My sister-in-law Yuka-chan in front of an aquarium
Last month, my sister-in-law Yukari (whom I call Yuka-chan) came to visit America for the first time. We drove out to Los Angeles to meet her at the airport. We took her around Hollywood, went to Universal Studios, the Grand Canyon, Sedona, and surprised her with the insane heaps of food they give you at Claim Jumper restaurants.
Before she came, I had been planning to buy an import Playstation 2 slimline this summer. I already had the import of Taiko no Tatsujin and bought the taiko drum set to go with it. I really wanted to start collecting the great shmup (shootemup) games for the PS2, starting with Mushihime-sama. I'd played this game a lot at game centers in Japan, and I love it. Very reminiscent of Miyazaki's Nausicaa movie, except this time the princess is punishing the insect kingdom instead of saving it. I even got the limited edition soundtrack just to own the figure of the princess Reko (infamous for her lack of wearing any panties under her skirt, I kid you not).
Amazon.co.jp has free shipping within Japan, so since Yuka-chan was coming to America and I'd be paying for everything while she's here, I figured I would get her to do something for me in return. Of course, Amazon Japan had a much better price for a new PS2 than if I would have gone through online import game retailers like NCS or Play-Asia since naturally it is in Japan. And I wanted one of the beautiful new "Ceramic White" PS2s!
I ordered the limited edition of Mushihime-sama because, surprisingly enough, it was actually cheaper than the regular version on Amazon!!! The difference was the percentage of the discount between the two. I have no idea if this was a mistake on Amazon's part, but I definitely took advantage of it. I ordered a second one for my friend Lou. Yuka-chan received the white PS2, two copies of the game, and took them with her on the airplane to America. I am now happy.
So to show off my new treasure, I enlisted the help of my friend Kermit the Frog to help model for my neat stuff and had Yuka-chan take the pictures. Pictured here is my new Ceramic White slimline PS2, the limited edition Mushihime-sama box with game and the figure of the princess Reko as a child, as well as the adult Reko figure. (And no, I'm not going to take pictures up her skirt.) You may also notice that in these pics, I'm wearing a matching Kermit shirt. Hi-Ho!
So in case you can't tell, I like video games. And Kermit. In fact, this Kermit puppet is my wife's. I had searched everywhere to find such a puppet, and so when I met Mayu for the first time, I saw that she had a Kermit puppet in her car! I knew then and there that the best way for me to own a Kermit puppet was to marry this girl so that the puppet would be mine. Often I remind my wife that the only reason why I ever married her was for this Kermit puppet. I even once had a fantasy about our wedding, before we got married, that I would have the Kermit puppet on my hand, Mayu would have a Ms. Piggy puppet on her hand, and the pastor would have a Fozzie puppet or something and we would conduct our marriage ceremony that way and have the puppets kiss each other. And then I also thought that it would be cool if we would ride around on bigwheels for the wedding. But alas, I chose to do a normal wedding. Mainly because it would've been even harder to track down a Piggy puppet, and I could only marry one person, so....
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mail: greg -atsign- stevethefish -dot- net