Filed under: Anime, Entertainment | Tags: AGoT, Anime, bleach, manga, naruto
I don’t really watch anime much these days, it seems that coming to Japan made it all the less interesting. It is something I regret to one extent and celebrate to another. I honestly appreciate the artistic licence afforded to anime creators that is impossible for those in more traditional movie and television to utilise in the same way, so by not really following the anime world anymore I feel like I’m missing out on some exposure to fantastic creativity. However, this benefit is seldom employed to full effectiveness and more often than not we often end up watching the same recycled tripe or diverged filler storylines.
In the recent Bleach episodes, in the middle of a major story arc Bleach suddenly skipped over to a 12-15 episode nonsense filler arc before skipping back, seams and all, to the very middle of an encounter with just a casual “and now back to our real story” message. Is it just me or is that bullshit? It’s not like they even tried to disguise the fact that they wasted quarter of a year butchering an excellent source manga. The production company responsible (Studio Peirrot) also pull the same crap in Naruto on a regular basis. Its hardly any wonder I don’t watch anime anymore, it seems like a slap in the face to me. Anyway, if you are thinking of taking it up, I reccomend both series’ very highly assuming that you either skip the filler or just read the manga instead.
This fascinates me, we must discuss the significance of the onion:
EDIT: Got my Greyjoy decked owned by Terence (winner) and Theo last night. Although looking back I’m unsure why I put a lot of the cards in my deck that I did.
Filed under: Daily life, Entertainment, Politics | Tags: AGoT, Mccain, Obama, school
Do you think the McCain campaign vet anything before they throw it out there? Or is that part of being a Maverick?
The debate yesterday was great fun, frankly it was the only one worth watching, and it was mostly thanks to McCain, both for his ramped up aggressiveness, which worked well early on making him look assertive and presidential, but made him look like an angry old man in the latter stage as “No Drama Obama” just yawned off a lot of what was being thrown at him. Watch one of the inifinite replays if you can; the format was much more interesting that the previous two.
Todays zen:
Kenta: Hey, Gareth, do you know Maho?
G: The Maho in my selection class I’ve been teaching for over two years? The Maho in your class of 17 that I visit two times a week? The only Maho in a school of 50?
Kenta: Yes.
G: Yeah, I recall her.
Kenta: She loves you.
G: Oh really? Well I’m married.
Kenta: Your clothes are cool today, she’ll be pleased.
G: Your clothes are ….. completely normal. I’m sure she won’t give a rats ass.
In other news, I really really need to focus my mental powers on constructing a decent AGoT deck. I spent a while staring at my cards last night trying to find inspiration but nothing came, a recent trouncing at the hands of Theo and the oddly handy Terence left me floundering desperately for some kind of wild strategy.
Today in politics, nothing you didn’t already know:
I’m going to miss Cindy McCain when the campaigns are over and done with.
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..all right don’t bother.
In keeping with my families fine military tradtion (my Dad was in the territorial army for a couple of years – so he used to turn up on satudays and pretend to play soldiers for a few hours), I’ve been investing a lot of time recently in contests of strategical prowess. Honing my skills for when the inevitable war with Tonga comes to Japan and I will be required to lead our brave Japanse brethren to an overwhelming victory. I’ve been brushing up my art of war by:
a) Playing AGoT against Theo
b) Playing the old school Age of Empires II
c) Registering with Travian
Things however have not gone to plan whatsoever. My most recent outing of AGoT resulted in two crushing defeats. An experimental Targaryen deck I prepared looked tasty for about 3 rounds before falling to pieces. A Baratheon deck I thought so hard about and poured my soul into fell apart after about 5 seconds, leaving me to declare in the 3rd round, at probably a record breaking speed.
Age of Empires is more difficult than I recall it being. I’m sure I could beat multiple opponents with the difficulty level set to high previously. Upon restarting my campaigning I seem to lose track of what my poulation is doing after about 20 inhabitants and forget to build any defenses, making me seem a bit like the military equivalent of Poland.
Travian is irritatingly slow, although I suppose that’s the point. Log in once or twice a day, spend all my money before someone else takes it and wonder how the hell people managed to get these huge populations and massive armies whilst I have a rat and a donkey (flatulent).
It’s entirely possible I am not the mighty strategos I thought I was. On the plus side, this would make fine evidence when it comes to getting me out of conscripｔion (I say getting out of, I think perhaps the wisest idea for conscription would be to just not go, and see what the hell they did about it, if anything).
So the summer holiday has arrived with typical Japanese promptness. How is it going so far? Well, like black and white really.
Friday: Went to Theo’s after school, played a game of AGoT that last three hours. I lost 15-12 in the end but it was a really close fought match and Theo came right back into it from 12 points down to win. A thoroughly entertaining game. Dropped round Mayumi’s parents house afterwards where I was given various gifts for no particular reason.
Saturday: Mayumi has to do parent/teacher interviews at school so she has no holiday. I go to hospital to get my toe looked at again (recently had the nail removed because it was ingrowing for the 4th time) and then go to Wakayama city to try and pick out some summer clothes. Uni-Qlo yields nothing interesting so I make a move to go further out to Garden Park (a mall about an hours drive away) to look in Muji and have a browse round a few other stores. I get there, I enter the car park and then a batshit loco Japanese “lady” drives past a stop sign coming out of the car parking lane and ploughs directly into the side of my car. Leaving me with a wheel hanging almost completely off. Of course the Police can’t come and judge who was wronged as they’re like to do because it’s a “private area” which means it’s left to the insurance companies. Always irritating as there is bound to be arguing from the opposite persons side about how much they pay, the fact that the person driving ignored right of way, stops signs and was the person to “hit” the other car not withstanding, I doubt they’ll really want to pay 100% of the repair if they can possibly avoid doing so.
Here are a couple of pic links to the aftermath (the other person having removed her car because we were in the way of hordes of traffic and one of the store staff was getting shirty).
So, after an hour and a half wait I got my car towed back to the garage I lease from and the owner had prepared a replacement car for me. So aside from the general inconvenience of having half my day spent waiting for someone to take my car back home there was really no major knock on effect to my weekend. The weirdest thing about the whole incident was. The person that hit me was a crossdresser. I swear I’m making no joke. He had a man’s name, in his driving license picture he was bald, yet in meeting him her had an obvious shoulder length womans hairstyle, he was also wearing womans clothing complete with makeup and earrings. All the time he/she was speaking in an over the top womans voice as if her were in a pantomime or something. I was expecting Ashton Kutcher to jump out at any moment to punk me.
Sunday: Conversely, Sunday was one of those “perfect day” days. Mayumi and I had the day off, we watched Forrest Gump in the morning (one of my all time favorites), went to a brand new shopping centre in a different city in the afternoon, I found a bunch of well priced summer clothes I wanted. We ate lunch at an awesome sushi place. Came back to Kimino, went to the river because it was baking hot for a swim,(swimming in the river in Kimino is a bit of a thing here as the water is so clear it’s like glass) the river was deserted save for us and the water awesome. We came home had dinner and watched a movie. Damn near perfect.
I am left to wonder however if there will be a pattern emerging as to how my days will procede from this day forth. I certainly hope I got rid of all my bad luck in one go.
Filed under: Daily life, Teaching | Tags: AGoT, Battlestar Galactica, English, jobs
In so many ways to keep this blog updated. I always feel busy these days, or if I’m not busy I feel like I should be, leading me to feel guilty about rambling self righteously on my blog.
However, in keeping with the “fuck Gareth” approach that has dominated Japanese weather ideology for at least 2 years, it is far too humid for anything else today, the crew of the good ship Galactica would have sailed right on by this planet in search of another had they seen the humidity guage. Battlestar Galactica is something I’ve gotten into, in fact my two main vices at the moment are Mr. Theo Thourson’s fault,
1) Battlestar Galactica
2) A Game of Thrones CCG.
The former is awesome. I’ve been through a string of addictive big budget dramas in recent years, “24″, “Dexter”, “The Wire”, “LOST” etc. but of them all Galactica has surprised me the most. It didn’t have to be good to get viewers, the cult following would guarantee it a lengthy run, just take a look at the new Dr. Who, it’s fucking awful, and yet despite lead actors dropping out every 5 minutes it is still going strong. However, the makers of BG obviously said “Fuck this. Let’s make a high tension, involving Sci-Fi drama and not fill it full of pseudo-science and plot holes”. I applaude it.
The latter of my 2 vices is not something I am good at, or get to do enough. I have never played a CCG before, having always been a nit too skeptical about Tragic: The Saddening (not my joke) to jump in headfirst. I have been playing against Theo for a couple of months now on an almost weekly basis and it has to be said it is great fun, although I have yet to beat him so much as once. I could make excuses for this, but the biggest issue is probably my own incompetance – I recall cringeworthy moments of simply not reading my cards correctly and bungling things like and oaf (the incident of the misread military and power challenge is burned into my memory). But, it IS a great deal of fun, so much fun that I’ve spent ludicrous amounts of money on cards already, of course, reading the books makes things far more entertaining. Reading the books is something you should do, so buy them.
I’m thinking a lot more about my future these days. I’m being careful to do “thinking” rather than “worrying” as Baz Luhrmann once put it “Worrying about the future is about as effective as trying to solve algebra buy chewing bubblegum”. What do I want to do? Now there’s a question. This can be put quite simply. I want to go into TV/movie production as per my degree. There are a few issues with this, the biggest being that rather than being a guy who can speak English as a talent, I suddenly go to being a guy who can’t speak Japanese very well, not a desireable quality in an employee in Japan. Also, outside of my degree I have no experience in the field at all. I’m trying to think of ways to converting my English into a saleable skill, the most obvious field that comes to mind is educational TV or location documentaries (assuming said locations are in English speaking countries).
The other far too obvious option is teaching English. Now don’t get me wrong, I do like teaching English ……generally. I have good days and bad, the busier tends to be the better. This is the first job I’ve had where I don’t get up in the morning resenting the days ahead in some way, although I occaisionally come home resenting it happening but that’s to be expected. Too much free time wouldn’t be a problem if I were to work for an English education company out here, chances are that the company don’t want me laying about anymore than I want to be laying about, it’s all about the turnover after all. Theo made a good point a few weeks back when saying “you should do a job in which you help somebody every day, at least then it will be bearable”. This applies to English teaching at least, it’s not like I’ll be working in a sales or retail environment, however it feels like I’m kind of falling into it by happenstance and I’m keen to avoid it.
The real question is “Do I have the will power to chase my dream come what may?” It’s a big question, and it would be terribly easy to fall into the trap of taking the easy door rather than battle on through the shit to get what I really want. Whatever happens, I guess telling people what I want to do is kind of the first step, at least that way I’ll have some
