Random crap.
It’s cherry blossom season now! Going through my box of old photographs, I found these pictures of cherry blossoms in a park near where my in-laws live in Nagano Prefecture. We were visiting Japan for a month when I took these. These photos were taken on Fujicolor 200 film with my Canon AE-1 Program SLR camera. Below are photos I took at night on a bulb exposure with my tripod.
Lastly is this cute picture of Mayu I took the next day at that park.
There are a few movies on this I haven’t seen. I’ve never seen a single Rocky movie all the way through. I don’t think I saw a full Rambo movie either. The most was seeing First Blood but it was on cable TV and I started it about 15 minutes late. I can’t recall ever watching any Richard Pryor movie. Never saw Tootsie because my parents didn’t want me to watch a movie involving transvestitism and I barely remember 9 to 5. My family weren’t big on James Bond movies either, and it wasn’t until high school when I finally saw the old Sean Connery movies. I’ve seen the rest off these movies. I remember the summer of ’89 when my friend Matt and I saw Last Crusade and Batman in the same day at the same theater on Bell Road. There was a cool game arcade next door where we played video games in between the two movies. That was a great day.
How many of these little Tomy wind-up walking robots did you have? I had two. I wish I still had mine somewhere. Maybe I do? These Robot Rascals debuted in 1977, and were later rebranded as Pocket Bots in the ’80s. Just looking at photos of these little fellas reminds of the sound they made while walking. I used to play with these with my Star Wars action figures, pretending that they were some sort of older Astromech droid still used by the Rebel Alliance. Mine looked just like the ones below.
When I was in college in my old bedroom at my parents’ house, these little guys stood guard atop my stereo in the corner of my desk. You can see one, out of focus, in the photos of my old bedroom I posted to Greg’s Life.
It’s cool how YouTube can, out of the blue, recommend music I’ve never heard of before and when I click to listen, I become completely enamored with it. I’d never heard of Castlebeat before, but now I’m definitely a fan. The above “Change Your Mind” music video showed up in the algorithm and the cute Japanese girl caught my eye. I clicked on it and loved it. The song reminded me a bit of The Radio Dept. with the whispering vocals. The footage used to make this video was taken from some Japanese short film from the ’60s. I’ve no idea what this movie is about, but this actress is very talented at expressing emotion.
Since I liked that video, next to be recommended by Castlebeat was this video of “I Follow.” This video uses footage from the movie Career Opportunities. That movie came out in 1991. I was 15 at that time and my adolescence was really kicking into high gear about that time. I had a subscription to Muppets Magazine in the ’80s and Jennifer Connelly graced the cover when Labyrinth came out and I thought she was pretty then. But in ’91, Jennifer Connelly and her boobs were so pretty and she became my imaginary wife. She was in other movies like The Rocketeer and Dark City, but after 2000 she became so thin and gaunt-looking. The most recent movie I saw her in was Top Gun: Maverick and she still doesn’t really resemble the round-faced beauty I fell in love with back then.
Lastly, check out this video. The previous two videos were fan-made, but this is an official video by Spirit Goth Records. I love the old ’80s video game arcade footage.
Castlebeat’s music can be described in different ways. Lo-fi, dreampop, shoegaze. I’m really not an expert, but I like the effect of nostalgia I feel while listening.
This is a Dutch band called The Essence. Just as bands like Camouflage and Cause & Effect were like, “Shut up, we don’t sound like Depeche Mode! Depeche Mode sounds like us, so shut up or else!”, The Essence shares the same relationship with The Cure. If you didn’t know any better, you would have sworn that this is Robert Smith while listening. So listen to this or else you’re just not cool anymore.
“The Cat”:
“Only for You”:
“Mirage”:
The band isn’t a total ripoff, and the music is not derivative. No plagiarism, just similarity. The music is more post-punk than goth. Maybe a bit of a Creation Records feel to the music? And it’s not like the singer is doing the whole Robert Smith eye makeup thing either. I obtained their first album as mp3 format and burned it onto a CD to listen to in the car. I’ve been listening to it over and over for the past several days and I really like it a lot. It’s as if I’ve discovered some Cure albums I’d never heard before. I first discovered this band about a year ago as it showed up as a YouTube algorithm suggestion and I wish I had known this band 30+ years ago.
Last week, the three of us went to Tokyo to submit a passport application at the US Embassy for Ulan. It was Mayu’s birthday too. Because I could pay for the passport in advance through PayPal, it sped up the process. An appointment is required, which I did online. We were only there for about an hour. We finished there around 10:30 am, then took the subway back to Tokyo Station.
The rest of the time we spent in Tokyo was in the underground shopping area beneath Tokyo Station. There they have Tokyo Character Street, which you can see in the picture above. I covered this place on my site 12 years ago, when I did a photo journal of our trip to Tokyo Sky tree in 2013. Tokyo Character Street is a collection of speciality shops, for Studio Ghibli, Kamen Rider, Ultraman, Rilakkuma, One Piece (I hate that show), etc. It’s changed a lot since then. The Gundam Cafe is gone, and now there is a Harry Potter store, etc.
So these characters are from a comic/anime called Chiikawa. They’re like these adorable RPG characters who supposedly go on quests, but most of the time they are eating bento and drinking tea and doing cute stuff. Ulan loves these characters.Â
We had lunch at a grilled fish restaurant since the “Ramen Street” area had long lines waiting for those restaurants. It was Mayu’s birthday, so I let her decide where to go. We also had 1,300 yen parfaits after we did more shopping. Tokyo can be a bit expensive!
There were actually two Ghibli-themed stores there. These Porco Rosso punch puppets were at the one featuring high-end merchandise. I ended up buying more stuff for Ulan’s upcoming birthday than for Mayu’s birthday.
There was a Shonen Jump pop-up store where I bought a deck of Spy Family Uno cards.
One store had these neat-looking Evangelion-themed storage containers.
Ulan likes Kirby, although she’s never played a Kirby game before. I got her a pocket towel at the Kirby store.
There is a whole underground shopping mall down there too, which we only barely entered. We went to the Can Do 100 yen shop, Kaldi Coffee, and the Don Quixote snack shop. Looking at the map online, I realize that it is bigger than I thought.Â
Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay long in Tokyo as it was a weekday and we had to go back to work and school the next day. We took the 2:40pm shinkansen back home. We had a nice time.
I bought this game on a Steam sale the year before last because the ad for it reminded me of Super Famicom action RPGs like The Secret of Mana and Zelda: A Link to the Past. I just played the prologue and when I saw that the gameplay is far more complex than I was expecting, it proved to not be just something I can pick up and play for a bit. Since it was a bit more involved, I decided to play it later. I sort of forgot about this game until last month when I decided to give it another try.
The pixel art in this game is beautiful. It is definitely 16-bit inspired and the in-game sprites are cute and well-detailed, but no Super Famicom could handle the cool lighting and shadow effects that this game has. This game actually comes from Germany and while the up-close character designs show that this is not a Japanese-made game, the actual in-game graphics look very much like a sprite-based, 16-bit style JRPG.
It’s taken me some time to get used to this game’s controls. You definitely need a modern controller with two analog sticks. You have two attacks: a melee slash and a projectile. Enemies vary with which weapon is more effective. Another button activates a spin that helps you dodge. There’s a lot of platforming in this game with pitfalls, but you respawn if you make a fatal fall. Jumping is conveniently automatic, so you don’t have to time jumps perfectly. You also won’t make any accidental jumps.
There are no random encounters, unless you get ambushed as part of the story. Most enemies don’t attack you until you attack them. As you level up, you can upgrade yourself by making additions to your “circuits” by spending CP. This raises your stats and enables you to learn new special attacks to dish out heavy damage. When you begin battles, your rank is at D and the more enemies you defeat, your rank goes up. When you reach rank S, the music changes and you get a disco lighting effect. The more you can defeat at higher levels, the more experience you gain and therefore the more quickly you level up.
I’m at the point now where I’ve learned fire attributes. This helps makes short work of the ice monsters in the mining cave dungeon.
Here’s the jibungous enemy robot in the ice mine. Look at the size of that thing!
Like I said, it takes a bit to get used to the controls. There is a lot of puzzle-solving that involves a lot of platforming. You’ll also have to align surfaces to bounce your projectile in a way so that it hits every surface in order to unlock a door or whatever.
So yeah, the sprites in this game are very cool. You’d think that they came from a Japanese game developer in the ’90s rather than a German indie company! But this is why I’ve come to really love Steam: companies like Konami may as well just not even exist anymore since they have completely abandoned their fans. The big name gaming companies have become pretty boring and I can’t expect Capcom to ever make another sprite-based game again. But these indie game developers are keeping the retrogaming spirit alive, and it’s why I like to talk about them on this stupid blog of mine that hardly anybody looks at.
I found these sprite animations by doing an image search. I assume that these are from the game, but if they are then I haven’t gotten to them yet. Anyhow, play this game or you suck. This game was made in HTML5, incredibly. So, it’s native in Linux, Win, and Mac. It runs fine on my laptop with its 16:9 display, but I have to use Glorious Eggroll to get it to display properly on my desktop’s 4:3 display monitor.
So Ulan and I stopped by the Mini Stop convenience store to get their Korean cheese hot dogs a few days ago. Holy crap, those are fantastic. They’ve recently begun selling them again and they are SOFA KING delicious. Japanese conbini food is fantastic. The last time I went to America was in 2016 and I was reminded of how gross the convenience store food is there.
As we arrived, Ulan spotted this Puyo Puyo display inside. I love Puyo Puyo, although being colorblind makes me suck at it. Ulan really kicks my ass in Puyo Puyo every time. I can’t beat her even once. but you can’t just buy whatever items you want; you pay 770 yen to reach inside a box. But it doesn’t burn your skin off like the box in Dune, nor is it full of roaches like the box in Temple of Doom. You reach inside and grab a raffle ticket. What you receive depends on what ticket you get.
The grand prizes are this Puyo lamp and this plush Carbunkle doll. I have to say that I much prefer the character designs by Compile that stayed with the series until the 4th game and I don’t care much for the new designs that came after Sega bought the Puyo Puyo license and released Puyo Puyo Fever on the Dreamcast. But Carbunkle pretty much has stayed the same.
More plush.
Eye masks. I’m glad I didn’t get that ticket.
Hand towels! Here is Draco (left) and Arle (right) taking naps. How cute.
One of these acrylic mascot keychains would’ve been cool, but that’s not what I won.
My raffle ticket let me choose a hand towel. I chose Draco the dragon girl who wears a Chinese cheongsam dress. I think she was one of the villains in the original Madou Monogatari games that Puyo Puyo is based on.
So nice to see one of these raffle deals that is of interest to me. I mean, you can see Evangelion stuff at 7-11 and I’d be happy to get a figure of Rei or Asuka, but I’d probably end up with some dumb robot instead. With Puyo Puyo though, I thought this was worth a try.
Ulan asked me what picture I wanted her to draw, so I asked her to draw a picture of Yoda fleeing from seagulls. This is what she drew.
“One day I was walking and I found this big log. Then I rolled the log over and underneath was a tiny little stick. And I was like, ‘That log had a child!'”