To Drive Or Not To Drive

Spent about 6000円 at the pump today. These Japanese gas prices are killing me. It probably doesn't help that I tend to drive around aimlessly in the middle of the night for no apparent reason, but ah well. I figure that you have to pay for some of life's pleasures. You know, it wasn't much to look at, but my old Suzuki was a bona fide miracle as far as fuel economy went...that being said, I never, never want to go back to driving a 658-cc car again. Its affinity for gas aside, I've got precious little to complain about with my current ride. My new favorite thing to do is park my car next to someone else who drives my car.



The Chaser seems to be the vehicle of choice among JZX100 owners, but there's just something so sleek about the tail lights on a 平成12年 Mark II.

It Was A Good Day

Busy day at work, but in that satisfying way, where all your lessons run smoothly and all the other teachers ask for your help and seem to find you immensely useful, if only for one day. Capped things off by grabbing a copy of Tekken 6 on the way home.



I also briefly, briefly considered getting BAYONETTA, but logic prevailed in the end. I'll probably devote every one of my waking, non-working hours to Tekken for the next week or so.
Thoughts on the game later.

Brock vs Carwin Postponed

Brock forced to pull out of the fight due to illness. Bummer. The fight has been rescheduled and will now reportedly take place at UFC 108 in January.



So Tito Ortiz/Forrest Griffin II gets bumped up to the main event slot. I'm kind of interested to see the reaction that Griffin gets. Ortiz will no doubt get a huge ovation upon his return, but Griffin will probably take a little heat from the crowd after his embarrassing knockout at the hands of Anderson Silva. I mean, no shame in getting knocked out by Silva, but did Griffin really have to run away afterwards? (cue the "run Forrest" jokes)

As Skyzoo Would Say...

...my shoe game is Penny in 96. COPPER.

Dwight Howard Dominating Regular Folks

Watching Dwight Howard block children brings me so much joy.

KANSAI

Not exactly sure why I always find it necessary to type that in caps. It just seems appropriate. We did the smart thing and hit hostels and cheaper inns to save a little dough this time around, but regardless, I'm done traveling for the year. I mean it this time.



Gion, where we spent two nights.



The famous Kiyomizu Temple.



Osaka. The place gets infinitely better once the sun goes down.



Takoyaki.



The view from the top of (the exorbitant reproduction of) Osaka Castle. Quite nice, actually.



Ordering that Kobe beef like Shaquille O'Neal.

Next Stop...

...KANSAI. Be back in a few.

Cradle Rock Low

Steve Nash's signature joint for the 09-10 season. The tongue says it all: FRESH.







Kind of hard to imagine purchasing these sneakers as something to hoop in, but it'd make a pretty nice casual shoe to kick around.

EVA: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance

Evangelion: 2.0 was finally playing in town this past weekend, so I made it a point to check it out on the big screen. I was a little worried that the nerds would be out in full force, but Evangelion is such a big deal in Japan that normal people actually turned up for the premier. Go figure. While 1.o was more of a flashy retelling of the television series' first story arc, 2.0 turned out to be something entirely different; new characters, new Eva units, ridiculous animation, more streamlined storytelling and character development...dare I say, the finest thing to come out of Eva canon, ever. Without spoiling too much, newcomer Mari manages to be thoroughly interesting and entertaining without butting into the Shinji/Rei/Asuka dynamic, and to top things off, we even get a few glimpses of Kaworu's badass Eva Mark.06.





One last interesting thing was Anno's decision to repeatedly use Kare Kano music in any of the school scenes. While this could be construed as laziness on the part of the producers, it's a little hard to complain about lack of imagination when that familiar soundtrack helps to bring together those classroom exchanges as well as it does.

Not sure what direction 3.0 will take, but I certainly hope that the release comes sooner than later.

SUPER SFIV

Not that we didn't see it coming, but an updated version of Street Fighter IV will be hitting consoles sometime next spring. For owners of the original game, the updates have unfortunately been deemed too significant for DLC, so I imagine that there will be fairly sizable gameplay tweaks in addition to the roster additions. Good news for anyone who managed to resist buying SFIV the first time around. Personally, I'll likely end up purchasing the game again because this installment features 100% more T. HAWK.





The other 2 confirmed characters are Dee Jay and newcomer Juri (who looks she'll be a lot of fun to play). Word is that there'll be a total of 8 additional fighters in the game, and considering that the SFII roster has now been exhausted with the inclusion of T. Hawk and Dee Jay, we'll most likely be seeing more Alpha/Zero characters and hopefully some from SFIII. If Capcom isn't too worried about taking a few liberties with the story and timelines, the inclusion of younger versions of Alex, Makoto and Ibuki would make me very, very happy.