped with Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten and JEDict ready to go on my iMac.

And I couldn’t help but wish there was an easier way.

Isn’t that ridiculous? I can take a hunk of plastic and scribble it on some device and look up Japanese characters within seconds. And I want to be able to do it with less effort. If I were to have played this game back when it was released, I’d probably have to spend hours digging through paper dictionaries to look up kanji I don’t know just to be able to figure out one word. I can do that within seconds now, but that’s not good enough for me.

I really need to just sit down and crank through some Japanese games again. I’ve been mingling through for the past weeks but I haven’t actually been doing anything constructive. I really do live in a technological paradise and yet I’m not getting motivated enough to make use of it. That’s a shame, and really almost a crime.

 Posted by revenantkioku at 3:32 pm

Increasing Challenges

 Gaming, Japan, Musings, Random  2 Responses »
Feb 192009
 

I failed the JLPT.

I would like to say I studied hard for it, but I didn’t. It’s fairly disappointing that I only got a 52%, but it’s mostly disappointing that I’ll have to shell out for the test again. Oh well, time to pick back up the books.

I did worse last night in Street Fighter 4 in terms of wins, but I feel I did better overall. I was pulling off more moves1 and was winning a round more often, even if I couldn’t win two in the same match. I heard I can get a decent stick for around Â¥5000, which if I can sell a good chunk of my US games to this one store that carries imports should be nothing big. I’m mostly thinking of the investment for the sake of my poor thumb.

Devil Survivor has gotten pretty rough as I am nearing the end of Day 2. I have done one fight over at least five times already. I have to make sure two characters don’t die along with keeping my own team alive and this is proving frustrating. The one young woman is trying to run to a certain tile on the map to escape, and if I do not take care of enemies close to her fast enough they will get her. But she’s at least trying not to die. The other guy is steadfast in his belief that he will soon die so he keeps charging into everything and, well, dies. Doofus.

I’ve been kinda in the mood for a horror game, so I think Nameless Game will be my next venture when Devil Survivor is out of the way. Although with the rate I am going, that might be a while.

  1. Until my thumb started hurting like hell. [↩]
 Posted by revenantkioku at 12:29 pm

Inushishi

 Cooking and Food, Japan  No Responses »
Jan 172009
 

I have tasted many different animals in my time in Japan. Horse is surprisngly tasty. Whale is great but a little greasy but nice. Fish reproductive organs and pregnant fish aren’t my favorite, but they are okay.

Tonight I got a chance to have wild boar. We made it nabe style which is basically a big pot with various vegetables and other shit. Thing is we thought there would be more people and didn’t even make everything that we have and had ore than enough to split between 3 people.

It was good but I learned I really don’t know how to describe food. I mean, it tastes like meat with a little excitement to it. I have heard the word “gamey” thrown around before. Hard to know what that is. I guess this is it?

Solid meat, though. Would eat again.

 Posted by revenantkioku at 9:24 pm

Making the Deal

 Japan, Musings  No Responses »
Jan 162009
 

There are several stores that I hit up in Japan for my used game excursions and they all seem to haev their own little deals. Point cards and so on for the most part.

This one store I go to has a little lottery that costs ¥1000 (about $10). You get a capsule and there is a coupon inside. Now, the basic “You lost” coupon is a coupon for up to ¥1500 (about $15) in games. You can’t go over, so unless you pick out some games that total the amount, you’re bound to lose some of that bonus cash.

But if you’re going to buy a couple of cheap old games anyway, it seems like it would be worth shooting for a prize, which can range from a game that’s around ¥2000~¥3000 or a Playstation 3 at the top prize.

So, they make a little less money off of me with the basic coupons, or, almost a little less but I was planning on not spending any money and they got ¥2000 yen off of me and I got a bunch of cheap used games that they probably paid less than that for. Everyone wins, I guess?

 Posted by revenantkioku at 11:56 pm

The White Terror

 Japan, Musings  No Responses »
Jan 132009
 

I loathe driving in snow.

Continue reading »

 Posted by revenantkioku at 10:35 pm

Whatever you like, grilled.

 Cooking and Food, Japan  2 Responses »
Jan 062009
 

I had a dinner of okonomiyaki, and it is destroying my bowels at the moment.

Definitely not the healthiest dinner I could pick, but I haven’t had it in so long the offer from a friend to go grab some was hard to pass up. It’s hard to describe what it is exactly. I mean, even reading the Wikipedia page only covers a bit of the experience. The amount of stuff packed into it just makes it such a filling meal. Dolloping copious amounts of mayonnaise, spicy mayonnaise at that, makes the dish so rich and fatty that it never fails to put me into a sleepy daze.

That said, instead of rambling about okonomiyaki some more, I am going to go pass the fuck out.

 Posted by revenantkioku at 9:50 pm

Undrinkable Delicacies!

 Cooking and Food, Gaming, Japan  No Responses »
Dec 102008
 

As I don’t have enough nerdy junk adorning my apartment (Really. The place is pretty bare!) when I saw these cans pimping Final Fantasy Dissidia, I couldn’t resist. I saw a good number of available cans, but I had to snag Butz and Tina (FF5 and 6 respectively). The other sides of the cans have Exdeath and Kefka to pair each character up with the game’s villain.

I’m not entirely sure what cans there are all together, but I know I saw Frionel from FF2 and Nayan over at HDRLying got the FF1 and 3 ones. If I can find a FF8 one, I’ll have to buy it. But assuming they made one for each of the ten pairs of characters I might have to catch ‘em all.

Click the image to see the full cans.

Update:
Found this website for the cans. Looks like there are 16 cans in total. One each for the pairs of good and bad guys for Final Fantasy 1 through 10. They ignored FF12! Thank goodness!

In the remaining six, 2 for Chaos and Cosmos, which seem to have Yoshitaka Amano art of all the characters from each side. The remaining 4 just show off the game’s CG and some of the characters as made for the game.

Hmm, guess there is one more game for me to pick up this year!

 Posted by revenantkioku at 10:30 pm

Get with the times, man!

 Japan  No Responses »
Nov 292008
 

So I have been spending way too much time with my nose in a grammar book in preparation for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test which is going to be a week and day from today.

Reading all these grammar points isn’t exactly interesting, but some of the sentences really show how much things have changed in the world.

For example, one sentence basically said, “If he’s not answering his phone, he must have already left.”

And it took me a minute to realize what it actually meant.

I mean, if he’s not answering his phone, what connection does that have with him leaving? Then the realization that they must have been talking about a landline sunk in. They weren’t talking about someone calling a cellphone, but the last time I actually called a landline is not an event I can clearly remember. Especially in Japan.

Really makes me wonder how old these sentences are, or who is writing them.

 Posted by revenantkioku at 9:59 am
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