Aug 2
Monika bought me two new figures for our anniversary. They can be seen along with some of the others I’ve collected. There’s Ruri on the top shelf, and Haruhi on the bottom. Haruhi is 1/4th scale, pretty damn large.
Both shelves
Haruhi Suzumiya
Ruri Hoshino
Well, it’s been two months since I last wrote a diary update… wow! Adam and I have been living in Japan for 7 months now. Time flies when you’re having fun… or so they say… but you know… these last 2 months have felt like a decade to me!! As most of you probably know (because I complain about it a lot!), it’s summer here in Japan now. It’s very hot and sticky… I’m so jealous to hear about the cold, miserable weather in Adelaide… I heard it’s been raining a lot there too! Damnit! I mean… it rains here nearly everyday too… but this type of rain just makes the day more humid… it doesn’t bring relief! It’s so hot here that it feels like you’re in a sauna all day… In the last few weeks, the temperature has been around 32 degrees… but it’s the humidity that is killing us. It’s usually between 70-99%! It’s disgusting! It’s uncomfortable… and our air con never gets a proper chance to rest! I’m not looking forward to our electricity bill next month… that’s for sure!! At times like this, I wish I was living in Tokyo… I hear it’s much cooler there… or better yet… Hokkaido where the temperature is usually below 20 and it’s never humid at all!! I heard this information from my good friend/musuko (=son) Hiroshi. He came back to Japan for the winter holidays to see his family and girlfriend. He was so shocked at the temperature in Osaka when he came to visit me for a few hours before heading back to Adelaide to finish his masters! It was great to catch up with him even though it was only for a few hours (THANKS HIRO)! We had okonomiyaki and yakisoba for lunch… surprisingly… it was my first Japanese meal in ages! Here I am living in Japan… not eating very much Japanese food. Haha. Anyways, next weekend, two other mates from Adelaide, Wilson and Stewart are coming here so I’m looking forward to catching up with them!! Later in the year another friend, Kathryn, will be coming to Japan as well! I’m really looking forward to seeing some friends from Adelaide! WOO!
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Jun 30
The new Evangelion movie hit cinema’s Saturday. I ended up going to the Sunday evening showing (being busy on Saturday with work and such). It’s so much better than the first movie in so many ways, can’t wait the 1-2 years needed before the next one hits!
It being in Japanese, I only understood the storyline, and the general flow of conversation from the words I could pick up and my knowledge of the plot. But it was still great fun. I’d gladly pay to go see it again…
They also had a meal deal for the movie, popcorn, drink and Asuka figurine for 1500 yen. All the containers were Eva themed (the popcorn was labeled ‘Calorie Supply System’), so of course I got that.
The cinema has a small goods shop from which you can buy posters/pamplets/random goods for the movies they’re showing. As such I bought a bunch of Evangelion goods. The ones I ended up getting are in the pictures below (as well as a pamplet not shown).
If you’re interested in whats inside the pamplet, click here, someone scanned in their copy.
All up I spent about 6000 yen on goods (~AU$77).
Jun 5
Figured I’d try out Gallery2. So you can goto http://gallery.rurisu.net. Right now it just has some of the albums that you may have seen here on the blog already. But I plan to add a lot more in the next few days or so.
Till next time…
May 17
So on this past Friday we went to Universal Studios Japan (USJ). I’ll leave it to Moni to do a write up some time. Meanwhile, here’s a selection of photos for you all.
Here I am with the tour car from Jurassic Park.
One of the ones still intact anyway. Behind the camera is the Welcome Center from Jurassic Park (well in USJ its the ‘Discovery Restaurant’ but its built to look like it).
Hello Kitty in her show ‘Hello Kitty Dream Weddings’. She organizes a wedding between Aiko and Kevin (two random USJ staff members).
More in the gallery to look at below:
May 16
My hard drive is back in perfect health! Thank god, considering it had the only copy of some of our videos from the video camera of our trip! These have now been backed up onto my other drive as well, heh.
I managed to find a small USB to RS232 kit (pre-built) which had the option (via jumper) to set it to either 5V or 3.3V output operation, which is fantastic as I needed the 3.3V for the HDD’s PCB. I soldered some wires to the output lines, and plugged the other end into the serial port on the HDD. I entered the commands, to reset the drive and fix the SMART tables, screwed the PCB back down firmly on the disk, plugged it in and turned on the machine. Up came windows and along with it, the hard disk, great success. I put the new firmware on a bootable CD, reset the machine and let it update. Now the drive won’t pull this shit on me again. Phew!
Meanwhile, we went to USJ (Universal Studios Japan) yesterday. Which means I got to visit Jurassic Park (among other places). More on that later, I’ve got more files to back up.
May 14
So my main hard disk decided to die (lucky me). However by the look of it, its a firmware failure (very common with this drive, it caused some news back in January).
So in order to fix it, I’ve got to get a 5V to 3.3V Serial adapter to talk with the HDD’s PCB board and a Torc screwdriver to remove said board from the main HDD casing. After sending a few commands to fix the error, I can update the firmware so that the drive works again. The firmware issue prevents the BIOS from getting past the POST screen as the drive is in a BSY state (BuSY), so the bios is happy to wait till it stops (problem is, it doesn’t).
I’ll let you know how its gone come Sunday evening…
May 8
I’ll get around to writing up about all the stuff we did during Golden Week while we were in the Okayama / Kurashiki area. For now, here’s a few low-res photos taken with the video camera. I’ll put up some higher quality shots from the digital camera once we’ve gone through them later.
A quick list of the things we did however:
Walk around Historical Precinct of Kurashiki
Short hike (after a long drive up) a mountain to see some ruins
US Marine Core Airshow at Iwakuni Base
Took a look at a pretty cool bridge
Took a look at another huge bridge between Honshu and Shikoku
Various other things…
I might even throw up a couple of short videos from the airshow and other things.
May 2
Heading out of town for Golden Week (Japanese national holidays), we’ll be back the evening of the 7th. We might be online sometime before then, who knows. Pictures and info to come later I’m sure.
Till then~
