Haven't been blogging Japan because a) tired, and b) figured I was boring most of my friendslist based on the dwindling number of comments. So no full blogposts from me. Instead, have the Flickr photostreams.

Most of the streams aren't too detailed because time spent shopping == nothing particularly photograph-worthy, but I did put in some lengthy explanations on some of the photos I did take, so they're worth checking out if you're interested (particularly the Washinomiya day).

Tomorrow we head to the Tsukiji fish market in the morning so that might be something more interesting. The day after that I fly back to Singapore.


Day 6: Ikebukuro
10 photos


Day 7: The Lucky Star shrine (Washinomiya)
44 photos


Day 8: Shibuya
7 photos, 3 videos





I'm tired and I want to go home.

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!

Our first full day in Tokyo passed in a madness of shopping and elbowing through crowds of people. I went to Harajuku intending to spend money, and spend money I did. Something like six tops, two skirts, a bunch of leggings, and a whole plethora of accessories to go along with. Packed ¥30,000 (about USD300) into my wallet and spent almost all of it. Along the way, managed to grab some good food, meet some of Tokyo's more outrageous denizens, and have dinner with dilettantka and hinoai. Sugoi.

The main attraction, for us, was Takeshita dori, the little street that could--crammed from end to end with shops hawking clothes and bags and accessories for the trendy kids of Tokyo. And it's got benri--convenience--down to an art: get off the train at Harajuku, follow the big bright signs that say "Takeshita dori", and bam! The street is right in your face the moment you step out of the ticket gantry. No maps needed. Just cross the road and you're on your way to a day's worth of browsing the colorful, beckoning, overflowing stores down its maybe-hundred-and-fifty meter length.

Here's a very brief pictorial recap of our day there-- mostly I was too busy buying stuff to take pictures.


One of the places we patronized hugely was this shop called ACDC Rags, which had multiple outlets around Takeshita dori. They sold all sorts of punk apparel, frills and checkers and skulls and metal studs. I bought a pair of boots and a sling bag from them.


( Cosplayers, and madness )

Here's a little video of Meiji-jingu-mae, where my sister wonders about the nose strip popularized by (I believe) the Gazette's Reita.

Tomorrow we head to Akiba: Otaku heaven!

Day three had been reserved for traveling: from Kyoto back to Tokyo, and then bashing around Tokyo until we'd finally located our hostel, and then riding on the Yamanote line like crazy bastards getting used to commuting in Japan.

It went sort of something as planned.


We walked back to the Kyoto Tower to do some last-minute souvenir shopping. And while we were there, we saw something quite unusual--or perhaps quite usual, by Japanese standards:


Then it was Shinkansen time, back to Tokyo. We ate bento we bought from the station, as well as a few mementoes we got from Kyoto:


We got to Tokyo and onto the Yamanote line without a hitch. That wasn't the hard part of our trip. The hard part... was to come later.


( Getting lost in Tokyo! )

And here is the video of the day: the Ameyoko open air market. Deliciously crowded and lively.


Here's the flickr stream for Day 3. As usual, bookmark it if you are interested in seeing more photos later-- I will probably upload more after I get back to Singapore. This is a brief (very brief) recap, after all.

NEXT UP: HARAJUKU AND THE WALL OF PEOPLE... or so I've heard about the conditions of Harajuku on a Sunday. But we must catch the cosplayers and the Goth Lolis in action!

P.S. I know I have a metric shiton of comments to get back to on the previous posts-- sorry! I will get to them... eventually. A bit short of time here, I am.

We got up early and hacked our way to Kyoto station, where we caught the 8:04AM Shinkansen to Hiroshima. Our destination: the A-bomb done and the memorial park.

Luckily for us, there is a electric streetcar that goes from the Shinkansen station to right in from of the A-bomb done. The station's even called Genbaku Dome-mae.


The dome is the beginning of a series of interconnected parks and memorials around the Hiroshima Peace Museum, which documents the bombing.



( Memorials and okonomiyaki )

Tomorrow, we head back to Tokyo and settle in. In the meantime, here's a video I took of the Shinkansen arriving at the station in Hiroshima:

pkyyr and menelvir were trying to stick their fingers into the shot while I was filming >8(


Here's the flickr stream for Day 2. As usual, bookmark it if you are interested in seeing more photos later-- I will probably upload more after I get back to Singapore. This is a brief (very brief) recap, after all.

So! Day 1 in Japan with pkyyr and menelvir. After a long overnight journey which was so empty I got to sleep across a row of chairs in cattle class, we arrived in Japan, and spent the next six hours shuttling from highspeed train to highspeed train until we finally arrived in Kyoto.

Kyoto/Hiroshima is the scenic leg of our trip, all culture and scenery and sane, not-at-all-brain-melting things. Or at least, as un-brain-melty as it can get when it involves people like my sister and I.

A brief pictorial recap!


We arrived in Tokyo in the morning, struggled out of the airport and somehow managed to not only buy our passes, get our tickets and locate the train, but also do so without getting lost. 2 years of Japanese language studies have paid off, apparently!



I did some Japanese studying on the train journey there, which was a rather cramped and uncomfortable affair for someone traveling with 10 days' baggage. I was up to the eyes in stuff, and I kept elbowing the poor salaryman in the seat next to mine everytime I tried to retrieve something from my bag.


It took us a bloody long time (and a lot of trekking, 10 days' baggage and all) before we managed to locate K's House Kyoto, shoved into a small side street. After checking in, a sort-of lunch and a quick shower, we set out to explore on foot and search for Kiyomizu-dera (清水寺)-- the love shrine, and I don't mean the dirty sort. It's old, it's famous, and it's also right on top of a hill overlooking the city.

( A bajillion pictures of Kyoto and Kiyomizu-dera )

And that's my very brief recap of the day. I leave you here with a video I shot while we were walking through the tiny back streets of Kyoto. I call it "The Trouble With Tomare". JSYK, "Tomare (止まれ)" means "STOP!" in Japanese.




Here's the flickr stream for Day 1. Bookmark it if you are interested in seeing more photos of Kyoto-- I have tons more, which I will probably upload after I get back to Singapore. This is a brief (very brief) recap, after all.

Up next: Day 2, Day Trip To Hiroshima! Hopefully, I'll be able to get some blogging done tomorrow since we apparently arrive back at the hostel fairly late. If not, you'll hear from me on Saturday when we finally get back to Tokyo.

PinkDot! My Very First GLBT Event was a blast, I ran into people I knew, I met a whole bunch of people I hadn't known. I met up and had dinner with an old secondary school classmate whom I hadn't caught up with in years, and whom I just found out was gay today. That was awesome. Hung out or met up with ataraxistence, forochel, renovak, htenywg, glazzal, malyntine, the usual #awaresg folks (@missbossy, @ctham, @bruincoffee, @bionic_creative, @Wolfgang_, @wynlim, etc.), plus a whole lot of other friends-of-friends and assorted folks, including someone I'd hooked up with on OkCupid (hi Kai Er!)

In other words, it was awesome. A great day spent in the company of many like-minded, open-minded and/or openly gay folks. I can't really put the scope of it into words, so I will let my photos (and videos!) do the talking.



( PHOTOS, 20+ OF THEM )


And now, I will leave you with this. Due to my abominable videography skills, and the fact that I tried shooting all my videos by waving my camera above my head and hoping I would get something good, all the videos I took turned out disjointed, random, and worthy of Blair Witch-eqsue motion sickness fits. So I tried to salvage the scraps by snipping them together and pasting music over them. At 1AM. On iMovie. A program that I actually have no idea how to use.

I was tempted to use "Free" by the Lighthouse Family as a backing track, but the Glambert won out in the end.

My Flickr set for this event (with larger versions of all the photos here)
ETA!: The actual Pink Dot! Via Twitter
Son of ETA! Official PinkDot video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9gDazG4cC0 I'm in it @ 00:28 -- check out the stupid face I made!

I have decided that, come hell or high water, skipped Japanese lessons and what not, I will be going for PinkDot, the local Freedom To Love! LGBT support event that's happening next Saturday. It's not a protest, it's not a demonstration, it's just a gathering of people who want to show they believe that people should be free to love whomever they want, regardless of sexual orientation.



I want to do this, badly, and the reason is several-pronged. I suppose I can trace it back to the Aware saga, a large part of which became about homosexuality, and the acceptance thereof. I was heartened, really heartened, by the groundswell of support from people who came out to say that yes, there's nothing wrong with homosexuality, yes, we should be telling our kids in school that it's not a bad thing to be gay.

At the same time, I'm disheartened by the number of voices that I've heard saying that it's wrong to teach children about homosexuality, it's wrong to imply that it's not normal, it's wrong to even bring it up for discussion in the first place. It's not part of our accepted social fabric. Bringing it up will disturb the status quo.

That, at least, seems to be the line echoed by the establishment here. After the Aware EGM was over, after the ruckus has settled down a little, the Ministry of Education suspended all its external sexuality programmes, including the contentious Aware one that was accused of teaching "pro-gay" values. Its official reason, given in a letter to the press, was that part of it was inappropriate. In verbatim, I quote:

In particular, some suggested responses in the instructor guide are explicit and inappropriate, and convey messages which could promote homosexuality or suggest approval of premarital sex.

Promoting homosexuality. Just like promoting being Chinese, or being black. It's not a choice, but lots of people here don't get it. They think that by shielding their children from the fact that homosexuality exists, they will be able to protect them from catching the gay virus, or whatever they think it is causes people to be gay.

It's the sort of thing I can't stand. The misconceptions, the refusal to know all the facts, the "let's sweep this under the rug and not talk about it because it makes me uncomfortable". I cannot really blame the ministry for doing what they did, because that is the way a lot of people think.

But that is why I must go for this. To reaffirm to myself that there are lots of people here who aren't like that. To comfort myself with the knowledge that no matter how uphill the battle for acceptance seems to be, we are not alone. We will be taking steps. Baby steps.

I will be wearing this pink #awaresg shirt there, and will most probably be meeting up with a few others from the #awaresg Twitter hashtag-turned-channel-thingamajig. 4.30-6.00PM, Saturday, Hong Lim Park, FOC, all are welcome regardless of orientation. Can I convince any of you guys to come with me?

ETA: Some blogs.
From Catherine Lim, writer.
Open letter to MOE, written by a very eloquent student
Alvin shall not be ignorant about homosexuality anymore (click on the 'l' to read the post)

So this is how I spent my Valentine's Day evening. Getting drunk with a bunch of kids at my sister's 21st birthday chalet party.

In short: it was good eatings, and good fun. The chalet we rented, at Pasir Ris, was large and well maintained (except for the walls, which badly needed a fresh paint job), came with a functional kitchen and its own BBQ pit, and was all in all good value for money. My sister invited some dozen-odd friends, a small core of which--mostly the crazy anime-watching otaku geek gang-- stayed over and somehow managed not to burn things down.

Came back yesterday, spent the day alternatively uploading photos and videos to Flickr, napping to make up to the lack of sleep the night before, and prepping this post. (And catching The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button at the cinema, but that's a whole other story.)

Saturday evening to Sunday morning. The essence of madness distilled and bottled, to go with chips and cake. Good things come with age.

Here's the formula.

1. You take a bunch of otaku kids for whom default mode is preset to "crazy".


2. You add copious amount of this.
   


3. Shenanigans result.

Here are pictures of the mayhem, numbering 30-odd, handpicked out of the literal hundreds that were taken that night.

( The BBQ )

( THE CAKE WAS A LIE )

( CHOCOLATE HULK SMASH!!! )

( Games, games, games )

( The Crystal Apple Puzzle )


We also sat around telling ghost stories in the dark, which didn't work out because my sister had somehow expected the army boys she'd invited to not tell the scary army ghost stories that every army boy hears of during the two years he's serving his National Service. Then we progressed to sitting in a circle and telling lame jokes, dirty jokes, or lame and dirty jokes.

That went down a lot better.

(Unfortunately, no pictures or video of either event exists because everything I took with my camera during that period turned out pitch black, with huge red splotches all over. And there was this mysterious little girl in white hanging in the background....)

PRESENTS!
I feel obliged to share this, the most epic of gifts that my sister's BFF got for her. While I'm glad that I managed to capture down her LOLWUT OMFG!!!! DDDDDD: reaction for posterity, I am quite dismayed that after several months I still haven't figured out that flipping my camera horizontally while filming will result in video that will be irreversibly rotated.


I took photos of the inside as thurisaz83 flipped through it in utter bemusement. NSFW, unless pictures of two guys having buttsex while the bottom grinds against a third gagged & bound guy on the bed are par for the course for your office (in which case, where the hell do you work, and are you guys looking to hire a writer by any chance?)

( And from your lips he drew the Hallelujah... )

Other presents included a giant calculator you could kill a kitten with, phrasebooks for making out in Japanese, fluffy Mokona slippers, a SD Gundam00 doujin and A Brief History Of Time. Yes. Of the whole pile of presents, the only one that approached any semblance of normality was a book about quantum mechanics written by Stephen Hawking.

Also, we had a surprise frog invasion.

And now, I provide the concluding statements for my Alcohol + Geeks == MAYHEM thesis.

( Alcohol + Geeks == Mayhem )


My sister invited one of our cousins, who brought along a friend. They were the only normal people at the party, the poor things.

Their reactions for most of the night looked something like this.


Poor normals.

Ever since I swapped my Nokia N73 out for an iPhone, I have been bitching and bitching on about how inadequate the iPhone's built-in camera is. No manual focus? No white metering? No fucking flash? In this day and age? Jesus Christ, what a crock of shit.

Since I have a habit of photographing random interesting things that I see while out and about, I decided that I now couldn't live without a decent compact camera of my own. I started hunting for one, saw the prices... and balked, as contrary to popular belief I do not have spare hundreds in cash that I can wantonly toss around. A colleague offered his own camera, second hand, for half-price... and I said I'd buy it from him in January, giving me adequate time to starve myself into purchasing sufficiency.

Last Saturday, over dinner, my dad asked me, "So, did you have anything in mind you wanted for Christmas?"

Thrown for a loop--as I usually am whenever people ask me what I want as a present for X--I ended up blurting, "Well, I was looking to get a compact digital camera, but I think I'm getting one second-hand from my colleague in January..."

"Well," my dad said, "you don't have to do that any more." And then he handed me a box.

ASFDJKLAWEJR HOW DO THEY KNOW--

So my parents got me, for Christmas, a Canon Digital IXUS 870 IS, done up in snazzy bling-worthy gold. It's a great camera, I've enjoyed monkeying with it over the week.

(My sister was the one who told them I wanted a digital camera for Christmas, after she figured it out when I borrowed hers to take to AFA.)

A sample of the photos (and the one video) that cam out of said monkeying around!

Delish!


( My Pomeranian Chewie, my sister as Tieria Erde, Singapore Changi Airport, and Ugly Chicken Puffs. )

( VIDEO OF TWO PUPPIES. I REPEAT, VIDEO OF TWO PUPPIES. YOU WANT TO SEE IT. YOU DO. )


But of course, the most amazing and unexpected present has come from istoo, who bought me a permanent account on LJ! ASFDJKLAWEJR!! [speechless incoherent flailing] Thank you so much OMG. I seriously have no idea what I've done to deserve this, but OMG THANK YOU and ILU OMG, and have I already said OMG? *expires* I have space for 190+ usericons now-- what to I fill them up with? Halp!


The real question is, though, WHAT SHALL I NAME THE NEW CAMERA? (Yes, it's an important question!) Perhaps something ridiculous like Bling Stabbity? Or... geez... I don't know, Joe the camera Bob? Any suggestions, folks?

Last night I brought home booze and nachos to celebrate. My sister and I watched McCain's concession and Obama's victory speech together, I for the second time (but do I mind? HELL NO).

We totally had to stop the video and squeal when Obama told his daughters that "you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House". OMG FIRST PUPPY HOW INCREDIBLY UNBELIEVABLY ADORABLE!!!

With that in mind, this clip courtesy of my new TV boyfriend Jon Stewart totally made my day (as if that dirty, dirty segment where Stephen Colbert was talking about paddling a canoe up him wasn't great enough).

THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE FIRST PUPPY.



That Pomeranian fuzzball stretching in the background when John Oliver is introducing the chihuahua? It's the time travelling puppy clone of my bb dogkums Chewie.

BRB, DYING OF THE FUCKING CUTE.

So the ever-resourceful pigtail78, found out some info about Tieria and Allelujah's seiyuu character singles, and made a couple of posts about them.

Firstly, Tieria's single is called Ideas/Elephant.

...ELEPHANT.

WTF, Sunrise?

See, the unfortunate thing is, when I think of "elephant", the first song that comes to mind is this one. By Missy Elliot. Which features elephants in the chorus.

(Video not quite safe for work, watch at own discretion)




... I, for one, would love to see Tieria put his thang down flip it and reverse it.

*ahem*



But otherwise, I'm quite looking forward to hearing what Allelujah's character single sounds like!

The thing is, I've always had the silly notion that

• Hallelujah raps like a gangsta, and


• Allelujah sings good opera.

Yes, I know I'm insane. Bear with me.

A couple of days ago, I discovered that I had a MUCC album that I hadn't gotten the time to listen to yet. I put it on, and I got to this song. A pop-rock song with rapping! And falsetto singing!

I thought, "Mmm, knowing Sunrise's predilection for making character singles sound like pop music, here's hoping that Allelujah's single sounds something like this."

It's fucken' awesome. And I say this as someone who hates, hates, hates pop music.



Wonder if Yocchin can sing like this

If you don't have Superman vision and can't process images flashing by at rubber-burning speeds, this composite picture may help you (thanks, hydrangea!)

Major ASFDJKLA moments:

• Louise is piloting something?


• Saji with a gun?


• Soma and Sergei are living together (Soma looks like she's in pyjamas)?


• Did all the women get new haircuts this season?

And of course: HOLY CRAP ASFDJKLA ALLELUJAH T_____T

Well, guess who had a miserable time of it in the four year time gap. The urge to take him home and feed him and shower him with love and affection is now stronger than ever. COME HERE, ALLE. I WON'T LET THE BAD MEN AT SUNRISE HURT YOU ANY LONGER.

OCTOBER, HURRY UP AND GET YOUR DRAGGY ASS OVER HERE NOW.

EDIT:

This message has been brought to you by PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Allelujah. Membership now open; applications to be put in comments

I may be completely vanished from LJ all of next week because a) I'm getting a new laptop and I have to set shit up, b) on the work front, our exec producer is in from the UK, and c) I need to get the b00bies fic archive and forum up to running speed. Guess which one of the three has me pulling out the most hair. T____T (Protip: computer == shiny thing and work == going swimmingly. Do the math.)

...here's the official trailer for the second season that came with the 7th and final DVD volume!

I'm serious. From the maw of Sunrise itself:



I tried to transcribe it but I FAIL because I can't hear half of what is being said AND I KEEP HEARING LOCKON TALK ABOUT HAMBURGERS AND CHICKEN RICE, SOMETHING IS DEFINITELY NOT RIGHT HERE.

Help, anyone? Help!!

( WHAT I COULD MAKE OF IT, HALP PLEASE )


...the second season needs to start NOW. I TOLD YOU I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE EPIC ZOMBIE LOCKON BEING CANON OKAY

ETA COS I JUST REMEMBERED: Also, Sunrise has obviously been rooting around in my harddrive and pinched the idea of replacing Tieria's head with a Haro from there.

(Thank you gundam00, you guys never fail to disappoint! Ah, I love the Internets!)

My sister (Her Highness pkyyr) and I make collaborative fandom jokes, because WHEN OUR POWERS COMBINE WE CAN TAKE OVER THE UNIVERSE!!!!, don'cha know?

Here's a video born of a three-line joke I wanted to make, which my sister then expanded on and vidded like the jenius genius she is. (Fuck you, Macross, stop screwing with my brain.**) This is the second version, modified to accomodate Soul Eater (and because I'm an annoying prick). MITTE MITTE WATCH IT GO.



(Should I post this to gundam00? Should I? Should I?)

Now all I have to do is to finally put together the art for the Incredible Japanese Pun she made like half a year ago and we'll be all set. (I am a failure as a sister. D'oh.) Seriously, Setsuna's "Kono sekai ni kami wa inai" is a neverending source of entertainment for us. Especially when we were learning the nai forms in Japanese class and kept repeating it everytime "inai" came up in a flashcard session. Inai inai inai.

Also, I feel that I should mention that I won't be able to read my f-list much over the course of the coming couple of weeks, on account of the doujin-finishing, and work-script-finishing, you know, all that pesky stuff. So, yeah, I'm not deliberately ignoring you guys or anything. DROP ME A LINE IF THERE'S ANYTHING SUPER IMPORTANT THAT YOU WANT ME TO SEE. i'm like, a total failure as a friend orz


The End!

**Speaking of Macross, why can I not stop watching the junk that is Macross 7? It's like a can of Pringles, I know it's bad for my health but I just. can't. stop. popping. Actually, it Needs Moar Max. In his spiffy military hat and formal uniform. Dammit it's like they discovered my secret weakness for men in formal military gear. And hats. ASFDJKLA I ♥ Max so much.

Okay. So. Vitas. Fucken amazing Latvian-born Russian pop opera singer. Attempting to sing his Opera #2 is how I discovered that I have a separate head range in the whistle register that upsets my dogs when I sing it. This is a dude who can reach notes that sound like dolphins would use them to echolate, or as I said when I first watched the linked video: "My god, that man is a a walking, piano-playing whistling kettle".

Anyway, as pigtail87 and I were discussing Allelujah's combined Russian/Chinese heritage the other day, I confessed that ever since I decided that Sergei was Alle's father somewhere early season 1, I've been wanting to do fanart of Alle in a hat and a scarf, standing one of the domes of St. Basil's Cathedral, singing Opera #2 (because in my head, Alle is a Russian countertenor who can totally sing operatic notes that would shatter glass in a hundred-foot radius).

Several digs on YouTube later, she found this amazing, hilarious video and showed it to me: a Taiwanese professional singer covering Opera #2 by dubbing it in a mixture of gibberish, Chinese, and Hokkien:



I COULD NOT STOP LAUGHING. Especially when he started singing "OMG cannot hear lyrics" in Hokkien.

(See, if you want to make a Singaporean laugh until their sides ache, all you'd have to do is to dub over everything in Hokkien. I found this out after thurisaz83 and I were discussing Gundam dubbed in Cantonese, and I said, "Screw Cantonese, I want to hear b00bies dubbed in Hokkien." And then we tried translating a few choice phrases into Hokkien *coughIAMGUNDAMcough*. We took several minutes to catch our breaths after that.)

Anyway, fucking amazing video, as I said. I am incredibly impressed that he not only managed to hit every single note on key, he managed to do so while playing the acoustic guitar accompaniment. Fuck. Watch it and be wowed too.

While we're at it, here's the original live performance of Opera #2 that introduced me to the wonder that is Vitas back in 2006. This time with Russian and Chinese subs (not the nuclear sort).

The Chinese subs aren't all that accurate, though. I was under the impression that "Plachet opyat nado mnoy" means "it cries once again about me", and not "I cry once again", Jesus Christ, cases, people, cases.

Also: Il dolce suono. You know the opera song featured in the Fifth Element, one of my favorite cinematic sequences ever? Yes. That song. He covered it, which is something I only discovered the day before. Although the techno arrangement is different and sounds a bit like something Sarah Brightman would do. (I still prefer the version in the Fifth Element, though. The sopranista had a lot better control of her voice.)


...aaaaand that's your dose of utter randomness from yours truly for today.

I think there's something about Moleskines that just demands creativity from its owners. I can't stop myself from drawing or writing in them, not even the ones that I use for other non-creative purposes.

"Rapture I"

You know what I need? TO STOP SUCKING AT INKING.

And oh, to pre-empt horrified questions: Yes, she did. I was actually intending to draw him with special milk er, Irish cream all over, but I decided he looked prettier without random splats of stuff on his face.

Ganked from candypyon and others on my flist: this video is made of fuckawesome. Dancing Meisters FTW. Original dancing video they spoofed is here.

Minna, mitte! New scanning project in the works!



I did a few test scans and they scanned beautifully; I've already gotten the Meister pages scanned and I'm working on the spreads yoinked from Gundam Ace. I might scan the mecha pages too depending on how much harsh treatment the book can take. The binding is so scrappy and I brutalized the spine of the book so much that I've had the thing for an entire two days and PAGES ARE ALREADY FALLING OUT. WTF. The things I do for my f-list.

I'll put the scans up in batches (because I'm such a perverted tease), but I just had to share this blurb from Tieria's page:


Basically, if I'm reading this right, the official blurb on Tieria's appearance says: "Slimmest amongst the Meisters and appears to be of ambiguous gender sex. (ETA: I fail at Japanese/Chinese and in the morning, I realize that 性 refers directly to biological sex. Not sure if it covers gender, do not have proficient enough grasp of either language. FAIL) And his civvies are probably hiding the b00bs and the child-bearing hips" WHAT?! ASFDJKLA out loud!

Seriously, if Sunrise doesn't go somewhere with this in the next season I will be one disappointed fangirl.

In the meantime, I am throwing at you the thing which has been eating my brain all day, and that I have been flinging at IM windows like a bloody virus (and you can blame nightrays for inflicting it on me first).

THE GUNDAM B00BIES DANJOU DANCE

Switched to the far more awesome and hilarious version pointed out by swirling_chaos. WITH SUBTITLES!

Additionally, I've found ones for Death Note, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Suzumiya Haruhi.

But it took watching this one with text and helpful illustrations to realize that the whole song is UTTER NONSENSE about lining up people in boy-girl-boy-boy-girl-boy-girl formation. And the guy keeps getting it wrong and the teacher/group leader is like CHIGAU! YOKU KITTE! DO IT LIKE THIS OKAY. DAN JOU DAN DAN JOU DAN JOU [sound effect]. Oh my god. The whole song is just inane and makes NO SENSE.

But the one that has to take the cake is the Moyashimon overdub version. They filked the song with bacterial dialogue! KOU YATTE KAMOSE (ferment it like this)! It's utterly delighful and it doesn't take much Japanese to get the gist of it (I mean, I understood it and my Japanese is pretty much fail). If you know Moyashimon, you cannot not watch it. MINAKEREBA NARIMASEN.


...enough insanity for one day.

Okay. You know what? I never go on 4chan. That place scares me. It's like jumping into whitewater rapids composed primarily of toxic waste, man-eating fish, and other shades of DO NOT WANT. Therefore, it was a very unusual occasion last night when I decided to pop onto 4chan's /m/echa board for no rhyme or reason.

And guess what was the first thing which caught my eye?



Wait, wait... JUST FUCKING WHAT? What kind of crack do the people on 4chan smoke, precisely?

The rest of the thread was full of equally surreal FUCKAWESOME.

( ...but who would that make Vir? )

( Mr. Ribbons: What do you want? )

( Who would Sheridan be? )

Also, Anon got it right. Lockon is G'kar. Londo is Tieria. Haughty air, fabulous hair, mysterious genitals... why the hell not?

I am so very glad I saw this. All the while I thought I was the only person on the planet who thought, "Hey, B5!" when I watched the very first ep of b00bies. Just to make my case:THIS was the first ever mention of Gundam b00bies on this LJ. Ever.

But I'm not alone in this world! I'm not! I'm not!

Alright, you don't understand a word of what I'm saying. Nevermind. Here, have the most fuckawesome crossover video ever made. I don't even like Spongebob Squarepants and I laughed out loud watching this video.

DEATHSPONGE NOTEPANTS


The timing was spot on and perfect. Plus, having SeriousMode!Miyano Mamoru voice SpongeBob? How much more deranged can you get?


Alright, now that the insanity is over, a moment of silence for Arthur C. Clarke, please. His writing helped shaped the world of my youth in more ways than people can imagine. It's probably TMI, but, amongst other things, I personally acknowledge his Rama series for introducing the concept of female sexuality and self-pleasuring into my young mind. The twisted lech that I am today? I blame the scifi authors I read when I was a kid. Trufax.

What's it with all the awesome people passing on this week?

*points to video*
*points to torn muscles in side*
*shakes head*


*points to latest episode of Gundam b00bies*
*puts two thumbs up*
*draws hearts around Setsuna and Graham*
*...and Jackie Chan Hong Long*


*points towards Gundam b00bies spoilers on gundam00*
*holds up sign saying "GOT TARDIS? Girl wants to travel into future to download unaired episodes of anime series NOW"*



....
*gets back to work*