Inbox by Google

I managed to get myself an Inbox by Gmail invite just to test it out. My overal impression is that this still seems like a very beta interface and in terms of functionality, I think I would prefer the old Gmail interface.

Chicago

So I've been in Chicago since Gencon finished and then I'll be heading to Japan. 

Paypal

Or really known as why I prefer to use Paypal than Credit cards when buying online... This probably only really applies to Singapore or maybe other SEA countries. 

Japan 2013 #6

Final 2 days in Japan...That made me sad.

Japan 2013 #5

Boy. This is going to be a mouthful. Basically, Daimon, Tokyo Tower, Asakusa, Ueno, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro And Akihabara. 

Japan 2013 #4

4 words. Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea.

Japan 2013 #3

Right, the Internet connection in Tokyo, Japan was a bitch so I really didn't manage to do much. Well, except enjoy myself in Japan. 

Japan 2013 #2

Day 3-4 see me heading down to Nara Park, Osaka Aquarium and Kyoto respectively. 

Japan 2013 #1

Been spending the last few days in Japan and will be here till the 19th at least. Also it's been raining a lot. Curses. 

Help a 9 year old make a RPG or help a millionaire get more money?

There are a lot of dubious kickstarters out there but the most recent controversial one has to be this. 

The Perils of running a game shop

Otherwise known as " Why it's sometimes damn hard for me to justify buying from a brick-and-mortar store. Note: this is really just an anecdote about a recent experience of mine.

Update: The situation with Broken Egg Games

Well, I'm glad to say that my sitch with Broken Egg Games was resolved; although I still wish that it had never happened in the first place. I'm also not too happy with their level of service.

Broken Egg Games AKA How to open up a credit card dispute

Well, it's finally happened. I've finally had to open up a credit card dispute after years of shopping online. I mean, the law of averages meant I was bound to do this sometime. 

Kickstarter

In the past I've been skeptical of kickstarter for several reasons. Mostly because it seemed to me that people were using it as a way of getting cheap funding from the crowd without ever having to fund it themselves. Plus, the crowd probably doesn't charge 6% interest per annum  and have reams of legalese for them to sign. 

WAAC vs Being friendly to newbies

Just a few random thoughts inspired by lots of Warmachine and other things. If you've read my previous posts, you'll probably know what kind of impetus I had for writing this. 

Two things to note. I play for fun. However, I also play to win. The 2 aren't mutually exclusive. It's also part of why I don't like to play D3 Inferno mode unless in a party; because I find single player extremely boring, despite the fact that single player was previously a lot easier than multiplayer.

Last Night in Japan

So it rained the whole day today. Which made it a bitch going ANYWHERE. However, I managed to make it to Diver City to catch the giant Gundam in action. Watching it, I joked to my friend that we should get into the Gundam and fly off. Which led to more banter between us before I was telling him about this old joke I remember from back when the life-size gundam was first revealed a few years ago. This was back when N.Korea was being a dick and doing some missile tests and me and another friend were joking that the Gundam was secretly a working prototype that would only activate if N.Korea tried to launch any ICBMs at Japan. 

Anyway, after that we headed to Akihabara because we still had several things we wanted to get. I managed to 'convince' my friend to get a 3DS. Which makes it 3 things I've managed to convince him to buy this trip, a PS Vita, a DSiLL and a 3DS. If only I was this successful at selling to others -_-

I also saw something hilarious while walking in Akihabara. Gendo Ikari of ALL people being used to promote Schick razors. His expression in the commercial is hilarious, as is Reis. Because of the laugh the advertisement gave me, I bought the razor since it was fairly cheap anyway. 


Because of the rain, we didn't feel like going to other places and walking in the rain. I was already wet enough because I didn't want to buy an umbrella just to have to throw it away when I returned home the next day. So we spent most of the time trawling Akihabara's arcades and playing UFO catchers. First of all, I'll say this, UFO machines nowadays are FUCKED UP beyond all belief. I think they realised the old methods were too easy to crack and they came up with new ways of stopping people from winning. 

Just take a look at the machine setup. You're supposed to topple the box so that it falls down and releases the latch that will drop the prize down into the slot. Sounds easy? It's really not, because of the way they set the machine up. 

First of all, because of the fact that the power of the claws is near non-existent, don't expect to be able to lift the box very far. Furthermore, the layout is set up so that the box is sort of on an incline so that if you lift it up, it'll pretty much fall back into place. So you have to try multiple times so as to budge it a little before it'll fall a little. And it's not cheap at 200yen per try.  I tried it for a while before giving up on this particular machine. 

Which is not to say I didn't win anything. I did. I got myself a Macross Frontier cloth poster. This game was also rigged as hell. The poster was supported on two sides so the centre was over empty space. You had to drop it into the slot as usual. Take a look at the Ranka version over there. HOWEVER, there are several strips of god knows what materials on the sides of the machine that increases the friction of the prize with the edge by a factor of over 9000. And they were damn long as well, so it was near impossible to get it because you could only nudge it little by little to drop. I've seen grown men walk away from the challenge of winning these things. Nonetheless I managed to persevere. 

My 2nd prize of the night. A Rei Ayanami figure. This was a different machine from the previous one, and the most popular variation I've seen. Basically a little plastic plank is balanced on a round plastic ball and if you manage to tilt the plank enough, the plank drops and trips a ledge which drops the figure into the slot. However, as usual the ball is made of some unholy material and the force of the claws are crap. However, I managed to do pretty well for this, managing to catch it with about 1500yen. This is the most popular variation of UFO catcher that I've seen probably because it requires VERY little placing. The other types all have sticker markers to indicate where the prize should be placed to ensure MAXIMUM difficulty for the player. This however just requires a plank placed squarely on a ball...

Now for the last prize. Frankly, I didn't really want this, but I had already invested too much money in it to just walk away and let someone else win the prize based off my hard work. I can only say this prize was pretty damn fucked up to catch. Everytime I thought I had it, the plank shifted again so it was still secure on the ball. 

On the other hand, I managed to get three of these bags. So suck on it Sega -_- Also, you apparently need a basic knowledge of physics to be able to catch those things reliably -_- Me and my friend; who's an engineering architect, actually spent most of the time discussing where to hit with the claw to try and achieve what effect and then discussing what to do. 

Also, apparently one of the Taito staff members is damn friendly. I was looking at this japanese teenager (in his later teens) try to win a persona 4 canvas bag from the UFO catcher. This variation had the bag balanced on 2 metal poles so you had to tilt it and somehow push it into the empty space between the poles. Usually the bag starts off as parallel with the poles so it's really hard to knock down. Apparently, this teenager had so much trouble, the staff member did him a favor and rearranged it so that it was already tilted so all the teen had to do was use the claw to push down in the centre and the bag would pretty much fall down. Sadly, the teen STILL couldn't do it. Seriously, wtf failure was this? It got SO BAD the staff member helped him out a SECOND TIME. By opening the case and then pointing out WHERE TO hit with the claw. It's like WTF?? I can not believe someone can be this bad at this. Apparently, elementary physics is not a required course in Japanese education. 


And he still failed the first two times -_- Seriously, wth. Ah well, if he had given up, I was planning to just win the bag. Considering it was THAT easily placed. 

On my way back, we saw even more maids lining the streets. I gotta admire and pity them at the same time. It had been raining the whole day and it was near 11 and they still had to stand in the streets to try and get customers. 


On the other hand, I managed to get over 100 street passes with my 3DS while in Akihabara TODAY. Just in one day. Yeah, I'll never get this in Singapore -_-

Japan Day 5

So today we were shopping for some PS Vita stuff. Turns out Sony is a bit of a bastard and has disable the collection of trophies (Achievements for the xbox crowd) for any 2nd hand games. Apparently, trophies are now so rare they're tied to the 1st account that plays the game. I have to wonder HTF does sony even know the game is 2nd hand in the first place. 

Anyway, while we were doing that, we stumbled upon the Gundam Cafe at Akihabara. It's apparently the opposite way from the Electric town exit, which would explain why I've never seen it before. Next to it was the AKB48 cafe but that's less important. 

Despite having eaten already, we decided to head in for coffee. I originally ordered ice coffee but once I realised they had HARO coffee, I knew I had to order more coffee. Which explains why I'm awake at 12 midnight typing out this blog entry instead of sleeping -_-


The coffee was average really. And the waiters/waitresses really need to dress up as Gundams instead of pilots. But the price wasn't that bad and there were quite a few other Gundam Otaku there as well. 

Japan Day 4

So my fair has started. Which means I'll be working from 10am to 6pm everyday until Friday. Which means less time to wander around Japan.


Turns out today was some AKB48 election, where they elect the most popular member. Mostly by having their fans send in votes and whoever gets the most votes wins. My friend was asking me who I supported and I mentioned Tomomi. Why? Because she's appeared in Kamen Rider W, which is the ONLY reason I know of her. So that's the one way to win my vote in most things, appear in Kamen Rider. 


We ended up going to Shinjuku after work for dinner. But on the way, we decided to walk to Shibuya from Shinjuku because Shinjuku was kinda boring. Big mistake. It took us 1.5 hrs to walk from Shinjuku to Shibuya, mostly because 1/2 the time we weren't sure where we were going. Considering none of us had a map and we only had a general direction...


Nonetheless, we eventually made it there. We walked around for a while, trying to decide on a place to eat. While there, I finally managed to 'persuade' my friend to buy a PS Vita. Hohoho.


We finally decided on a ramen place I had eaten at the other time. Mostly because I couldn't be bothered to walk much further. While eating there though, I got really freaked out by the woman next to me. I was eating my ramen and talking with my friend about trivial stuff; something about how I like to eat spicy stuff while the other people he knows don't, and then I turn and I find the woman sitting next to me (with who I assume is her bf right next to her) leaning in to me and staring really really closely at me (or my food). I was somewhat taken aback to find someone that IN my own personal space since I have issues with people touching me. Sure, she was pretty in a ragged sort of way but she just gave off HUGE yandere vibes. I cautiously turned back to my food and continued on having my conversation with my friend while her boyfriend kept going on about how 'umai' (delicious) the food was. 

Japan Day 3

So my friend's vacation energy is waning. Might have something to do with the fact we've walked 45k+ steps in the last 3 days; according to my 3DS. He came back to the hotel to sleep it off in the afternoon. I didn't have much of a choice since I spent most of my morning doing some work-related stuff so I had to go out in the afternoon to make the most of my time here in Japan. 

So I ended up going to Akiba because I wanted to get a micro-USB cable for my phone. Turns out the one I brought over here died and I didn't have any reliable way to charge my phone except borrowing my friends cable. However, that wasn't really a permanent solution. I went to get a microUSB cable but ended up getting so much more. Turns out Akiba sells a lot of random stuff, other than just games and porn. I managed to get myself a battery charger that uses a USB cable that has a 3DS head and works for the PSP as well. 

And seriously, the maid situation in Akiba is getting out of control. It's like the number of maid cafes in Akiba is over 9000!! You can barely walk the back streets without seeing one; if not several of them standing on the streets, trying to get people to visit their cafe. The maid cafe business must be pretty cutthroat.

I also dropped by the mega Sega arcade like I usually do. Managed to play the new persona 4 fighting game, and like I guessed, it's VERY obvious it was by ARC SYSTEM. Those who have played their games before obviously know what I'm talking about -_-.

I also found something amusing in the toilets of the arcade. Apparently they have an interactive toilet which measures how ...much force your pee lands with and tells you about it as if they're reporting the weather. It's seriously wtf. Apparently I rate a typhoon....

Japan Day 2

So day 2 breaks. And we wake up early to go to Tsukiji. However, my friend can not find the don place he wants to eat at so end up at eating at Sushi Tai instead. I joke to him that as we're going back to the station, we'll see the place he wants to eat at. And it turns out we do. Lol, the look on his face.


Afterwards, we head down to Nakano. There's not much at Nakano but we do browse through a few anime stores. Turns out they opened a games workshop in Nakano but the prices are OMGWTF expensive. It's 6100yen for a 10 man tactical squad of space marines. That's 610 yen per soldier, which is damn expensive. 


And finally, despite carrying a huge load of stuff, we head down to Ikebukuro because my friend has never been there before. We end up stuffing our bags into a locker which makes things so much easier for us and we wander about Ikebukuro. Turns out Ikebukuro now has a lot of love hotels situated in the shopping district, as well as a lot of maid cafes. Are the two related in some manner? Probably...

After wandering about for a few hours, we finally decided to go for dinner at Daiba. We wandered about for a while, dropping by the capcom and Hello Kitty store. We also found a Daiso at Daiba, which was surprising because I can't imagine it makes enough to pay for the rent. My friend was damn elated though, since he said it made it easier for him to buy stuff for people back at hom now -_- I pity his colleagues. Finally we ended up eating tonkatsu on the 5th floor.