Archive for September, 2008

Life, Games and Avatars

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

It reads "half of life is a game". So enjoy your life! I only wish it came with continues and ways to get extra lives. ^^.

I know avatars are pretty popular. Does yours really look like you? If not, what determines your avatar's looks?

Jin-Roh

Monday, September 29th, 2008
Protect Gear  019

Here’s my second Revoltech! My first was the purplish EVA01.

If you’ve seen Jin-Roh, then you probably would recognize this suit of armor, the Protect Gear. Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade or simply Jin-Roh (人狼) is a 9 year old animated movie. I think I saw it in 2000 or 2001. The story’s dark, but it’s quite the animated movie. Not really for kids because there the themes in the movie are rather deep, even though Jin-Roh borrows heavily from the tale of Little Red Riding Hood (the darker version, yes, there are 2 versions).

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Namaste India 2008

Monday, September 29th, 2008
Namaste India 2008

Neil attended the Vietnamese Festival the week before. You can read about this experience here. I had wanted to go, but when I had time, the weather decided otherwise… but last week was a different matter.

Last weekend there was an India festival. The whole section of Yoyogi Park right opposite NHK Studio Park was cornered off and dedicated to this event. Stores were set up and many were promoting tours to India, Indian wares, arts and craft etc. Basically almost everything Indian. There were also movies from Bollywood. I grew up in a multi-racial and multi-ethnic environment, so I’ve been exposed to Indian culture. Indian movies are quite interesting, provided they come with subtitles. ^^. Long movies though, with lots of singing and dancing. I find it fascinating that whenever a song starts, dancers just pop out from thin air. ^^.

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1Gbps fiber-optic service

Sunday, September 28th, 2008
misc  001

Forget that 160Mbps I talked about earlier. I want me some 1Gbps lovin’!

KDDI Corp will launch a fiber-optic communications service with upload and download speeds each of up to one gigabit per second on Oct 1. The new service will target people living in single-family homes and low-rise apartment buildings. The traffic speeds will be the fastest in eastern Japan, up drastically from the current 100 megabits per second.

With the service, KDDI aims to catch up with Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp, which has a share of over 70% in the market for fiber-optic broadband services for single-family houses.

KDDI will charge 5,985 yen in basic monthly fees for Internet and telephone services, down 1,155 yen from the current price, if a user subscribes for two consecutive years.

KDDI will start offering its fiber-optic services, which are now available only in six prefectures in the Kanto region and nearby Yamanashi Prefecture, in four cities in the northern prefecture of Hokkaido.

From Japan Today.

How Japanese female figurines are made.

Saturday, September 27th, 2008

Panther told me of these series of vids detailing the creation of his latest figure in YouTube uploaded by sleepylafiel. It details the creation of a Japanese figurine. The vids are from a DVD whose cover is pictured here….

It’s a rather long vid, about 90 minutes total and it’s all in Japanese. Despite the language barrier (if you don’t understand Japanese), I’m sure you’ll be able to understand the techniques and attention to detail that is given to make just one of these figures just from watching the videos. It’s like a documentary really.

Although I recommend watching the whole thing, you can always start off with part 2 and part 8 to wet your appetite. In part 2, you see how the whole figure come into being and in part 8, see the attention to detail when it comes to painting the “cat’s ear”, the techniques used to make it look realistic under different lighting.

Here are the vids

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9

Enjoy.

Please do it on the mountain

Friday, September 26th, 2008
Please do it on the mountain

Found another one of these “Please do it at somewhere else” posters around Tokyo Metro. These posters are supposed to educate commuters on certain “do-s” and “do not-s” when using the trains. This particular one tells us to “please do it at the mountain”; be considerate of others when holding bulky belongings. Here’s another one “Please do it at the beach”.

I think posters like these are quite helpful. At least it helps raise awareness to certain issues. I would like to know how effective they are though.

Hachiko and Waiting Around Shibuya for Dinner

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

hachiko  003

If you know a little about Japan, I’m sure you’re heard of Shibuya. The place where just about every traveller to Japan will visit at least once. If you’ve been to Shibuya, you must have met “Faithful Hachiko”. Better yet, if you were meeting a Japanese friend (or one living in Japan), you must have been asked to meet up there. There is a rather touching story being “Faithful Hachiko”.

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