Peter's Japan blog

After half a year of waiting, and 1 month delay, my Suzumiya Haruhi 1/8 scale figure has finally arrived! I've taken some quick pictures for now, but I will be doing a photo shoot tomorrow or so :-)
I really like the expression on the face a lot, and the whole gesture perfectly shows Haruhis character. Love it ;p
Have a look:

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It has been confirmed that Ayumi Hamasaki will release her 42nd single on September 19th 2007. This is only 2 months after the previous release of glitter/fated on July 18th.
The song will be used/previewed in a new upcoming Panasonic Lumix CM. It will be a rock-themed song!

There is also a rumor of a new album to be released November 29th, but this has not yet been officially confirmed. The 29/11 album rumor is false, as it was about 2006, which was "Secret"...

Still very excited about the single though! More news to come! :-)

Here will come the planning, schedule and report of our trip to America in 2008. Last time in May 2006 we undertook a 3 week journey through the South-West from Los Angeles, Las Vegas, the National Parks to San Francisco. This time we will be doing the East coast.

A rough schedule of cities we will be staying are: (Toronto? Niagara Falls), New York, (Baltimore), Philadelphia, Washington D.C., (Columbus/Cincinnati), Nashville, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa & Miami. This is still a rough route which will need to be adjusted to what we can do for sight-seeing in these areas.

Me and my friends who are going with me to the GazettE concert in Cologne, Germany, have decided that we will go in style ;p. Which means, we will be dressed in Visual Kei style ;p.
Since my favorite guy from Gazette is Reita, I will go as Reita. Which means blond hair in front of one eye, a nose bandana, and appropriate clothes. This way we won't stick out too much in the crowd ;p. It was a good thing I had been growing my hair since the end of last year or it would not have been long enough (always had very short hair). I wanted to have a more japanese haircut anyway :).

Now I need to find some clothes, and make a nose bandana :).

You see them all over Japan, in streets, in buildings, in temples and train stations. Boxes against the wall that have this round red light on them that is always on. I have wondered what it was for a long time (as I couldn't read what was written on it). First I thought it was some kind of security system for detecting stuff, but I couldn't figure out what it was detecting. I couldn't think of anything that would be in all of these places.

But now I know: 消火栓 means fire hydrant ;p
So these things are just fire hydrants, and it all suddenly makes a lot of sense.
It's the red light that made them look a bit ominous ;p But it's actually easy to spot them with this light.

While going through one of my old hard drives, I found some of my old drawings, and also one that I colored in CorelDraw. The one I'm showing in this post is a drawing of Sakuraba Aoi from Ai Yori Aoshi. Ai Yori Aoshi was a kind of harem anime, but different because of the chemistry and devotion between the 2 main characters: Sakuraba Aoi & Hanabishi Kaoru.

This drawing is from the opening video of the first series.

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Just got my ticket today for the GazettE in Cologne, Germany! I'm so excited! It's on October 21st in the Live Music Hall.
the GazettE is a popular Visual Kei J-Rock group. Have a look on their MySpace: The GazettE Official MySpace

Title: glitter / fated
Release dates:
July 18th 2007: Japan

Info: She sang glitter at the final concert of the Asia Tour 2007. (also both songs have already leaked as of June 12th, if you like it, buy the cd and support Ayu!)

Versions + Tracklisting

CD version (Preorder from YesAsia (Global))
1. glitter
2. fated
3. Secret (single version)
4. gitter (instrumental)
5. fated (instrumental)

CD+DVD version (Preorder from YesAsia (Global))
1. glitter
2. fated
3. Secret (single version)
4. gitter (instrumental)
5. fated (instrumental)

dvd: short film "Distance Love" (18 minutes) featuring glitter & fated

Weekly ranking
Week 1: 110165 copies at #1
Week 2: 23826 copies at #4
Week 3: 13311 copies at #15
Week 4: 7133 copies at #28
Week 5: 4844 copies at #25
Week 6: 2494 copies (outside ranking)
Total: 161773 copies

PV Info
- To be shot in the streets of Hong Kong on June 1st. Will be a short movie featuring a HK rising star Shawn Lee (notable roles: Infernal Affairs movies, Initial-D live action movie (the anime is much better though). Infernal Affairs is better known to European & American people as the original to the American remake: The Departed by Martin Scorsese)
- The PV will be 18 (not 15) minutes long, another mini-movie like the Voyage PV.

Tie-ups
glitter: song for new Zespri Gold Kiwifruit CM (streaming video)
fated: ghost story movie? (unconfirmed)

Updates:
May 30th 2007: PV Info
June 12th 2007: PV Info
June 29th 2007: Covers & tracklisting
July 3rd 2007: Title of short film & length
July 25th 2007: Sales of week 1
August 9th 2007: Sales of week 2 & 3
September 3rd 2007: Sales of week 4-6

Black Lagoon, another anime that I'm liking very much!

The story kicks off with a Japanese salary man, Okajima Rokuro, who needs to deliver a special disc, but is being kidnapped by the Black Lagoon company. Black Lagoon are a bunch of pirates/deliverers for those who pay for dangerous jobs.
However the company that Rokuro works for leaves him behind, and he decides to stay with the people that kidnapped him and join them on their dangerous missions. He is nicknamed "Rock" by the other team mates.
The other people of Black Lagoon include:
- the sexy but dangerous Revy aka 'Two-Hands', an american of chinese origin, who dangerously wields double Beretta 92F. She does most of the shooting, and she always picks on Rock, whom she cares for, but doesn't show that at all, cause she's the tough girl.
- the leader of the Black Lagoon, Dutch, is an african-american ex-vietnam soldier. He is the boss and the captain of the Black Lagoon boat.
- Benny, an american of jewish origin, handles all the technical aspects of Black Lagoon like communication, computers and hacking.

So that's it for a little introduction of the story (only the very beginning though).
There are a lot of action scenes and the animation is done very well and realistic. The series can be pretty dark at times, but sometimes there's a funny moment of course. The characters are explored quite deep in the first season, while the second season focuses more on the action. But nevertheless, I really started liking all the characters, especially Revy (she's hot as hell ;p).
It's also features an awesome OP song by MELL called Red Fraction.
I give this anime a big 10!

Also, I SO want this t-shirt (which you can buy here) :D.

Black Lagoon is now being released by Geneon on R1 dvd with english subtitles and an english dub.
Buy them at Amazon:
- Black Lagoon, Volume 1 Limited (with Art Box)
- Black Lagoon, Volume 1
- Black Lagoon, Volume 2 Limited (with Dog Tag)
- Black Lagoon, Volume 2
- Black Lagoon, Vol. 3 Limited Edition (to be released Sept 18th 2007)
- Black Lagoon, Vol. 3 (to be released Sept 18th 2007)

There is some new merchandise for A-Nation 2007, and it's very cute and better than last year.
Check it out:
It includes a new fan, beach towel, beach umbrella, glassware and the usual sports towel, t-shirt, shopping/beach bag and cell phone straps.

I've talked about it in my travel blog, but I'm gonna tell you a bit more about bicycles in Japan. Let's say 90% of all bicycles in Japan look about exactly the same, whether it's used by males or females, there is no difference. These are simple and cheap bicycles.

But they have a few typical characteristics:
- they all have a metal basket in front of their steering wheel. This can indeed be very handy to put your bag in, so that's actually very convenient. Usually they also have a kickstand and a lock.
- they all put their saddle to the lowest possible height. so if you're a bit bigger, your knees can almost touch your chin. These are safety regulations because you have to be able to put both your feet flat on the ground when you are sitting on a bike.
- this third characteristic is more of a general annoyance, half the brakes on these bikes screech like hell. Apparently this is good, because then the pedestrians are aware of them, but mostly they make my ears go deaf and get a chill down my spine :p.
I read that bicycle theft is still quite common in Japan, and therefore bicycle can be registered with the police for a small fee.

Also, there are no bicycle paths on the road, so they have to drive on the sidewalk, through all the pedestrians... Even though Japanese law states that bikes have to ride on the street, and not on the sidewalk, they do so anyway. So I've had many near close encounters with them when I was in Japan, and you really learn to actually behave like when you're driving a car: when you want to go left/right, first look behind your left/right, and then go left/right. Otherwise, you're bound to (almost) bump into a bicycle that is racing through the crowd.

Also there are special parking lots for bicycles at train station, sometimes even multi-story. When the rare occasion arises that there are not places to put them, they are just put in every possible space, even if there is a sign that says it's not allowed. This sometimes leads to confiscation by the local police :)

This is actually one of the only annoyances in Japan, but you learn to live with it :)

If you like watching hundreds of little balls coming down hoping for them to fall in a small hole, like lots of noise, some mindless gambling, lots of smoke (Pachinkos are one of the last public places where you can smoke), then Pachinko might be something for you.
A Pachinko machine is a combination of a sort of pinball machine and a slot machine.

How to play:
- buy a 1000 (or more) small lead balls at the counter, and find some free machine.
- put the balls into the container
- use a level to control the speed at which the balls are shot into the machine.
- look at the balls coming down through an array of pins
- when a ball falls into to a special hole, the slot game begins
- and if you're lucky you win, and get more balls in return
- and thus the whole process starts over again

But since gambling is illegal in Japan, they use a loophole in the law. The balls that you won, can be traded for prizes or token. These prizes can than be traded for money in a little shop next to the pachinko parlor, so you're actually just selling the prize. A prize which gets used again for the next winner.

Pachinko machines usually come in many flavors with an extra story and game built-in the slot machine, based on popular movies or animes. For example, you will find a lot of evangelion pachinko machines which includes battle stages in the slot-game.

You can literally find a pachinko parlor in every city in Japan, and it usually has a huge neon sign that can be seen from a nearby train station. Also, you can find any age (18+), any gender and any wealth status in there. Regular players usually line up in front of the door before it is open.

There are people who can make a living from playing pachinko, these are players that try to find machines that are fixed, and to find which machine is fixed on which day. They all have several methods of calculations to find out which pachinko machine.

Got a package from Japan again with some cds :).

- the GazettE - STACKED RUBBISH ~Limited Edition CD+DVD~
The new album from the GazettE, a very popular visual kei band in Japan. This is the follow-up of the previous succesful album: NIL. This albums contains 3 previous single: Regret, Filth In The Beauty and Hyena.
This album seems to have a few (experimental to me) tracks in the same style as Defective Tragedy which was on the Hyena single. But it still a very gazette album, with some typical sometimes hard, sometimes experimental, sometimes party-like and of course some ballads. Although I personally like NIL more.

- Kosaka Riyu - Danzai no Hana ~Guilty Sky~ [CD+DVD] (ED of Claymore, see other post)
This is Kosaka Riyu's first solo single. She was part of an all-female group BeForU which was formed for DDR songs. But this song just blew me away. It has a gothic feeling that reminds me a bit of Within Temptation, but not entirely. The single also contains the English-sung version of the song. The b-side "ignore" is also quite good, a good rock song with a beat. The DVD contains the PV for Danzai no Hana, which includes some nice slow-motion shots. There is also an edit of this video on the DVD, which intercuts with scenes from Claymore anime. A very nice addition.

- Hirano Aya & Katou Emiri & Fukuhara Kaori & Endou Aya - Motteke! Sailor Fuku (OP of Lucky☆Star)
This is another very addictive anime song, that also features a para para dance, just like Hare Hare Yukai from Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu. (which also featured Hirano Aya in a main role).





- Trance Paradise 5
Bought this one because it contained another remix of Dub-I-Dub, the Delaction Remix.

Buy on YesAsia:
the GazettE - STACKED RUBBISH ~Ltd Edition CD+DVD~ or Normal edition
Kosaka Riyu - Danzai no Hana ~Guilty Sky~ [CD+DVD] or CD-Only
Hirano Aya & Katou Emiri & Fukuhara Kaori & Endou Aya - Motteke! Sailor Fuku
and Amazon.com:
Trance Paradise 5

Been doing some drawing again, it was a long time again. But this time I skipped the step of drawing it on paper, and tried to do it directly on the computer. But I'm kinda weird in the program that I use for drawing: CorelDraw. Everybody does it in Photoshop, I do it in CorelDraw, which is a completely vector-based program. Vector-based anime/manga drawing has it's advantages, it's easy to just move the line or adjust the curve, in stead of having to draw and erase, draw and erase with traditional bitmap drawing. Also coloring has it's advantages. But it also has it's disadvantages like drawing shadows is not easy as you have to make separate objects for the shadow for each color. And if you move some lines, you also have to move the fill (IF your fill is separate from your lines, which you might do sometimes).

I've done this type of drawing in the past before but I started it on paper, scanned it, and then put the lines over it. I must tell you that I always have an example in front of me to look at. I'm not that talented (yet) that I can draw them out of my head. So this time I did it directly in Corel and here's the result:

My attempt:

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Yatta! A second season to "Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu" is coming!
Or at least, it's going to be announced in the next issue of NewType, but it is still a rumor.
But let's hope it will be :)

source: AnimeNewsNetwork

My figure got delayed. Was supposed to be released on June 30th, but it is now delayed by 1 month until July 31st :(
Here's a preview of the figure: