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I think I measured the salt wrong, my crepe tastes a little off. But at least I found a use for Ikea jam.

(A cake would totally be inappropriate, it’s not flat enough)

Anime Weekend Atlanta is pretty much the best con around, you should go to it. But if you stay more than a few minutes away you’ll probably oversleep and miss the Eva panel, so watch out for that.

On Friday I saw Patrick’s Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno panel; after the fire alarm triggered by the Japanese schoolgirls had been fixed, he explained what a takenokozoku was and how to be a gothloli (buy his book). Afterwards I went to with some guys and some other guys (and also the specter of these people hanging over us) to Abdullah the Butcher’s House of Ribs and Chinese food, which is not a joke and has good ribs. I forgot to introduce myself, but I was wearing my most powerful shirt. Afterwards, the con illuminati introduced everyone to the wonders of Crystal Triangle and that one episode of TV Champion 2 whose torrent I forgot to seed.

Afterwards I got sick and accidentally missed every other panel I wanted to go to, but at any other convention I wouldn’t even have a chance to miss a panel about Message from Space. And that’s what it’s all about.

(also I bought a marisa x youmu vs nitori doujin, and all the tsukihime manga after it turned out to be sort of good/interestingly flawed, although drmaster is the worst publisher)

Trawling around the net, catching up on rss feeds and adding new ones now that I’m actually getting settled in. Some very mildly interesting things that have likely been posted elsewhere:

Lupin: Cagliostro, Secret of Mamo, TV Season 1+2 coming to Blu-ray
5040 per movie, that’s like half the price of what Bandai Visual wants for Honneamise!

Tokyo International Film Festival has a ridiculous anime lineup, why am I stuck in Kyoto
animecs TIFF is doing a Tezuka restrospective and has some bad-ass premieres of “Japanimations” and ungggg

notables:
10/18: Marine Express (lol) (digital betacam), Hell’s Angels (premiere, hdcam-sr), Both Rintaro’s Phoenix and Ichikawa’s Phoenix (35mm), Summer Days With Coo (35mm)
10/19: Both Unico movies (hdcam), Shoji Kawamori feature “The Universe of Kawamori Shoji” (!!!)

maybe I’ll just take a week off of school and go to M3 and then go to TIFF!

“Relese” details on the new Ali Project single/op for Kurogane no Linebarrel
Atonal warbling, no one cares, etc

Drunk Germans covering Ghibli film songs: the album
Featuring probably the best cover of this song that will ever be recorded

Further proof of the NHK conspiracy: while flipping through channels last night, I caught the tail end of this show run on public tv about hero songs. HERO SONGS! Since I only saw the end, I missed the earlier parts with lame songs like the Eva op, and instead got to see Masaaki Endoh and Tanaka Kouhei be totally awesome. Endoh sung some parts of Yuusha-oh Tanjo, Kouhei sung some other parts while playing an electric piano, and this dude wearing a lot of black and a funny hat was mouthing along to all the lyrics. In between songs, there’d be comments on the pure-heartedness of hero songs and some discussion on how they have awesome lyrics that would sound really lame if it weren’t for the fact that they’re yelling move names in between verses. Kouhei laid down some high-level music theory and explained how rather than take after the earlier styles of hero songs in “minor keys” he opted to use a “major key” to keep with the totally awesome feel of GGG, and how he wanted to go balls-out so he made the “dodekkai shugoshin/bokura no yuusha-oh” line keep ascending because a true hero/composer can do whatever the hell he wants. Seriously, how does PBS expect to stay afloat when they don’t have JAM PROJECT members on tv singing the Abaranger theme song? Or when they don’t have Tanaka Kouhei confessing that he composed the King Gainer op as a joke, then had to admit defeat to Tomino once he saw the op animation, causing Tomino to just nod and say something along the lines of “Good. Now you know my power.” Now that’s the kind of tv that Viewers Like Me want to see.

This is an incredibly late report, but better late then never! All but one of the photos is stolen from Moondabor, who pretty much single-handedly made my two weeks in Tokyo three times as interesting and infinitely more maidy.

About a month ago, I went with a big ol’ group of gaijin to one of the few shrines most otaku will ever willingly visit: Washinomiya, aka “you know, the Lucky Star shrine.” And Lucky Star shrine it was. The place looks like any other small-medium-sized town in the Kanto area, except a large number of stores have realized that they can make a ton of money from fairly quiet people who smell a little funny if they put up some signs and offer minor changes to their goods and services.

Naturally, the first thing we did upon leaving the station was go to a very small restaurant and order some “Tsukasa no Katsudon Dakee~!”s. The store was run by a very elderly couple, and the only other customer there was an equally elderly man watching the Olympics on an ancient tv set while an equally ancient electric fan was blowing on him. There was a full set of Lucky Star figures placed next to the tv which one of the guys with me identified in about 10 seconds, noting that he too owned the set. As our food came, the lady working our table also had Lucky Star chopstick holders and Lucky Star Washinomiya-area food store stamp rally sheets, and confirmed that we were there for “this,” in the simplest Japanese she could muster. The katsudon wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t really that “Dakee~”, but it did have an egg on top!

The actual temple was a pretty short walk from the station, and before we knew it, we were at those famous gates. Of course, we were immediately distracted by the nearby itasha, oddly placed billboards with ads for affordibly-priced Minoru Shiraishi haircuts, and of course this bizarre doll that appears to be half Konata, half KFC ad.

The temple itself was very quiet, it being a weekday afternoon and all. I mean, despite all this anime stuff, the place is still a regular temple, with regular temple stuff like this huge sign about the temple’s history that none of us even made an attempt to feign interest in. We did some regular temple stuff, like washing your hands and drinking some temple water like “the sign with the loli that they had in lucky star” tells you to on a handy poster, and ringing the bell and clapping and bowing and messing up the order in which you’re supposed to do all that business.

I guess there were some really faint signs that an otaku or two had been to the temple, like a board here and there on this thing (…(2), (3), (4), (5).) I’m fairly sure we spent a good half hour just looking at these things, because there were some real gems in here. Some highlights:

• Germany
• Taking it Easy
• Konata can full combo Hare Hare Yukai Oni mode like it was nothing
• MULTI-TEMPLE DRIFTING?
• Can’t spell Misao without M..ao! (tte VUA!)
• Who in the world would put something like this up there
• MOE AND PEACE. DESU.
• Lots of Japanese seem to really like praying for traffic safety in temples, which I guess isn’t that bad of an idea, to be honest.
• what in the world is going on here
• This is the Lucky Star shrine, not the Vocaloid shrine!!!
• Sorry to break it to you guys, but Ronald is now taken as someones yome.
• This is the Lucky Star shrine, not the FUTAE NO KIWAMI shrAAAAAAAAAAAAAAa
• And what better way to end the photo collection than a picture of Golgo wishing death upon all the disgusting otaku talking about Lucky Star?

I have to say that I had more fun than I was expecting, but I doubt I’ll ever be going back to the place, unless someone wants to accompany me as I finish the rest of this damn stamp rally. Anyone who has the opportunity that remotely cares about this stuff should go out there, it’s a good excuse to say that you took in some Japanese culture while also nerding out at the same time, not to mention that the place will probably go back to being yet another decrepit small town in another few years :(