Filed under: videogames
It’s easy to be disappointed by Final Fantasy. I say that not because it’s bad, but because since FFVII came out, none of it’s successors has come close to matching the epicosity of the PS1 classic. I’d argue that FFIX came closest and FFX was a decent effort spoiled only by the sudden and rather silly ending, but frankly unlike FFVII neither of them made me want to spend well over 100 hours of my time trawling through every little side-quest and enhancement available.
FFXI I played for a few hours before figuring out that despite the attraction of a Squaresoft world, it was simply not as competent an mmorpger as WoW, I still think the decision to create an mmo out of one of the most solidly built offline concepts was a mistake. FFXII I have yet to play (sinful after 2+ years past the release date), but I must say I’m not expecting big things having read reviews and heard about it first hand from a few friends with whom my opinion tends to run a close parallel with.
However, for those of you who missed it, here’s the bodice-ripping eye candy that is the new trailer for FFXIII.
It really is hard to believe that this won’t be fantastic. Admittedly the protagonists have just been turfed out of the Squaresoft generic good guy storeroom, but the action looks sublime. If nothing else this is a reason to become native style fluent in Japanese prior to release.
In other news: playing Oblivion, in Japanese for some reason. Currently I’m enjoying it but frankly I am finding some of the quests more irritating than fun. It does please me however that all enemies seem to be defeatable by backpeddling in a circle and spellcasting simultaneously in an amusing fantasy Benny Hill style.
Filed under: Uncategorized
So Mayumi caught the flu last week, and then I guess I caught it or something. I hate calling in sick to work, probably because coming from Britain if anyone ever has a sick day it’s immediately met with calls of faking it, a cold has never been an acceptable excuse for time off as far as I’m aware. Still, I called in sick for the latter half of the week. Today I made the walk of shame into the office braced for half-sarcastic calls of “where have you been then?” or “have fun last week?”, followed by a back to work interview with a hawkish member of HR who is immune to all sickness and thus doesn’t believe in it conceptually. Indeed I remember once when I worked for Safeway in my high school days, I got seriously ill, took a month off work (signed by the docs who told me it was that or a hospital ward) and never heard the end of it from half the staff.
I’ll be honest, I was half prepared for the same thing today, being a repressed British male. Then I remembered I live in Japan – where people just believe you’re sick if you say you are. Hot drinks and concerned looks beat the hell out of suspicion and interrogation any day. I’m unsure which is weirder, Britain’s gestapo like intolerance of the sick day, or Japan’s velvety get well gloves.
Scene: Elective class
Student A ( terrible at English) Student B (middling to poor)
G: OK, you have 10 minutes to put these words (paper 1) into the correct sentences (paper 2, gaps in the sentences). Go!
(10 mins later)
G: Let’s check your marks, B-chan, you got 7 out of 12, good effort.
B: Thank you.
G: A-kun, wow…. you got all 12, well done! Did you find this easy?
A: I didn’t understand most of it, but you wrote the answers in the same order as the questions so I just copied it.
G: ….ah….
Gareth Williams: Imbecile.
Just send us home for the day
Actually today it isn’t so bad, but still I am beginning to resent the cold a little. Especially when we had to spend an afternoon in the gym making weird horses out of bits of palm trees (I complain, but actually it was surprisingly fun, although one student grossed me out by sewing up his own hand, seriously, he stitched his hand by threading a needle just under his skin and then ripping it all out in one go.)
This horse took us 2 hours to make, and doesnt really resemble a horse
So after two fairly laborious days of back and forthing in snow and rain and following a fridge incident that could easily have killed a man only a few months away from retirement in a Lethal Weapon style (but didn’t…. and also Danny Glover didn’t die, making the whole statement moot) we are finally in our new abode and it feels fantastic. At a stretch I’d say our new place is a little less than twice the size of our old place, but it feels far bigger than that because everything just packs away better in this house. The only drawback with the place is that because it is bigger and less cluttered, it is also cold enough to rear a club of seals (I find it morbidly amusing that a group of seals is called a club). I have in fact resorted to racing between the kotatsu and strategically placed space heaters to keep from getting hypothermia as the snow builds up.
I was thinking about all the places I’ve lived in my life, I guess it’s probably higher than you’re average bear but from my count this is the 14th house I’ve lived in if one excludes the houses my Dad lived in after my parents got divorced as I only every stayed there at weekends or for visiting periods, if I was to include those that takes me to an impressive 18. In terms of places that are mine it is the most obviously nice one I’ve ever lived in, but frankly I miss the rough and tumble charm of Pemberton and St. Margaret’s (the former especially). Although I would never consider bringing up a child in either place, especially if Slade were there … although I’m none too sure if he was a real person or whether I made him up.
All I can say is thank all the deities in Japan for it’s ludicrous amount of public holidays as today I was shattered from moving house all weekend but thankfully monday was “Coming of Age Day”, a day in which all those who turned 20 in the last year, dress up, go and listen to a speech and then go and get shitfaced as all adults should. 20 of course is the age of sufference in Japan, so having been good attentive healthy individuals for the past two decades they can now legally go and erode it all away with cigs and alcohol and have their first legal hangover as they crawl to work or classes tomorrow.
…finishing your goddamn book George!
Stop watching American football, and pull some fingers out. I realise as an apathetic reader I have no right to demand this of you, but as a British man who doesn’t understand the alleged complexities of the NFL I must insist on some bookery post haste. I am at a loss for good new authors these days, I’ve expanded my horizons a little but Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire is the only series I’m reading – and I need to know what happens next. Given the recent trend of author deaths and illnesses I can only hope he gets a shuffle on.
Filed under: Weird
I forgot my lunch today, so I went to one of the small local lunch places near the school.
During the meal, the single biggest cockroach I ever saw ran across the table infront of me. In all seriousness, in the very depths of freezing assballs winter; how dirty must a restaurant be to still house roaches?
One star review from me. But the owner did give me his card for some reason saying “If you need anything, please call me”. I wonder how far anything stretches.
Filed under: Uncategorized
To one and all.
So I couldn’t find my coffee mug at school just now. I looked in all the regular places and then asked the secretary where it was. She said “Oh, I put it with all the other staff mugs.” Staff mugs? How long have we had a place for staff mugs? Does this mean for the past two and a half years the cleaner has been discriminating against me by segregating my mug with other general use mugs? I like the word “mugs”.
2009 is now upon us, and I spent the new year period with the in-laws. It’s my first lengthy stay in a Japanese home. It was great to have nothing to think about except whether or not I should go and grab another orange or just lie in the kotatsu (FYI: Westerners. Nothing is more relaxing or more counter-productive than lying in a kotatsu) and watch one of the infinite comedy shows on TV. However, after a week I noticed a number of bizarre things that may either be unique to my in-laws or a regular trait in Japanese families.
1) Bath mats. Once scolded for not putting a towel over the bath mat after exiting the shower I inquired why I needed one. The answer of course is to stop the mat getting wet. I thought this was the only purpose a bath mat served? If a bath mat is not getting wet in some way then surely there is little point in having one.
2) O-sechi: Traditional new years day huge lunch box that the Japanese eat on the 1st January. I found this to be incredibly bland and full of things that whilst not terrible, simply don’t say “I’m delicious, eat me!”. I would in fact go further than this and say that eating o-sechi is far worse than your average 3 squares a day.
3) Unwashable futons: Why? Why on earth would you make a bed that is ruined once it gets in any way stained? This is clearly ridiculous. Heaven forbid that one should think of putting a cover over it, because then it wouldn’t be a Japanese style futon would it. Fuck off futons.
Anyway, there were other things that confused me, but those were chief among them. Still I had a great time all in all.
As of today it’s moving time, with Mayumi in her pregnant state the majority of the pack horsing falls to me, but thankfully we don’t have so much stuff, although I have a suspicious feeling that I’ll find a lot of things I didn’t know I had somewhere or other. I will update as the week wears on. For now, to the study cave!
