I went to a matsuri last night. The friend I was meeting at the festival was 90 minutes late, due to circumstances beyond her control. Normally, that might have irked me; normally, I might have noticed. But having had the foresight/addiction to pack the new Castlevania DS, I spent those 90 minutes happily trolling around the map with Soma a new movement ability. My friend was apoplectically apologetic upon her arrival, having made me “wait” so long, and I couldn’t properly explain how much I had thoroughly enjoyed that hour-and-a-half without sounding like I would have been happier had she never shown up at all. (I wouldn’t have been. For the record.)

While searching for something to make for dinner tonight, I struck upon the Army’s recipe for yakisoba. 25lb beef, 8lb peppers, 6lb spaghetti. Yield: 100 Servings.

While poking fun at EA’s upcoming superhero fighter, Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects, a friend and I came up with a rather abstruse parody–Marvel Emesis: Risibly Imperfect.

Our talent is wasted on the game industry.

Mom: you want us to bring you some good pancake mix?
Me: that’s okay, thanks though
Me: I’ll never use it. I don’t use nice things
Me: I’ve played too many RPGs
Mom: huh?
Me: RPGs train you to hoard your rare items
Me: I’ll just save the imported pancake mix for the last boss encounter

Why are keitai cameras so wonderful?

Well, if you’re wandering the SummerSonic music festival and run into the lead singer of the Arcade Fire, you can totally geek out and take a photo.

Without a keitai camera, you’d just think I was a liar. Who’s lying now, liar?!

More tomorrow.

So I thought I’d try out the Japanese iTunes music store. I was able to preview Ayumi Hamasaki’s new single, but when I tried to buy it for 200y, Apple informed me that my account was restricted to the US iTMS (no doubt due to the U.S.-based credit card), to which they would now politely redirect me. Stay inside the lines, children.

I fired up WinMX, and 20 seconds later was downloading a 320 CBR MP3 of “fairyland” at 250.0 kB/s. I didn’t even want the song, really. At first, I just wanted to try out the Japanese iTMS; by the end, I was hoping to prove a point. What, I’m not exactly sure. The only conclusion I can really draw is that Ayumi Hamasaki’s new single sounds a lot like her old ones.

In any case, any time I want to give a large megalithic corporation money, and they won’t let me no matter how I try, I strongly feel they might want to look into their business model, perhaps changing to one more able to receive my money.

(As administered at my local grocery store this evening.)

MATH
If an American soup recipe requires 4-6 12oz. cans of chicken stock, how many 260g bags of liquid chicken bouillon (diluted by 2-3 times their volume in water) are needed to substitute?

VERBAL
What is the difference between chicken stock and chicken bouillon? Describe how the two are used in the cooking of soups. Cite examples. You may use the back of a Japanese bag of liquid chicken bouillon as reference.

…

POST-DINNER UPDATE: My tortilla soup received a 1600 in deliciousness from the judges. They were especially impressed by the total lack of tortillas. When pressed for the secret of my culinary success, I thanked “desperate circumstances.”

In the end, imported upscale corn chips were substituted for fried corn tortillas, tomato puree for tomato sauce, “melty pizza mix”¹ for Monterrey Jack, and a correctly calculated amount of chicken bouillon dashi (two bags of bouillon, 5 of water) for chicken stock. Hard-to-find items procured against all international odds included sour cream¹ and chili powder. Any time I feel my life in Japan has become too Westernized, cooking an American meal provides a rude awakening.

1. This is the name of an actual cheese blend in Japan, and is referenced as such in Japanese recipes. It could be worse; it could be Velveeta.
2. There was a restaurant in Kiryu that served tacos with sweet, whipped cream. Um. The Hokkaido-made sour cream I found comes in an adorable 100g jar (about 4 oz.), making each spoonful feel preciously delicious. The consistency is a bit thicker than U.S. sour cream, too.

Advise me: should I care about any of the bands that are playing before TV on the Radio at 14:05? Or do I get to sleep late next Saturday?

I have failed. I thought that I was becoming less dorky–I’ve made some good progress in that direction–yet tonight I bought “3-nen B-gumi Kinpachi-sensei (Densetsu no Kyoudan ni Tate!) Kanzenban,” or “Class 3-B Kinpachi-sensei (Take the Legendary Platform!) Perfect Edition.” This is the “perfect edition” of a dialogue adventure which puts you in the role of a Japanese middle school teacher. Even more obscurely, this edition is sold only at 7-11. I have failed in my attempts to reintegrate with society.

3-B Kinpachi-sensei, for those who don’t know, is a long-running TBS drama about a gruff-but-kind-hearted middle school teacher who helps a group of about-to-graduate middle school students deal with life, school, family, all sorts of things! He’s a swell guy and we all learn a lot of lessons about each other…and ourselves. It’s a good setup for a recurring Japanese drama because they can just stick in 40 new crazy kids every season, and maybe one or two become breakout stars by the end of the show. In any case, you don’t actually play as Kinpachi-sensei in the game, but as a substitute once Kinpachi-sensei is laid up in hospital (probably for intervening in a knife fight between two students or something). You follow the kids from the start of their school year until graduation.

The “game” is set up as 22 1-hour “episodes,” just like the show. It’s also anime-style, despite being based on a “real life” property. It’s from Chunsoft, makers of many fine dialogue adventures, and was fairly well received upon its original release about nine months ago. As someone who taught English for three years, I have a special place in my heart for Kinpachi-sensei.