A new restaurant opened up two days ago, and I went tonight to try it out. I had no idea what it was before arriving, but I’d watched the construction with interest and figured I should give it a whirl. It turned out to be a yakiniku restaurant … a lamb yakiniku restaurant. I grilled up some lamb, some mutton, and like a whole goddamned onion. It was super awesome. Lamb – the other red meat! Yummmmmmmm.

Busy beyond words. Replied to email tonight for the first time in about a week, and still didn’t get to it all.

I’ve been poking around Nintendogs. It’s cute, but when Famitsu gave it a 40/40, in my mind, that about wrapped it up for the Japanese game industry. I can’t really explain in depth right now, but things are gonna get a lot worse before it gets better, and the next hardware generation is going to claim some serious Japanese company casualties. Maybe I’ll write my reasoning up in-depth post E3; in the meantime, feel free to flame me in the comments. Actually, don’t. Hold that angry thought for a few more weeks.

In any case, I accidentally named my dogs a terrible pun. The first one was a blenheim male Cavalier named Pepper — named after the Sgt., I suppose. The second, a female golden lab I got today, I named Kai, after the Druaga heroine. …so my dogs are Kai ‘n’ Pepper. Hot!

I’ve also been listening to Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, which has leaked out a few months early. Really damn good, if full of ridiculous track names. Sufjan Stevens is a sort of spiritual folk acoustic banjo-playing singer-songwriter. “Flannery O’Connor set to music” is a good encapsulation; his last album, Seven Swans, even has a track based on “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Stevens has set himself the laudable/insane goal of creating an album for each of America’s 50 states. He started with his home state of Michigan, and he expands his vision of the American midwest with album number two, Illinois.

My favorite track right now is either the Philip Glass-inspired revival number “Come On! Feel the Illinoise!” or the lower-key “The Seer’s Tower.” The latter track reimagines America’s tallest building as the quiet center of the end of days:

In the tower above the Earth
There is a view that stretches far
Where we see the universe
I see the fire, I see the end

Still I go to the deepest grave
Where I go to sleep alone

If you like his songs, then please buy his albums.

Today in Jiyugaoka, I saw a white shirt with black block letters proclaiming:

EATHLINGS
WELCOME
LITTLE
ALEINNS

So, everyone be nice when they show up.

It’s been a long week and I wanted a new toy, so I cashed in several PSPs worth of points at Bic Camera and picked up a 1GB iPod Shuffle. I am in awe. There are moments when you know that what you’re holding is something from the future – like those aforementioned PSPs – but the iPod Shuffle is something else. It’s about the size of a cigarette lighter, but half as heavy. It has absolutely no moving parts, in fact, it hardly seems to be there at all, but when I push “play,” music comes out. I’ve had a lot of portable music devices, but none that have made me go “gosh” like the Shuffle has. I wanted a player so small I would hardly know it was there, and by God but the Shuffle delivers.

I am amused by the lanyard – cleverly, it’s a strap with an attached USB cap, and not a holster. It’s also referred to as a lanyard in the manual, a word I didn’t know existed outside of E3. Even more amusingly, the image is labeled “Lanyard (SUTORAPPU),” which begs the question why it wasn’t called a “strap” in English in the first place.

Autistic yukihime readers may remember that my three hard drives are named Ryu, Nina, and Lin. So when it came time to name the 1GB iPod, it only took a few moments to think of the obvious response: Odjn.

Now comes shifting my library to iTunes…

Christian asked for pictures of my recent Mexican bonanza. I think you have tacos in America, but who am I to question my audience? I give you tacos!

That was probably underwhelming, so here’s something much cooler: a complete set of Pepsi Twist Super Mario Bros. bottlecaps. Also available in extreme angle vision.

Recently, a bunch of web movie people got to tour the set of Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain and do some interviews. I’m quite looking forward to The Fountain; it takes place in 1535, 2005, and 2500, and mixes conquistadors and space travel with a modern-day love story… well, I’m hoping for something special. The structure and themes sound similar in many ways to Light, and as I’ve mentioned many a time before, I love Light. (As usual, please don’t read the bitter and spoiler-filled reviews at amazon.com.)

In any case, one of the more interesting pieces of news to come out of this junket was that David Bowie will contribute a “third” Major Tom song to the soundtrack; presumably, Space Oddity and Ashes to Ashes are the first two. Oh, and Bowie is working on a rock opera adaptation of Watchmen.

Yes, that Watchmen.

Ogawa-san, everyone’s favorite Klein-bottle manufacturer, has started her own blog. It’s called “Dou de mo iin,” which is a pun on “Dou de mo ii” (anything’s fine) and “iin” (doctor’s office). She’s translating it “Dr. Whatever’s Office,” which seems fine by me.

Ogawa wrote me asking for a link. “I’d appreciate it if you could link to me from yukihime.com,” she said. “Your site’s popular and if you did it I’d get lots of hits (laugh).” So, link-linking away! If nothing else, it’s good to learn at an early age to be careful what you wish for.

I particularly enjoyed her post on the Marugoto Ringo Pai (Whole Apple Pie), a spherical concoction from Nagano which somehow combines the flavor of apple pie with the sensation, texture, and shape of eating a whole apple. She also attended the Aichi World Fair and blogged several times about it. She offers recipes for a genki drink and egg cheese toast. And the morbidly curiously can find out what’s on her iPod mini or her thoughts on generic pharmecuticals.

Now, I don’t know how much our audiences overlap, but hey, she asked for a link. Happy birthday, Ogawa-san!

For some unknown reason, the grocery store near my house has set up a sort of Mexican Food kiosk. It may be permanent (it’s in the “international” section), but I’m worried I’m in a test market and will wake up one morning to find it vanished like some kind of ethnic Brigadoon. You can get taco seasoning, taco sauce, salsa (still no hot), guacamole dip, corn taco shells, and even plain corn chips which don’t taste anything like kimchi or yakitori. I even bought a can of refried beans!!

Clearly this is too good to last, but in the meanwhile I’m enjoying it for all it’s worth.

from musicwhore.org

“Singer Songer, a new band featuring Cocco and members of Quruli, launched
its official site. The band includes guitarist Kishida Shigeru, bassist
Satou Masashi, Cornelius keyboardist Hirohisa Horie and FEED drummer Dai
Tarou. They first got together in the studio, when Cocco recorded “Sing a
Song ~No Music, No Love Life~” for Tower Records’ 25th anniversary. Singer
Songer made its live debut opening for Quruli at the end of 2004. The web
site states Singer Songer makes its debut in May 2005.”

So … happy …

I took an accidental nap for four hours this evening and ended up eating dinner at Denny’s around 1:00 A.M. On my way out the door, I noticed I only had one of my gloves. Oops! It wasn’t in Denny’s, so rather than go straight home, I retraced my circuitous path home as I was taught in Sesame Street, and eventually found it five blocks away in front of Wendy’s, only a bit worse for wear after an hour of rain and getting run over by taxis.

Anyway. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but two rights and a wrong make an awesome! Listen to Ted Leo cover Kelly Clarkson by way of Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I have, over and over and over.

At the GIA, we did our share of classic April Fool’s Day jokes. So it is with great pleasure and honor that I tip my hat to IREM. A hilarious writeup for four console designs, techspecs, seven games with several screenshots each, third-party support, and even a developer’s blog hosted on an external site … these guys are true masters of the form. All hail IREM, lords of April 1st!

I’ll be translating bits and pieces of it over at the Gaming Age Forums, so the Japanese impaired should keep an eye out.