Aino Minako-chan

Three videos that I've gotten hooked on recently:

• Carry On Wayward Son, as performed by a Japanese girl on Electone. It's pretty awesome. Bonus points for the hysterically dry Japanese MC and audience.
• Where the Hell is Matt? is just a happy-making video. I possibly got a bit verklempt while watching. [sniff sniff] Shut up! So I'm a leetle girl!
• Kiwi is an animated web video that I'm sure many people have already seen, but it never fails to make me sqeak a bit. It's phenomenal... it's like a Pixar story written by Japanese screenwriters.

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So I went to Roppongi two weeks ago to watch Indiana Jones with a friend. I loved it, of course (I'll keep watching until Indy's hobbling along on his walker). Here are a few of my spoilery thoughts for anyone who's actually managed to miss it:

( Indy Jones, how are you so awesome? )

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In other news, I possibly accidentally bought myself a big new TV last weekend. Ummm.... yeah. It was just one of those things where I had just received my summer bonus and I was thinking about how my current TV is failing me and there was a sale, and before I knew it, I had made a snap decision to buy a TV. I mean, I never budget for bonuses so it's not like I can't afford it, but still. I'm usually fiscally responsible (except when it comes to electronics)! I swear!! [sigh] I feel weak. I seriously need to stay away from the freaking electronics store. It's dangerous.

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Finally, I almost wish that I had a video iPod now, because Square-Enix just released a new game called Song Summoner. From what I can tell, it looks like Square's version of Monster Rancher, but with music straight from your playlist. It looks pretty awesome. Who can resist the urge to see what kind of fighter Mini-Moni's Hamuzu no Uta will produce? It's relatively cheap, so if anyone has a video-compatible iPod, download it and tell me how it is!

I feel like it's been a long month. My boss took his week-long vacation to Israel, and all of us tend to get lost when he's gone, so I worked some long-ish nights that week. Then on Monday, I had to take the morning off of work to get my yearly physical done. (Top things that you don't want to hear in the doctor's office: "Sorry!" "Oh dear." "Ganbatte kudasai!" For cereal. >_<) Plus, we received homework at work. In order to receive our bonuses, we have to copy out, by hand, the 65 pages of our 2008 company plan booklet. It's seriously enough to make a girl cry. I'm trying to do 30 minutes after work each day, but then I'll have to step up the pace to get it done this weekend. It's absolutely horrible, and my hand's been cramping for two days straight.

Anyway, here are some links to stuff that's made me smile:

• Muppet Troy! And other inspired responses to our movie-remake contest. By Dana Stevens

A little article from The Slate had two movie-remake ideas that made me laugh:

[...] "I, Robot with Christian Bale in the lead role, because I'd be curious to see if Bale would have his arm surgically replaced with a robotic arm to prepare for the role."

This is awesome mainly becuase I think Christian Bale would actually do it. Method for the win! But the best movie remake idea was obviously:

I would remake Troy with the Muppets, in the belief that Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy would add more gravitas to the story as Achilles and Helen than the living actors did. I would use a nearly identical script but include Statler and Waldorf (the two grumpy old guys in the balcony) so that they could read from the Iliad and note where the script favors plot points lifted from Steve Reeves and Michael Bay movies instead of Homer. Unlike the original, Muppet Troy would also allow for kid-friendly merchandising, such as Baby's First Trojan Horse.

• LIT 101 CLASS IN THREE LINES OR LESS. by Ben Joseph

This was a little find from McSweeney's. Most were fairly funny, but it was the following that killed me:

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. LEWIS: Finally, a utopia ruled by children and populated by talking animals.
THE WITCH: Hi, I'm a sexually mature woman of power and confidence.
C.S. LEWIS: Ah! Kill it, lion Jesus!

I think that last line is my new catch phrase.

I am sadly behind on my reading this year. (I had read nearly 20 books by this time last year.) Maybe I'm reading longer things; I spent the first half of 2007 blasting through Discworld books, which I could read in about a week each. Still, I feel like I should speed up; my list of "must read" books only grows longer every day... but on the plus side, I've found a pretty good used English book store in Tokyo, so it's cheaper for me to get new reading materials (and get rid of old stuff). Hurray for economical-ness! Anyway, on with the reviews!

( (10) Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre ) Even if only half of it is true, this is one of the best spy stories, ever.

( (11) The Highly Effective Detective by Richard Yancey ) In the end, it was a decent detective novel: good enough that I was happy to read it, but not so stunning that I'd pick up the series.

( (12) American Gods by Neil Gaiman ) A highly recommended book that blends ancients gods into the modern world.

( (13) The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall ) A wonderful, quirky mystery that's right up my alley.

( (Bonus A) Adverbs by Daniel Handler ) Perhaps big Lemony Snicket fans would approve, but I felt little love.

• Have other people seen this? http://www.dothetest.co.uk/ It's a really great video that works best when you don't know what it's about. Just follow the instructions and count carefully. If you do this right, you'll be pleasantly surprised by the results.


• Infinite Undiscovery is an RPG being published by Square Enix for the Xbox 360. It looks like a fairly standard RPG so far, but the reason why I already adore it is the title. It's like the developers went, "We need to make an RPG for the Xbox that is totally not like Final Fantasy. So not 'final'.. It'll be... infinite! Infinite Fantasy! No, Infinite Unfantasy!! No no, I've got it, Infinite UNDISCOVERY!" Seriously, doesn't the title sound like something that was the result of a late night meeting involving way too much beer and someone repeating the phrase "Final Fantasy" one too many times?


• Sakamoto Maaya's latest single Triangular (the "Macross F" anime theme song) has been doing surprisingly well on the single charts, but the reason why I bring it up is because on my morning TV show, they said something about how she's become more and more famous thanks to her musical roles. So I looked it up quickly... Turns out she was one of the actresses who played the roll of Eponine in Les Mis from 2003-2007. Huh, go Sakamoto Maaya! And you mean I missed a chance to hear her as Eponine? Damn.


• As mentioned on kinomakoto's LJ, THEY'RE MAKING A HERE IS GREENWOOD TV DRAMA. Oh be still my beating heart. Greenwood is one of my favorite anime and manga of all time, so I am super-de-duper excited. Having said that... I already disagree with the casting of Shun, and I seriously doubt that anything can change my mind. I honestly think that they should have cast a female actress (for those who don't know the series, the entire joke about Shun is that he looks (and acts, for the most part) exactly like a really cute girl; the lead character Suka-chan rooms with Shun for several days before figuring it out, and that's only because he finally walks in on Shun at a urinal). I'm sure that the guy playing Shun is perfectly nice, but it's tough when you think that they cast a character as the wrong SEX. But the guy playing Suka-chan is cute like a bunny, so we'll see.


• Just when I think that I'm starting to get used to living in Japan... Without talking too much about the show, I was watching this normally funny "talk with celebrities" program, and they were discussing "kawaii" and women being cute. Anyway, they had three examples (sent in from actual viewers) on the topic "Things that I do to make myself seem cuter": Purposely walking slow behind a guy and complaining, before jogging up and tugging on his sleeve; pretending to get caught in clothing while taking off sweaters or whatever; making expressive little hand gestures to emphasize emotions like sadness or shock.
  
  I would just like to say that these are not only all actions that annoy me, these are all actions that actually make me raging mad. Every. Single. One. I was ready to hit something just after watching the little reenactment videos. That, or start screaming, "OMG, it's your fault that women can't advance in the workplace!" My rage almost overwhelmed my desire to start sobbing on behalf of double-X chromosomes everywhere. I felt ill after watching this little comedy program. Honestly ill. Don't make me smack a bitch, Japan! I'll do it! I totally totally will! Minako-chan smash!!


• In better news, Superfly's new album hit #1 on the charts. I adore Superfly. She's this teeny girl with massive vocal power who reminds you more of Janis Joplin or Grace Slick or some other 60's powerhouse vocalist. I quite like her; I have a soft spot for teeny powerhouses (see: TMR). Go go Superfly!

A quick question for the more computer inclined (or at least a question for people who are not at work and have time for Google Fu):

Apparently my parents' computer crashed while Dad was at home, so he went ahead and immediately reinstalled Windows. (I tried to not start shrieking "data recovery" at the top of my lungs when I read this email.) Anyway, I've got a couple questions, just curious if any computer gurus on my FL have the info on hand:

1. What's the simplest way to copy music from an iPod back onto the PC? I'd prefer a free method, but I had to write a mini-manual to explain to my mother how to rip a CD, so probably the simplest method is the best.

2. Does anyone know of data recovery methods that my parents could try? All I know about the situation is that my Dad went outside to do some work, came back in, and the screen said he had to re-install Windows, so that's exactly what he did. (I'm baffled both by the fact that Daddy knew where the original Windows install disks were and that he managed to install it correctly by himself.) Mommy said that there's nothing on the computer anymore, but there's a good chance that there's still something somewhere, right? I'm sure that they'd be happy if there was an easy method they could use to at least recover some of the information; Dad said he had backed up a lot of files, but they're both missing (and I mean missing in every sense of the word) their address books.

Big hugs to anyone who can help!

So over the four day Golden Week holidays, Mommy and I went to Osaka. We walked an insane amount, saw takoyaki stands every few feet, and spent an entire day at Univeral Studios Japan. That was actually lots of fun (except for the "Back to the Future" ride; both Mommy and I got very very motion-sick, so we really should have skipped it). But the best part by far was the "Jurassic Park" ride.

See, my mother actually hates "scary" rides. And by "scary", she meets anything that bumps, has sudden movements, or drops. She's ridden "Splash Mountain" exactly once, and she was terrified. "Pirates of the Caribbean"? She considers that to be plenty scary as far as sudden drops go. (No seriously, it has teeny mini-bumps at the very beginning. I swear. I know this because my mother brings them up every single time.) But I wanted to ride "Jurassic Park", so my mom bravely agreed to ride it once with me (I figured I could always ride it once by myself later). So we rode, we got "spat" on by random dinosaurs, we got suckered in by the first fake drop, and we screamed our heads off as we dropped away from under the T-Rex's snapping jaws.

My mother's reaction?

"Oh, that was fun! I liked that."

We ended up riding it again later that night, and according to Mommy, it was just as fun the second time around. It was seriously kinda weird. "Who are you and what have you done with my mother?"

Okay, so Mommy arrived in Tokyo yesterday. It was also, coincidentally enough, her birthday, so I brought out presents and some little cakes for dessert. We got to talk a lot over dinner, and it was good to have her around. Anyway, she told me the most hysterical story that I simply had to share.

Mom was apparently at the grocery store and scanning her items at the self-checkout lane. After she finished, she checked to make sure that she wasn't missing anything, and that's when she noticed some money dropped on the edge of the scanner. However, it wasn't just a normal dropped bill; it was folded tightly into a little square shape. It was odd, but my mom picked it up anyway and brought it home. (The motto of our household in regards to dropped money is "Yeay! Free money!" We're the type of people who stop to pick up pennies and nickels on the sidewalk. If you find a dime... whooo! Party time!)

Anyway, Mommy brought the groceries home, and finally got around to the dropped bill. She unfolded it... and she said she was shocked when she found white powder inside. She didn't know what to do, so she flushed it. (She was mostly concerned that she was traveling in a few days, and the bill had been in her purse.) She contemplated tasting a bit, just to check, but she realized that she wouldn't know what illegal drugs tasted like, anyway, so decided it was better she leave things alone.

I couldn't stop laughing when she told me this story. I have no idea if it was real or just a prank, but I keep imaging a guy standing behind my mom in the checkout line, cursing to himself and trying to figure out if there's a way he can claim a previous dropped dollar bill.

• OH SWEET BABY JESUS I JUST GOT PROM PHOTOS FROM MY LITTLE COUSIN. I AM OFFICIALLY OLD. Honestly, if you had asked me how old he was last week, I would have said 11. It's SCARY.

• I've also been in bodily pain a lot recently. (lol) Ever since high school, I've had an unfortunate tendency to hyperextend my left knee if I overstretch, and that's exactly what I did at the gym last week. (stupid knees...) Then we had our annual bowling tournament at work (okay individual score; top team score for the win!), and then yesterday I ended up wandering all around Tokyo looking for a birthday present for my Mom. (Well, present for Mommy, from Daddy. I still have to get my own present tomorrow. ;-_-) And did I mention that I was carting books around all day, too? Long story short, I woke up sore all over. Tomorrow's a holiday, but I need to do more cleaning and shopping for Mommy's visit, so I don't think there'll be much relaxing. Le sigh... It's so tough being a grown up. ^_^

• I was trying to come up with a name for a color at work, so I ended up visiting the Crayola homepage, followed by a brilliant Wikipedia page showing all of the Crayola crayon colors, and I gotta tell you, I was kinda shocked. Did you know that they got rid of Raw Umber? (I fondly remember organizing Raw Umber and Raw Sienna next to Burnt Sienna and Burnt Orange, even though the colors really weren't close enough in appearance to warrent such an order...) Or that they replaced Maize with Dandelion? (Dude, the only reason why I knew what maize was as a kid was entirely due to my love of the color!!) And the new colors introduced since the 90's tend to have horrible, HORRIBLE names like "Wild Watermelon" or "Mauvelous" or "Fuzzy Wuzzy Brown" (SHOOT ME NOW). There is also, interestingly enough, the horrifically named color "Beaver", which just makes me bite my lip and try not to giggle. What are you doing to my childhood obsession, Crayola?

 As mentioned previously, about two weeks ago, I dropped a whisk on a glass in my kitchen and accidentally shattered the thing. And just a few minutes ago, I dropped a metal water bottle and, you guess it, shattered yet another glass. I am so losing the war with my kitchen...

It's time for more reading with Minako-chan! I'm starting to run out of room on my bookshelves; reading is fun, but it sure takes up space.

( (5) The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson ) An interesting enough tale to fill a novella, or short-story, even, but somewhat painful at its full length.

( (6) Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon ) Although nothing new, a well-written story about the trials of an intoxicated author.

( (7) Un Lun Dun by China Mieville ) Fun, fanciful kids lit that's recommended for everyone.

( (8) Light Before Day by Christopher Rice ) A trashy but somehow enjoyable pulp mystery.

( (9) Acceptance by Susan Coll ) A fairly funny story about the trials in a priviledged town: it's kinda like "Desperate Housewives" for the parents of college-aged kids.

Long story short, it took me two tries to make whole wheat banana pancakes this weekend. The first try was a disaster that cost me an hour of prep/shopping time, melted the edge of my spatula (as I tried to scrape one glutenous mess from the pan), and shattered a glass (my whisk apparently has a handle like a brick that can cause serious bodily/glassware-ily injury when dropped). Luckily, I managed to fix the recipe by Sunday and I emerged triumphant. Revenge has never tasted so sweet. Or banana-y.

Update on my previous complaint about the company who insisted on correcting my corrections, even though they're wrong wrong wrong:

No matter how many times we tried to explain that we MADE THE CORRECTIONS FOR A REASON, the company refused to accept them and told us that we had to correct the document the way that they wanted.

Minako-chan: But... these were, like, GRAMMATICAL mistakes.
Boss: Yeah, and the spelling mistakes, too. But...
Minako-chan & Boss: [sigh]

None of us can understand it, seriously. So we're making all of the corrections, but we're sending comments for the places that are just plain wrong wrong wrong. That's not counting sentences that are awkward or written with poor style or technically not wrong but not 100% correct either (I could argue that jewelry goes around your wrist or neck, not your wrist and neck [unless, of course, your company is in the habit of producing combination bracelet-necklaces] but I really can't be bothered to nitpick at this stage in the game, so they can keep their stupid "and"). So I'm not entirely happy. But by focusing on areas that are blatently wrong, this will hopefully drive home the idea that, surprisingly enough, we know what we're doing when we make corrections, and hopefully they'll cut us more slack in the future. SIGH.

An open letter to the people who hired my company to do localization work:

Thank you for choosing to do your business with us. As I'm sure our company president has informed you many many times, our company has its very own in-house native English speaker/translator/proofreader. Namely, obviously, yours truly. Although I prefer translating to the mind-numbing work of proofreading, I am more than happy to proofread anything that crosses my desk. If you feel that my additions still don't quite meet the image that you are trying to project, I am more than willing to accept your corrections to my corrections, or to rework my own corrections for you.

Last week, you gave us a list of corrections, which either came from your clients or from previous catalogs. Understandable reasons for wanting corrections in a language that, if I do say so myself, you are likely less fluent in than I. However, since you are paying us, and therefore indirectly paying myself, I thought it wise to make some minor amendments to your corrections. When you broke grammatical rules, I corrected them. When your word choices were redundant, I spruced them up. When you randomly started a sentence with "it" without ever specifying a specific noun, I rewrote it. Good times were had by all.

However, today we received the latest corrections from your company, and it appears that almost all of your so-called "corrections" are asking us to undo the changes that I made last week. Unlikely as it may seem, I do not actually make these changes for my own health, or because I think I'm so so sooooo much smarter than you, or because I just want to fuck with your mind a bit. I made the changes because "an unique" is not English, or because the phrase "the necklace can be wore" makes me want to vomit a little, or because you used prepositional phrases starting with "with" twice in a 10 word sentence. I don't care if you received this English copy from your clients; your clients are idiots. That is why they are paying you to handle localization for them, and that is why you are paying me to correct you. If you actually think that your high-school English textbook and Babel Fish could do a better job than me, feel free to save yourself the money.

In conclusion, please let me do my job. I beg of you. Freaking let me do my job.

Sincerely with hearts and kisses,

Minako-chan

Has everyone seen this? http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/ It's Garfield, without Garfield, and it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Brilliant.

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I also read that the final Harry Potter book will be broken into two movies so that they don't have to worry about cutting out information. I will fully admit that my first thought was, "Oh, that is a horrible horrible idea." I understand what producer David Heyman says about it being difficult to cut anything from the book. It's the last book, afterall, so there's no time to slip information into the story at a later point. But making two movies out of the book sounds absolutely horrid.

( More about Harry Potter... )

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In random Japan news, there have been recent articles about proposed revisions to the bicyling rules, which actually involve fewer changes and more crack downs on unsafe riding practices, such as wearing headphones, talking on the phone, or holding an umbrella. The reason these changes have been coming up in the news, however, have been because of the crackdown on people who ride with three people on one bicyle: one adult riding with a kid in a back basket and another kid a front basket.

( More about bicycles in Japan... )

• I'm working on the world's saddest rewriting job right now. Basically, some poor woman at Company A worked super hard to put together an English Power Point presentation, complete with narration, to be used for sales to potential foreign buyers. They sent it to us in hopes that we could spice it up a tad, and our overwhelming response was, "This is the worst Power Point presentation in the history of Power Point presentations." It's literally a textbook example that could be included in a guide entitled "How NOT to make Power Point presentations for Dummies". We've got 0 animation or even transitions. We've got bad English. We've got pages literally crammed with detailed information on complex charts while the narration goes "This is a chart. Next page." The narration itself, in poorly pronounced and difficult-to-understand English, is even bracketed by loud "clicks" when the recorder was turned on and off. It's almost horrifying, only made more fascinating by the poor woman's apparent denial. She apparently wants us to change "as little as possible", since she plans on re-recording the narration herself. Lady, I will throw in the narration for free. Please, for the love of god, just let us do our jobs. Or, at the very least, never ever mention our company's name in conjunction with your product. Thank you.
• In better news, the Senshi Gakuen is back online. Yeay! If you're really curious it was basically a super-lame computer goof where our provider's system didn't send all of the required information to the bank when charging us for renewal, which obviously caused the bank to reject the shady shady attempt to squeeze money out of kinomakoto, which caused the provider to cut off services for us deadbeats. It's all fixed and it's actually kinda funny, so it worked out in the end.
• Now that Mako-chan finally got her super sekrit gift, I can announce that "Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 2nd Season" came out for Nintendo DS on Valentine's Day. It's SO EXCITING like you wouldn't believe. Skinship is back and better than ever; I had forgetten how much the lead guy Saeki-kun cracks me up; you can totally sexually harass your underaged next-door neighbor. It's a weirdly awesome game and anyone who enjoyed "Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 1st Love" needs to check this out. Srsly!

Okay, so I'm translating a catalog right now, and one of the items for sale is 500 ml of Scotch sold in a plastic water bottle. I'm supposed to be writing this crap about how it's so nice and convenient in a trendy portable size, but all I'm having trouble coming up with a way that doesn't make it sound completely cheap and sleazy. "Comes with free paper bag to hide your shame from the world as you glug your cares away in the middle of the park!!" I'm sorry, but it's a freaking plastic bottle of Scotch. It doesn't get much tackier. At least it doesn't come with one of those squirtable sports drink tops. THAT would be awesome-tastic.

FYI, as some of you may have noticed, Senshi Gakuen is completely down. Yes, we know. No, we don't know why. I can't really help from Tokyo, so poor kinomakoto has to try and fix things all by herself. Ganbare, Mako-chan! Faito, Mako-chan! I will, of course, post something once I know what's what. We've never had major problems with the web site before, so it's really strange to have everything crap out within the past few months. ^_^;

Holy crap, the translation department has a business dinner with the company president tonight; we're required to think of 3 questions to bring to the round table. KILL ME NOW.

On the plus side, Tokyo is starting to have snowy winter weather, creating perfect days for reading a novel while chest-deep in a bubble bath. So to celebrate, some books! Yup, for a second year in a row, I have decided to keep reading and keep reviewing. This entry will have my last couple books of 2007, and my first books of 2008. As noted last year, I tend to read books with humor, mystery, surrealism, and fantasy, but I'm not a huge fan of serious books, romances, tear-jerkers, horror, or non-fiction.

2007

( (32) Reliquary, (33) Entanglement by Martha Wells ) Fun action novels for anyone who likes the Stargate Atlantis TV show.

2008

( (1) Microserfs by Douglas Coupland ) A lovely tale of geeks ruling the world before geeks ruled the world.

( (2) World War Z by Max Brooks ) A surprisingly serious, entertaining, and highly recommended book about zombies.

( (3) Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link ) A collection of magical short stories with its ups and downs.

( (4) The Neverending Story by Michael Ende ) A rather stereotypical fantasy novel that evolves into something much more.

1. High School Musical 2
   After a somewhat hysterical comedy of errors that was totally my fault ("Where are you?" "In front of your house. Where are you?" "Uh, at your train station."), johnabe came over yesterday and we watched High School Musical 2. I would like to note right now that this was totally not my idea. It was John! I swear to god! But in the end, we were drinking and some of the over-the-top dance sequences were laugh-out-loud funny (the baseball dance-off? oh my GOD the baseball dance-off!!!), so it was a good time had by all.
   
   
2. Shadow Hearts 2
   Completely randomly, I decided to replay Shadow Hearts 2. I was 3/4 of the way through the game, but I hadn't played in probably two years, so I could barely remember who the characters were. Therefore, I decided to just start from the top. Hopefully, I'll actually finish the thing this time.
   
   
3. Final Fantasy (Versus) XIII
   Okay, so I'm obviously very excited about the next FF game. I doubt it will come out in 2008, so I'm placing my hopes on Spring 2009. (But who knows; Square-Enix always likes to surprise me with release dates.) Anyway, Famitsu released some more images for Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII, and they were pretty pretty as always. But the part that made me sit up in my chair? Check out the images for Versus. I know! Hot lead guy has a hot posse! Square-Enix always knows how to snare us fangirls. (FYI, I call dibs on Glasses Guy.) The only thing is that, after playing FFVII: Crisis Core, I'm utterly terrified that they'll all go crazy or start turning into monsters or something, and they'll all be dead by the end. Because if anything happens to Hot Posse, I will CRY.
   
   
4. Zombies
   Completely by coincidence, I have read several stories recently involving zombies. (Really; it's been weird. Weird and hard to sleep at night.) Anyway, it's made me think more about my own personal zombie readiness levels. In general, it's not terribly high (my general earthquake readiness isn't all that great, either), but I've come to the following conclusions that could turn the tide in either direction:
1. Pro: I live in Tokyo, which has plenty of bicycles (for easy, gas-free, faster-than-zombie transport) and relatively good systems in case of emergency (good earthquake readiness should be fairly similar to good zombie readiness... access to emergency food, water, etc = same. access to pitchfork for bashing zombies in the head = different.)
2. BIG Pro: I live a block away from a sword museum. Not even kidding you. A sword museum. It's even shorter if I lept out my window and climbed a few fences. If zombies ever start taking over Tokyo, you'll be able to find me snatching up all the best samurai blades for myself. Let me know if you need anything.
3. BIG Con: I live in freaking Tokyo. The city with dense population, narrow & confusing roads, and no unlimited ammo rocket launchers (if Resident Evil is any indication, this is what I'll actually need to survive a zombie attack). I'm screwed.
   
4. Conclusion? If there's a zombie outbreak in Tokyo, I'm most likely dead meat. But feel free to imagine me defending the local 7-11, sword in each hand.

I'm back at work and I'm exhausted, but that seems about par for the course. (lol) I work on Saturday this week, too, so I have a feeling that I won't be doing anything productive after work for a while. Oh well. The gym can wait a bit longer. The holiday pounds aren't going anywhere, after all. In the mean time, I ended up seeing four movies over the holidays:

Sweeney Todd: The biggest problem with Sweeney Todd was the slow first half. Now, don't get me wrong. Every single bit of exposition was vital to the story, and there was really no way to cut anything out. However, I felt that things didn't really pick up until Mr. Todd began killing men by the dozen. THEN it got hysterical. But incredible visuals by Tim Burton as always, and really, how could you possibly NOT love a movie where Johnny Depp and Alan Rickman sing a duet?

Enchanted: Not as super-de-duper great as I had hoped, but I did enjoy it. It was fluffy cuteness and sparkling puppies; always fun. Plus, James Marsden. Yum!

Pan's Labyrinth: Rented in the States so that I could get my hands on a copy with English subtitles. ^_^ And, um... See, I was totally psyched to see this movie, and it really sounded exactly like my type of film, and I thought I would totally love it, and er... I didn't. I... kinda disliked it, actually.

( Cut for both length and spoilers. )

3:10 to Yuma: This was playing on the flight back to Japan, which was the perfect way to see it. Although I love Christian Bale, I'm not a huge fan of Westerns or Russell Crowe (Tugger!!). As a whole, it was a pretty okay movie.

( Cut for length, but only minor spoilers. )

So long story short? Worth renting with friends for a couple of great performances and a good ending. But maybe not much more than that.

Special Bonus:
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: I finally got kinomakoto to see it, so everyone who knows her should brace themselves, because you'll be seeing it soon, too. It's one of my favorite movies ever, with a great narrator's voice and a spectacularly high quotability factor. Everyone needs to watch it! Then you'll know why phrases such as "Stop multiplying" and "Mr. Mustard" are so funny.

Well, my family is gone, I'm back from visiting

kinomakoto, and I'm leaving again for Japan in a few days. How to sum up the holidays with my family? Busy, loud, incredibly fun. The kids are great, but they're related to me, so we already know that. ^_^ They seemed to enjoy the presents I got them for Christmas (thank goodness), and I got lots of DVDs and things that I had wanted. Hurray! (I also got some extra LJ time from lenariel... Thank you! *^_^* Want, er, a translation or something?)

New Year's with Mako-chan was fun, especially when we found out that the Senshi Gakuen had been hacked to become a portal site for a prescription drug company. We got it fixed and didn't lose anything, but still, that's bad. (BTW, thanks to everyone who wrote or left a message on LJ. Who knows when we would have noticed if left to our own devices.) Therefore, I have decided to make a few New Year's resolutions after all:

 

1. Update SG.com
   The only thing I've updated recently has been, well, my Tokimeki Memorial page, so this year I vow to update some of my old obsessions, like my V6 and translation pages. And maybe add some more manga reviews. Because everyone deserves to know when I'm horrified by New York, New York.
2. Study Japanese
   Because I want to take the Level 1 proficiency exam this year. Actually, that means the real resolution should be:
3. Don't miss the cut-off date for the exam
   That was technically my problem this year. I think I need to sign up by August.
4. Study vacation language
   Mako-chan and I are pretty much decided to visit Europe next Fall, so I want to study the local language a bit. Just so I can say things like, "Where is the bathroom?" or "Get your hand off of there, you bastard." You know. The important stuff.
5. Continue reading and excersizing
   These are two good habits that I started in 2007, so I really hope to keep it up. Good way to keep both my brain and body fit!

Anyway, hope everyone has a good 2008!!