Kitkowskiland!

More on the fun geeky game stuff in a bit.

Eikichi - So I felt a bit of a disconnect with returning to Japan again this year (I usually go once every one/two years, but this time it will be three) after Satoru died (and more on that). I go back home to visit family (I have a niece now, and my nephew Riku is just turning two) and friends, eat at a lot of incredible joints, burn thousands of calories marching all over Tokyo with a backpack full of the latest Japanese study materials from Kinokuniya bookstore, etc.

Thing is, my best bro, the one that took me to all the crazy shit all over the place: The underground manga stores; the bizarre philosophy conferences where a PhD would break down robot anime into its contemporary sociological elements; the HG store with the silver mannequin with the leather gear on it.

Anyway, one of my best buds is Eikichi, who is also my wife’s cousin (and I guess mine). I first met him when I was out of college and he was in high school. We ended up hanging out a lot at family gatherings, and then just hanging out a lot in general. In my last two years in Japan we hung out weekly at my place, getting friends together for cards (poker, daihimin) and bizarre Japanese variety shows, etc.

Normally we just hook up when I get back into town: We’d crash at his or my place over in Gunma, or I’d stay with him in Tokyo when I paced the city again. But otherwise, we’d just lay low until we met again. But recently we’ve been hitting each other up over email, and it’s been fun. It’s also fun to get back into the habit of writing in Japanese again, as my Kanji skills have been slipping (even when reading and not writing, it’s easy to slip when reading and doing less writing). So that’s rocking.

Also, found some nifty pictures from the last time I went to Japan. That’s us at “Tambo”, one of the best restaurants I’ve been to. Anyway, that’s been on my mind these days.

Twleve Kingdoms - So for Christmas(ish), my wife and I just tend to pick up some stuff for ourselves and share it. This year with the help of an old gift certificate and Clinton’s Barnes and Noble membership, we scored the complete Twelve Kingdoms boxed set (in two parts). If you haven’t heard of this anime, it’s the Best Anime Series Ever. I once fought a guy with knives who didn’t believe it. The quick history:

1) This woman wrote a series of young adult novels about a Japanese girl whisked away to a fantasy Chinese(ish) land of magic and myth and (in the long run) maturity. They bust out like madness, and are pretty much the Japanese equivalent of the Harry Potter books.

2) NHK, Japanese public television (like PBS with an actual budget) picks up the series to turn into an anime. Rich budget, very artistically driven, and no panty shots. They even made changes to the screenplay that actually improve the story; adding two “friend characters”, which really crank up the awesome: Especially the friend-girl, who is basically the equivalent of “one of us” (a geek who is absorbed into fantasy literature and the like).

3) Unfortunately, the author was still working on the book series as the anime series was in development when she got sick somehow (sounds like an anxiety thing or breakdown). So she didn’t finish two of her novels when the anime was done.

4) So the anime has like 4-5 stories wrapped in it: Fortunately the main character’s story was wrapped up as per the author’s vision. But there were about two side-stories with dangling strings.

The only problem is that there are places where the Sino-Japanese words are a little thick. The novels… they’re not written particularly cleverly, but the author loves to slam all sorts of old Chinese words into the book. The anime doesn’t suffer from that too much, but there are some episodes (particularly in the “A Great Distance in the Wind, the Sky at Dawn” series) where the medieval Chinese verbiage is really thick, especially during introductions of various political offices and posts.

So on my last viewing of the series (what, the fifth time?) I decided that I want to make a complete printable episode-by-episode guide to the series so that it’s easier to follow. I’m also thinking of cooking up an RPG based on The Shadow of Yesterday. I’m backseating those projects until some translation work is done, but it’s one of my 2007 goals. We’ll see how far I get

PS: If you rent this series, for the love of all that is good don’t watch it dubbed. I’m not some weird “if it’s not dubbed it’s automatically crap” dudes, but this anime has a particularly bad dub. NHK paid big bucks for actors and voice actors to read the parts, and in the US they apparently found dudes who will work for meth to read their lines. Just a warning.

Zatoichi - I’ve been on a huge Zatoichi kick recently. Not the 2003 weirdness with Takeshi Kitano (which was awesome, save for Takeshi Kitano), but the classic 60s-70s media machine that produced something like 25+ movies and a 5-year TV series starring Katsu Shintaro. I’ve watched about 8 movies in the past 6 months, and I’ve gotta say: They’re awesome. For the most part, it’s a glimpse of high-action high-drama simple stories dealing with the yakuza underworld and, AND, a “slice of life” of Edo-era lifestyle.

There are samurai movies. There are gangster movies. There are ‘historical piece’ movies. I love all three genres. The Zatoichi series is all three in one, which is quite rocking.

So I’ve made it a small side-goal to watch as much Zatoichi as possible, then go back and rate them. Maybe find, like, the “top five” to recommend to folks. Currently, my favorite is “Zatoichi the Outlaw“.

I think that’s all I’ve got going on lately for now. More later!

Christmas came and went. For the most part it was a good year. Normally I’m not into the holidays; I hate to go shopping during the holidays, I hate the Santa commercials and Polar Bear Coke CMs, etc. But I like that “it’s cold outside but it’s warm inside” feeling, and this year we played it up.

Basically, last year I worked through the holidays (as I usually do), but Xmas came and went without any pause. The bad thing is that the holiday work ended up being pretty rough. Everyone else in my workplace got to refresh and relax, and came back to the office ready and renewed: And I was strung out. This year (well, 2006), it was similar, but this time I had a lovely Christmas tree (with equal parts Hello Kitty, Star Wars, and Fist of the North Star decorations), Christmas lights, and was able to go through the whole experience of being in a warm, warmly lit living room while it was cold (NC cold, but cold) outside. I worked through the holidays again, but it really wasn’t as bad this time around, as I had that nostalgic “warmly lit, comfortable home” thing to return to.

Christmas rocked. Got a gift certificate, an Avatar the Last Airbender LEGO set (I’ve never seen this cartoon, but have been told by friends I must. Did I mention I’m 31?). I also got myself an “All-Ett“, which is an awesome invention. I quickly adapted to it, and it’s the best wallet ever. Got one for my dad, even. I also managed to snag a 320gb external USB bookcase drive by Western Digital from www.buy.com for $100, which is an incredible steal (even for buy.com). It now only has 1.2 gb free, as it stores .
For my far-away friends and family, I drafted up “The Best of 2006″ holiday letters. I’ll convert them to PDF and put them up here later. Just a quick newsletter summary of the major events of 2006.

So it’s coming up on my B-Day, heading to the 30 + 2. Interesting thing I just realized: I’ve now lived in this same house for two years, plus a week or two.

This is the longest I have ever lived in one single place since 1991. Seriously. I haven’t lived in any place longer than two years for over fifteen years. It actually feels weird to settle into one area. I constantly have that thought that I need to be ready to pull up roots and move at any given second. But I think I’m pretty much over most of that.

Weight loss: I’m making it a resolution to lose 20 pounds this year and keep it off, basically the stress weight gained over the past two years. I haven’t really taken it too seriously. Now, realizing that I’m 50 pounds bigger than I was when I graduated, it’s time to put on the breaks, back the fuck up, and get healthy again. I can honestly say 10 of those 50 pounds are muscle, because I can press and lift more than I could back then, and have been doing a lot of strength training on and off recently. But I’m not fooling myself with the other 40. Time to cut back.

Writing: My other goal this year is to finally finish and release the Tenra Bansho game I’ve been working on for the past three years. I’ve been lazily going through the motions as I hadn’t set hard limits. Now I have, and these past few weeks/months have been a blur of movement towards that goal. It’s falling together, but still kinda far. But this year it will be out in stores.

Langauges: After the above, all my other goals fall into a distant second place. But I’ve been playing with the idea of getting back into languages. Brushing up on Japanese, perhaps finally taking the 1-kkyu test (the highest general language test). Also, I want to start slowly and learn a third language to at least the “where is the bathroom?” level. I’m waffling on returning to Russian (which I haven’t taken since high school) and Polish, which for some reason I’ve been thinking about lately.

Work: Is cool. I’ve been picking up a mad amount of new skills. We recently made #6 on the “Fortune Magazine Top 100 Places to Work”, which I dunno if it’s accurate, but it’s nice to be recognized. This year I’m digging hardcore into fiber channel, linux, nfs performance, and network engineering. We’ll see how far I can get. Most likely looking towards a promotion this year as well.

I got off the weekend shift and went back to 8-5 a few months back. One problem with that was that I noticed that I stayed until 6:00 anyway. I don’t know what it is about this place, but because of the workload and other random factors I found myself working 9, 10 or more hour days regularly, working for several hours on the weekend, then crashing for most of the weekend (as I would run on 5-6 hours of sleep a night).  Last week I changed back to my old regular 9-6 shift, and damn my work schedule snapped back to regular mode. I’m still working 9 or more hours a day regularly, but it’s not as out-of-control as it was for the past few months.

Trying to think of what else is going on… I’ll post this for now and return later if I think of anything.

-Andy

So I’ll just be sitting along here at night, going “Tonight I got to get to bed at 10. 10:30 at the latest.  No more of this 2-3 AM shit”. OK, I’m ready for bed, teeth brushed, pajamas on, all set…

…but first, let me go take a peek at my favorite forums and Lifehacker.”

*sound of hours being sucked from my life ensues*

Man, I tend to get waylaid a lot these days. And always when I’m in the middle of a bunch of important projects.

I’m going to post a Real Entry (a lot has been happening in the past month) in a bit (maybe this weekend), but first some sleep.

OK, one quick fun thing.  The DUEL PROJECT: Two movies were made, Aragami and 2LDK. Both were interesting, 2LDK had more bitchslapping and an ending you could see a mile away. But Aragami Totally Wins. I could watch that movie, seriously, over and over again. I’ve probably seen it five times and haven’t gotten sick of it yet. If you have Netflix, go put Aragami in your queue. If you’re in need of a Fun Movie, bump that shit to the top of the queue. Honestly, I can’t really recommend 2LDK in general, it’s ‘ok’, but not worth the 2 hours of a busy life.

Aragami goes on the shelf next to Asoka and Twelve Kingdoms, in the “I will never get sick of this flick” pile.

-Andy