Golden Week Wrap Up

27May10

This is several weeks late but I figured it was better to get to this than to not do so at all. As I had mentioned in a previous article, I was going to be in Japan for several doujin events during Golden Week.

Surprisingly enough, I did not actually buy a single thing for myself while I was there although I did pick up a couple things for friends. At the same time, I did receive some goodies from circles I knew which was certainly appreciated. Overall, I was impressed with what I saw at a lot of the events and all in all I was able to get to the circles I wanted to hit without the need to try to break the rules and camp out at night.

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Tags: BL

Yet Another Post About “Otaku” Rooms

19Apr10

So instead of working on the translation of something random as stated in my previous entry, I have decided to embark upon the often repeated blog entry of not so much showing off my room as presenting it to anyone who is bored enough to read what little can be found here.

Now then, I note my room as an “otaku” one but be prepared to be moderately surprised for mine is not typical of ones you may see on other blogs. Though I profess to have otaku interests, I prefer to try to keep my place looking as relatively normal as possible. It is perhaps just “how I roll”.

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Tags: Stuff

Entering the World of Freelance Translation

16Apr10

I am an avid reader and collector of doujinshi. I’ve been purchasing books for quite some time now and given the frequency in which I travel to Japan, it isn’t usually hard for me to get my hands on the latest and greatest. Given the economic downturn however, I’ve had to greatly curtail my spending and in some cases I’ve had to offload a part of my collection through eBay.

In any case, unrelated to my economic mishaps, I’ve decided to get involved with doujinshi translation. There are already a number of groups out there who do a rather good job in this endeavor, but every year thousands of doujinshi, manga etc. are produced and certainly there’s plenty out there that fall through the cracks which people may choose not to translate but have a loyal following nevertheless.

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Tags: Translation, 同人

Golden Week and the Doujin Flood

16Apr10

For people living in Japan, Golden Week is generally recognized as that random series of holidays that occurs between the end of April and the beginning of May. Ideally, the holidays end up strung around the weekend which can lead to nearly a full week of vacation-tastic fun time that…no one in Japan seems to really take advantage of. Clearly, the workaholic nature of Japan is something to be feared. When I studied at Tohoku University many years ago, I rather enjoyed those days of not needing to worry about classes.

According to Japan Guide, Golden Week will have an isolated holiday (Showa Day, 4/29) followed by a 5 day weekend. Of interest to otaku perhaps, is the tendency for stores to go completely out of their way to offer discounts and otherwise try to get rid of stuff to perhaps take advantage of the absurd influx of people going around doing a whole lot of nothing. Outside of “day 4″ of Comic Market (aka Comiket), expect to see Akihabara absolutely flooded with people. Of certainly greater interest are the large number of doujin-related events happenly in Japan during this time.

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Tags: Japan, 同人

Delays and Mechanical Issues, An Adventure in Air Travel

23Feb10

As a frequent traveler, the trips I make often times take me through the major hub airports of American Airlines who I swear my elite status err loyalty to. With the exception of flying out to New York’s JFK, my travels anywhere east has me flying through either DFW in Dallas/Fort Worth or ORD in Chicago. So far I’ve flown through ORD each time on my travels this year. Now flying into the airport wasn’t really a problem persay, but the return trip has proved to be anything but. Each time I’ve flown from Chicago back to San Diego, there has been a spate of mechanical issues, delays among other things. Forever will AA1339 stick out in my mind because of that.

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Tags: Travel

The return from Comiket 76 and Comitia 89

27Aug09

I’d write more but the jetlag is doing me in pretty good. Let’s hope I actually write something up as opposed to what happened the last time I made an attempt to write something about Comiket.

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Tags: Comiket, Japan

Oh my, doesn’t this look dusty.

07Aug09

It comes to no surprise that it has been so long since I’ve written anything in here. Things happen. Interest wanes. Laziness ensues. I’ve run out of two word phrases to use.

In any case, I am going to make an attempt to make more use of this blog. I do have many ideas I’d like to run with for the sake of having this in the first place. For one thing, I am still getting used to how WordPress works so I imagine things will look a bit out of place at times as I tinker with the code and whatever else I can use. Let’s see if I can keep this a bit more consistent then eh?

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Today is the start of another era…

20Jan09

Today, Barack Obama is officially inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America. My only hope is not that magically good things come right away, but that things will not get worse. Sure he is getting the rock star treatment now, but people need to remember that at the end of today, he has a lot of work ahead of him.

Let us hope he gets things done. Good luck, Mr. President.

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Tags: politics

Winter Comic Market 75

12Jan09

I recently attended Comic Market 75 which was the first winter Comiket event I have ever attended. Unlike the previous times that I traveled to Japan for Comiket, I was in the company of a rather merry band of mischiefs. It was also cold as hell as opposed to the summer events where I just sweated a lot. Here I was still sweating but it was nevertheless cold. How that works will be explained in due time along with my experience at Comiket 75…just not now. A more thorough post will be forthcoming.

Filed under: Japan, 同人Event   |  1 Comment
Tags: Comiket, Japan

Ragin’ into 2009.

12Jan09

For whatever reason it may be, I have decided to start writing a blog again.  I wasn’t really wanting to keep using the existing sites I had accounts on already, so I figured I’d start anew. What I will write about is rather debatable however.

Why don’t we start off with my thoughts on 2009? 2009 started out with much of a bang in many different ways:

The conflict in Gaza reached new heights of insanity as Israel continued to pound the crap out of this dense Palestinian enclave. As usual the world condemns Israel’s actions, Israelis cheer the military on, and nothing changes. Despite the tragedy of the situation, one perhaps cannot help but laugh somehow at how history seems to just repeat itself. Will something let up this year or will we be reading similar news in 2010 and beyond?

Stocks took off like proverbial soaring birds as the world felt hopeful things would not suck as hard as it seemed. The yen/USD exchange also improved to the tune of 93 yen to $1 USD. And much like how things were going, stuff went to hell quickly as the market took yet another nosedive and the exchange rate dropped down below 90 yen to $1 USD yet again. Good times I tell you.

So I am looking at the situation at hand and figuring that perhaps 2009 will probably suck.  Let’s hope I am wrong here.

…oh and the Chargers dropped it again. That and the Celtics lost 3 in a row?! What the hell is going on???

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Tags: World, WTF