Normally, this title would be reserved for me. Whether it's falling off my bike, walking into a post (usually groin first) or saying 'I love you,' instead of 'one pineapple please,' (often in Japanese, but sometimes to a very pretty grocers daughter) I'm fairly confident I could fill a thousand pages with ways to make yourself look stupid. I do it regularly.
This post is something else entirely. I read this (warning: it's very long) post by a game creator, who recently wrote this post for a gaming website. I recommend reading both before continuing, or at least getting as far through them as possible.
I now have a confession to make. At first, the original article made me rage. It made me so angry that I had to stop halfway through (I've since finished it, through gritted teeth and much fist waving). Not because the men were acting stupid, childish or immature, but because the woman involved was being so pathetic that it made my heart rate increase, my blood boil and any other metaphor related to anger.
When you examine the article, far from being a feminist superhero, she is actually a controlling, manipulative wench. Here is why: Her flowing tears were nothing to do with 'being objectified.' She was expecting her boyfriend (whom she deliberately hides as being her boyfriend until the latter stages of the article, for dramatic effect) to jump into the fray to save her dignity/honour. When he didn't share the same expectations as her, and didn't tell the idiot to shut up, she ran out of the room crying. As exuberant feminists tend to do, she then examined the various relationships involved, checking to see if they were still worth her while. If they don't defend my honour, what's the point in friends - that's exactly what she is saying. Of course everyone is inherently selfish, and relationships of all forms are merely ways to improve ones own standing, physically, mentally or socially, but she expects the rest of the world to carry her views about life; when no one else does, she will cry and huff and puff and make everyone recognise their own mistakes. Whether they want to be reformed or not, they will damn well accept it.
The continuation on Kotaku is almost incidental - her hyperbole filled rhetoric is not dissimilar to my own; it's based on opinion and skewed world-views, nothing more. (Aside from her incorrect usage of misogyny (I can kind of understand it, it's sometimes misused even in mainstream media) belying the actual philogyny in her argument.) Two things strike me - first, philogyny is underlined as being a misspelt word. This means the powers that be determine hatred of men to be far less important than the hatred of women (the penalty for which is death, no compromises) and the wikipedia article I linked to philogyny is orders of magnitudes shorter than the antonym. Equality for all! Especially women. Orwell is correct in any application of equality involving more than one group. It will always be the case, I suppose.
Kotaku is a gaming website, written by a couple of interesting people, a couple of average writers, and a couple of morons, (generally changing positions when the mood takes me) but I never feel the need to go home crying when one of the morons starts saying things I don't like.
Instead I write a blog post about it.
Woah, hold your horses there sparky. She did the same thing! You are no better than her (directed at me, a strange sentence to write).
Except I didn't project my own insecurities onto my boyfriend in the form of a monumental guilt trip, while mislabeling a group of people in an attempt to tarnish an entire gender.
Also - stop trying to ruin my video games, you dumb bint. Also - try a sports bra next time.
Thank you for your time.
(Towards the latter stages of this post, the rage became unbearable and I started writing random nonsense. Couldn't help myself.)
Showing posts with label video game. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video game. Show all posts
Thursday, 3 November 2011
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
The Shinkansen, Tokyo Aquarium, and of course, Happy Birthday Ray!
Happy birthday Ray! First of all, follow that link for my Happy Birthday Ray Japanese lesson. Curtesy of a couple of willing Japanese 'volunteers.' You have no idea how difficult it is to convince Japanese people to participate in such events. They either have to be drunk, or in ann extremely good mood.
Secondly, check out my visit to Tokyo Aquarium. It has more drums, is full of fish; and even has the best meal ever conceived! The whole day was fantastic.
So onto yesterday.
Yesterday was a travelling day, I took the shinkansen (bullet train) from Yokohama to Kyoto; and arrived around 2:30PM, having left at 12PM. Frankly speaking the whole thing was too efficient. While i was on the train I wrote todays entry, so here it is:
At this point I mention Nan and Ray. I got the people in the hostel to say happy birthday in Japanese, and I recorded them, but I've lost that days' pictures and videos. So hey Nan, happy birthday! I'll give you a ring later.
And hey Ray, happy birthday, I'll probably catch you on MSN when you should be working, at a later date.
So I'm sitting on the bullet train, on my way to Kyoto.
I woke up this morning and decided I'd had enough of Tokyo and Yokohama. I'm off to Kyoto, for some serious temple and shrine sightseeing, while meeting up with Pascal for some fun and frolicking; maybe. I'm told there's not a lot to do in Kyoto, other than the temple and shrine route. This has driven a number of my fellow travellers to distraction, and I've found a number of them crave the Tokyo life after only a week or two in Kyoto. I have to say that the type of person who's commented in such a way is usually here for the technology, rather than the general tourism. A number of people have come here on stays for cultural reasons, Naree for example, and loved Kyoto. Then again, she was engaged in dancing activity for a large amount of her time, so it was more like a job than a sightseeing tour I guess. We'll see how it turns out for me, I might get bored of it, I might not.
One of the guys sitting next to me seems extremely nice, he's chatted a little, and even showed me the power socket for my computer. His English isn't very good, but neither is my Japanese so I think we're equals in this sense. The other guy is too cool for school. Ginger hair is big over here, men and women wear it with equal zealousness. Genetically speaking, I don't think it's possible for a native Japanese to have anything other than black hair, so when they see foreigners with blonde hair and blue eyes, they immediately stare, mouth agape. If you happen to be blonde and have blue eyes, and be female, no matter how ugly you are - a job teaching English beckons here.
So to explain my motivation for dropping such a large amount of money on this mode of transport: The shinkansen is just awesome. It's doing two hundred miles per hour, and it feels like we're on a cloud. The trains have their own dedicated tracks which means no interruptions by normal intercity riff raff, and the tracks have neither junctions or much in the way of bends. Those corners we do round, as you'll see in my videos when I upload them, are banked like an american oval to a degree that you can actually feel your bum being pushed into the seat. That's really g-force. However minor it may be, the fact it happens on a train is just plain mental.
I also can't emphasise how luxurious this travel is, even in scumbag class (I accidentally got on the wrong end of the train, meaning I had to walk, bag and all, through all the really nice parts of the train, knocking people, cups, sushi, bento and all flying) I have ample legroom, and I mean ample, just check out the pictures. My baby laptop is sitting so far away from me on the aeroplane style desk, that I'm having to lean forward to reach it. This is amazing. Width is still something of an issue, but since the age of ten it became obvious my shoulders were not designed for public transport. Height is the most amazing thing though.
Most trains require me to enter sideways, while bent double in a full ninety degree shuffle. This modern, forward looking transport system means I only have to nod my head down to get through the doors, and once I'm inside I can stand tall! It's amazing! In twenty years time, foreigners might not even have to duck at all.
I've been on the train an hour or so now and the air hostess lady has passed three times. Now that's (expensive) service.
The noise is also something that took me by surprise. English trains, at their fastest, do half the speed of this thing; but by god do you know they're doing that speed. One hundred miles an hour on an English train may as well feel like a thousand, and every time another train goes past those with gulf war syndrome jump aside for cover; and those sleeping pretend it didn't just make them wet themselves.
Here, when another bullet train goes past, in the opposite direction, at a combined speed of over 400 miles per hour you hear nothing. I kid you not. Nothing. The only reason you know something just happened is because train rocks slightly, and by the time you look over to see why, the other train has already gone.
So it was getting a little crowded between the other two guys, so I switched seats, and using my incredible foreigner powers I've bagged myself a seat with a spare to the side.
The efficiency of the entire endeavour boggles my mind, every time I think about it. It's never late, there's no fuss with tickets and whatnot because you ask someone before buying, buy it from a person, have it pass through a machine, then another person checks it. In terms of economic efficiency, it's probably much more labour intensive than it could be, and therefore much more expensive; the human and mechanical efficiency of such a system means that everything runs smoothly. It's obviously an expensive service, as I've just seen first hand, but the fact a large number of people are using it, even today at a decidedly non-peak time is testament to the value this service holds, beyond the cost.
I guess justifying having eight members of crew on-board a single train, not including the drivers (plural) would be difficult for the bigwigs who run British trains.
On a side note, rural Japan seems to be extremely nice. Contrary to what I was expecting, a large percentage of the houses do seem to carry the traditional style to some extent, specifically the typically oriental roof design, that seems so frivolous and eccentric. It's difficult to see at this speed whether there are any wooden buildings left, I fear this might be simply a dream. The number of rice fields here is also surprisingly high but then again, Japan produces 120% of the rice it needs as a country, so presumably they've got a large export industry in rice. This is of course nullified immediately by all other foodstuffs. Except maybe daikon. They love daikon here, and I don't even know what it is; bar some kind of vegetable. All meat is imported, hence the horrific bill I paid yesterday for my yakiniku meal. A day on and it was still worth it though, so I figure I'm safe in terms of conscience on that spend.
On a further note about Japan; I learned in a geography lesson a while ago that the landmass of Japan is primarily mountainous and cannot be built upon. Therefore, despite being (roughly) 1.1 times the size of England, they only have the luxury of being able to build upon a quarter of that land. This is the reason for the chronic population densities, that top anywhere in the world. Having been here for a while I couldn't really see where this particular mountain statistic came from, or what the Japanese obsession with yama (one of the few kanji I know, 山, mountain) was. I now know. Since we left the built-up regions I've seen nothing but mountains. And I should add they're mountains that are quite definitely not populated, or able to be built upon. The effect is quite incredible, having massive high rise apartments a stones throw from a great big hill. Although most are quite modest, some reach through the clouds. Most belong to chains, and I suspect a lot also have shrines and temples on top, with thousands of steps ala Kill Bill, or any number of samurai/martial arts films.
Factor all this into a population of 125 million, and the density now makes perfect sense in my mind.
Awww jeez I wanted to write so much more, but we're already at Kyoto. Damnit.
You never know, maybe we'll be delayed and I'll have more time to write...
And now for some pictures!
A funny little warning telling you not to run on the platform.
Presumably to see this sign you've made it onto the train; so you survived the platform experience. You never know though I guess; someone might have been carried aboard.
It also tells you the load weight of the table! How thorough a warning is that!
Look how much room I have! There's enough for me and my enormous bag!
I don't think you can buy this kind of space on any other mass transit system. First class? Pfff who needs that...
So this is an aisle view of the train. Looks pretty much like an aeroplane in my eyes.
Three on the left, two on the right.
That's as many words as I can stretch this picture to.
Moving from Tokyo to Kyoto is one hell of a creepy experience. I was in this underground station, and there wasn't a single other person; it was only 7PM!
The hustle and bustle of Tokyo only really begins to become apparent once you move to a city like this. There are still 1 million or so people living here, but it feels like a village... Albeit a village with a metro line.
And this is the view of the station looking in the other direction. Creepy.
It's like something out of a horror film - decimated population, zombies in the woodwork, that kind of thing.
A mini salesman and repair shop.
In the middle of kyoto.
Interesting.
A lot of them were pretty beaten up though it has to be said.
I do think the mini is the perfect car for here though.
So for the Shinkansen videos:
So this is the platypus jawed machine pulling into the station.
I managed to get on the wrong end, and had to traipse through the entire train; knocking people and sushi flying. (they have an airline style food service onboard) A lot of people were very angry. Stupid foreigner.
And this is an onboard shot; looking out of the window. You can clearly see the banking of the track in this photo, and it might make some seasick! Advisory, don't look at this video if you get motion sickness!
Oh wait, this is below the video... Oh well (please don't sue)
So basically this machine is expensive, and horrifically efficient. Efficient beyond the realms of probability. But then again everyone already knows that anyway...
Ride the shinkansen: Tick.
On an unrelated note, Naree used a couple of my pictures on her website.
Picture one: A tree that she made negative. On her homepage as well!
Secondly: A blurred picture of the zanily dressed girl! I don't really like this picture because it's blurred as hell! But then again, covert documentation such as this often carries with it such risks of poor quality. Thanks for using my pics!
Ciao for now!
Secondly, check out my visit to Tokyo Aquarium. It has more drums, is full of fish; and even has the best meal ever conceived! The whole day was fantastic.
So onto yesterday.
Yesterday was a travelling day, I took the shinkansen (bullet train) from Yokohama to Kyoto; and arrived around 2:30PM, having left at 12PM. Frankly speaking the whole thing was too efficient. While i was on the train I wrote todays entry, so here it is:
At this point I mention Nan and Ray. I got the people in the hostel to say happy birthday in Japanese, and I recorded them, but I've lost that days' pictures and videos. So hey Nan, happy birthday! I'll give you a ring later.
And hey Ray, happy birthday, I'll probably catch you on MSN when you should be working, at a later date.
So I'm sitting on the bullet train, on my way to Kyoto.
I woke up this morning and decided I'd had enough of Tokyo and Yokohama. I'm off to Kyoto, for some serious temple and shrine sightseeing, while meeting up with Pascal for some fun and frolicking; maybe. I'm told there's not a lot to do in Kyoto, other than the temple and shrine route. This has driven a number of my fellow travellers to distraction, and I've found a number of them crave the Tokyo life after only a week or two in Kyoto. I have to say that the type of person who's commented in such a way is usually here for the technology, rather than the general tourism. A number of people have come here on stays for cultural reasons, Naree for example, and loved Kyoto. Then again, she was engaged in dancing activity for a large amount of her time, so it was more like a job than a sightseeing tour I guess. We'll see how it turns out for me, I might get bored of it, I might not.
One of the guys sitting next to me seems extremely nice, he's chatted a little, and even showed me the power socket for my computer. His English isn't very good, but neither is my Japanese so I think we're equals in this sense. The other guy is too cool for school. Ginger hair is big over here, men and women wear it with equal zealousness. Genetically speaking, I don't think it's possible for a native Japanese to have anything other than black hair, so when they see foreigners with blonde hair and blue eyes, they immediately stare, mouth agape. If you happen to be blonde and have blue eyes, and be female, no matter how ugly you are - a job teaching English beckons here.
So to explain my motivation for dropping such a large amount of money on this mode of transport: The shinkansen is just awesome. It's doing two hundred miles per hour, and it feels like we're on a cloud. The trains have their own dedicated tracks which means no interruptions by normal intercity riff raff, and the tracks have neither junctions or much in the way of bends. Those corners we do round, as you'll see in my videos when I upload them, are banked like an american oval to a degree that you can actually feel your bum being pushed into the seat. That's really g-force. However minor it may be, the fact it happens on a train is just plain mental.
I also can't emphasise how luxurious this travel is, even in scumbag class (I accidentally got on the wrong end of the train, meaning I had to walk, bag and all, through all the really nice parts of the train, knocking people, cups, sushi, bento and all flying) I have ample legroom, and I mean ample, just check out the pictures. My baby laptop is sitting so far away from me on the aeroplane style desk, that I'm having to lean forward to reach it. This is amazing. Width is still something of an issue, but since the age of ten it became obvious my shoulders were not designed for public transport. Height is the most amazing thing though.
Most trains require me to enter sideways, while bent double in a full ninety degree shuffle. This modern, forward looking transport system means I only have to nod my head down to get through the doors, and once I'm inside I can stand tall! It's amazing! In twenty years time, foreigners might not even have to duck at all.
I've been on the train an hour or so now and the air hostess lady has passed three times. Now that's (expensive) service.
The noise is also something that took me by surprise. English trains, at their fastest, do half the speed of this thing; but by god do you know they're doing that speed. One hundred miles an hour on an English train may as well feel like a thousand, and every time another train goes past those with gulf war syndrome jump aside for cover; and those sleeping pretend it didn't just make them wet themselves.
Here, when another bullet train goes past, in the opposite direction, at a combined speed of over 400 miles per hour you hear nothing. I kid you not. Nothing. The only reason you know something just happened is because train rocks slightly, and by the time you look over to see why, the other train has already gone.
So it was getting a little crowded between the other two guys, so I switched seats, and using my incredible foreigner powers I've bagged myself a seat with a spare to the side.
The efficiency of the entire endeavour boggles my mind, every time I think about it. It's never late, there's no fuss with tickets and whatnot because you ask someone before buying, buy it from a person, have it pass through a machine, then another person checks it. In terms of economic efficiency, it's probably much more labour intensive than it could be, and therefore much more expensive; the human and mechanical efficiency of such a system means that everything runs smoothly. It's obviously an expensive service, as I've just seen first hand, but the fact a large number of people are using it, even today at a decidedly non-peak time is testament to the value this service holds, beyond the cost.
I guess justifying having eight members of crew on-board a single train, not including the drivers (plural) would be difficult for the bigwigs who run British trains.
On a side note, rural Japan seems to be extremely nice. Contrary to what I was expecting, a large percentage of the houses do seem to carry the traditional style to some extent, specifically the typically oriental roof design, that seems so frivolous and eccentric. It's difficult to see at this speed whether there are any wooden buildings left, I fear this might be simply a dream. The number of rice fields here is also surprisingly high but then again, Japan produces 120% of the rice it needs as a country, so presumably they've got a large export industry in rice. This is of course nullified immediately by all other foodstuffs. Except maybe daikon. They love daikon here, and I don't even know what it is; bar some kind of vegetable. All meat is imported, hence the horrific bill I paid yesterday for my yakiniku meal. A day on and it was still worth it though, so I figure I'm safe in terms of conscience on that spend.
On a further note about Japan; I learned in a geography lesson a while ago that the landmass of Japan is primarily mountainous and cannot be built upon. Therefore, despite being (roughly) 1.1 times the size of England, they only have the luxury of being able to build upon a quarter of that land. This is the reason for the chronic population densities, that top anywhere in the world. Having been here for a while I couldn't really see where this particular mountain statistic came from, or what the Japanese obsession with yama (one of the few kanji I know, 山, mountain) was. I now know. Since we left the built-up regions I've seen nothing but mountains. And I should add they're mountains that are quite definitely not populated, or able to be built upon. The effect is quite incredible, having massive high rise apartments a stones throw from a great big hill. Although most are quite modest, some reach through the clouds. Most belong to chains, and I suspect a lot also have shrines and temples on top, with thousands of steps ala Kill Bill, or any number of samurai/martial arts films.
Factor all this into a population of 125 million, and the density now makes perfect sense in my mind.
Awww jeez I wanted to write so much more, but we're already at Kyoto. Damnit.
You never know, maybe we'll be delayed and I'll have more time to write...
And now for some pictures!
A funny little warning telling you not to run on the platform.
Presumably to see this sign you've made it onto the train; so you survived the platform experience. You never know though I guess; someone might have been carried aboard.
It also tells you the load weight of the table! How thorough a warning is that!
I don't think you can buy this kind of space on any other mass transit system. First class? Pfff who needs that...
Three on the left, two on the right.
That's as many words as I can stretch this picture to.
The hustle and bustle of Tokyo only really begins to become apparent once you move to a city like this. There are still 1 million or so people living here, but it feels like a village... Albeit a village with a metro line.
It's like something out of a horror film - decimated population, zombies in the woodwork, that kind of thing.
In the middle of kyoto.
Interesting.
A lot of them were pretty beaten up though it has to be said.
I do think the mini is the perfect car for here though.
So for the Shinkansen videos:
So this is the platypus jawed machine pulling into the station.
I managed to get on the wrong end, and had to traipse through the entire train; knocking people and sushi flying. (they have an airline style food service onboard) A lot of people were very angry. Stupid foreigner.
And this is an onboard shot; looking out of the window. You can clearly see the banking of the track in this photo, and it might make some seasick! Advisory, don't look at this video if you get motion sickness!
Oh wait, this is below the video... Oh well (please don't sue)
So basically this machine is expensive, and horrifically efficient. Efficient beyond the realms of probability. But then again everyone already knows that anyway...
Ride the shinkansen: Tick.
On an unrelated note, Naree used a couple of my pictures on her website.
Picture one: A tree that she made negative. On her homepage as well!
Secondly: A blurred picture of the zanily dressed girl! I don't really like this picture because it's blurred as hell! But then again, covert documentation such as this often carries with it such risks of poor quality. Thanks for using my pics!
Ciao for now!
Monday, 12 October 2009
Tokyo Aquarium.
We then went into the aquarium and had a nose around there. It was pretty good, but here we felt the sting of the Japanese population. It was packed. Absolutely full to the brim. We had to go on a weekend because of my schedule, so I should have expected the crowded nature of things.
Again I'm posed with something of a dichotomy of opinion about the packed nature of certain attractions during the day. Firstly, I can't speak Japanese, so all the shouting and general high level of noise is just that, noise. It holds no meaning to me and therefore cannot be annoying. Secondly, a few smaller attractions aside, I stand nearly a head taller than everyone; so seeing things is not a problem for me. I can see everything, even when there are thirty people in front of a single tank. Of course the downsides are the same no matter where you're from or you're visiting. Lots of people.
These aspects are entirely selfish of course, because my companion was a little over five feet, and couldn't see a thing. I offered to lift her for a better view, but she declined...
So after the aquarium I readied myself for dinner. I have wanted to try yakiniku since I've been here, but it's really expensive; so today I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. If you don't know what yakiniku is, wait for the pictures.
Unfortunately this meal, coupled with the shinkansen ride the following day has pretty much wiped a few zero's off my budget, which is unfortunate...
So now we move onto the pictures, and today we have an awful lot.
It pretty much set my day up with a smile to see these guys driving around in their stupid vehicles, bought a smile to my face from the very beginning.
It was a pretty hot day too; I've no idea how many celsius, but I would imagine a fair number more than in England.
I suppose it looks quite nice, but all that just to house a few escalators? Overkill methinks.
This is from the top of a small (glass again) structure overlooking the entire area. All things considered, it's a very nice place.
It makes an absolutely fantastic sound. It really is thunderous, and sounds amazing to say the least.
I want to learn how to play taiko and wadaiko, but I also like the flute, (you can hear it in almost all of my taiko videos) in the earlier matsuri the players were all able to play everything, again, a fantastic breadth of skill involved there!
The stand seen here didn't look particularly solid when I was watching it, but they all pounded the absolute hell out of that thing, and it didn't even wobble, so they obviously know what they're doing.
I badly wanted to hit this drum when they weren't looking. It's just begging to have the hell beaten out of it.
I'll say again, it sounds like rolling thunder. The kind of sound a hyper car makes in a tunnel, the guttural sensation that makes the hairs all over your body stand on end.
Ok so these are some more shots of the traditional dress. I've not shown you many; the view of the traditional Japanese wedding was an extremely lucky and privileged one and I've just left it at that really. So here's another close-up, even if it's from a rather obscure angle.
The trio, man, woman and girl, are actually a family. From what I understand they travel around performing their amazing act, provide tuition and generally provide taiko based products for Japan.
They're cool!
What you can't see in this picture is the vocal accompaniment he gives while drumming, namely shouts and jeers; (presumably in time with the music) if you've ever seen the shaolin monks live or on the tele, you'll hear them make similar kinds of noises to psyche themselves up. It's all very macho and masculine, and frankly very cool.
So his wife is also fantastic.
They move so quickly between drums, and they move over the face of the drum to create different sounds so easily; practice makes perfect I guess.
The fact it's a family troupe would also help in their timing and whatnot I suppose.
He's pulling quite an interesting face too!
Ok there are a lot more wadaiko photos because I like them so much, but I'll try and limit them!
Sorry!
Taking the plaudits for their great performance.
I want one of those drums...
You can see the traditional dress in this picture as well, amazing stuff.
Sorry for another taiko picture...
How many times can I say fantastic without it getting boring? How many has it been now?
Coming to think of it I don't think I've seen these guys in the flesh before.
They sense electrical currents between the two eye protrusions, and feed on creatures hiding in the sand. All creatures give off a slight eletrical current, so it's a handy combination I think you'll agree.
Steve Irwin look away now.
They were all in the same tank, so they don't eat each other.
Cute in an ugly kind of way, not in a rirakuma kind of way.
Who knows.
Good camouflauge though.
There's not a lot else to say really, without telling you what it is, but that would be no fun.
Yes.
This is basically to illustrate how full it was. This is overlooking a large tank full of tuna, so you're thinking right now, ah, tuna, there would obviously be a large number of hungry Japanese congregating at this part. This may be true, but there were a lot of people everywhere, not just here.
Strange things. I don't know how they breathe. With difficulty, or they hold their breath for a really long time. It's kind of weird to think they might hold their breath when out of the water...
It reminded me of seeing the lobster when diving, and how scary they actually look in the deep dark ocean.
I think they look kind of delicious behind glass though...
Even if you can only remember the last three seconds, they're three seconds of not gliding over the waves. I can see why that'd make any creature sad.
Damned camera.
They also move around extremely quickly which is why this picture is awful. Sorry about that...
It does make you happy though...
Wait for the next few photos!
I had an unbelievable craving for some real meat, everything here is fish or wafer thin slices of some unindentifiable meat, that may have once been a cow...
Read this all the way through a couple of times for full impace. Amazing...
It's cool stuff, for sure.
Those are hot dog sausages in case you were wondering; interesting decision on that front...
But yeah the meal was amazing.
Once a month I will make it my mission to eat yakiniku if I get a job over here.
Halfway through grilling the first batch, and hardly a dent made upon the foodstuffs.
And look at the mound of rice that cost 150円. Cool.
Everything about this setup is cool.
It's all in a tare sauce, I've no idea what it is in English, kind of like a barbecue sauce I think.
It was tasty either way.
And that was pretty much my day. It was all really good, and I enjoyed it a lot.
Some videos now:
So this is the first of half a dozen videos I took of the family; however only two survived... Oh well. Turn the sound up for these; despite the terrible sound quality you can still get a feel for the noise these things make. Unfortunately my videos of the guy hitting the big drum have been lost; take my word for it. It's impressive.
So this is the other video of the family. This has them only playing drums; and you get more of a feel for the sound.
And here are some random jellyfish... I like watching them; they're like a living lava lamp.
I finally took some video of the drum game I like so much! They're all over the arcades in Tokyo, and there are none in Kyoto that I've seen. I'm going to miss these guys while I'm away from Tokyo.
Ok so that's all the video from my trip to the aquarium. Another strange place to visit, just like the zoo. I'm just a sucker for delicious looking animals I guess.
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
Yokohama The Third (or Fourth, I Forget) Day!
So today has been a mega doss day. I ran out of money, so ended up using today to look for jobs and whatnot. I planned on doing this yesterday, but I got an invitation to go to a CONVEYOR SUSHI RESTAURANT. This is an invitation I couldn't refuse.
So we spend a full two hours in the restaurant eating the conveyor sushi. I'll upload the pictures later, and the video I took. It really is a conveyor belt with plates of sushi on it. I'm already thinking of ways I could adapt the conveyor system to help with other things. Maybe a conveyor beer system for long bars. Place an order on the belt, the beer is poured and then sent back down the conveyor to the customer. What a brilliant idea.
So after that we ended up just milling around, playing the taiko drum game (which I love so much I've not taken any photographs of it because I'm too busy playing it) and generally checking out the city.
We watched a man playing a guitar hero style dj game with expert precision; he had obviously practiced long and hard to perfect his skills. The thing is, he had a wedding ring on... He was quite young, so presumably newly married, but we speculated that with the amount of time he must have spent playing this game, he won't be married for much longer. It's also interesting to note the demographic of video game players here, in that everyone plays games. Old grandmas use mobile phones while listening to their ipod, holding a ds on standby, waiting to carry on playing something when they finish their phonecall. It's amazing!
The work ethic here also seems to have lead to a 'play' ethic as well. A large number of people here are unbelievably good at the games, presumably because they've practiced for so long. This means they have to use their spare time, which is in precious short supply, to play these games until they can do them blindfolded. It doesn't seem a particularly fun way of 'playing,' but it's kind of Japanese.
The trains here stop around midnight too, I haven't been caught out yet but I'm sure it's going to happen sooner or later.
The trick then is to hit a mangakisa I think... Maybe I'll stay in one just so I can take pictures and put them on here...
Ok so these are squid! They're swimming around trying to escape. They're going to be eaten. Yummy!
(They're actually quite tasty)
But the fresh ones like these guys here, are really expensive. To pick your own swimming dinner is a status symbol I think.
So these guys looked awfully like some kind of grouper to me, with the always depressed looking downturned mouth. Poor guys. I want to say it's not so bad, cheer up! But they're about to be eaten so... Yeah it is that bad. Poor guys...
And finally, octopus. I don't really like these guys raw, or sushified, but they're really good in takoyaki.
Yum yum.
This guy didn't look very happy though. Octopi are supposed to be quite intelligent, maybe he knew what was about to happen.
So we enter the conveyor belt sushi restaurant! This place is entirely unrelated to the fish above, we just happened upon those in our journey to the sushi place :)
So this is, apparently, quite a big conveyor sushi purveyor. I can see why this might be so, because if I spotted something but was too slow to pick it up, it took about five minutes to come back around! Worse than the airport! Essentially the chefs make sushi that's running low, but they also cater for individual orders too. now that's what I call service.
Ok so this is barracuda!
The portions of fish here are actually more reasonable than I was expecting. The seaweed rolled sushi is much smaller, and much more delicate looking; altogether more pansy in my eyes though. Full on, no holds barred raw fish on a sliver of rice is where it's at. Having never tried it before, I was pleasantly surprised. I don't think I could eat it every day, but as a healthy treat, versus pizza for example, definitely a winner in my eyes.
Ok so this particular dish is the fry of... I forget what. But this freaked my colleague out, she said the fish were, 'looking at her,' when she was eating them... Oh dear...
I thought they were quite nice though. They weren't brilliant like tuna or shrimp, but they were bad like barracuda.
ma-ma
Each colour represents a price. White is the cheapskate one, right at the bottom there. Pink is third leaste expensive, orange second least, blue is middle of the road.
What you can't see here is that I tried some mega expensive fatty tuna sushi, just to see what it's like.
Apparently the fattiest bits of the fish are the tastiest, but I preferred the non-fatty tuna. I don't know why... I obviously don't have the sushi tastebuds.
Ok so the tall signs on the actual conveyor tell the customer what fish is coming past them.
I spent ages learning the japanese names for all the fish, and my buddy painstakingly researched the name on her phone and translator. Now I've forgotten them. Worst. Student. Ever.
Ok so this amazing invention is the Japanese version of that coin game, where you put coins in a machine, it fired them onto a ledge with hundreds of other coins, and if you get lucky it forces some other coins off the edge.
Of course this is Japan, so you also sometimes get balls, which you then fire into the machine, it goes around that big long track going round loop-de-loops and all kinds of other flashy showy things, then it falls into a slot, either firing a number of free coins onto the ledge, or going down a slot that gives nothing. Amazingly over complicated.
Ok so here you can see the coin tray more clearly. It is actually an incredibly simple game, but it's dressed up in such a fancy way that it took us ten minutes to figure out how to put coins in, let alone what anything else did!
Games like this are scary...
Now we enter, the twilight zone.
Most arcades, like everything else here, are divided into floors. (Everything is vertically orientated!)
The lower floors are for children and girls, with cute arcade games (and my personal favourite drum game) and the upper floors are for the hardcore no hopers, who don't like being married or spending time at home.
So I include this picture to illustrate my point. The guys in the ez-boy recliner chairs, are they playing a game? It has horses on the screen so maybe they're piloting their own horse in a derby? No. They're betting on virtual horse races...
So half-life 2 is a pc game... Why is it in an arcade?
Any way to make money I guess...
I only include this because I didn't take many pictures on this day...
Ok so now I'm going to include a link to you for my youtube channel.
http://www.youtube.com/user/NotAzebu
I've put some more videos up, mainly of the crazy Japanese affinity for playing games.
They have one game where you slam a number of buttons, at speeds that make my eyes glaze over, in order to strike a tune or melody. The game in my videos is really popular here, and can be seen in practically any arcade. The surprising thing is that the women here play games too. They're not as good as the men, but they're an absolute tonne better than me.
I've also included a lemmings/lego hybrid game that I think it fascinating. A group of girls were playing, and you essentially have to make the group of lemmings pick up a number of different objects on the screen, by layering lego blocks in certain ways. The combination of the tactile element with the video game portion is really interesting, and something I've never seen done before. I really wanted to have a go, but seeing as it was only girls playing I thought even that would be stretching my 'oh he's only a foreigner,' license a little too far...
So we spend a full two hours in the restaurant eating the conveyor sushi. I'll upload the pictures later, and the video I took. It really is a conveyor belt with plates of sushi on it. I'm already thinking of ways I could adapt the conveyor system to help with other things. Maybe a conveyor beer system for long bars. Place an order on the belt, the beer is poured and then sent back down the conveyor to the customer. What a brilliant idea.
So after that we ended up just milling around, playing the taiko drum game (which I love so much I've not taken any photographs of it because I'm too busy playing it) and generally checking out the city.
We watched a man playing a guitar hero style dj game with expert precision; he had obviously practiced long and hard to perfect his skills. The thing is, he had a wedding ring on... He was quite young, so presumably newly married, but we speculated that with the amount of time he must have spent playing this game, he won't be married for much longer. It's also interesting to note the demographic of video game players here, in that everyone plays games. Old grandmas use mobile phones while listening to their ipod, holding a ds on standby, waiting to carry on playing something when they finish their phonecall. It's amazing!
The work ethic here also seems to have lead to a 'play' ethic as well. A large number of people here are unbelievably good at the games, presumably because they've practiced for so long. This means they have to use their spare time, which is in precious short supply, to play these games until they can do them blindfolded. It doesn't seem a particularly fun way of 'playing,' but it's kind of Japanese.
The trains here stop around midnight too, I haven't been caught out yet but I'm sure it's going to happen sooner or later.
The trick then is to hit a mangakisa I think... Maybe I'll stay in one just so I can take pictures and put them on here...
(They're actually quite tasty)
But the fresh ones like these guys here, are really expensive. To pick your own swimming dinner is a status symbol I think.
Yum yum.
This guy didn't look very happy though. Octopi are supposed to be quite intelligent, maybe he knew what was about to happen.
So this is, apparently, quite a big conveyor sushi purveyor. I can see why this might be so, because if I spotted something but was too slow to pick it up, it took about five minutes to come back around! Worse than the airport! Essentially the chefs make sushi that's running low, but they also cater for individual orders too. now that's what I call service.
The portions of fish here are actually more reasonable than I was expecting. The seaweed rolled sushi is much smaller, and much more delicate looking; altogether more pansy in my eyes though. Full on, no holds barred raw fish on a sliver of rice is where it's at. Having never tried it before, I was pleasantly surprised. I don't think I could eat it every day, but as a healthy treat, versus pizza for example, definitely a winner in my eyes.
I thought they were quite nice though. They weren't brilliant like tuna or shrimp, but they were bad like barracuda.
ma-ma
What you can't see here is that I tried some mega expensive fatty tuna sushi, just to see what it's like.
Apparently the fattiest bits of the fish are the tastiest, but I preferred the non-fatty tuna. I don't know why... I obviously don't have the sushi tastebuds.
I spent ages learning the japanese names for all the fish, and my buddy painstakingly researched the name on her phone and translator. Now I've forgotten them. Worst. Student. Ever.
Of course this is Japan, so you also sometimes get balls, which you then fire into the machine, it goes around that big long track going round loop-de-loops and all kinds of other flashy showy things, then it falls into a slot, either firing a number of free coins onto the ledge, or going down a slot that gives nothing. Amazingly over complicated.
Games like this are scary...
Most arcades, like everything else here, are divided into floors. (Everything is vertically orientated!)
The lower floors are for children and girls, with cute arcade games (and my personal favourite drum game) and the upper floors are for the hardcore no hopers, who don't like being married or spending time at home.
So I include this picture to illustrate my point. The guys in the ez-boy recliner chairs, are they playing a game? It has horses on the screen so maybe they're piloting their own horse in a derby? No. They're betting on virtual horse races...
Any way to make money I guess...
I only include this because I didn't take many pictures on this day...
Ok so now I'm going to include a link to you for my youtube channel.
http://www.youtube.com/user/NotAzebu
I've put some more videos up, mainly of the crazy Japanese affinity for playing games.
They have one game where you slam a number of buttons, at speeds that make my eyes glaze over, in order to strike a tune or melody. The game in my videos is really popular here, and can be seen in practically any arcade. The surprising thing is that the women here play games too. They're not as good as the men, but they're an absolute tonne better than me.
I've also included a lemmings/lego hybrid game that I think it fascinating. A group of girls were playing, and you essentially have to make the group of lemmings pick up a number of different objects on the screen, by layering lego blocks in certain ways. The combination of the tactile element with the video game portion is really interesting, and something I've never seen done before. I really wanted to have a go, but seeing as it was only girls playing I thought even that would be stretching my 'oh he's only a foreigner,' license a little too far...
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