it can’t all be about manga…

I’m so buying this summer time Yotsuba figure when it comes out…

I’ve actually been meaning to mention J-List (I’ll link to the under 18 site for this) since Christmas, believe it or not.  I got a couple of calendars from them (my Saiyuki Reload calendar, which rocks!) and killed a few hours browsing through their website.  The Japanese make some mighty odd things, people.  I ended up getting a bunch of candy for everyone as well as far too many KitKat bars.  (Oddly enough, I’ve only been able to get the KitKat search to work on their adult site.)  Vanilla Bean KitKats… mmmm…. 

They have a lot of other neat stuff there too.  Figures, t-shirts, bento and other cooking things, learning Japanese books, bilingual manga.  I was tempted by the bilingual Nodame Cantabile but couldn’t justify the cost considering that I’m not actually trying to learn to read Japanese.: Also, I picked up a couple of bilingual volumes of the Tale of Genji when I was at the International Manga Museum in Kyoto and haven’t read them yet.  Bad, Cathy.

I was also going to get an ITunes Japan card from them, but ended up buying one on my trip.  I was looking forward to actually paying for Japanese music!  When I finally got around to loading my gift card onto a new account there, I realized that they don’t sell the songs I wanted there!!  I really wanted to buy some High and Mighty Color songs but couldn’t find any.  I ended up buying a few songs by randomly clicking on things until I found some music I liked.  One thing I dolike is that the songs are all either 150 or 200 yen.  I’m not going to have a stupid little balance left like I did with my Canadian iTunes cards.

Whee!  Tonight was the season finale of Supernatural.  At the end of last season, Dean made a deal with a demon: his soul was forfeit after a year if his little brother Sam was saved.  Tonight was the night the deal came due. 

Heh.  I love this show.  Nothing will ever be as evil as the cliffhanger at the end of season one, though.   When we didn’t know if it was going to be renewed or not.  Evil, I tell you! 

This is, however, the perfect time for anyone out there to run out and get the first two seasons on dvd.  Really, run.  Then you can savour it over the long, tvless summer and watch season three all at once when the set comes out right before the fourth year starts up.  I warn you, though.  Everyone I’ve given my sets to has blown through them in about a week.  This year had it’s flaws, though.  Durn writer’s strike.

Er.  If you have no idea what I’m talking about, Supernaturalis a tv series about two brothers who travel around America hunting demons, ghosts and other creatures.  They like to dip into the urban legend pool for some of their stories, many of them are just creepy ghosts.  The show is *really* about Sam and Dean Winchester, though.  They’re so completely believable as brothers.

That’s it, I’m spent.   I’m going off to lounge in bed to read some of yesterday’s manga.   Night all.

Last week when I went to pick up my comics I got the “official” word that the store would be closing.  I guess the building is remodeling and the owner doesn’t want to relocate again.  I’ve been going to the Comic Emporium for my comics since I started working at the hospital - which is about 11 or 12 years.  Sniff.  Whenever I hear tales online of bad comic stores, or places where women comic readers feel uncomfortable shopping I’ve always felt lucky.  The two women there are great, and managed to remember enough of what I read that they’d point out new stuff that I’d like or even things for my nephew.  Whenever I’d have a bad experience somewhere else *cough*Beguiling*cough* I’d always be glad I had such a good store.  Awww.  :(

So what am I going to do for comics now?  I’m honestly not sure.  I’ve been feeling disgruntled about the comics I’ve been reading lately, but haven’t done much to upset the status quo of my reading list.  I had a folder at the store and it always seemed like too much of a pain to fiddle with it or I’d forget to mention it when I went in.  I guess the bottom line is that I think I’ve been spoiled by my manga experiences.  One writer, one artist, one volume at a time.   I feel like whenever I really start getting into a comic they switch something up.  Like the Avengers.  I started reading it when Spider-Man joined the team.  I liked the writing and the art, and then Civil War happened and suddenly there were two Avengers titles.  I didn’t want to read both so continued with the Spidey team.  Still liked Bendis’ writing, but now Yu is the artist.  I don’t like him.  His people look like they’re dead and decaying.  Now I have a backlog of Avengers comics that I kept buying but never got around to reading because I didn’t like the art.  What’s the point?  That doesn’t happen with manga.  If you don’t like it you can drop the series, but you’re not going to have a sudden replacement artist in the middle of Bleach for example.  sigh.  Don’t even get me started on the trauma of having to drop Robin when Willingham took over.  My favorite comic book character and I couldn’t even read him in his own title!

Don’t get me wrong.  I still love superheroes and have no intention of dropping comics, I’m just going to do it a little differently.  Ultimate Spider-Man and Buffy I’m going to only buy when the trades come out, I’m probably going to stop reading things like the Avengers, and be a lot quicker to drop titles when I don’t like it or it’s boring me.  It’s a safe bet that I’m going to want anything with “Titans” in the title or Robin on the cover…  :)  

I buy my manga at the Hairy Tarantula and they can do a comic file for me there, but they don’t get comics in that people don’t order.  Which means that I’m going to have to be more proactive about finding out what’s coming out (I bought the latest issue of Previews which was fun to browse through, but potentially expensive when you see things you’d normally miss) or do more wandering around on Wednesdays.  I work fairly close to One Million Comix which is great for new releases and last minute buying decisions, but for some reason I tend to walk past it without seeing it when I try to go there and it’s one of those stores that I kind of creep around in.  Not sure why since the staff is always very nice and helpful…  They also have a really nice toy selection there which can get pricey.  Last week I went in for a $4.50 copy of Previews and ended up leaving with a Rukia figure as well.  :)

Gah, I’ll figure it out.  I guess in the end I’ll just have to figure out what comics are worth the effort and which ones aren’t.  Either way I’m going to be buying fewer of them now.  I think I’ll probably be buying more in trades rather than monthly.  It’s cheaper that way, too.

I’m going to miss the Emporium though.

I decided to be brave after my last eye exam and give contacts a shot.  Yes, I figured it was about time that I overcame my “eye thing” and contacts would be very nice to have.  I discovered that I have a huge blinking reflex to overcome, but I’m better at putting them in myself than having someone else do it.   My eyes like to send a frantic, “Some dude’s fingers are touching me!! Get them out! Get them out!” message to my brain.  Tonight I went over to Laurie’s and got a live demonstration of taking the damn things out since that was my biggest worry.  (I was actually going to find out the location of the nearest walk in clinic just in case I couldn’t manage.)  Yesterday I spent a whole hour in the optometrists office and had to eventually get him to take them out.  His refrain was “stop digging around in there!”  but his demo was less than helpful as he didn’t actually wear contacts.

I gave them another try tonight but I’m not sure if the experiment was a complete success.  I could *feel* them covering my eyes and my vision wasn’t quite right on one of them.  It made me wonder if the lenses somehow got switched.  Not when I put them on!  I totally knew that the big “L” on the case meant that that was my left lens.  :)  I’m going to put them in again tomorrow afternoon at work and then go to the eye place (conveniently located in my hospital) and have the guy check them to make sure they’re in properly.  Maybe I just need drops or something…

But why am I putting them in tomorrow afternoon?  To see Iron Man, of course!  I went opening night and absolutely loved it.  It’s everything I could want a comic book movie to be, and I even think that comic book Iron Man is a dink.  That Civil War thing was totally his fault.  :)  But I loved Robert Downey Jr. - he was perfect.  And his little robot arm thingy in the lab could have it’s own movie.  I’d go see it.  So my second viewing is my reward for contact lens success.  It’s going to be the first movie I’ve seen since I was 12 that didn’t have my glasses framing the screen. 

Speaking of eye things, btw… there’s a new xxxHolic season/series started.  There are five episodes subtitled so far and the first story is of the grudge-holding spider that webs shut Domeki’s eye.  I loved that story. 

I’m coming to the end of my last full day here in Japan. I’ve had such a wonderful visit, it’s making me not want to leave! (I acknowledge that visiting a foreign country for a couple of weeks is a lot different than working here, so no, I won’t be moving.) :)

Amy (as usual) has been a wonderful tour guide. It’s been interesting to see as well what a difference a month makes. Last year I was here in May, and the rice fields were newly planted but right now they’re just muddy plots of land. Last time the only sakura I saw were a few lonely blossoms on the ground, this week I got to see trees in full bloom as well as ones that were just starting. The trees in Kyoto were much farther along.

I did a lot more travelling around this time. I went to Nara, Kyoto and Osaka with Amy last week, and this week I had a day trip to Kyoto with one of the other English teachers. I saw a lot more temples this time around as well. :) I’ll talk more about what I saw when I upload my pictures to Flickr. I suppose if you’re going to read about someone’s vacation it’s slightly more interesting with pictures…

I did discuss with one of Amy’s classes that one of the things that I would recommend to people coming to Japan would be to travel. Living in Canada I had a very different idea of how long it would take to travel from place to place. Taking the train from Tokyo to Kyoto would be rather fast (I think between 3 and 4 hours depending on which way you went) and I really never thought I’d be able to do something like that. In one day we took an express train from Kanazawa to Kyoto, transferred to go to Nara for the afternoon, came back and checked into our hotel in Kyoto, then hopped on the train to go to dinner in Osaka. Wow.

I did find out though, that the quick jaunt I was going to take to Akihabara tomorrow was complicated by the fact that I looked up the information for the wrong airport! Haneda airport has a shuttle directly to Akihabara, not Narita which is where I will be. Oops! Big oops! I’m going to take the Narita Express train to the Yamanote line and transfer there. I won’t have long though! Narita is pretty far out of the way and I think it’s going to take me over an hour to get to Akihabara. I’m probably only going to have a couple of hours there. That’s okay though. If I find the right store I’m sure I can do a lot of damage to my Visa pretty darn quickly! I’m going to try to find either Animate (so… many… floors…) or Gamers since I seem to like buying figures.

Ah, wish me luck. I think it’ll all be okay. I’ve got to go finish packing now and make sure all of my new treasures are cushioned properly or at least aren’t going to break anything else. (I think the only thing I’m really worried about is my Kyoto Starbucks mug. The Totoro mug is bubblewrapped and in a box…)

Next post will be from Canada! sniff….

I spent 2 hours walking around the Animate shop and other anime stores in Kanazawa today and spent all of 600 yen. And that was on a set of School Rumble figures I bought because I was ticked at not buying anything else.

What gives?

I think a lot of what was on display was for shows I’m not particularly interested in or have even heard of. Amy also says that this location has only been open for a few weeks so they might have stock issues…

All I can say is, thank goodness I found that anime figurine shop in Osaka! :)

One of the more interesting stores in the building was a doll parts shop. Doll heads, bodies, wigs, outfits… all in pieces you can buy to form your own creation. If I was a local I would definitely give it a shot. The dolls they had on display were beautiful, if a bit goth-like and creepy. (Some of the make up jobs on the dolls were Blade Runner-lite. Not the kind of thing I see sold in Canada.)

I’m going to go back to Kanazawa later in the week and I’ll pop in again to see if they have anything new. I guess for now I will be content with my Osaka purchases and the Totoro music figurine I bought at a craft village.

I actually just went online to check out travelling around in Tokyo for the day since I have about 6 hours to kill between my flight from Komatsu and the one I’m taking to get home. There’s an airport limo shuttle that runs from the Narita airport to various Tokyo destinations… and one of them is Akihabara…

Should I do it? Heh heh. I think I would be ashamed of myself if I didn’t. Or at least go back to the Nakano Broadway building where I bought all of my figures last time. But Akihabara is choice number 1 right now.

Now I am off to bed at the absurdly early hour of 11 pm since I have to get up at the even more absurdly early hour of 5:30 am because I am going back to Kyoto for the day. I am going to go to the Kyoto International Manga Museum, which is conveniently located across from Nijo Castle, another hot destination point. I’m not sure what else I’ll have time to do while I’m there.

Today we headed into Kanazawa to meet up with some of Amy’s friends at Starbucks (I had the sakura cake) and to go to a late evening enkai. During our exploring we found the new location of the Animate store there. It’s conveniently located just up the street from the old location. :) This is the store where I dropped most of my money on the last trip and where I bought most of the random anime merchandise I brought back. I’m going to be a bit better this time around, but it’s still going to be fun. They take Visa. :)

Part of the danger is not only is it just the Animate store, but now it’s in a four story building that’s filled with anime, manga, model/figure parts and Lolita Goth clothes. There’s even a cafe that I’m going to have to visit. I’m going to have a lot of fun exploring the building, though it’s up in the air right now which day I will be going back to shop. Today was just a quick pass through. :) They had some beautiful figures though.

The enkai was fun and I was happy to discover that while I am absolutely crap at remembering Japanese phrases to speak I’m better at figuring out what people are talking about. Well, the really simple conversations they’re polite enough to have around the chick who only speaks English, anyway. :) I got a little impromtu lesson on pronunciation and phrases.

The food was interesting. I was happy it started out with sashimi, battered chicken and roast potatoes because I have a fish aversion and that was what was served for the last two courses. We had nabe that basically had a fish chucked into it which I tried to avoid. I was served some of the veggies that were in the nabe and towards the end of the evening they brought out a big bowl of rice, eggs in a bowl and some chopped onions. (I think they were green onions, anyway.) This was all stirred into the leftover broth and fish left in the nabe pot and I ate some of that once it was checked for fish chunks. :) It was surprisingly tasty! (I had a horror movie moment when I witnessed someone eating a fish eye. Way to combine two of my least favorite things: fish and gross things happening to eyes. Uh!)

All in all an enjoyable evening meeting some friendly Japanese people and watching them interact. The night was capped by watching a drunk man yell at a parked cab while we were waiting to pull into traffic. Our cab driver was laughing at him. It was all quite amusing. I think someone said that he didn’t like the company of the cab that was taking his verbal abuse.

And I still have shopping at Animate to look forward to and another trip to Kyoto on Tuesday. I found out they have a manga museum that opened a couple of years ago and I’m going to try to go.

I mentioned in my last post that one of the souvenirs I got in Kyoto was a small container of candied sakura blossoms. I figured I’d give them a try today and…

I was rather disgustingly reminded that sugar and salt look really really similar. Blech!

Amy doesn’t know why the store was selling salted cherry blossoms, but figured it was a cooking ingredient.

I’m just glad I tried them before giving them to someone as a gift. Amy spit it out when she tried it… I actually swallowed the bit I ate and it took a good two hours to clear the taste.

Beware snack buying in foreign countries!!