Just another Picture

Not blogging for a while due to several non-interesting reasons, so I’ll post another interesting picture, courtesy R. Pelisson - http://www.SaharaMet.com.

Blow up !

Have you ever felt the need to blow something up ? That’s pretty much how I feel right now, but since I’m very peaceful and can’t hurt a fly (if they dodge my strikes that is), I’ll just post a picture.

Subjectivity

Many things have the potential of pissing us off one way or another, everyday. I’m going to write about one that infects virtually everyone, my self included, in some way.

In short, some people simply don’t respect others opinions/ideas/beliefs/etc thinking that they are in some way, “wrong”. In my view this is caused mainly by two things, our natural self-centeredness and the fact that we see only what we want to see.

Truth is, we don’t see reality, we see our interpretation of that reality and depending on many factors we may grow to have difficulty on seeing things other people see.

This in itself is not really problematic, I don’t understand why some people like some things, the real problem is when they don’t understand and have the presumption to judge it wrong or inferior to something else. This is pure lack of respect, that comes when people egoistically think that what they “see” is the truth.

Unfortunately there are major displays of this happening everyday with very serious results in the form of ethnic and religious intolerance, and everyday we are also fed up with minor displays, when people criticize your beliefs, ideas or hobbies, just because they don’t like/understand them.

It would go a long way in making this a better world, and stopping stupid conflicts if we started to learn and teach respect towards differences, but its only possible one small step at a time.

Kodachi Ran-Ai

The last Seitei Jodo Kata, Ran-Ai, is very long and very impressive when done right, the one I show here is a Koryu kata from where the seitei version probably originated. I don’t know enough to see any difference between both, besides the fact that the one in the video is being done with a short sword, while seitei Ran-Ai is done with the longsword.

And now for some quality Jodo:

Random facts from Japan

I’ve been writing this to post since I finished the travel report, but only now it’s finished. Damn I’m lazy. Anyway, these facts stem from what I personally saw over there, some confirm myths others don’t, but they are all at least mildly interesting (I hope).

1. Japanese are short, but only if the average height in your country is above 1,80m. I’m a pretty average height European, and I didn’t feel higher than the Japanese.
2. Servings are small, if you are used to American sized servings, that is. I easily got stuffed, but most importantly,
3. Japanese food in Japan is DELICIOUS. Seriously, their food is very very good. You can easily see that they have much care with what ingredients they use and that contributes allot to the taste, plus,
4. Japanese food is cheap. Of course if you go to a gourmet restaurant you will have to sell a kidney to pay the bill, but there are TONS of cheap restaurants and their food is always very good.
5. There are more vending machines than Japanese people. Well, not really, but it should be a close call. You find vending machines everywhere, and a small insignificant 20 meter back street can have up to half a dozen of them, most of them sell drinks, but you can find snacks as well as clean underwear inside some bathrooms.
6. I saw no alcoholic drinks in vending machines, and I didn’t see any selling used underwear, but probably because I didn’t go to the right places.
7. There are no people in Tokyo. Thing is, unlike European cities (at least the ones I know), Tokyo is much more divided. There are work areas, living areas, shopping areas, leisure areas, etc, all clearly divided. In the work and living areas you will find very few people in the streets (except at rush hour of course), while the shopping/restaurants areas will be packed full of people. It’s an interesting contrast.
8. Everything closes very early. Restaurants close at 9 (some close a little later but not by much), and if the are full they will send you away even if it’s 8:30 (happened to me), so don’t delay your search for Japanese nourishment. Izakaya, are a type of bar that also serves food, where people go to socialize and are open all night, so they are a valid option for dinner.
9. Karaoke is AWESOME ! I never thought I would like it so much, but it’s really very addictive. If you ever go to Japan with a group of people be sure to try it.
10. Taxis have different prices depending on the company. I’m used to taxis having the same look and price, but in Japan not only do taxis look different depending on the company they work for, the prices also vary. Odd.
11. They have great arcades. Guitar hero and other rhythm based games where born there and I had the chance to take a look at some of these, but the best was one pod thing where you controlled a gundam mech. The screen was huge (nearly 180º), you had headphones with a microphone and the controls where two pedals and two joysticks. It is a bit expensive but a load of fun plus its online though I played only with bots (probably the matchup is rank based)!
12. At night almost every car you see in the road are taxis.
13. You hardly see any car parked in the streets.
14. Most of them run away for your camera lens if they notice it.
15. The train/subway lines are incredibly confusing at first, but when you get the hang of it, you realize that their transportation systems work really good.
16. Convenience shops are very convenient (no wonder they call them that). Not only can you find many useful things there (from food, drinks, batteries, umbrellas, etc), but you can also find the best ATM’s if you ever need to withdraw some funds. Most are also open 24/7.
17. The trains always stop at the exact same spot in the stations, so line up at the marked spots on the floor.

The end of me

I stole the title of this post from a friends msn message (Diablo 3 will be the end of me), but in my case it’s more something like “Metal Gear Solid 4 IS the end of me”.

After a long time without a really addictive game I got Persona 3 and shortly after another one that vastly surpasses it. Metal Gear Solid 4 is all people say it is, definitely the best game in a very long time, and is making me loose way too many sleep hours hehe.

I had played MGS 1 and 2, but didn’t finish either.  They had great stories and characters yes, but the gameplay was not specially compelling, specially MGS 2 with its endless backtracking. MGS 4 still has a great story and characters and extremely long cut scenes,  but its gameplay is drastically improved over its predecessors and is, oh so much more fun !

This is definitely one of those games that does is all right. The production values are extremely high, with great looks, fluid animation, awesome soundtrack and sound effects as is expected from a MGS. Another great thing in the game is the amount of minute details, specially the fact that snake really is old, so if you let him crouched too long his back will hurt and he will groan alerting any nearby enemies.

Adding to all this the gameplay has received many improvements and additions. In contrary to previous games, if you want to play MGS like you would a shooter, then you can, but not only that, it improves your options to the level that you can choose to sneak and not kill anyone, or you can take your rifles and go head to head with the enemies, as well as you can opt by taking them down at a distance with a sniper, or maybe you prefer to use only grenades and create many big explosions, or mines. The amount of weapons available is huge and each one borrows a different playstyle. This of course isn’t enough, so you are also given many gadgets to play with, that you can use to distract enemies, hide (the famous cardboard box and a barrel), remotely scout ahead, among other things. Variety is huge and you are only limited by your imagination.

Of course nothing is absolutely perfect and the great story and long (I mean REALLY long cutscenes) may not be everyones cup of tea, but for me its just perfect. This is one game that I see myself playing over and over again.

Diablo 3 is coming !

Hell yes ! One of my favorite games from all time is returning ! I wasn’t really hopeful that that splash screen from blizzard would be diablo, since it could easily be a protoss or a deathknight to pave way for some announcement regarding those two games, but after a week of agonizing and thinking “what if it’s Diablo?” here he is ! At blizzard’s site you can see a nice cinematic a lengthy gameplay movie and some more info on the game.

Sure it will still be a year or two, at least, before they release the game, but now there is hope for the future of mankind ! Or at least there will be hours of fun, while plowing through Diablo’s minions.

The website is down !

Found this video the other day through company email. Hilarious !

Staring at the ceiling

There are days where all I want to do is lay down and stare at the ceiling and do absolutely nothing. This is frustrating because then I think of everything I have to do, the pile of books to read, manga to translate, anime to watch, models to build, stuff to study, games to play, and so on and so on. My backlog is large enough that even if I retired today I would have enough stuff to keep me occupied until I was 80 years old or so, and yet there I am unable to move a muscle. Don’t know why it happens, but fortunately tomorrow is jodo and iaido practice day and that always helps to regain focus.

Oh and I also had some articles to finish and post here, but yeah, can’t be arsed to write them right now, so here is just a useless post instead.

Iaido Embu

Some time ago I posted a video to show what Iaido is. Well forget it, this is the real deal. In this video you have Sensei Ishido himself performing a Koryu Embu.

Inspiring !