What to say…?

No news is no good news.  Nothing happening around here.  Contrast the beautiful weather we were basked in at the time of my last post that left me sunburnt.  Like that sunburn, that nice weather has faded away.  I gotta say I’m OK with it, I like the cold better than the hot by miles and I don’t mind the rain either.  But it does kinda hamper our “getting out” and “doing things.”  And what the hell is up with the timing?  On Sunday we had the front of a Typhoon (that later dissipated before hitting us) dumping rain all day followed by three (work) days of decent temps and even sun.  BOOM! Right as I reached my station coming home from work last night the rains began and haven’t let up all day again.  Enough about weather, time to see what I can scrape together for some sort of update of what I’ve actually done.  Probably sprinkle in a picture or two if I find anything decent, probably be of the boy and maybe no explanation because I’ll probably end up doing it after I finish writing. 

So, stuff I’ve done/been doing…

Well, I actually just finished making my lunches for the next two days: pizza and okra soup.  I’ve made it through two weeks of packed lunches and starting on week three tomorrow.  It’ll be the first time (the pizza) that I haven’t made everything from scratch but so far it’s been good.  After the wife had the baby she stopped making my 弁当s everyday and I’d expected it and don’t mind.  But I’ve gotten pretty tired of buying lunch everyday.  First, it’s expensive, but more important, I’m just lazy and don’t want to bother looking for something each day.  So what I’ve been doing is Thursday and Sunday nights I’ve been making lunches for the following two days and because I don’t have one prepared for my Wednesday I’ve been eating out that day.  Wow, boring, next.

I finished setting up my desk-o-lopolis and now have the PS3 in the office too.  I’ve got the 360, PS3 and DC all hooked up to my 2nd monitor and it’s nice.  I also hooked up the sound set-up better with a couple purchases and now there’s no wire switching/sharing which is great.  Only thing I have to plug in sometimes is headphones.  I still would like to get a new desk and we’d planned on looking for that (and a table and something else) at ニトリ today but bagged it because of the rain and because we had to be around for an A/C unit to be installed this afternoon. One of the reasons I want a new desk is to put both my monitors on one place and the other is…

Well, I’ve been drawing a bunch lately and with my current desk (which was perfect in the old place) there’s just not enough space to do it here.  The counter in the kitchen is too short and the table we have now is not good either.  If we get a dining table maybe I don’t actually need a new desk.  Anyway, most of the drawing I’ve been doing has been at work on breaks.  Long breaks.  I’ve been doing mostly character design and I think I’ve got dude? and Melvis nailed. Mrs. dude? and morning are pretty much spot on but I’m, of course, having the most difficulty with me.  Nothing to put up at this time but I’m hoping to get a couple different projects going soon.  The writing is the hard part for me though.  Not my forte.

Video games.  Finished L.A. Noire and that’s a good game, not perfect by any means and maybe I’ll talk a bit more about that in another post but no spoilers here for now.  Got DiRT3 and that game is badass so far.  Gotta finish Killzone 3 and get more into Mortal Kombat as well.  Also, need to start Portal 2… A lot to play.

Also received my license translation from JAF and it came pretty quickly.  The website said it might take a week but came back in two days.  Sweet! No I’ve gotta make my way to the testing center and get to the next steps…

Think that’s about it for this time around.  Probably jot down a couple notes and fill in some other loose ends about what’s been going down in a supplemental update post this weekend.  That is, unless, we actually do something.  Oh yeah!  (Sorry Casey!) Canucks had an amazing win today, not a spectacular game but bruising and the NUCKS came away with the only goal of the game with 19 seconds left!  SWEET!!! GO NUCKS!!!

pluggin’ along.

So it’s the end of another Thursday. Crawling into the last stretch before we get a much-needed and hopefully well-timed Golden Week. Well, some of the timing was already f’d because of my scrawny paycheck this month.  I was originally hoping to have 8 days off but can’t afford to go that long without working now so I’ll only end up with 5 days off.  Oh well, it will hopefully be a good 5 days. The well-timed part is that we are all seemingly finally coming to the end of our colds around here and I’m hoping we’ll be totally ship-shape by the time vacation actually kicks off next Sunday.  It’s been a rough couple of weeks for all of us, really the last couple months.  For a baby that’d never been sick and a wife that almost never gets sick they’ve both spent their time on the mend. Not to mention me.  But we’re all feeling fairly well and really are just struggling now to shake the coughs that rattle our chests.

Before I go on, I’d like to mention that I’m watching the first episode of “Game of Thrones” and so far so good, visually stunning.  Not usually something I’d be much interested in but all the buzz around it had me intrigued.  Also I’m sipping on my new bag, メロンクリームソーダ: I’m not usually much of a soda drinker but I happened to pick up a bottle of this at the store a little bit back and really dig it.  Sweet though.

So Golden Week, we’re gonna go up to 秩父 and visit g-pa and g-ma’s graves and hang out in the woods a bit.  Hope we’ll have some nice weather and hope I can get some good photos.  After we come back into town we’ll be heading to a baseball game! Yeah, you heard me, a baseball game!  We picked up tickets to the May 5th (boy’s day and cinco de Mayo!) game at Seibu dome (or whatever it’s called now) to see the Lions against the Marines.  It’s not Central League but it’ll do.  Hope it’ll be a good game. Man I just hope that nothing terrible happens (in general as well) before the game to postpone or cancel this one… I don’t think I could take the heartbreak again… It’s been too long.  Luckily it’s going to be in the only dome that I like so at least there’s no chance of a rainout.

For some reason my left knee has been hurting all day…

I finally tried to play GT5 the other night and I can say that I’m just totally done with that game.  I spent about an hour updating it and then trying to work my way through the menus (which seem to have been designed by a complete idiot) and I raced about twice and just was completely finished with it. After, I fired up Forza 3 but found out that my save file was missing which was disappointing but still, it’s just a better game. I did start up Killzone 3 again today and I think I will play a bit more after I finish this.

Last thing on the list is some sweet-ass sandwiches I made tonight.  I finally got the wife to make some sourdough bread and I whipped up the sandwiches; BLTACs, super grilled-cheese and a mishmash of the other two.  Here’s a shot of the BLTAC:  No real other news I think. Just hoping that everyone is well soon.

Nada Mucho

Well, the boy’s still sick. I’m sick again (damn day care) but not to any point that I can’t go to work but it made for a pretty low-key day off on Sunday. Also, how about all these damned earthquakes?! Kinda done with it. At least they could happen when I’m home, I don’t want to die at work. With someone I can’t stand especially.

Anyway, back to the intended purpose of this post. Video games. I need to get on the PS3 and get into Killzone 3 and GT5. I played both of them right after I got them but since probably the first day or so after that I haven’t touched them. One of the problems is that the PS3 is in the living room. After the wife and I have dinner and maybe watch one TV show at night I usually retreat to the office where my PC and 360 are. The wife does too. So it’s easy to pick up the 360 controller and put some more time into NBA or MLB. In any case, we’re in kinda a “new game” lull so I figured while I have a chance I better make an effort to get to those games. There are a couple games out now that I wouldn’t mind picking up (Shift 2 and Tiger) but I doubt I will because of my most recent paycheck… Anyway, might not get to the PS3 tonight but for sure tomorrow night and Thursday I’ll put some time in.

That’s about it I guess, work starts in about 23 minutes, hope the earth is more at rest today than it was yesterday.

Oh and FUCK the Mariners! God they suck, have some heart! Get a hit with RISP for god’s sake!

NPB starts today, go Tigers!

Homefront review

So it’s been awhile for one of these I think. Maybe the last one was Mass Effect 2? I’ve played a bunch of games since then and, who knows, maybe I’ll get around to lumping most of them into one big review post when time permits but I thought that this game deserved a review because it seems to be pretty controversial as far as review scores go around the Internet.
To start, I hated this game after the first level. Of course it was kinda a tutorial level and there was so much I did not like. The visuals were (and are) pretty weak (some pretty impressive stuff near the end though). The fact that I had to wait around for my buddies to catch up to me and kick the door in (numerous times in the first level) before I could continue just sucked ass. I really didn’t want to go back to playing it after that first night. I’d heard good things about the multiplayer so I wanted to finish the solo campaign before trying it out so I forced myself to play it again. A good thing. I started to really enjoy it. The single player portion of the game is short (as most FPSs are anyway) but there was a lot of challenge (some of it I cursed as unfair (and it was) and a couple unforgivable bugs (like arriving somewhere where I needed to talk to a guard to progress, and I did, but seems I should have waited for my teammates because when they did get there they just stood around because I exhausted the talk option before they arrived or just falling through the floor and getting stuck in the environment (both were in the same section so I had to restart that part twice)). Anyway, some of the battles were excellent, well scripted and more challenging/unpredictable than other games’ in the same vein. This game kinda confirmed my feeling that I probably won’t be buying a Call of Duty game again for awhile. They are good games but they are multiplayer focused and I just don’t enjoy their brand of spastic ADD infused hair-trigger action enough (love Battlefield Bad Co. 2′s slower-paced/vehicle action) and the single player part is just as short and less inspired than something like Homefront that I don’t think I can justify buying another one again until they focus on single player or at least on-line co-op again. BRING BACK MW2′s BLACK OPS PLEASE!
I haven’t gotten into the multiplayer yet but I will this week so I might add that in here later but I enjoyed (mostly) what I’ve played of the game so far and maybe can’t recommend it at full price based on the single player only but I think the sequel could be pretty great. I plead of you THQ, make the single player a good 8-hour adventure with the same firefights of the last 5 levels of the first game and I’ll be first in line for the next installment!

Homefront review score: sequel could be amazing!

Sunday-Monday and other days.

Well looky there.  Still no voice. Well, more voice than yesterday. Much more than Friday or Saturday but even what little I have today I imagine wouldn’t last long if I’d gone to work so I’m home sick again today.  Hope I’ll be near full strength tomorrow so I can go in to work Tuesday and Wednesday. The wife and I might head to an Ear Nose and Throat doctor this afternoon to get me checked out and maybe speed up my recovery.  Being an English conversation teacher and not being able to talk is quite a conundrum.

Hey, it snowed like crazy again this morning! Sweet!So Sunday, well, I felt fine, the weather was amazing and incredibly Spring-like (weird how these snow flurries seem to come the day after Spring-like weather…) so we went for a walk and had lunch outside the house.  We went to Jolly Pasta and my favorite picture from the restaurant was this awesome backhand I received from the boy when I got too close, gotta keep your pimp hand strong: After lunch it was off to Baskin Robbins for some ice cream: And after that, we spent some time at the park. MJ played with some other kids (a girl with exceptional eyebrows especially took a keen interest in him) and we rode the slide a bunch:

And that was about it for Sunday.  I got Killzone 3 two weeks ago and played a little bit of it but have to get a bit more into it.  Also got Fight Night Champion last week and played a bit.  Both of them are pretty good but I’ll hold off absolute judgement a little while longer.  This week I’m hoping MLB 2K11 will be on its way to the place and then next week I think I’m in for Homefront (probably place my order later today) so a lot of gaming to do this month.  Need to get back and healthy, been going to bed too early lately to get in many games. Also have Back To The Future The Game Pt. 2 to get into… Can’t wait for this Sunday most of all though, SOCCER!!! It will be the first game since we got the new camera so I’m really excited to bust out the zoom lens and hopefully get some cool pictures of the stadium, the game, and the action!

Finally, the boy sleeping, I took this under really bad lighting conditions so I tried to bump things up in Photoshop, not sure how I feel it turned out but here it is anyway, later:

down goes MJ!

So it seems like MJ might be battling his first real cold.  He’s got a seriously stuffed up nose and seems to have come up with a cough this evening.  Not cool man, not cool.  He seems to have gotten it from his cousin when he went over to her place on Saturday for her first b-day party.  I didn’t go because I had to work so I’d requested the wife to take some pictures in my absence.  I appreciate her doing that for me but I also realized that I shouldn’t be absent from any more family outings as this was the only picture that I really liked from the lot: I mostly like the humor in it.  There were some other pictures that gave me the idea of what went on but not really anything stunning.  I’ll be there next time. Anyway, happy birthday K-chan!

In other news, we took a little outing today to a local “home center” and I picked up a nice little tool box to put my miscellaneous tools and such in.  Nice.

We finally got tickets on Saturday to our first game in about a year and a half and I couldn’t be more excited!!!!  We’re gonna go see Omiya Ardija at their home stadium just up the road on March 13th.  We’ve decided to become Ardija fans because we’re close, Urawa is too popular and Ardija are pretty bad so they probably won’t compete with our true love (Frontale). I’m really excited to see the stadium (Nack 5) because the one thing I never really liked about Frontale was Todoroki stadium.  It’s pretty big, usually close to capacity and the fans are great but because it’s multi-purpose they have a track around the field so even when we sat in the first row we were still 20-30 feet from the field.  Maybe more. Nack 5 is soccer only so I’m hoping it’ll be nice, doubt it’ll be as packed as Todoroki though but I’m hoping the fans have some passion.

Last news for now is I put in some orders on play-asia.  This Tuesday (Wed. in Japan) Killzone 3 should ship out (if all goes well) and should be here by the weekend.  That game looks real good!  The following week Fight Night Champion should be headed my way and then the week after MLB 2K11 is on its way.  I haven’t put an order in for Homefront yet just because I want to see a bit more before I pledge to that one but I did see a little gameplay footage on GT.TV yesterday and it looks pretty cool.  Still, I’ll wait a bit till I hear some hands-on reviews and such.

That’s it, a shout-out to Casey and his fam who are leaving for the US on Tuesday, be safe ya’ll!

games I want-2011

Finally made it.  By the way, also the 200th post for this new site, bu-ya!

So to start, I guess I’ll list my top 5 games of last year real quick:

1.NBA 2K11 (no question here)

2.Battlefield Bad Co. 2

3.Mass Effect 2

4.Heavy Rain

5.Red Dead Redemption

You can see my whole top 10 over on Giant Bomb here.

So now onto this year.  First I’ll start with the games that are close to 100% must-buys for me right now and follow those up with some that might fill in the dead time or could move up or down depending on new info I find. Of course not all the release dates are available and could be changed…

Killzone 3

release: Feb. 22nd

I didn’t play the first one but the second one I found to be tons of fun.  I like the weight of the controls and I can’t imagine liking to play another FPS on the PS3.

Fight Night Champion

release: Mar. 1st

I had no intention of getting this year’s edition of this game after falling out of love with FN Round 4 pretty quickly, that is until I heard about all of the story mode stuff.  That was pretty much the only thing that could have drawn me back and it looks like a really cool story in addition.  I think this is the route that sports games really need to go down from now on, immersive single-player story modes, instead of just game after game, fight after fight.  Maybe they don’t all need to be so gritty, but this one looks great. You should watch the trailers.

Homefront

release: Mar. 8th (*update: pushed back to March 15th*)

This game could be really cool.  I’m hoping it will be.  I’m hoping it will have a really good single player mode (and maybe on-line co-op) because the story that the game is based on (basically Red Dawn) can serve as an amazing backdrop.  I also have  a hope that the campaign will focus on one general locale instead of the globe-trotting story-lines that most FPSs travel these days.

Top Spin 4

release: Mar 15th

This game could be a ton of fun.  I’m not 100% on this one just yet but I loved the earlier games in the series and I think it’s been about 6 years since the last one (maybe).

L.A. Noire

release: May 17th

The release date for this one just came out yesterday and I’m hoping they stick to it because this game could be AMAZING.  I’m hoping for a tighter version of Red Dead, of course in a drastically different setting and the facial animations are scarily great.

Forza 4

release: Q3

I’d love a reason to break out my racing wheel and no better reason.  Also it’ll be nice to play a good racing game again *ahem, ahem GT5*

Uncharted 3

release: Nov 1st

I can’t wait for this game, #2 was a great action-packed thrill-ride!

Mass Effect 3

release: Q4

Probably the game I’m most excited for this whole year.  #2 was an amazing game. Like Uncharted and Killzone, I didn’t play the first one of this series either but this is the only one I feel like I lost out a bit for not.  I can’t wait for the third installment in this trilogy (?) to see the ramifications of the choices I made, something that the other games can’t offer.  So excited for this one!

So there’s the list of the main things on my radar and here are some more that I’m in more of a wait-n-see mode for…

MLB the Show (Mar. 8th) or maybe MLB 2K11 (maybe coming out around the same time). Tiger Woods 12 (Mar. 29th) is going to feature the Masters for the first time in any game.  Need For Speed Shift 2 (Mar. 29th) could be a really cool racing game and from the trailers I’ve seen it looks good but definitely one I’ll wait for the reviews on. Mortal Kombat (Apr. 19th), could be good. Gears of War 3 (Fall) which I haven’t played either of the first two but when a game is used as the prototypical example of a (sub-)genre, maybe it’s time to get on board (and co-op with dude?).

So that’s about it for now, there are some other games that are further on the peripheral (like Dirt 3) but I haven’t looked too hard at, I’ll wait a bit more on those.  There’s hopefully gonna be a lot of quality games coming out this year.  I’m also gonna keep my eye on NCAA (I heard that they have been asking around about where the bands sit at each stadium so hopefully that will bode well for better atmosphere in the game and as long as they don’t worry about shit like talking trash on the computer and focus on making the game environment and play better I’ll be happy.) and NBA as well… and maybe more…

Back to Bidness

So I just had a cancel giving me an extra 20 mins to sit around doing nothing particular. I did walk over to Bic Camera to look for a night lamp for MJ’s room but sigh, I was denied. I’m also totally obsessed with NBA 2K11 and played a game this morning (the wife and baby had left before I got up) where I missed a game-tying three at the buzzer (because some BS of course) and need to get my mind off of that game for a couple minutes at least. Hence this post. Crap. I’ve made it to the playoffs with my “my player” and after taking the first three games in the first round (Bulls x Bucks) we lost the next three (BS) but came away with game seven to move onto the second round. We won the first two games (Bulls x Nicks) and then there was this morning. Still have the lead (2-1) but I can’t wait to get home and get my revenge! (update: won! next up, the Heat in the conference final… I’ve gotta guard Lebron…)
Something different time. So, the first two weeks of the new year have passed us by and not too much has happened. I played A LOT of basketball! It’s been a really strange start to the new year, kinda only starting to get back into the working thing recently because after having the first six days off this year came back to work for two days then had two more days off. Then I had a six o’clock start (gave me the chance to watch the College Football Championship Game though) which didn’t help me get back in the groove so I finally started feeling back in the rhythm on Wednesday this week but then had another day off. Oh well.
Yesterday we took the boy to get a shot and I made faces at him and he totally didn’t cry, took it like a man! Last week (maybe) we bought some new kicks for the boy and took him for his first walk in the park. He totally hated the shoes the first time and balled his head off but has gotten more accustomed to them since. (*I was gonna put up more pictures but no time now, gotta wash the dishes and go to bed*)

Other than that I finally got a decent video of him walking last week as well and I’ll try and load that up here at the end?

Think that’s about it maybe. Not too much really happening, maybe I’ll hit up Akihabara next week to get my HD checked out. Can’t wait to get home and play more basketball… Think I’ll do a “2011 games I want” post later. Maybe tonight… only if I can stop playing basketball long enough. Doubt it. Maybe this weekend. It’ll be a challenge enough to just stop playing long enough to add pictures to this post…

let there be heat

Yesterday we got two sweet A/C/heater jobs installed and you’ll be able to see one of them in the header until I change it. Rock.

Since today was 文化の日 I was able to not work and in fact I won’t have to work tomorrow as it’s a Thursday.  On Thursday I rest.  It’s a rare treat for me to have two days off and I appreciate them greatly.  This year a lot of national holidays fell on Thursdays (besides the happy Mondays) so I got hosed on a lot of possible free days off.  Next year all of them will be on Friday and I’m probably gonna take a lot of those Saturdays off so I’ll have a bunch of four-day weekends next year (if I’m still at my company). Anyway, onto the day that was…

The day started off with the arrival of MJ’s new play mat tiles so we set those up and the fun ensued…

And there are too many other good pictures that I’ll have to just stop there.

After we had our fill with the play mat it was time for an outing.  We hadn’t all been out for anything except the occasional shopping trip really since we’d moved so it was time.  We decided to go over to Asaka and have lunch in the park over there.  When we got on the train I was amazed.  It was a new train and the most interesting thing was that between the cars where they usually have a sliding glass door, they had a HUGE sliding glass door that was also buffered on either side by some more glass so you could actually see all the way through the whole train in a strange, ghostly fashion:Hope all the trains are like this one soon, the Tobu Tojo line has some pretty shitty trains running…

Also a cool little map on the bus to the park:

Finally we arrived at the park and sat down to lunch.  The boy found the wife’s vegetable juice to be of the most interest:

Here’s kinda what the main entrance area of the park looks like and at the left you can see a big climbing thing that I couldn’t help but get all up in before we left:

After lunch we walked around and I took some pictures, some were alright:

When we got back to our station we walked over to Olympic because I wanted to get a Mahjong set but failed to find anything reasonably priced.  I’ve got less than two months now to learn how to play so I’m ready for new year’s at the fam’s…

When we got back home the wife’s cousin and her two kids came over to hang out, play some 毛糸のカービィ and have dinner. I get nervous in such situations and so I decided to drink a little beer to take the edge off.  After the first I decided to go a little deeper and crack open a bottle that I got as a b-day present from a student.  It was this beast: Brewdog Tokyo is one of the worst tasting things I’ve ever had in my life.  It tastes like a mix of whiskey and wine and has 18.2% alc. which makes a bit of sense but in my opinion, not worth the ride.  Thanks K.H., but never buy it for me again please!

One more day off, bring it on!

NCAA 11=phail

Think I’ll be able to do a post tomorrow (maybe the last in Kugahara?) but I’m sitting here watching some college football, thinking about the game I just finished playing.  I finished a bowl game in NCAA 11 after playing an online conference championship game against dude?  I’m just so disappointed in this year’s edition.  Annually, I love NCAA more than any other game but this year’s installment just leaves me constantly frustrated.  It’s broken in its game play.  I’ve never “rage quit” before this edition. I’ve never been a “controller thrower” before this edition.  I won’t go into all the things that piss me off, just know it’s frustrating.  It’s still a good looking game and it has its fun moments, it’s just sad that there are so many “WHAT THE FU&K!?!!?” and “THAT’s BS!!!” moments when playing the computer. I hope that if they change one thing in next year’s version it’s the AI and the “rubber-banding.”  They should focus on the game play and not bull shit like being able to recruit players and make your own news stories on the internet.  What a waste of programming time.  The one good thing I can say about this year is that they fixed the online play a bit so when I’m beating people’s brains in and they quit, I still get my win.  Pussies.  Think I’ve still only played one or maybe two games online this year against anyone other than dude? but at least people can’t screw me by quitting if I ever do get back online.  Doubt it.  I’m pretty ready to move on.