byoki

Well this weekend was really not that exciting. This week I have my Japanese history final and my Japanese language finals. Also I didn't have any plans so I thought it would be best just to stay home and do as much studying as I could Saturday and Sunday. I slept in a lot Saturday, tried to skype home but the internet was bad, then around noon I decided I needed to go out to get some food since my host mom was gone. So I headed off to Sannomiya and tried to find a Wendys because I was really longing for some regular American food but couldn't find anything so I ended up getting some curry at some little place. The other reason I went to Sannomiya was to play that gundam arcade game. For my conversation test we had to pick a piece of news and talk about it and I picked an article about how that game is getting a firmware upgrade and the features it was adding so I thought I should know what I was talking about. I'll rant on about that game later in this blog because it will be a lot I'm sure. After words I decided to just check out gamers because they have random sales that are really good. I ended up picking up another gundam model, which I will also hold back on talking about until later.

So I went home and from that point until Sunday night I was just going between playing DS, watching Gundam Seed Destiny on youtube, messing with my PSP to get new programs isntalled, and a little studying here and there. By late sunday I was really regretting staying home all day and was really looking forward to going to school just to get out of that house. For dinner we had this hamburger thing, it was just the meat with some sauce on it. It tasted fine but my stomach started to hurt right after I got about half way through. It was pretty light and it was more like a pressure so I thought I was full. After dinner I just laid on my bed but slowly it got worse and worse and when I tried to go to sleep the pain kept me up pretty late. It wasn't excruciating or anything like that it just felt like there was a lot of pressure on my insides.

In the morning I felt like crap but I had to go to school because I had two finals. I was barely able to eat some yogurt and headed off to school. The walk to the station felt so terrible. I really didn't want to go on anymore. On the train wasn't too bad because I could find some sort of sitting position that didn't hurt as much. At school I just felt really bad. I kind of bombed the conversation test because I just didn't know the new vocab I needed to talk about the story and I could use notes but looking at that totally throws you off. I got an 82 on it which is much better then I thought. I tried to eat some ice cream and fruit for lunch but couldn't get it all down. The history test wasn't too bad I thought. If this was a real class I would have worried because I didn't put college level answers to the questions but since this is make-believe-joke-of-a-college class and there was extra credit I'm sure I'll get a good grade.

Right after I turned in the test I hurried home and the walk from the station to the house was so terrible, I wanted it to be over so badly. I some how made it and fell right asleep. I woke up for dinner and had enough of an appetite to eat dinner. I messed around online for a bit then went to sleep at like 11 or something. The next day I felt better but still had some discomfort so I called in sick and just layed in bed most of the day. I watched like 20 episodes of gundam seed destiny I think, I'm almost done. I didn't take a nap just sat around all day. When I went to school this morning I was really happy to finally get out of that house.

So the semester is really close to being over, here is what I have left; Thursday: kanji test and reading comprehension, Friday: grammar and listening test, Sunday: field trip to Kyoto, and Monday and Thursday: meaning less Japanese history class since the final is done. Then it's off to Tokyo to take lots of pictures and spend lots of money.

Oh also I'm hanging out with one of my penpals tomorrow. I don't know if it is a date or not though. I've seen her pictures and she's really cute and were having dinner and seeing the lights for the luminaria festival. It's always hard to know what is and isn't a date. I think as long as you don't call it a date there isn't much pressure. Oh well heres hoping things work out.

Now for the rants. First that Gundam arcade game. The game is called Mobile Suit Gundam: Bonds of the battle field (kidou senshi gundamu: senjou no kizuna) and it is a giant dome pod that you enter in and sit inside. The game uses a projector to give you a giant hemisphere view from within the mobile suit. You have two flight sticks and two peddals. The flight sticks control movement, left, right, forward, turhing, etc and the buttons on the sticks control lock on and meele or long range weapon. The peddals control dash and jump. It is really easy to get the hang of the controls and it really feels like you are piloting a giant robot! The hemisphere view really brings it all together as you will see stuff in your peripheral vision and since the controls are the way they are you do more normal movements, none of the crazy stuff that main characters do in the show but things that the regular troops do, which is what you play as. I don't think I'm doing a very good job explaining it but the way the whole presentation comes together it feels like you understand what the anime characters are actually doing.
But this game has some huge problems. The first is the graphics suck. Like you can play the game online with other arcades across Japan, so the graphics are held back for that but this really looks like a dreamcast game. I never understood why they can't just put a freaking PS3 into these are arcade games to get decent graphics. Second the projector is pretty low quality. I mean it is kind of understandable since they are high mass production and run pretty much 24/7 but its a really low resolution image, making kanji nearly unreadable, and it has really bad screen door effect which takes away some of the experience. The game is also kind of pricy. Its 500 yen for 2 plays and each play lasts for 3 or 4 mins, so compared to other arcade games its not a terrible yen to min rate but its not something I think I could justify playing everyday, atleast with all of my other vices. Also you have to buy an ID card to play. The ID card is cool because you choose your character's costume, voice and default mobile suit and it prints out this card with your name and an emblem and stores all of your win records on it. But at 300 yen it means your first play costs 800 yen.
Now more gundam rants. At gamers what I decided to buy was the 1/60 scale wing 0 gundam. I kept going back and forth on this because I am going to tokyo and didn't want to waste all my money before I went but these 1/60 scale are kind of rare and Gamers has a sort of ware house or budget store kind of vibe in their gundam section so I thought when that thing is gone its gone for good. So going with that mind set I HAD to buy it. I've yet to start it but I am glad I bought it because for 2500 yen it has a light up chest. Whats really cool is that you build the little light circuit yourself they just give you some wire pieces already bent the right way. I'm really looking forward to having that one finished. With this one I also decided that I'm finally going to start buying spray paint and painting the models. I sprayed some of my completed ones with this top coat stuff which adds a hint of flat metalic look to them in addition to protecting the decals. With wing 0 I can get by with just buying white, red, blue and gold. And white red blue are colors that tons of gundams use so it won't really be a waist.
The problem with spray painting them is how do I keep the pieces organized. What I plan to do is cut out all of the pieces, trim them, sand them (since I am painting them the extra scratches wont show up) spray them, ink them then assemble them all. On the 1/60 models the pieces are simple and big enough it should be ok but on the 1/100 master grades there are somewhere around 200 pieces and a lot of them are really small. Just digging through a box of parts could take forever.
Lets see what else do I have to rant about. I'm playing castlevania order of eclessia on DS right now. I like the main character being a strong non girly female and the weapon system is really good but I'm at the end game part right now and I'm just stuck with nothing to do but keep leveling up, and leveling up in this game usually breaks down to you running into a room killing 1 monster running back out then back in so that he spawns once more. Normal castlevania games make mosters lower the amount of exp the give as you level up but in this one they stay the same. Which is good and bad. It kind of encourages me just to kill the same thing 1000 times. At any rate once this is done I'm going to try and burn through Phoenix Wright 3, so that I can do nothing but Dissidia when that comes out on the 18th.
Well theres another long blog for you all, bye