Here’s today’s update. I just about finished up Chapter 3 in Genki I, which dealt with Verb Conjugations (Ru, U, and irregular verbs). I kinda have a good feel for it although I am studying up on flash cards from Memrise to keep the new vocab stuck with me. I wanted to finish up my workbook last night but our dog, Ravenna decided that was the perfect opportunity to sit on my lap, directly between the book I’m writing in and my face.

You probably have seen those Android card games, they are a dime a dozen. One particulary stood out last to me last year with its excellent art design from Mobage, Rage of Bahamut. Well just yesterday I preordered a Rage of Bahamut Figure directly from Kotobukiya. All the main sites (AmiAmi, Hobbysearch, etc) sold out within hours, and after looking at this figure you can understand why:

Sexy, eh?

Also picked up a couple import preorders from Play-Asia. Onechanbara Z Kagura for for the PS3 and Akiba’s Trip 2 for the Vita. What can I say about them? Onechanbara (Also known as Bikini Samurai Squad here in the US) is a game that deals with a katana-wielding cowgirl and her sister who kill zombies. Gameplay is pretty straight-forward, so apart from missing the dialogue queues, no other translation is really needed except…kill zombies. Akiba’s Trip 2 on the other hand deals with killing vampires in a perfectly recreated district of Tokyo, Akihabara (which I’ve visited twice IRL). It’s basically the anime/manga/otaku mecca of Japan. Here’s a photo I took earlier this year:

Akihabara, what I would do to go back…

I’m on the fence about preordering Gods Eater 2, Project Diva F 2nd, and Fairy Fencer “f”. The import business can be a little tricky because you can wait months…sometimes years for an announcement on a translation to come out (case in point, Yakuza 5…or as my friends call it, “Japanese-man game”). By that time the developers are already moving on to the sequel to the original game. Some cases (such as Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts), it’s a no-brainer that there will be a localized copy here in the states, and it’s safe to skip the import. But for the more niche games, especially from publishers like Sega (who is terrible at localizing anything that doesn’t have “Sonic the Hedgehog” in its name) it’s a bit more difficult to gauge.

Regardless, I am not going to wait on my butt for someone else to do the translation for me. Yakuza 5 was what brought me to the whole Japanese-learning/import thing. So rather than wait 2-3 years for someone to do a proper translation, I’ll spend that 2-3 years learning Japanese up to JLPT N3 (which is my personal goal).

Lastly, got a game of Pokemon X to go through. I’ve discovered the wonders of the Wonder Trade system. Most of the time I get junk Pokemon (ughh another Budew…Pidgey…etc?). But sometimes I luck out and get something cool like a Ghastly like I did last night. Also I’m trying to cut back on the grinding aspect of Pokemon and just move on with the story for now. It’s just a constant battle between me and the fast-moving sun…in other words…time.

Also GTAV. I’m going to do some online playing later today so if anyone wants to hit me up, give me an add on PSN: incrediblescott.