Just a grab-bag of things that have been happening lately ( Read more... )

While nowadays I listen mostly to synthwave, chiptunes, and video game soundtracks, my playlists used to almost entirely consist of goth music. I picked Philadelphia for university without realizing that it was the headquarters for Dancing Ferret Discs, the record label for a lot of the bands I listened to--and probably named after the Dancing ( Read more... )

​I actually went to go see a movie together with softlykarou! The last movie we watched together in a theater was...well, actually, it was あん, but before that it was The Golden Compass, way back before we moved to Japan. I'm not usually much of one for movies, and even less for movies in a theater ( Read more... )

Not at the same time, obviously.

Yesterday, my parents came into town and softlykarou and I went down to meet them at the Shedd Aquarium. They're members and go a few times a year. They're much better about it than we are--while we were members of the Field Museum for the last year, I'm not sure we went once--and often we only end up going when they come in ( Read more... )

I say finally because we missed them by twenty minutes at the last Flower Festival we attended in Hiroshima.

I have a bad habit of springing for concert tickets when I haven't actually listened to any of that band's recent albums. My record is probably the last time I went to see VNV Nation, 15 years after they released the most recent album I ( Read more... )

You can tell Japan is a high-trust society with good social cohesion because the elevators hang around forever but close instantly when you press the 閉める button.

I woke up late, so after showers and breakfast again at Lotteria, softlykarou and decided to go to Sanjūsangendō again. But apparently everyone else had the same idea, because when we got to the ( Read more... )

Over a year ago, I first wrote about my idea to run a Legend of the Five Rings game inspired by Game of Thrones. It seems like a perfect match--L5R players often talk about how the game is more about questions of loyalty and honor and conflicts between families than about finding more treasure and looting the bodies of your enemies, and from what ( Read more... )

Journey is one of those games I've always wanted to play that I knew I would never have a chance to. The main lifespan of the PS3 occurred while softlykarou were in Japan, with it only being out for a short time before we learned that we were moving there, at which point buying one was kind of pointless, and when we moved back I had gone away from consoles ( Read more... )

I'm sure that comes as news to none of you ( Read more... )

It's listed in the book as "chanas or chole," based on which ethnic group is referring to it, but the phrasing reminds me of some kind of Fremen ritual.

It's a chickpea kind of day. softlykarou and I went to the symphony to see the Shen Yun Orchestra, which was pretty good, although I admit I preferred the original compositions over their performance of ( Read more... )