August 2005 Archives

Just listening to Ajikan here, kind of bored of running around Ancient China killing people, and I'm really wishing we had karaoke places here in the States. What I wouldn't give for a nice karaoke place right now. ;_;

Saw the ex-boyfriend, Omi, again yesterday. It feels like it's been a long time, since we barely got to spend any time together last time I was home. He seems fairly well settled in his dorm up at the University of Utah, and for the moment he's really driven to kick ass at his BioEngineering major. :D Go Omi! *cheers*

We found ourselves a coffee shop last night settled with some tea, and mostly sat there and talked about anime, manga, and videogames. :D We talked about how awesome One Piece was, and I explained the Sangokushi Taisen system to him before we headed off to chill in his dorm room.

Sometimes I really regret letting him go. I think I had to because I really needed to grow in order to really appreciate what a kind and understanding person he was. Roni really taught me a lot of things, and I'm glad I'm still good friends with both her and Omi.

But you know, I really wish I had Omi back sometimes. It's always a teensy little bit awkward with him because we were never friends before going out so I don't know how to behave normally around him. I always have the compulsion to go and sit on his lap, and I have to stop myself and remind myself that we're not in that kind of relationship anymore, since he's got a girlfriend he seems to be going on steady with. I think that if I could have him back, I definitely would. Without a second thought.

Oh well. *sighs* Angst, regret, stuff. The usual baggage you go through after four years in college. I think I've figured out a lot of stuff the last two years of college, and when I look back on myself sophomore and freshman year I'm hardly the same person. Makes me wonder what's in store for me this fall when I start graduate school, and how I'm going to look at myself when six years down the road (eep...it'll be 2011 by the time I get my Ph.D O_____O) when I graduate. I'm sure you'll all have a good laugh at calling me "Dr. Skuld" and "Skuld, that old hag."

^_^v

If anybody has the "Scream" mp3 from the GLAYxEXILE collaboration, please hook me up?

I saw their music video over the summer and thought the song was awesome. I am such a Japanese popular music whore. (At least I don't listen to their female idol singers...except for Hamasaki Ayumi. *cough*)

Back to getting Cao Cao's fourth weapon.

EDIT: Somebody really nice uploaded it for me. ^_^v Yay boy bandsxboy rock band collaborations. *cough*

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT!

I knew those Japanese kids would beat me to it! *bangs head against wall* Excuse me while I wipe up some puddles of drool...cause you know...those two girls are REALLY FUCKING HOT. o_o;;

Anyhoos, just spent the weekend with Charm and Crystal, good longtime friends of mine that I've known for almost 15 years. O_o;; Yeah, it's seriously been that long. ^_^ I've known Crystal since she was in kindergarten (or even before!) and now she's going to be a senior in high school. What a way to make a girl feel old. *laughs*

We went for Dim Sum on Saturday and spent the afternoon at the movies (finally saw the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and at Sugarhouse Park, which is much nicer than I remember it being. There we decided to be kids again and do what we hadn't done in nearly 10 years-- lie down on the hill (Sugarhouse Park is basically two really big hills) and roll down. *grins* ^_^ It was great and exhilarating, but I think I showed by age by getting queasy halfway down, and feeling like I was going to puke. I got a few good rolls in there again before deciding I'd better stop before emptying my entire stomach's contents in the park. It was nice to get the feeling of rolling uncontrollably and almost running into my friends. I think it's been a long time since I've felt like that.

After that we went to my house and I introduced to them Dynasty Warriors, which Crystal has renamed Kill A Lot. Kind of like Camelot, but Kill A Lot. Very aptly named, I tell you.

Ergh, now I've been seized by a bout of sudden doubt and depression. *sighs* I'm moving very soon. I've got everything settle for my apartment in Los Angeles, and I've got nearly everything squared away with the roommates. Evan's moving in around the 7th, I'm moving in three days after that, and Andy's moving shortly after me. We'll have almost two weeks to hang around Los Angeles and figure stuff out before classes and Official Grad School stuff formally starts, so I hope at least we find a few good hangouts (too bad there aren't bars like Sunset around LA...or are there?) before shit really begins to hit the fan.

I have been home for two days, and all I have done said two days is play Dynasty Warriors and sleep. Mostly the latter, but there's a whole shitload of the former too.

And my life is going to suck tonight, because everybody I know will be watching Battlestar Galactica on the SciFi channel, and I will be stuck at home crying because I have cable, but SciFi isn't part of basic or expanded cable, so my life sucks. More time for Dynasty Warriors/Shin Sangoku Musou for me, I suppose. -_-;; *sigh* I can't wait for Xtreme Legends/Mousouden to come out, but then I'll be starting class in Los Angeles (still haven't quite worked out the whole, "So uh, when am I going to move to my apartment?" thing yet, but hopefully that'll get sorted out in the next couple of days).

Anyways, back to Sangoku Musou 4.

I'm home! Haven't been back in ages, but it does feel pretty good to be back. ^_^ The trip home was completely uneventful save for the fact that economy class was full, and I got bumped up to Business. ^_^ WIN!

I have a splitting headache from playing 6 hours of Dynasty Warriors 5/Shin Sangoku Musou 4, so I don't think I'm going to say much for now other than, wow, you can totally tell where my priorities lie. X3 Video games with hot ancestors in them RULE ALL! *grin*

Goal for the next year: be the best and/or shortest Xiahou Dun cosplayer (I'll settle for either, though preferably both) EVAR.

That is all.

*crash* [/end insane rambling]

Apologies to everybody on Livejournal who sudden got spammed with old posts, not sure whether it was Movable Type that was fucking up or LJ, but I'm willing to bet the latter.

Today's my last full day in Japan, as I leave back for the States for an undetermined amount of time tomorrow. I am full of sadness. I'll really miss Japan, I really like it here. I was going to go travelling to Kamakura today, but I decided to lame out and stay around here in Tokyo, mostly because I wanted to take a leisurely stroll around Kabuki-cho and find Rock Bar Mother again (which I did accomplish), and I'm so addicted to t3h Three Kingdoms right now, it is overruling every single rational sense I have.

I'm glad I went and bought Shin Sangoku Musou 4 (aka. Dynasty Warriors 5), because the horrendous losses I have been suffering at Sangokushi Taisen really really make me sad. (It also makes me sad that I still don't have the pretty Xiahou Dun uncommon card...*sniffles* He's so beautiful in that one, looks just like his Dynasty Warriors 4 self, 'cept with darker armor.)

Anyways, I have no idea whether or not I have internet at home, so if you don't hear from me, I'm either dead or I'm back in the States on my Japanese PS2 (assuming it hasn't died in the process of being shipped from Boston) gorging myself on how much I absolutely love the Kingdom of Wei, despite being a descendant of Wu. (I think I might be pinpointing why the ancestors are unpleased at me. *cough*)

So...on the menu for the last night in Japan is: dinner, karaoke, and hitting up Rock Bar Mother. After spending pretty much all afternoon walking around Shinjuku and the past three and a half hours at a manga cafe called "Manboo" playing Shin Sangoku Musou 4 and looking up FAQs online every couple of minutes, because hell, I have no idea what's going on (my military Japanese is sadly lacking, even after playing Sangokushi Taisen) and I'm unwilling to live through the tragicness of "Cow Cow" and "Cow Pee" in the North American version. (It's pronounced "Tsao Tsao" kids, and if I ever hear any reference to bovines and Three Kingdoms, I WILL, with the divine right granted to me by my ancestors, KICK YOUR ASS.)

Anyhoos, all doujinshi from Comiket is sent out, so you guys should be expecting that soon.

Alas, I did not get to do all the things in Japan that I came here to do this time, though I did get a few things knocked off my list like sleeping at a manga cafe and climbing to the summit of Mt. Fuji.

The regret list is:

- Hokkaido - Never had time or money
- Kamakura - Never went, cause Fuji killed me for any sort of travelling
- Takarazuka - Didn't have any good shows this time, so I have yet to see anything
- Concerts - Neither Flow, Orange Range, or Ajikan was playing while I was here, so I guess I miss out. Maybe next time.
- Yoyogi Park - Never hauled ass out there on a Sunday to laugh at the goths

Well, I do need a reason to return to Japan, I suppose. I'm a little glad I left a few things undone, I guess it means I have an excuse to go back.

Without further ado, this is Skuld and her last day in Japan, signing off. :3

I just had the most miserable 17 hours of my life. Okay, maybe "just" is wrong, since it was about 24 hours ago that the misery actually stopped, but given the fact that I've been sleeping for over 16 of those past 24 hours, and my body is so sore I can barely even walk (I grimace every time I go down and up stairs) the misery feels like wasn't that long ago.

In short, I climbed Mount Fuji this weekend, while y'all were having a blast at Otakon. It was pure punishment, except for those few seconds when　I was at the summit marveling at the sunrise, and even those few moments I was huddled in four layers of clothing trying not to get blown over by the wind, my teeth chattering like hell.

FUCK. OW. is all I have to say after Fuji.

Some dumb Japanese guy once said something like, "A wise man climbs Fuji once. A fool climbs Fuji twice." He's dead fucking wrong. It's more like: a fool climbs Fuji once, somebody batshit insane climbs Fuji twice, and a wise man stays far away and takes pretty pictures.

Lindy, Ari, and I set out from Shinjuku and took a bus up to Kawaguchiko Fifth Station. There immediately I piled on a couple of layers and we began the hike. We started somewhere around 7:30pm. Ari and I reached the summit around 2am (we never stopped for a break longer than 15 mins, I think) and Lindy reached it around 4am. So climbing in total took about six and a half hours for me. OUCH. It started off fine, but within the first hour my calves were beginning to complain, and I wished I could ditch one of the 2 liter bottles in my backpack.

By the time I reached Seventh Station I was about to drop, but luckily by the last Seventh Station I'd pushed past the lameass/whine barrier and gone into automatic mode, wherein I stopped feeling things like soreness and pain. I just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, and not getting blown over by the wind during the periods of Rock Death, that is, climbing over miniature boulders. That part sucked ass. At least it wasn't cold.

By the time I reached eighth station, about 2/3 the way up the mountain I think I'd put on every single piece of clothing I had, and thanks to my outermost jacket which served very well as a windbreaker, I was not cold. I felt really bad for Ari who didn't have anything vaguely windbreaker-ish and lacked the resistance against cold/wind that four years living in Boston had trained me to endure, and she was totally freezing her ass off before we got to the last 8th station. I think we all briefly considered giving up sometime between the last 8th station and the summit (when we hit yet another disheartening block of Rock Death), but by then we were too far along to take the walk back own (aka. The Walk of Shame) and seeing as we'd we called ourselves the Zettee Katsu Gumi, we weren't about to give up. Or at least I wasn't, as I was determined to prove to my awesome Three Kingdoms ancestors that I was worthy of el kickass, and would get to the summit before sunrise if it was the last thing I did.

She made it ahead of me because she needed to keep moving and I was going too slowly amongst the pack of Japanese hikers, but I made it to the top just a few minutes after her, wherein the winds on the summit were obviously trying to kill me. They were literally strong enough to blow a person over, apparently because there was a typhoon coming. Any accounts of how much it sucks to climb Fuji are not exaggerated. It really does suck that badly.

I don't think the temperature was below freezing at the summit, but goddamn the windchill sure knocked it down to far below freezing. I hadn't been that cold since that January blizzard in Boston, and even then at least I had a down coat and several layers of pants, instead of once layer of short shorts and one pair of khakis. My legs are now complaining so loudly I can barely walk, and I grimace every time I walk up and down stairs. (Down is worse.)

I waited about three hours for the sunrise, sitting down in a hut huddled with other Japanese people for warmth. The sunrise, which came around 5am, was absolutely gorgeous. I have never seen a more beautiful sunrise than that. It was wonderful seeing the very rim of the sun crawl above the horizon, lighting the clouds with a pink and orange glow, and then see it rise to a full disk of glowing red. Absolutely astounding, and had I brought gloves with me (a huge oversight; never climb Fuji without gloves) I would have taken pictures. But as it was, I was freezing my ass off, shivering uncontrollably (at least I was shivering, cause if I weren't it would've meant I was going through the beginning stages of hypothermia) and not about to take my fingers out of my pockets for things as lame as pictures.

The way down was also shitty, but instead of Rock Death, we got sand death. Killer on the quads and the ankles, let me tell you. Ari and Lindy and I discussed many times the merits of having bringing an inner tube with you to Fuji, and sliding your way down, using our hiking sticks as punts. Would have been a much nicer ride.

Anyways, it seems odd now because the entire trip up and down Fuji seems like a surreal dream I never really experienced. If any of you guys ever go to Japan, totally go up Fuji. It really tests what you're really made out of, and whether or not you're hardcore. I at least, can now claim that I am.

And I am never, ever, ever climbing Fuji again. It is truly a once in a lifetime experience.

Found my cell phone charger, it ended up being in the bottom of one of my bags. :/ Absolutely brilliant, Skuld. *bangs head against wall*

Anyways, you guys probably are not going to see me very much until I get home, as I will be internet-less. My parents are leaving Japan (they were staying in Tokyo because my Dad was on a short summer sabbatical at Tokyo University) and now I'm crashing at Lindy's space until my flight home on the 24th. She doesn't have internet, so I will be stuck with internet cafes in the meantime. I'll be busy travelling too, as I really want to hit Kamakura before I leave, possibly Nikko, and Lindy, Ari and I are hitting up Mt. Fuji on Saturday night/Sunday morning. I also want to go clubbing in Roppongi one night, though I'm not sure how that quite is going to figure into things, as I don't think I'll have anybody to club with on weekdays.

Sadness. I'll also have to find myself a good arcade to settle down with Sangokushi Taisen before I leave. (I'm like...5 points away from getting demoted, god please let me win.)

:D See you guys in internet cafes, where I will likely be spending the majority of tomorrow, for lack of anywhere else in Tokyo I interested in going/haven't been to yet. ^_^v

See ya on the flip side. :3

AUGH!

I can't find my cell phone charger. This is not the end of the world, but I am incredibly annoyed nonetheless, probably because this loss of my charger is directly because of my micromanaging mother who, if she could tell my molecules what to do and how to do it, would do exactly that.

Two days ago she saw my charger plugged in and said, "You should put that somewhere, so you don't forget it." I put up an argument, and ended up complying with my mother's wishes, as I always do, just to shut her up.

So I took my charger, put it somewhere (likely in my luggage, though now I'm not entirely sure), and now I can't find it. The luggage that I probably put it in has now been rearranged, because for some reason my mom finds my packing unsatisfactory, and she always has to pack my suitcases for me, despite the fact that I'm twenty-fucking-two.

Now I have no idea where the charger went, and I have gone through my luggage and can't find it. You know, if she hadn't felt the need to manage every single detail of my life (up to and including where I put my godammn cell phone charger so I don't fucking lose it) I think I might still be sane, and I might still have my charger and would not feel the horrible urge to be screaming at her because she rearranged my stuff.

Sometimes I really wish I had brought my comiket doujinshi home, because I would get a vague sort of satisfaction at shoving cock and ass in her face and going, "GAAAAAAAAAY! I LIKE THE GAAAAAAAAAY! DEAL WITH IT!" and seeing the horrified look on her face as I pointed out our ancestors, and pointed out the penetration, the cum, and the little censor bar.

I'm going to die of a heart attack one day, I just know it, because I'm so mad right now I feel like going out and killing something very big and nasty.

Shopping with my mother is like pulling teeth. It's long, arduous, and full of much pain and headbanging. But in the end, if I behave myself and maybe act sufficiently miserable (which is no act at all, I am really as miserable as I look when I shop with Mom), I might get nice presents, because Mom likes to see me happy. ^_^

Nice treats like the Final Fantasy Advent Children Play Arts Sephiroth figure. And all I had to do was go, "Holy shit, I want this SO bad." And Mom gave in, and I was nice to her the rest of the trip. ^_^v Buying my patience is so easy. :D

It's also very unusual that the figure of Sephiroth actually looks better than he does in the AC movie, wherein I think whoever made his CG self turned him from one hot motherfucker into the one archetype that everybody points at when they say, "That looks like ass." Sephiroth, in Advent Children, looks like ass. :/ I'll never forgive SQUARE ENIX for that. :/ The bastards. *sniffles* But that's okay. ._. I have the figure. That doesn't look like ass, so I'm vaguely happy.

Anyways, here's my Comiket report of Thursday and Friday:

Left home on Thursday afternoon (my mom insisted on taking me to the station although I could've made it myself) to haul myself over to Lindy's place. I was halfway to her station (Kokubunji) on the train when I realized that I'd forgotten my comiket sketchbook. You cannot imagine the look of "OH SHIT" that I had on my face. O_O;; My comiket sketchbook! *cries* Which I have taken faithfully to all (of the two) doujinshi markets I've been to! I was seriously in a state of panic. I think the first thing I told Lindy when I got there was that I needed to find a place that had a sketchbook. ^^;;

Managed to find one at a 100 Yen Shop, which was hilarious because it was EXACTLY the same ghetto sketchbook (with cute animals on it) that I'd given Mel a hard time about last year. What goes around comes around, I supposed, until on the way to dinner we found a stationery store, one that thankfully sold real sketchbooks and I was saved from t3h ghetto. XD So now all the sketches I got in that book have been cut out and carefully taped into my original sketchbook, thus preserving the integrity of my comiket sukebu. :D

Woke up around 5:45am on Friday morning in order to haul ourselves out to Comiket. Met up with Ari and Pong at the Starbucks in Shimbashi, got myself some caffeine, and then we headed out. We got there around 8:30ish or slightly before, the first people in the press line. It was a fun time gaijin smashing our way around pretending not to speak Japanese so they'd take pity on us or at least be frustrated at our lack of Japanese-ness to let us in at foreign press for the MIT Anime Club. You could totally tell that nobody believed us, but because of three very nice letters put together, they let us through. Those three letters really get you far.

Friday was games, anime, and manga day, and while I actually spent more money on Saturday, I think I had more fun on Friday. ^_^ I was rather disappointed by the complete and total lack of Final Fantasy VII doujinshi (I'm sure there will be tons at Winter Comiket and the summer one of 2006), even from well known Sephiroth/Cloud circles like No Reset Club. :/ Come on, guys. I think I only ended up buying 8 doujinshi for myself that day, all of which amounted to either Ancestor Slash (Three Kingdoms! *heart*) or Guilty Gear. O_o;; The first Guilty Gear circle I found I dropped off my sketchbook, and got the most squeeful full color-pencil Sol/Ky I have ever seen in my life. I was so full of squee, you have no idea.

Originally Ari, Lindy, and I were supposed to hang around together, but Lindy got distracted by some Aerith shiny right as we were walking in, and she wandered off by herself and we never saw her until our appointed meeting place at the International Desk at 3pm. o_o;;

Didn't end up having time to go to the Cosplay Place that day, which actually makes me sad because later in the west wing of the con center I saw a whole buttload of kickass Dynasty Warriors/Shin Sangoku Musou cosplayers that I wanted to hug and squee and fangirl over. But alas, given that you're not allowed to take pictures of cosplayers inside the convention halls, I was forced to squee from afar.

The Ancestor Slash I got amounted to three absolutely cute and adorable Zhuge Liang/Jiang Wei drawn by Akira Hayase (incidentally, this person also did the very first doujinshi I ever owned and bought, a cool Zephel/Marcel I got off Ebay. Whoa, talk about coming full circle in doujinshi, eh?), which was so full of the cuteness that I could not resist and sprang for all three. The other two I sprang for and pretty much glomped/tackled as soon as I saw them were two Xiahou Dun/Cao Cao. I'd already been toying with them in my head as a couple, and just seeing it in print made it that much better. Notice I'm not fucking around with any characters from Wu, because yeah...I'm too afraid that if I slash Gan Ning/Lu Xun or Zhou Yu/Sun Ce they'll disown me. *coughs* Right.

Friday culminated in a very interesting discussion about Japanese law regarding doujinshi, pornography, and obscenity from Comiket's legal advisor. Apparently Japan works opposite the way the American court system does, namely that in the States the Courts set the precedence and interpret the law, whereas in Japan the police choose where the line between 'okay' and 'arresting you now, bitch' is, and it's the courts job to uphold that. Very interesting.

I also learned that in Japan, what determines obscenity is the sexual arousal of normal people. We brought up child pornography in question, and apparently kiddie porn is not considered obscene in Japan, because a normal person wouldn't be aroused by it. Therefore, loli and shota are considered all right.

WHOA, back up there, Japan. I think they missed something in that thought logic of what 'obscene' means, but hey. They don't have an absolute moral standard like religion, you gotta make do with something.

Once again, very interesting and after we started discussing some of the social bits of Japan I think the guys at the international office were more convinced we really were going to write an article and were at least semi-press-ish. *cough* Of course, the obvious lack of note-taking might've destroyed any chance of that at all. *sweatdrops*

Anyways, I'm off to play with my new, shiny, non-ass-looking Sephiroth figure, because I just can't wait anymore. o_o Mom will hate it and think it's savage and violent looking (must be the 3 million foot long sword that Sephiroth compensates with), but it'll be too late! *cackles* It's mine now! ALL MINE!

Hey babies,
Guess where I just got back from. :D

Best Swag of Comiket: Ari's Metal Gear Solid Russians yaoi doujin. Raikov, Ocelot, and somebody else I don't remember. I really regret not getting it. ._.

Best Could've-Been-Swag-if-I-Weren't-Cheap of Comiket: The Mario doujinshi set in what seemed to be World War II.

Best Comiket Quote: my "Don't be a Freak!" slogan, thought up after the Comiket guide, in not so many words, told the English-speaking cosplayers NOT to wear their costumes to and from Comiket thusly preventing them from being horrible freaks. It's bad enough you're a gaijin.

Best Comiket Gaijin Smash: Gaijin smashing our way through the 100,000-person line every single morning by going through the foreign press. We're students, we don't have business cards. Just fucking let us in.

Most Painful Comiket Moment: Hearing Ari say, "I'm from America" because her nametag for the press said she was from the MIT Anime Club.

Most Awkward Comiket Moment: One circle was selling Three Kingdoms buttons, and I asked for Guan Yu/Kan U. The lady laughed and said something about 'hige' (beard), looked at me expectantly, and since I had no idea what she just said other than 'hige' I just smiled and said "Sou desu ne." I suck.

Most Hilarious Comiket Incident: Pong picking up the Claire/Nel doujinshi when I did, not realizing that it was full of dickgirl (which really creeps him out). Hahaha.

Hugest Comiket Disappointment: Seaborne's artist wasn't there, so I couldn't get a sukebu. Closely followed by the realization that Crushers was not going to be there and there was NO Sephiroth/Cloud doujinshi. I shit you not.

Best Comiket Day: I spent the most on Saturday. ^_^ Besides, nothing is better when it's crack day, and in addition to my wonderful Harry Potter, Kingdom of Heaven, the Silmarillion swag, people are selling things like guides for Red Dwarf and Monty Python doujinshi! :D

Worst Comiket Day: Sunday. Smelly, sweaty, pushy fanboy central. Also largest concentration of ugly people I have ever seen in my life.

Favorite Genre of Doujinshi (based upon # purchased by Skuld for Skuld): Ancestor Slash! (Xiahou Dun/Cao Cao and Zhuge Liang/Jiang Wei OTP!)

Favorite Cosplay of Comiket: The Sangokushi Musou/Dynasty Warriors group. I remember seeing Cao Pi, Ma Chao, Zhao Yun, Sima Yi, Lu Xun, and Sun Ce. Props to the Sun Ce, she did a really good job with the facial hair. Must keep that in mind for when I'm crazy enough to either whip out the Cao Cao or Xiahou Dun (monocular vision go!).

Weirdest MariMite crossover: MariMite/Star Wars! Yumi Skywalker and Darth Sachiko!

Moment of Headbang: Being stuck in the crowd on Sunday for five minutes. Amongst SMELLY FANBOYS. :/ Ew. Similar thing happened in the Bleach line for Ichigo/Renji, apparently. The lack of more good series (OP, Bleach, Naruto) as compared to shitty series (POT) also made me want to kill some people.

Moment of Oops: When I realized I'd accidentally picked up the Sol/Bridget and not the Testament/Dizzy/Bridget I'd intended to. Hahaha, I love how you work to my advantage, subconscious. I now have Sol/Bridget, like I have always wanted.

Moment of Kyaaaaaa!: The first sukebu I got, the Sol/Ky was the best. Full color pencil, absolutely gorgeous.

SWAG
(slightly inaccurate, because I've left all my doujinshi at Lindy's place, so my parents don't find them)

- James/Severus! Three of them! Two from this really popular circle whose name I forget, and another from this fairly obscure circle whose name I also forget. Absolutely gorgeous, now currently totally hankering for them. All very angsty, none of them very graphic.

- Ancestor Slash! Three totally awesome Zhuge Liang/Jiang Wei from Hayase Akira (it was so cute and beautiful I just couldn't resist) and two Xiahou Dun/Cao Cao. :D Tee hee. DISPWNED.

- Zoro/Luffy! Two from Seaborne, and another from a circle I've seen a lot of but never owned.

- Sol/Ky! There was surprisingly little Sol/Ky this year compared to last year, which I suppose is good and easy on the wallet. One new discovery from the circle I got the sukebu from, and one from D-Maniacs, who is incidentally also my favorite Venom/Zato circle. Got a Sol/Ky bag from them too, gorgeous rendition of Holy Orders Sol for #Reload Slash.

- Venom/Zato! Doesn't get better than D-Maniacs and Command-M. :D The story had a cute first time! on the both of then too. :D Awww. ~<3

- Kingdom of Heaven doujinshi! Holy shit! I knew if I hung around in the Lord of the Rings section, I'd find some KOH eventually. And there were two of them, no less! One was Godfrey/Baldwin, no less, which NOBODY does stateside. Cool, but also regrettable that it wasn't Tiberias/Baldwin or Balian/Baldwin, my two favorite couples. :D The other was a hilarious movie parody 4-koma thing, and I had to pick it up because nothing beats Baldwin scaring the shit out of Balian by wearing the Scream mask. XD

- Phantom of the Opera! Picked this up because that circle did the cutest chibi Phantom, and it was a movie 4-koma parody which also made it full of excellent and hilarity.

- Harry/Draco! From Adult Children, the makers of my "Hentai Book of Hentai." I don't like their uber-weepy-uke Draco, but I like their art style, so when I'm in the mood, I let it slide.

- Legolas/Gimli! My LotR OTP! From Wood Bell, quickly one of my favorite LegoGimu circles.

- Ecthelion/Glorfindel! Because nothing satisfies my inner Tolkien geek than Gondolin! And hey, they both died fighting Balrogs so, I guess I can see some connection there. RAH!

- Elladan/Elrohir/Legolas! The twins were sadly lacking in the movies, but there's nothing like ecchi doujin to make up for that. X3

- Star Trek! I harkened to my old roots of geekdom by picking up a Garak/Bashir. I always thought they'd make a great couple, and then that stupid Dax replacement came and crashed the party. :/ I would've picked up some Kirk/Spock, but that was all in text, and I am too lazy to actually read large chunks of foreign languages. Boo.

Orders Filled:

- Got Ed's ClairexNel, and nabbed him some Dizzy
- Filled Maiki's order, and Amberlee's. By the way Mommy, did you know that your Bail/Obi is a novel? T_T No art inside at all. ._. *saddened*

...more Comiket lowdown to follow in the next couple of days. It'll be a looooong report.

Fwaaa! :D Been having a lot of fun these past couple of days. My last day in Osaka, aside from running around for an hour trying to find luggage lockers big enough for my two suitcases, was spent with friends. :3 I ran Wally's Star Wars DVDs back to him, and chatted with him a bit before leaving. T_T I owe him and his wife lunch the next time I come back. ^_^ After that I caved in, bought the Xiahou Yuan card from Mandarake, and proceeded to spend the rest of the day with Rhole. We went to go see the new Naruto movie, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves giggling at the really bad B-movie-ness of it. :D I'm really gonna miss her too. T_T Come back to the States, Rhole!

I took the night bus to Tokyo, which meant that was on a semi-cramped coach, trying to sleep all night (I succeeded mostly), and got my ass dropped at JR Tokyo-eki at 6am. Since the bus to my parents' place didn't start running until 8:30am, I figured my interests would be best served by storing my luggage in lockers and heading my ass to an internet cafe/manga-kissa in Akihabara to get some sleep before I bought my comiket guide.

Managed to find this place called i-cafe where I rented a TV/massage chair booth for five hours, turned the chair on, and proceeded to sleep for the next three and a half hours. Internet cafes in Japan rule all, seriously. :D All the manga you can read, free drinks, free small treats (onigiri and miso soup in the morning! Yum!), and they even have stalls where you can shower. HOW AWESOME IS THAT? It was fun, and I was kind of sad to leave.

Anyways, Comiket begins TOMORROW! so I'll be doing that for the next of all of three days. I'm really excited, despite the fact that most of the doujinshi I'll be buying probably won't be for me. *cries and sniffles* T_T My fault that I'm so goddamn po' this year. If any of you guys are ZoroxLuffy fans, Seaborne is going to be there, and if I don't get a sukebu from Seaborne, I'm GOING TO DIE. Or at least cry. Doujin, at least! :3

Anyways, I'm gonna be gone for the next of three days, wallowing in doujinshi heaven. Ciao, guys.

There is an amazing amount of luck and coincidence in my life. O_o;; So much so that often I wonder when all the bad karma is going to suddenly come and try to kill me (maybe I'm shunting off the bad in small spurts at Sangokushi Taisen XD). Anyways, my professor and his secretary managed to get me a spot at the guest house again, because miraculously somebody canceled. O_o;; *phew*

Means I don't have to spend the night in lab tonight. Means I'll get to shower, change my clothes, and do a last-minute packing run before I leave. ^_^ Yay! So tomorrow is my last day in Osaka, which I am going to be spending with Rhole. Then it's on the infamous night bus to Tokyo. ^^;; Until the 24th when I return home. :D Two months in Japan is definitely way too short of a time to be in this awesome country. ^^;; Hopefully the next time I come here I'll be a lot more fluent in the language, and actually be able to carry on conversations that consist of complex sentence instead of single phrases. X3 *grins*

Anyways, if you guys don't see much of me online you'll know where I am. At my parent's place in Tokyo until the end of August.

SHIT SHIT SHIT
I have no place to stay tonight, due my own moronic memory and failure to see common logic. Having a place until Aug. 8th DOES NOT mean you have the night of.

I feel completely stupid right now. :/ Have to sleep in lab tonight. AUGH. *bangs head against wall*

Anyways, Comiket is THIS WEEKEND folks, so everybody who has asked me to get stuff for them at Comiket, can you please organize everything you want into a list and send it to me BY WEDNESDAY.

Thanks, guys.

*twitch*
Battlestar Galactica makes me twitch every fucking week. O____O Those of you who have been complaining that nothing ever happens can go and stuff it. So much happened in that past episode my mind is still having trouble wrapping itself around everything.

*scratches head*

In other news, I was feeling rather melancholy today walking around the Umeda area (tomorrow is my last day in lab, and Tuesday my last day in Osaka for god knows how long) after having lost two horrible games of Sangokushi Taisen. =_=;; But Battlestar made me feel all better. *sparkles with the awesome*

'cept for the end. T_______T Uu uu uu uuuuuuu...
I like the cyclic imagery of the blooddrop but...*sniffles*
Nooooooooo!!

3 more games of Sangokushi Taisen today, 0 wins. I'm 3-19, yipee. *bangs head against wall* I need some new cards and a new strategy. For the 2 cost that the rare Cao Cao and Xiahou Dun cards are, they're not doing so well for me. Need more. AUGH. BIG AUGH.

I guess the amusing quote of the day was after two games of sitting next to me and watching me play my dad finally said, "Oh, so you move the cards around and then the computer shows you where your army is going."

I was floored. You know, for a physics professor I thought my dad would be a little bit more observant than that. Good job, Dad. He's definitely getting old. Well, hell, today was his 63rd birthday. I think games like Sangokushi Taisen a little too complicated for his old brain to handle. It's okay Dad, I still love you.

Anyways, I'm going to be gone for the next couple of days, because my lab's going on a small BBQ-and-onsen weekend vacation. Yay! :D See ya, suckas.

More 3K (Three Kingdoms) rants...or rather, just Sangokushi Taisen.

So back when I first started playing Sangokushi Taisen, I noticed that a couple of cards looked, IMHO, a lot like Eiichiro Oda (the artist for One Piece) did the illustrations. He mostly did cards from Wei, which is what made me squee when the machine spit out my first rare, Cao Cao. I checked the artist's name at the back, and it was definitely not Eiichiro Oda. I was very confused. Art kinda looked like Eiichiro Oda, and even more so when I got the Xiahou Dun card at Mandarake, but the name definitely wasn't. Who was this "Mashima Hiro" guy? Too lazy to google it.

I was flipping through Shounen Magazine last night, and then it fucking hit me like a ton of bricks.

MASHIMA HIRO. Mangaka of Rave (or Rave Master, as TokyoPop has called it). Who has, if possible, the closest approximation to Eiichiro Oda's style that I have ever seen.

Well, fuck me. I feel like such a moron. Still a pity that Eiichiro Oda didn't do any illustrations for it (cause then I'd want those cards like crack), but I can deal with Mashima Hiro as a pity prize.

yay?

Spent the night with the parents at a chanko nabe place. Mmm...sumo food. I'm really going to be fat now, I think. *laughs*

It's always so tiresome when I hang with the 'rents, because Mom keeps treating me like I'm five years old ("Watch out for cars!" she says as I go out the door) and Dad treats me like I can't read any kanji at all. Okay, if he treats me like a total Three Kingdoms dumbass I guess I kind of deserve it (man was he ragging on me for not ever watching the series with him; something that I now seriously regret). I had no idea that Liu Bei's son was apparently a total dumbass, but somehow I can't stop laughing.

Apparently some of Cao Cao's children (like Cao Pi) were as big assholes as their father. No surprise there.

And the question of the millenium: Did Xiahou Dun's eye taste like chicken?

The world will never know.

Spent the evening with Rhole. Our love is so...purikura or something. XD

Anyways, thanks very much to Avatrix again, I have now seen the most recent episode of Battlestar Galactica.

Cut for thoughts. Spoilers up until said episode.

^_^ Had my going away party with the lab yesterday. It feels kind of weird because I'm not leaving for another week...but meh. I drank a whole shitload. I think my tolerance was upped to two bottles of beer and two cans of chuhai because I spent Sunday night hanging with Rocco (a 2005 MIT graduate like me, who has Yellow Fever like many guys at my school and is amusingly gay) at the Christon Cafe where we sat around and discussed Catholicism and the Bible in a very appropriate (and yet inappropriate) setting. ^_^ I also managed to win a game of Sangokushi Taisen that night, which ups my wins to 3, and makes my total record something like 3-16. UGH. Stupid people with rares and superrares. Still getting my ass kicked by you guys! *shakes angry fist*

Anyways, I had a decent amount of alcohol for my bodyweight and Asianness, and was pleased to find that some of my lab fellows were getting smashed after having less than half of what I did. I felt like I was winning the night until that last chuhai and I had one of those long moments of misery where I had crossed the threshold of slightly sick-drunk, but not yet puking-drunk. I hate that little area of limbo. =_=

After the second bar we decided it was time to head to a karaoke place, and I would've been okay had not the music been horribly loud, I been vaguely sick, and the room horrendously cold for scantily clad me (just a tank top and short shorts. Ha). I managed to stay for two hours or so before my head was throbbing so badly I just couldn't take it, and had to leave before singing "Zankoku na Tenshi no Teeze" with Maiko-san, a fellow anime fangirl in lab. ^^v (She's the sweetest and cutest thing I have ever met in my life in Japan.)

Took a long time going to sleep because of the headache, but finally made it around 4am and woke up pleasantly at noontime. ^_^ Gonna go hang out with Rhole today, since there's not very much for me to do in lab for today. :D Fwee, I hope it's not my last day with her. T_T

For fans of Devil May Cry and Engrish.

Courtesy of Roni