AIKBA! A day spent navigating up and down one cramped, crazy multisensory, multifloor store after another. Akiba, the venerable Mecca of otaku the world over, was a long street filled with tall skinny buildings all trying to outshout each other as throngs of geeks made their way down it, occasionally vanishing into one of the shining, gaping maws that awaited them. Was it an eye-opener? Most certainly. Would I want to go again? I'd say yes, but my wallet is sitting in a corner screaming "No! No! NO!" You figure it out.

We spent the day there, going in succession from Kotobukiya, K-Books, Gamers, Asobit Chara City, the @thome maid cafe, Toranoana, and Animate. Each of the shops was overflowing, absolutely overflowing, with varying portions of CDs, DVDs, games, manga, doujinshi, hobby kits and character goods. The madness didn't end where the merch did: the walls, the stairs, the gantries, even the interior of the damn lifts were literally plastered over with posters, ads, prices, and more anime than the eyes could stand. I didn't take many pictures of the places we went: where the hell would I start? Akihabara is not a place, it's an experience.

The absolute best part of our day was the time we spent in the maid cafe. We weren't actually planning on going, but we needed to find a place to sit down and sort through the stuff we'd bought, and we had been given directions to the place by my sister's otaku guy friend, so we decided to give it a try. What we found inside was a delight: the maids were cheerful and friendly, who held a rock-paper-scissors game for all the patrons, taught us to do a little "MOE, MOE, KYUNN~" handsign-and-chant thing before tucking into our sweets, and talked to us despite our general failure in speaking Japanese. One of the maids serving us saw us sorting through the b00bies doujin we'd bought and told us she was a fan of the series too (she liked Lockon and Patrick). When she saw the Tieria-centric ecchi doujin menelvir had bought for me, she said "Banshi ni attai suru!" Which was the title of the doujin, but left us all in a fit of senseless giggles anyway. menelvir asked another of the maids about the ring she was wearing which was this little thing with a faux macaroon on it, because she wanted to see if she could buy one like it. But it turned out that the girl had made it herself, and then she insisted on giving it to menelvir. Oh man! We left the cafe feeling slightly guilty about it, but also completely bubbly and giggly-- it gets infectious. I highly recommend visiting this cafe if you're ever in Akiba, it takes up several floors on a building on the left of the first big cross junction after coming out of the station. (@thome cafe's website)

The worst part of the day, if I had to say, was probably our time in K-books while we were browsing through the used CD section, which was also in the doujin and character good section. That place just gave off... weird vibes, from the body pillows on sale to the shelves of hentai stuff all over, and the men there who were giving us all sorts of strange looks. We three were the only girls in that entire half of the store, and it felt really skeezy in a way that the normal, non-yaoi hentai doujin part of Toranoana didn't (even though the latter had ginormous nipples on display everywhere you looked. Everywhere, I assure you). Maybe guys would have been comfortable hanging up, but we certainly weren't.

What else can I say about Akiba? By the end of the day we had bags filled with anime merch of all sorts, gotten entirely sick of the theme songs to K-on (they were playing in every shop we went into. EVERY shop), and spent more money than we had capacity to not feel guilty for. I'm just thoroughly glad that I'm not a huge fan of any of the anime series that have come out this year, or I would be much, much poorer.

( Pictures of the shops, and my swag! )

And finally, a catalogue of the stuff that I couldn't take out and photograph in public. I have no idea why I thought making a video of it would be a good idea, since I hate my voice and how dumb I sound when I talk, but there you go.




Today's flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jyyang/sets/72157618685353139/

Tomorrow: Ikebukuro, and a butler cafe!

Some backstory. I RP Ribbons Almark on the #g00tweets Gundam00 Twitter RP. We get to talking about skittles a lot. Not the candy, the Innovators. Sometime during one of our exchanges I was suddenly compelled to go to Skittles.com and check them out. Which was when I discovered that the Skittles.com homepage had been transformed into the Twitter search page for the word "Skittles" and that ALL OUR SKITTLE-RELATED TWEETS WERE SHOWING UP ON IT.**

Several hours of clicking on links and pictures later, I had developed a horrifying craving for Skittles. (GOD DAMN BUT THOSE INSIDIOUS MARKETING TACTICS WORK.)

So before I headed for Japanese class this week I went Skittles-hunting in town. I managed to corner a packet of the damn things in a 7-11 and made away with them. As we walked into a narrow, crowded underpass roped into half to manage the traffic flow, I giggled to my sister, "Who needs food when you have Skittles?"

And just then, as we were crammed into the crowd at the barrier's edge, next to the stream of folks going in the opposite direction...


A RANDOM SETSUNA WALKED PAST ME.


... ..."WTF?!?!?!"

It was a random group of cosplayers; aside from the Setsuna in the red scarf and the mad spiky hair, there was at least one character from Bleach amongst their number. Walking around the heart of town in full costume. I have no idea what they were doing, but I very much regret that the crowds were moving too fast in either direction for me to go up to the Setsuna cosplayer and intone, "SETSUNA F. SEIEI". Or, as my sister suggested, "INNOVATOR". Before running away giggling like the madwoman that I am.

Missed chances, missed chances!

But at least I didn't miss the chance to do a Skittle and gunpla/gashapon photoshoot after I got home.





In case you're asking: yes, I nommed all the Skittles in those pictures after that. No, I obviously don't give a flying fuck about poisoning from lead in paints. IT IS CRIMINAL TO HAVE SKITTLES AND NOT EAT THEM, OKAY?


**(Screencaps of Skittles.com or it didn't happen!)

After weeks of anticipation, my 2nd set of Prop Plus Petit figurines came earlier this week. I got a box of ten, and as expected of it, got one of every figure available--no repeats.

As expected of me, I pulled out a few to do a little PPP photoshoot. Miss Hallelujah Productions is proud to present, for your viewing pleasure, a double bill:






( Pretty Woman starring Tieria Erde )

( The Lament Of Hallelujah Lecter starring H/Allelujah Haptism )


And now, time for a shameless plug! Anybody interested in playing a Gundam00 RP on Twitter? So far, there's a Ribbons Almark account (owned by me) and a Red Haro account (owned by anibunny). It would be awesome to find more people to play with. ETA: NOW WE HAVE LYLE, SETSUNA, BRING, MARIE, TIERIA, MILEINA, H/ALLELUJAH NEIL, a HILLING (Healing?), and a REGENE. \o///

I'd probably run the Ribbons account like a normal Twitter account, responding to stuff in the news, replying to other Gundam00 character accounts (or actually, to anyone who sends @ replies to my account). I'm thinking the almost-anarchic structure of  would allow for multiple accounts all playing the same character, for real people butting in to have conversations with the fake characters (e.g. the immensely popular God & Socktington accounts for example).

We could even have real accounts pretending to retweet stuff from characters who don't actually have an account running.  We'd just have to tie together all the RP tweets with the hashtag #g00tweets. And it's one of those real-time, tweet-when-you-can streams so there isn't even an obligation to take part regularly, only just when you're free. And people who just want to watch can simply do a search for all the tweets tagged #g00tweets.

The more I consider it, the more interesting it seems as an RP format. Think it's a good idea? Anyone want to play along?

....Bueller?

AN IMMENSELY QUICK SNAP POLL.

Based on what you know of the differences in secondary sexual characteristics between adult males and adult females in the human species, answer the following question.

Poll #1372391
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

The above photograph depicts a figurine of:

View Answers

a woman
38 (33.0%)

a man
10 (8.7%)

WHO THE FUCK CARES?! I'D HIT IT!!
67 (58.3%)

Here's another angle of the said figurine. Pay close attention in particular to the curvature of the figurine along the left side, around the part the white vest ends.

Seriously, Bandai, what the hell. How does this sculpt manage to be hotter than the one with the garters and the red dress?Something went terribly wrong somewhere in your product planning stages, my friends.

I'm going to ignore my take-home work and stare at those childbearing hips for the rest of the night, thank you very much. You bastards.

Presenting: a pictorial essay on the annotation of Yun Kouga's illustration book for Mobile Suit Gundam 00 with Post-Its, as performed in public by misshallelujah and thurisaz83 (not into the show, just into the madness) a couple of Fridays ago.

Tools Needed:

• 1 (one) copy of Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Yun Kouga Design Works
• 1 (one) misshallelujah
• 1 (one) small pad of Post-Its
• Appropriate markers & pens
• 1 (one) giggling thurisaz83 to hold the book open for (documentation purposes)
• 1 (one) mid-range (or up) compact digital camera for (documentation purposes)
• A well-ventilated venue with good lighting, a large enough table, and enough ambient noise to cover up the giggling (for this particular procedure, a McDonalds' was utilized)

( Actual annotation of the book under the cut )

Look, look, I still have a scanner, and it still works! I bring to you: a scan of a day's worth of workplace scribbles!


January 20th workplace scribbles!




All of them were sketched yesterday, with the exception of the dude going horizontally across the page (I'd started on him earlier).

One of them, in particular, bears drawing more attention to:


I woke up this morning to people giggling on about how Obama flubbed his oath of office because the Chief Justice messed up the second line of the oath. >w< (Obama's "WTF, man?" expression was priceless.) HISTORIC MOMENT IS HISTORIC.

I have so many, many thoughts about why this makes me so happy that I can't fully articulate them all right now, when I have a series bible to polish up and make omgLOLfunny! so we can send it to a potentially-interested broadcaster. So for now I'm just gonna leave it at: PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA TEH SECOND FTFW. AMERRRIIIKA, FUCK YEAH!!!

Now I'll end off with something completely different: STICK FIGURE INNOVATOR PORN.

( omg whut r u doin bring stabity )



(Be back to reply to comments on these last two posts later. Have lots of work to do nao. O SHIGOTO O SHIGOTO~♪)

Remember yesterday's guts-and-gore panorama?

I thought the whole slurry of bright red blood-things was too unrealistic looking, and after having added pink fleshy bits to Deathscythe's scythe to give it the genuine just-butchered-a-dozen people feel, I decided what my slasher-flick panorama needed was actually more pink fleshy bits, all over the place.

So I updated it.





For those who asked what the gore is made of, it's actually real chibi Meister guts white Blu-Tack (from Bostik) with red whiteboard marker coloring. It's rather nifty, versatile stuff. As evidenced, clearly.

Why, hello, dearest friendslist.

Have I terrified y'all enough lately? No? Insanity been on the lacking? Fearing for the warpedness of my state of mind?

Well. Perhaps I ought to share with you some pictures I took of my desk at work today.



( GLORIOUS, JUICY, YUMMY MEISTERS )

Relevant To My Interests!pimping links:

I'm amazed by the amount of spazzing and chatting going on between people in the meme. Bawww, gundam00 always brings the love. Plenty of people on pages 2 & 3, so go say hi and make love! ....enh, I'm sure that was totally supposed to come out as "friends". What gives.


Mechaphiles Fic Exchange: FINAL ROUND All the finalist fics are excellent, so go vote, vote, vote! ♥

This is relevant not just to my interests, but serendpitiously, also to the post I made earlier today.


Spotted at a bus stop on the way to the gym tonight:




I particularly like the part that says "MORE REVIVE MORE FUN".

My brain has tried to think of ways in which "7 UP REVIVE" doesn't sound like it has any underlying dirty connotations, but my brain is admittedly not very good at doing things like that.

Instead, it chose to replace the word "rehydrate" in the poster with "get wet with".

More power to my brain!


...the real question is, in fact: who are the seven?

Gunday Capfest #10! Yes, yes, I know it's a whole, entire day late.

And guess what? I still watched it raw. No subs.

It's more fun this way. I get to make up all kinds of shit and then blame it on my non-comprehension of Japanese.

For your reading pleasure, I present:






( b00bies S2E10: O LIGHT DIVINE, now with 100% more ghetto. )



( SUBTITLE SCREENCAP THEATER )

( AND A FUCKING POLL, FUCKAWESOME )

First off, before we begin Gunday Capfest #8, I have to confess that I suffer from b00b envy. Which is why you will find me talking about the size of other people's mammaries loudly, constantly and obnoxiously.

That ought to give you a warning about what to expect from this week's fest, which is 90% recap, 10% screencaps, and 120% capslock ABUSE. There is a reason I fondly refer to this series as Gundam b00bies, yes?

As for the paucity of caps, though, I figured there are more than enough people screencapping every single frame which contains either Tieria's ass or boobs (or both, blessed are we), so I skimped on those.

Or I would have been capping till the wee hours of the morning.






( Episode 8: SOMETHING ABOUT STRAIGHTENING OUT KINKS I HEAR )

( LAMEASS SCREENCAP SUBTITLE TEATER. I MEAN THEATER. )

Gundam Sunday #6(66): June takes too many things with inappropriate sexual innuendo, gets ready to go to hell. The usual gravy of caps-- episode recap, Japanese Fail Subtitled Caps, GRATUITOUS ABUSE OF CAPS.





( Episode #6: Scar (aka I AM IN UR FANDOM, PERMANENTLY SCARRING UR INNOCENT MINDS) )

( Screencap Subtitle Theater! )

FACT OF LIFE: Men of all stripes and ages are completely, utterly incapable of checking out women subtly.

Going down to the gym for more than a month has convinced me of that. They can't look discreetly. They turn their heads to look. And they keep turning their heads as the walk all they way down the gym. It's like--staaaaaare.

I mean, I know I ought to be flattered, but I can't help but feel embarrassed for them when I catch them at it. In my head I'm all, "Yes guys, I know my ass has finally checked in after 25 years in absentia and I actually fill out my pants now, but do you really have to look so damn hard? PERIPHERAL VISION EXISTS FOR A REASON YOU KNOW."

*snort*

I have to admit, thought, that I'm pretty guilty myself of checking out men with nice bodies. Like last night, when there turned up this slender guy who had Allelujah's physique. His face wasn't that cute, but I couldn't stop flicking my eyes over every now and then to watch him work the weights. IT WAS A NICE VIEW, OKAY?

When I texted pigtail78 about it later her response was, "Well, you could have always imagined him with the face of the cute guy you see on the bus whom you say looks a bit like Alle".

I tell you guys, if any such person ever turned up at the gym I would not be able to get through any of my repetitions.

It would go: "One, two, three, four, five, six... daaaaamn he looks fine, I want to go talk to him... shit, where was I again? Dammit. One, two, three..."

But at least I would be staring at him discreetly.


BRB, REFRESHING ONTD_P AND WATCHING MSNBC STREAMING LIVE AND TRYING NOT TO CHEW MY NAILS OFF. Nate Silver says exit polls are bunkum and we should not trust exit polls but they called Pennsylvania on exit polls and oh goddddd it's a good thing I cleared a lot of my work for today yesterayyyy--

So yesterday while I was at Kinokuniya I went to pick up William Gibson's Spook Country since there was a special storewide discount on. I flipped the book open and the first word which caught my eye: Sunrise.

As in, capital letter, Japanese brand name Sunrise.

I am beginning to suspect that Sunrise may, in fact, be stalking or otherwise monitoring me.



( REASONS TO FIGHT: A CONCISE SUMMARY OF QUESTIONABLE VERACITY )

( My favorite caps, subtitled! )


( A collection of gratuitous ass & crotch shots. )

B00BIES EPISODE THREE. MAN I LOVE THIS SEASON MORE WITH EVERY EPISODE I WATCH.


Okaeri, Allelujah, thanks for bringing the BAWWWW factor back to the show. ♥

( Episode summary, shitty caps and utterly, utterly crude and shallow fangirling )

One last hurrah before the show starts! I finally managed to get my hands on the pre-season booklet for b00bies. Nothing much that we haven't already seen in magazine articles and trailers, but it's nice to have everything consolidated into one pretty package.

Scan, baby, scan! With the obligatory perving on Meisters snark, while I still have the energy for it.


( Right this way, ladies and gents! )

What a lovely day at work today. I came into the office with my bento box all happy and ready for another day of productivity.

And the first thing to greet me at my work desk?



ON TOP OF MY WACOM TABLET.


That's the best way to start a work day.

With screaming.




The world certainly has a thing for me today. Why, yes, I had to share it with you guys! Don't you love me?

I thank pigtail78 for bringing this to my attention.

Now, as a preface, CDJapan is one of my favorite sites in the world. I get all my J-rock from them, and now that they have anime merchandize on it as well I use it to keep track of potentially shiny new stuff that I may want to look out for. And their customer service has always been flawless, excellent.

This does not mean I can't laugh at them every now and again.




Link to pigtail78's post

But! Collaboration with the Back Horn! Which means awesome J-rock and not ballads about how cold your soup is, right? (Protip: USE A MICROWAVE OVEN, SETSUNA)

so fucken ordered

And now, just because I think this would be fun, and because I have a new computer and I'm sure everyone is jonesing to peek into its sekrit new-computery-innards: COMPUTER MEME stolen from just about everyone on my flist!

Ichi. Comment with a request to see absolutely anything on my computer. My desktop, my documents, my bookmarks, my latest works in progress, my iTunes. Whatever you're curious about. Request it!

Ni. I will respond post a new entry with a screenshot of the very thing you request.

Will post all the cap requests tomorrow. ♥ note that anyone requesting a cap of Meister porn vids will be sorely disappointed. What, you think I keep that shit on a computer?!

hydrangea and I have worked on this one for a while.

Its the first of our Special Edition scanslations of the b00bies manga by Ohmori Kouzoh (yes, the same series that I've been scanning for you guys).

Except better. Because a) hydrangea actually cleaned up my crappy scans so they look pretty, and b) IT'S TRANSLATED.

We've decided to host the scans on the Mechaphiles forum, which is just our dirty little trick to get y'all to sign up and add to the asylum headcount fun to be had over there! (Dooo it. You want to. Doooo it!)


Hosted by Flickr
(THE MILK IS A LIE)


...oh, might I also mention that between the two of us hydrangea and I know about twenty words worth of Japanese, and therefore the translation maaaay not be a hundred percent accurate?

Yeah. Thought I'd mention.

Enjoy!

TOO MANY THINGS TO DO, NOT ENOUGH TIME TO TYPE UP A PROPER ENTRY

BUT THIS ONE JUST HAD TO BE SHARED

(I am the Hallelujah person, thurisaz83 is the Moonchild person)





In case anyone's asking about "Hot dog! Hallelujah!", it's from Singing In The Rain, 'cos 2 of the designers have been repeatedly playing it on the creative lounge TV at work, which is just right behind me, so all I have to do is to swivel in my chair and I get a full dose of Gene Kelly's fabulousity.

....alright, since I'm here, I might as well do something I've wanted to for a good part of the week! I want to update my profile page, specifically the "Hear What Others Are Saying!" section. So. BECAUSE I AM TOO LAZY/TIRED/SHORT OF TIME/ALIEN-BRAINAPPED TO THINK OF SOMETHING NEW, HAVE SOME COPYPASTA FROM THE LAST TIME I DID THIS.

In an idea borrowed from the amazing honeycorrupts, I'm asking you guys to contribute testimonials to put on my profile page.

The testimonials? Can be anything you want them to be. Reasons why you haven't unfriended this journal since 2003. Reasons why you added this journal last week. Reasons why you haven't made calls to the CIA/FBI/some international policing body to do me in yet.

For example, it could be:

• Your general impression of me (i.e. "misshallelujah talks too much, makes no sense, and her LJ is a never-ending source of inspiration for my novel about escaped asylum inmates")


• What you think of when you see my username pop up on your friendslist ("Oh god, it's misshallelujah again, bet it's something NSFW, quick scroll past")


• Why you persist in reading this LJ despite its shortcomings ("IT'S LIKE A TRAINWRECK I CAN'T LOOK AWAY")


• Why you decide to friend my LJ in the first place ("THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT")


• Things this LJ reminds you of (i.e. Gundam porn, figurine dismemberment, bad art/fic, trashy Euro boybands that make your eyes and ears bleed. Etc. etc. etc.)


• If all else fails, just MAKE SOMETHING UP. "June is a Mafia princess who is obviously pimping out Gundam b00bies only to increase her sales of illicit Meister porn." "misshallelujah is obviously an alien sent to spy upon us before her technologically superior race burns our planet to the ground." Make it involve nunchucks and unicorns. Poppies and macrobacteria. Draw fanart, write sonnets, I don't care, as long as I can convert it to HTML.

Okay I'm done. Good lord so many things to do this weekend WRRRRRRY. Talk to you guys later OTL


i'm not sure i'm looking forward to the comments ahahahaha

Edit: Holy cow. The code I pasted into the entry still says "deadspeaker" but everything shows up as "misshallelujah" on the page itself. CREEPY. Oo;

Edit the 2nd, Royal Heir To The Throne Of Appendikistan: I forgot to add! If you took part in the first round of Epic Testimonial Get, feel free to update your opnions. You know, because I'm sure familiarity breeds contempt, blah de blah blah.

Edit the 3rd, Sending Assassins After His Royal Father: Gundam 00 Love Meme Because wars are stupid, and Setsuna needs a hug. Plus, this fandom is awesome, so why not?