A marvel of japanese engineering and technology: the vending machine! These magnificent devices provide travelers with delicious thirst quenching nectar known as tea (or coffee).  Not only that, but in the land of the rising sun, these contraptions also hold cigarettes and alcohol. And the best part, that are everywhere!

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Literally you can find a jihanki (自販機) on the corner of every street, at the entrance to almost every building, inside the lobby of almost very building, etc… For example we have 2 machines in my dorm (ドーミー谷町), then across the road, 2 across the other road (the dorm is located on the corner of 2 reads), then 3 further down that road, 2 more the other way, etc… Im at the stage when I know which jihanki sells what drinks and at what price, so I always take the rout with that one jihaki which has that one special drink at the lowest price. That drink is:

It used to be called Crystal Lemon, but now its called mistio. It is 100円 in that one special jihanki, 110円 or 120円 in other jihanki. Its a 500ml soda drink with the taste of lemon. Delicious, just delicious.

Back to the topic of vending machines. Not only do they sell you beverages, but some actually talk back to you! There is this one jihanki near my house which can talk, but not just talk in normal japanese, oh no. It talks in 関西弁 (Kansai dialect, Osaka accent). I find it so awesome! Here is a pic:

If you are even a bit into japanese TV or animation, you must have heard the tile Great Teacher Onizuka. It is a world famous series with a manga, which started in 1997, a japanese TV drama (TV series) which was broadcasted in 1998, and then a 43 episode anime which aired in 1999-2000. And now, in the summer of 2012 they have decided to remake the TV drama into a more modern version with a slight change in story. It is being broadcasted all over Japan on Fuji TV every tuesday at 10:15PM (literally its being aired as I am writing this, too bad I don’t have a TV set in my room ).

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The first episode came out last week (3rd of July). I downloaded (DLed) it from a very nice website and watched it on thursday. Although it didn’t have any subtitles, I managed to understand 95% of it. Excluding some words which i could make out cause Onizuka was speaking too fast at times, I can proudly say that I understood everything.

Im enjoying it so far, will make a review when it finishes. Everyone who watched the GTO anime/ read the GTO manga/ watched the old drama, should watch this to!

Here is a picture of the main cast (Murai, Onizuka and Fuyutsuki):

So I just finished the anime Welcome to NHK (NHKにようこそ！).  It was as good as expected. However when I started watching, my expectations rose. The series is what I needed right now to show me what to look after and who not to become :S

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It is a story of a collage drop-out NEET hikikomori “living” in an apartment in Tokyo. He thinks that everything happening in his life is due to a conspiracy made by the NHK (Nihon Hikikomori Kyoukai). Then one day he meets Misaki, a cute 18 year old girl, who’s life is almost as bad as his, who decides to help him cure his hikkikomori-ness. Then he meets an anime otaku, also his junior in high school, Yamazaki who coincidentally lives right next to his apartment ~purin.

 

Overall I really enjoyed the show! The characters were solid, the plot was consistent and the art was ok for a 2006 anime. What let me down a little was that there was a little too much depression for me. I do understand that its a important aspect of the show, but id like to see a happier conclusion…

I will give it a very strong 8 (out of 10).

It is that time 0f year, when all of us fighting game fans can rejoice and watch the worlds largest tournament - EVO! Held every year in beginning - mid July at the Caesars Palace in Las Vegas Nevada. This is like the olympics of fighting games! All the greatest players gather there and compete for the title of the worlds greatest fighter. The games that are featured this year are: Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade edition version 2012, Street Fighter X Tekken, Soul Calibur V, King of Fighters XIII, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and Mortal Kombat 9.

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The level of gameplay displayed by these players is amazing! They whip out combos and tricks which were not even imagined to be doable o_O

Here is a link to Eventhubs and Shouryuken, who are doing a full coverage of the event and they even have some link and embedded live streams.

What is important for me as a Street Fighter fan and player are the results of the SF players, so here they are; these will be the top 8, fighting on Sunday 8pm LasVegas time:

Winners bracket - WW|Infiltration vs. MCZ|Daigo - Humanbomb vs. CVPR|PR Balrog

Losers bracket - AVM|GamerBee vs. BT|Dieminion - TH|Poongko vs. eLive|Xiaohai

Now all that is left is to w8 until monday (Japanese time) and watch the top 8 battle it out!

PS: here is a vid of Daigo beating GamerBee in the 1/16th:

So I was watching Yuru Yuri ♪♪ and then this randomly appeared… It reminded me a lot of my high school physics teacher Shepelev.

Вообщем во время просмотра аниме Yuru Yuri ♪♪ появилась вот такая сценка… Она мне очень силно напомнила нашего любимого учителя физики из 10й Рижской средней школы - Шепелев. Когда она показала систему координат, я сразу подумал о Шепелеве, а потом еще и вопрос почему небо голубое! Сразу вспомнил уроки физики XD

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A must visit destination for everyone going to Tokyo!

In the suburb of Tokyo called Mitaka, there is a park (or more like a forest), which is the home for all things Ghibli.

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We were greeted at the entrance by Totoro - the receptionist XD

I would like to show you guys more pictures, but unfortunately taking photos inside of the Ghibli Museum was strictly prohibited, therefore I can only tell you what I saw.

First room was an introduction to the world of Ghibli: it had the drawings of each frame from various movies, and it showed how animation is created by skipping through those frames at a high speed. Then there was a room with lots of background art stiles, like from Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, and Arietty. They even had a life sized doll house which was featured in Arietty. Aside from animation techniques and stuff, there was a cat bus shaped playground for kids, the Laputa robot on the roof, a cafe, and a shop. I bought myself a badge for my bag (I’m collecting badges from all over the place and am putting them on my bag, all because of my good friend Ruben XD) and a small metal figure of the Laputa robot.

Afterwards we had some food in the cafe, and that pretty much sums up the whole day :D

PS: I also ended up in Shibuya, so I took some pics of the famous crossing: 

Here is the photo album:

There was one sole gole today: go to Akihabara and buy buy buy!

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First of I’d like to say, that after spending a whole day in Akiba, I have come to the realization that it is greatly overrated! Sure it has huge anime and electronics shops, but it isn’t as grand as was expected. My imagination of Akiba was this huge road with anime shops on both sides and arcades. Well i got exactly that, but not as big as initially thought. Because I have spent 4 months in Osaka and in its anime/tech district Nipponbashi, I expected Akiba to be three times the size. It is a bit bigger than Nipponbashi, I do accept that, but for all the hype that is around it… you can just go to Nipponbashi and get the same stuff, and with less people in your way (less gaijin too).

I could have spent 200$ today, but money doesn’t grow on trees. I managed to scoop up some very nice stuff though!

• Denpa Onna (Erio) fig for 500円
• Bakemonogatari (Sengoku) fig for 400円
• 2 omamori charms for 700円 each
• a huge Steins;Gate poster for 400円
• and a Bakemonogatari (Senjogahara) fig (present) for my good friend Ruben for 800円

Pic:

Full album here:

My friend Kosuke and I went to Tokyo for 3 days.

So we took the Shinkansen from Kyoto to Tokyo. It was awesome!

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I wanted to take a picture of Fujisan, but unfortunately there were so many clouds that i could even see the mountain, let alone take a pic…

Once we got here, we were planing on going up on the Sky Tree, but since it only opened in May, we couldn’t get any tickets, everything was booked out… We should have pre booked a week beforehand :(

We still went there, looked at it from the bottom and took some awesome pics!

Then we went to Asakusa and look at an old temple. Got pics of that as well.

After having nowhere else to go, we decided to go to 聖地 (holy land) of all us オタク - 秋葉原 (Akihabara). When I saw it, my heart started racing! Soo much anime in such a small space. I was a little disappointed though. I had imagined that it will be this huuuuuge place with like hundreds of stores, but it was pretty small in size, compared to the widespread Nipponbashi in Osaka. It is still a very amazing sight to see. With big 6 story buildings which are dedicated to selling anime related goods, 5 or 6 arcades and even a huge Yodobashi Akiba store.

So tomorrow I will be spending the whole day there, looking at anime stuff, buying figs and playing Street Fighter, jubeat and Project Diva. Also it was kinda sad to see this famous place had been demolished and a new building is being built:

Full album here:

DAY 3:

As a man of the Nights Watch, it is my duty to protect The Wall from everything that lies north. That is why I was given the mission of going up on top of The Wall.

The Great Wall of China! I architecture marvel, if I do say so myself. To get up there we had to take a cable car up into the mountains.

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The one disappointment was the weather, thru ought the whole trip it was cloudy and at times it rained heavily. On the other hand though, if it was sunny, we would have most likely died of the heat, cause it is summer after all…

We only had an hour or so on the wall, so my dad and me, we just ran off and started taking pictures of everything XD

The reason there is no sun is because Winter is Coming!!

Also they had some awesome panda hats on sale there (Look at the pics in the gallery at the end of this post)

 

DAY 4:

Plan for the day:

• go to zoo
• look at panda
• ????
• profit

Beijing Zoo! To get there, we took the subway. WOW the subway system in Beijing is soooo neat and tidy. I was very impressed, I even think that the trains themselves are better than the ones in Japan. They had screens with maps and all the stations were announced in Chinese and Engrish.

So anyway, we got to the zoo and went straight to the pandas. And what do you think… they have all eaten their lunch and are now sound asleep… So all we got to see were some butts of sleeping pandas… But luckily there was this one panda who was still moving and I managed to capture his face.

There were bunch of other animals around, and we got some pics of them as well.

After the zoo, we went for lunch and I challenged myself and ordered some MapoTofu! I managed half of the plate, and almost died doing that. Now I understand why Tachibana Kanade loved this stuff, its delicious once you get used to the taste of burn in your mouth.

That concludes my adventures in Beijing. Next up is Xi’an. We took a train to Xi’an from Beijing West Station. Now that is what I call a crowd, never seen so my any people at a station in my life.

Photo Album:

As you all might know, the english translations of signs in China are horrible, and sometimes hilarious. So here is a compilation of all the Engrish that I have seen during my trip to China (some of them are correct in English, but have mistakes in Japanese):

View album on Imgur