so glad busy week is over!

midyear seminar thing was just ugh... not to say it was a complete waste of time but... ok maybe it was a complete waste of time. i would have much rather seen my international students give their presentations than sit through workshop after workshop of stuff ive already done before...

and then there was english village! the numbah wun high school in the city put on this all-day english boot camp thing full of fun and games, and me plus a handful of other ALT soldiers were there to help with the excitement. boy oh boy, cant anybody hold them no.1 kids down. theyre so advanced with english conversation. youd think you were talking to university graduates.

then there was house of crazy live that me and justin played in... only one small lick of one song though! haha.

and then i did a lot of laundry.

OMG.

so exciting stuff first:

im pleased to announce that with the help of steve's bday gift to me i was able to determine my blood type! now i can tell all my students!!
behold!!!


in other news, the green day concert was most triumphant. i didnt expect the crowd to be so into it and crazy but they were! lol. we had tickets that put us in the standing arena b-3 which was actually not all that far away from the band. boy, does green day know how to work a crowd. im glad i got to hear the live performances of... basket case, american idiot, blvd of broken dreams, 21 guns, and wake me up when sept ends. but actually the best part was in the middle when they did this awesome polka cover medley of Shout, Stand By Me, and like 3 or so more songs i cant remember lol, but it was totally sweet. and the visual displays were sooooo good-looking! i appreciated the pyrotechnics too hehe. i took back with me a shirt and towel~ yay~



and then there were tarus!



man, sqex makes such good-looking figurines... the pix is just about the actual size of them too (their size in-blog, not the clicked, fully enlarged size). i have 2 more and brought them all to work, but im missing shantotto ;_; dont know if i should try my luck at getting the last one or not... but the last time i did that i ended up with almost a full other set haha. i have the star sibyl, ajido marujido, robel akbel and the taru ark angel in all... robel akbel is pretty creepy though haha. but the ark angel is awesome cause he floats! and his weapon is so huge compared to the rest of his body!

oh and plum blossoms are blooming! once they start looking prettier maybe ill get some snapshots of that.

ive been in ffxiii hype for the past few days. i must haved watched the newer trailer - the one with leona lewis' My Hands as the theme, and set in eng lang dialogue - dozens of times and i still dont know whether i like it or not lol... then i go back to watching the jp trailer and it annoys me to no end how awesomely GOOD all the voice acting is compared to the english >< i mean come on. whoever was in charge of setting up Rogue Galaxy's english voice over crew did a damn good job... i mean it's sqex. they could have held a big contest just in one single english speaking city to pick some good voice actors and to think what they managed to scrounge up... makes you think they plucked some random folks from the office to do the voices lol. (not to say there isnt the possibility of workers in sqex's programming, financial, translation etc. departments who are also talented voice actors hehe). in any case, i think it's such a big move for sqex and sony to get such a high profile artist to do the main theme. i guess theyre keeping their eyes ever on those dollar signs.

rant continues. ugh. the english voices. so is Snow supposed to be a texan? and is Fang supposed to be maori? lol. also... there's like a bunch of awkward dialogue going on with Hope. see, i could live with the overall sound of all their voices, but sometimes it's like theyre not even trying. there's even this thai fandub on youtube that seems to pack more emotion into the delivery lol... but i dont understand thai so i guess that's a little unfair.

man... i dont think anything will take me higher than what i experienced in avatar the last airbender; off the freaking hook in terms of voice acting. you could tell all the voice talent people were into their characters' personalities, motivations etc.

i guess im done ranting.

about the look of the game itself, i love the costume designs ;_; im so pissed that i'm going to just miss the summer anime con season when i come back to CA (have i whined about this before? i feel like i have already...). that is... not to say im planning on ffxiii cosplay - that'll all be decided after i play it!

today i miss those canadian dinosaur chicken nuggets that you could get at Costco.

so i got a fukubukuro today! as i mentioned before, none of the surprise/ happy new year bags i saw as i was window shopping around new years interested me, but yesterday when i went to Sports Depot i saw this one bag that had a puff jacket, hoodie, long sleeve shirt, short sleeve shirt, hat, gloves and muffler for one Fukuzawa =D i told myself that if today id go back and if there were still bags left i would get one, and sure enough there were... so... yay!

Wedding Dress by Taeyang is a pretty hot song + vid - it's just that his dancing + piano is so good! i was just watching a bunch of vids on youtube and after clicking around, i saw this one song in particular had almost 2m views.

here's the song with eng subs: Wedding Dress by Taeyang

oh yeah and i got WAR to lvl 68 today ^^ AND i got my 4th STR merit finally lol

art meme for 2010

maybe i'll spend the holiday we have on monday drawing something new! in other news, a friend got me to watch "glee" which i think is pretty cool! basically it's a TV series that FOX put out about a young high school spanish teacher who comes to be in charge of the school's glee (singing) club. high school drama ensues, lol. being a teacher myself, it's crazy how much i can relate. they need to make more episodes!

oh wait! for this semester's oral communication class i do indeed need something to be drawn! the lesson we're making the kids do is basically this: "how do you overcome your sadness/ depression?" and on their worksheet thing they're going to have a picture that looks like:
/( - n - )\ >> [ ? ] >> \( *^-^*)/ <3
key phrases we're going to make them memorize for the test will be something like,
"When I'm sad/upset/depressed, I overcome this by~ ________________."
"I overcome my sadness/depression by~ _________________."
~ eating sweets
~ playing video games
~ listening to music
~ talking with my friends
~ going on a walk with my pet, etc.

and then they need to write a handful of supporting sentences using whatever hodgepodge of grammar they want.

the reason why we're addressing sadness and depression is because in Japan, this is around the time kids start feeling the pressure from entrance examinations... sometimes leading to suicide and all that uncool stuff, so it would be better if i could give this as homework to 3rd year students too. sadly i can only force the freshman to do it, lol. also, it's all cold and wintry here brrrrr!

i have nothing else to report lol.

on the legend of zelda phantom hourglass: OMG you tap the bomb from a distance to pick it up!

DAMN IT!

so i got back into this game after getting it a long time ago - maybe when i first got to japan and for some reason as i was playing brave story i was reminded of zelda so i decided to give the DS some love today.

i was on this part where youre supposed to pick up these bomb flower things and hurl them at rocks to blow them up and for the first few times it was pretty natural and good, but there was this one bomb that i couldnt pick up for some reason! then i was like, i wonder if this is a dud one so i went back towards the beginning of the dungeon to pick up those first ones again and i couldnt! i was like what the heck why cant i pick these things up?! i kept clawing at the DS screen with the stylus using all sorts of funny motions - (maybe im supposed to draw a circle around the bomb, or maybe its like you walk into it and youll automatically pick it up - no. lol.) so after like 20 minutes of blowing myself up i went on google to search for stylus tips and somewhere along all the searches i find the line 'tap the bomb from a distance to pick it up...' and i was like OMG, YOU TAP IT!!!??!? THAT'S ALL?!?!

ugh!

anyway, the refreshingly cute DS link is as enjoyable as when i first gave this game a whirl many, many moons ago. anyway, if i finish this game, i think i might get spirit tracks in japanese too.

so i started playing Brave Story a few days ago and from the start i always felt the game mechanics were kind of clunky, but the plot, characters and overall concept made up for it really. the translation team also did a pretty nice job capturing personality! i just ran into this one ridiculous line and had to blog about it:

"Us minus you equals me. Do the subtraction."
-- Masked Man, Brave Story

and the main character is the silent protagonist type! yeah!

went window shopping again today. this time in hamamatsu. last time i remember going there was when i was trying to look for a plain red tie for the Alto Saotome (macross frontier) cosplay lol. anyway, not only are there plenty of nice-ish sales during new years, but every store puts up surprise bags for sale too! im usually a big sucker for surprise bags, (especially at anime cons lol) but nothing i saw really called out to me. there was this burt's bees one i saw for 3000yen but all i really wanted was a nice lip balm collection... but inside the bag were all these scrubs and bath salts and some other stuff i wasnt at all interested in. anyway, im proud to say i didnt blow buckets of cash today. actually, the only thing i bought in hamamatsu today was a quarter pounder set at mcDonalds.

hmm, where to go tomorrow...

oh! forgot to mention that i made those pajama bottoms yesterday! in a previous post i wrote that i bought some plaid fabric and was going to do some sewing over this vacation so... go me! i accomplish things! they're very 1990s, meaning longish and super baggy - way to take it back.