A good day...

Maia and I are on Golden Week (Which, this year falls mostly on the weekend, so we've taken to calling it "Golden Weekend". It's 3 national holidays in a row, which, added to a weekend, makes for 5 consecutive days off...

That is, unless the holiday falls on a weekend. In Japan Saturday is a workday, well... for everyone but us school folks. So, we get Saturday off! Well, isn't that nice...

Anyway, Sunday is also on the holiday, so they are giving us Tuesday as a "Switch day", it's not really a holiday, but since "Green Day" (Midori no Hi) falls on Sunday, we get Tuesday as the switch day.

Anyway, enough about the why... Maia is staying at my place this weekend. Friday night we go to the mall and, completely on impulse, we buy a Wii (Actually, it was impulsive to buy it on Friday, we have been pondering buying one for a while, it seems like it might actually have games designed to exercize the body more... I'm into that). We had both gotten our year-end bonuses, and I was going to buy a new computer with mine... but my company is sneaky, and they pro-rated my final paycheck of the year (See, I technically ended work on March 24th...), so they took away $700 from my paycheck and then gave me a $1000 bonus... Needless to say I really only got a whopping $300 bonus. So we bought a Wii instead. The computer will have to wait.

Anyway, Saturday morning we wake up and eat breakfast and then, completely on impulse, we get on a train to Tokyo (This too, wasn't really an impulse. We bought Mario Kart, and the Wii version has a cute steering wheel thingie which you put the remote into so you can drive. We only had one, and we wanted another... and everywhere was sold out, so we thought; if we can't find a wheel in Akihabara, there isn't one in all of Japan). We have no idea where we are going after our short mission to Akihabara. We are thinking of all kinds of places to visit. But we have no plan... By the time we arrive in Akihabara, we are thinking of going to Ningacho, via Nihombashi.

Nihombashi was the first stop on the very famous Tokaido road (The road that linked Tokyo (Then called Edo) with Kyoto, the capital of old-time Japan). It was a bridge that crossed the river that defined the very edge of Edo. It's now a very central ward of Tokyo (How times have changed :D).

During my Kyoto trip, I visited the last station of the Tokaido Road in Kyoto. And now I have been to the first station (Nihombashi)

The most interesting thing is that Highway 4 goes over Nihombashi... Think about that for a second: the freeway goes over... the river goes under... Highway 4 is built over the river... it just travels along, suspended about 100 or so feet above the river, going the whole way down. They had no more room along here to build the freeway on land, so they just built it on the river.

We then walked to Ningacho, which is interesting, but is really just a series of little teeny shops which didn't really interest us that much.

Upon returning to Akihabara, though. We ate at a Burger King! A real, live, Burger King (Which was surrounded by McDonald's...) I enjoyed the first Whopper I have had since I landed here... :D

Then we went to the book store.

See, I have a little goal; I discovered (Before I came to Japan) that one of my favorite Authors, David Weber, has had his series of Honor Harrington books translated into Japanese, and with some cool artwork, to boot. So I made it a goal to be able to read these books. In light of this, I've been collecting the books over here in order to read them when my Japanese level is high enough (This is still a little ways off). Well, I was pleasantly surprised to find "Echoes of Honor" at the bookstore, so, of course, I picked it up:

Poor Nimitz!

(These books are in Japanese order, book 1 is on the right, book 2 is on the left)

but then, while I was there, I spotted something wonderful!

These are the original Dirty Pair novels! Yes sir, the girls of 3WA are all here in the original novels that started it all (Well, okay, started one of my favorite Animes of the 1980's... which is probably why most of you, except Jer and James are saying "Whu?"). I saw a whole mess of the books, but I only picked up these two novels.

I've read Honor in English and so I want to read the novels in Japanese for the practice and the curiosity (How do they translate "Impeller Drive"?). The Dirty Pair novels don't exist in any language but Japanese. Which means I can't cheat. I have to learn Japanese in order to read these books. I have a whole new goal! (And I'll probably pick up all the other DP novels. I really just love Yuri and Kei! (Gads, look at Mugi... he looks downright terrifying... not fluffy and sleepy like he does in the series) :D) The girls of Collateral Damage are back! Or... Never left... or something...

I love the collars! I keep forgetting these books were written in 1982...

So that was our impulsive trip to Tokyo. I walked across five Wards (Akihabara, Kanda, Nihombashi, Chuo and Ningachoo), which racked up to 8,500 steps on the pedometer (Whomever said "10,000 steps a day" is on drugs). We only took a train back to Akihabara because we were totally beat.

-3Wme

FREEDOM!!!

Because I know many of you don't watch Japanese Animation I generally don't post about it...

However, I did get a degree in Animation, so I do enjoy watching said animation...

And sometimes one thing just completely startles me...

This one thing is Otomo Katsuhiro's new project called the "Freedom Project". Six Direct-to-video (Which in Japan doesn't mean "Relly Bad" like it does in America) animations sponsored by Nissin Cup-of-noodles (Which shows up a lot in the Anime, sometimes with rather humorous results).

Other than the fact that the opening song is voiced by Utada Hikaru (One of my favorite singers), the animation was so stunning I literally stopped talking to Maia on the phone to stare, open mouthed, at the anime...

Otomo Katsuhiro is best known for the anime "Akira", which is one of the landmark Anime's in the history of the Genre. The animation in that was so groundbreaking that, in 1989 when it came out, many Americans suddenly sat up and took notice of this little niche market called "Anime"...

He's out to do it again.

Freedom Project takes place on the Moon, about 300 years in the future. A disaster befell the Earth and killed everyone but the folks on the (then) fledgling moon colony... so the only survivors of the Human race live on the moon.

That was then, this is now.

Now, the main charcters live in a thriving moon colony where they race really nifty motorcycles (Think Tetsuo's bike from Akira, except with SW Episode One's variations and sound effects). I won't give away too much of the plot, but it has me hooked... I can see why it has been rented out every time I went to the video store for the last three months...

The animation is, mostly, 3D... but the only reason I can tell is that they still have "Drift" (As in the movements are a little too fluid, the head moves to the left and drifts back to the right a little. One of the little telltales of 3D animation... and something that is really hard to detect). But the 3D models are perfect... they look hand-drawn! There are still shots (Where the crowd is watching the bikes prepare for racing, so nothing is moving...) which are obviously hand-drawn, but the animation... is 3D... and it merges seemlessly! I was having a hard time seeing the switch... (In fact, I'm still not sure where the switch really was!)...

The thing that I loved most, though, was the opening credits (Again, not just because of Hikki's song), there are shots of the bikes racing in the "Racing Tubes" which are rendered as if they are from the Manga (Comic Book)... complete with ziptoning! (The black dots that comics use to simulate gray values so that they can print it... if you have ever photocopied somthing that was drawn in pencil, you'll understand what I mean. Ziptoning prevents that "Blotted black" look that you get when printing a page). The bikes squeal around corners and there are little floating "KI! KI! KI! KI! KI! KI"s (The Japanese sound for squealing tires in a comic) that drift by the skidding bikes! It's absolutely gorgeous!

If it wasn't $60 for each 30 minute disk (USED, no less)... I'd own the whole lot... as it is, I'll have to just rent them, watch them, then wait until I get home and buy it there...

Ironically, Anime is one commodity that Japan knows it has and prices accordingly... I have rarely found any Anime for less that $20... new OR used. Most new DVD's are $70-$100. Now I only buy Anime I know I can't get in the US... I bought Macross the movie, which is 25 years old (And completely unavailble in the US), used for $70... because I had no other choice. It sold new at $75, and resold at $70... that's the way it is... And the only extras on the disk are 4 television commercials from the original movie release in 1984...

So, if you folks are looking at buying Star Trek: Remastered and are complaining about the $140 price tag for 20 hours of television... keep in mind that Anime is roughly $100 per each hour over here...

---Impressed with "Freedom Project"