My new desktop wallpaper as of today, May 24th. More Nadia love.
New Nadia wallpaper for my Linux Mint desktop
My new Pac-Man pillow from Shimamura!
I went to Shimamura today and found this lovely Pac-Man decorative pillow! It feels so soft! Here are front and back photos of it. There was another Pac-Man pillow there which featured large sprites of the characters, but I like the design of this one better. Interestingly, it features the English names of the ghosts. There were also Pac-Man bath mats there too, but I didn’t get them because I imagine my wife wants to keep the ones we already have.
ORLY?
Everyone’s seen this classic owl meme. A few years ago, I made a few of my own one day when I was bored at work.
Enjoying the modeling hobby in Japan despite cramped living spaces
Living in smaller living conditions in Japan, there is an art to maximizing the space you have. I found these pictures on Pinterest and found them interesting. One thing to note is the absence of the “carpet monster” that Western modelers often complain about. Homes in Japan may have area rugs, but do not have permanently-carpeted rooms. You’ll see tatami rooms, but not carpet. I don’t like carpet, nor tatami for that matter. Anyhow, check out these pictures.
This fellow has a bunk bed and uses the bed on top as a place to stash his models. The model workbench fits underneath that nicely. The extractor booth’s air hose seems permanently attached to the window. Very clean and orderly, with a convenient L-shaped desk.
This is pretty incredible. This person turned a closet into a workbench! Very adequate lighting, and the tiny video screen for entertainment or whatever is a nice touch. No idea what it’s hooked up to, but that would be perfect for a Raspberry Pi computer, I think.
Holy cow! This is a chaotic mess, yet I admire how much stuff he’s managed to cramp into this small space. I’m about halfway to this guy’s level. Unlike the pictures above with the clean floors, if this guy loses a small piece on the floor, he’ll have quite a task on hand to find it. I like his poster of a Mitsubishi F-2 on the wall.
I also came across these photos on Pinterest and realized that they belong together. Here are four tall shelf racks. I love his tastes in models! It’s all character modeling. Can you spot what you like? I see Knight Rider, Mad Max, Gachaman, Star Wars, plenty of Gundam, Yamato, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, plenty of Gerry Anderson stuff, Votoms, and of course Macross. He even has that big Mega Force kit! Bonus points for keeping model categories together like that. (Click the images to expand, then open them in a new tab in your browser to see even closer detail to see the boxes.)
Again we see air hoses permanently attached outside. This is a nice idea. I have to crack my window and hang the air hoses out, but that means that mosquitos can come in unless I spray mosquito repellant onto the curtain. Speaking of which, I should buy some now that the weather has warmed up.
This is a bit too claustrophobic for my tastes. This guy is working on a Ma.K kit. He’s got paint bottles to the right. What’s in those boxes? It looks like the room is larger beyond those boxes.
This is pretty cool. A nice modeling workbench in the corner of the room. With that plastic drawer there though, where does his legs go? It’s packed solid underneath. Nice extractor though. It’s illuminated within. Nice.
Incredible. This guy obviously likes a lot of Gunpla.
Good golly, that’s a lot of resin garage kits! Super cramped work area too. At least there’s anime to watch.
Alright, this is not cramped at all. Just lots of neat stuff going on all at once. Nice window to let in plenty of light, too. Looks cozy.
Nothing says “modeling in Japan” more than sitting on a small table on a tatami mat floor. Oh yes, and with a blanket for your lap.
I’ll take pictures of my own workbench. Currently it’s just a big mess at the moment. I’ll put that in another post later.
Hachiware kicks ass
Hachiware is a cute cat, and he is Chiikawa’s best friend. Oh yeah, and there’s also Usagi, but usually it’s Chiikawa and Hachiware doing stuff together.
Holy crap, Hachiware is so cute.
It’s the ’80s, and you have only one quarter. Which game will you play?
Pac-Man is my all-time favorite game. In fact, I’m wearing Pac-Man boxer shorts underwear as I post this. I’m nuts for anything Pac-Man. That said, Star Wars was my #1 go-to game every time, as I mentioned in my post about the old arcade Bag-A-Tel as a kid.
I didn’t really play Defenders or Space Invaders in the arcade that much. I’d play them on my Atari at home. I preferred Galaxian over Space Invaders and I found the controls of Defender in the arcade to be too complicated with all those buttons.
And Tempest… wow. Star Wars and Tempest are the two I’d most want to play today. Playing games on an emulator and my Sega Saturn Virtua Stick is a great way to go at home, but the flight yoke of Star Wars and the analog knob of Tempest are two experiences that emulators can’t truly capture. For that matter, Centipede’s trackball is worth mentioning too, although while I liked that game, it didn’t come close.
Perhaps my least favorite of all of these games was Donkey Kong. I actually liked Popeye better, and Kangaroo even more so.
I scored a Sega Saturn pillow at Shimamura
The front and back of a neat Saturn pillow I found at Shimamura this week. It was actually put in the men’s section, discounted from 1300 yen down to 300! Swanky.
Cherry blossoms in Nagano Prefecture, April 2004
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.
The highest worldwide grossing movies of the ’80s
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.
Tomy’s cute, little Robot Rascals
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.
