Yes, there was definitely a trip to an izakaya. And there was definitely karaoke afterwards. Pictures and movies will follow, probably in a similar format to the last time I visited this area, with the appropriate degradation of amazement for this time.
All in all, it was a good way to finish up the “first” day. We didn’t get to bed until about 9am Seattle time, but it served the dual purpose of (1) resetting our clocks to Tokyo time, and (2) allowing me to sing “Jack and Diane” in what was apparently the same karaoke spot where this happened:
So that’s good.
The next morning, we had this for breakfast at Yoshinoya:
Only $4. Yes, please.
That got us some good mojo for heading to Tokyu Hands, only to discover that it didn’t open until 10am. So we hung out at Starbucks for a few minutes (featuring a surprisingly unhorrible vanilla latte) while we waited for the store to open. Lots of foreigners there. Shocking, I know.
After a relatively reserved Tokyu Hands shopping spree (no one wanted to carry around a bunch of purchases for the rest of the day), we decided to head to Akihabara. But again, since we didn’t want to make a bunch of purchases and then have to carry them around for the rest of the day, we mostly did some window shopping. We were on the lookout for a cat cafe, but after finally tracking one down, the available cats didn’t look nearly as adorable and excited as the ones advertised at the one we had seen in Shinjuku the night before.
And speaking of adorable and excited, Virginia wanted our next trip to be to a maid cafe. Seems like Akihabara would be a good place for that, right? Let me tell you that 30 minutes in one of those places is enough to last a lifetime. I think my ears are still ringing from the shouting and the arm-waving and the heart-making-with-hands. They seemed a little disappointed that we only got one beer each before getting the hell out of there, but I imagine they’ll get over it.
On our way back to the station, we saw a huge Left 4 Dead 2 setup, with a line snaking around a little miniature warehouse. Turns out that EA Japan was doing a promotion where you could play the game for a few minutes, then get a cell phone charm and T-shirt. Apparently Left 4 Dead is crazy popular in Japan — when we looked, it was the #6 best-selling game on the charts for the week, and the only Xbox 360 game on that list. Turns out that Japan likes zombies. Who knew? Other than Capcom, I mean.
Soon after, we met up with two of Scott’s old friends and headed to Shibuya — our first time there this trip. We had some drinks at an Irish pub (featuring some dangerously delicious La Fin du Monde), followed by a nice walk through a surprisingly vertical stretch of Shibuya. Just an awesome area. We puttered around at Loft for an hour or so, where I fell in love with about twenty clocks — turns out Japan has got this whole “technology” thing figured out.
After that, it was dinner at Gonpachi. Easily the best meal I’ve had this trip, and maybe better than everything last time, including a surprisingly awesome Caesar Salad. Who knew?
The ladies were ready for bed by then, so the four guys headed for Shinjuku and some potentially great game-friendly bars. Unfortunately, both 8-bit Cafe and 16 Shots were unavailable — the former due to a private party and the latter due to it being almost as tiny (and just as busy) than our eventual destination.
I had been to Rock Bar Mother the last time I was in Tokyo, but this time was simply transcendent. For those who don’t know, it’s a tiny-ass basement bar that only seats about 10 people comfortably. When you order your drink, you also get to pick the song you want to hear, from a rather huge collection — there are shelves full of CD’s covering the entire back wall.
This time, my musical mojo was in full effect. Since it’s Rock Bar Mother and not Indie Bar Mother, I started off with a blast from the past:
Ah, good times. From there, it was a steady parade of awesome, featuring Faith No More, Skid Row (!), Anthrax, and many others that I don’t really remember because there was a lot of Chimay and shots and the like.
By the time we staggered up the stairs and out of the bar, it was almost 2 in the morning. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have been a problem, but it was only when I got into the elevator of the hotel that I realized that I had no room key — and that Virginia had been asleep for hours.
After ten minutes or so of fruitlessly ringing the doorbell (which apparently sounds like a pleasant, yet distant elevator bell) and lightly knocking so as to not wake neighbors, I steeled myself enough to travel to the front desk to ask for another key.
I suppose I could have started with “sumimasen… eigo ga wakarimasu ka?”, but it was late, and it never occurred to me to do anything but hope that my Japanese synapses were firing correctly enough to get a new room key without getting arrested. So drunk, sweaty, and exhausted, I stammered enough “heya” and “motte imasen” and “arigato gozaimasu” to get two new ones without incident. Success!
So day 2 went pretty well. I’m writing this during a break in the action of day 3, so hopefully by this time tomorrow you can read about our traumatic time at The Lockup. Unless I have a heart attack while I’m eating my asparagus. For now, VA and I are headed (sans escort!) to a local drugstore before dinner.
またね！
Update: One thing I forgot to mention — after I chose “777″ by Danzig (and unfortunately left before it was played), the bartendress at Rock Bar Mother started shaping her hair into a Misfits devil horn.
So far, it’s been a relatively smooth operation. We arrived at the airport to find it just as un-busy as we’d hoped a Thanksgiving Day flight would be. After a brief delay at the ticket counter (where I made what could potentially be labeled as a questionable decision by musing aloud that Josie’s passport photo looked fake), we boarded without incident.
And man, that is a long-ass flight. 10 1/2 hours from Seattle to Tokyo. Luckily, we brought enough electronic devices to keep ourselves busy for three flights.
The only setback thus far has been the gentleman who sat two seats in front of us, sporting what appeared to be a custom-made satin jacket with Pepe Le Pew on the back, the words “The Real Stinker” under the exaggeratedly French skunk.
Assuming the odors present aboard the plane were coming from where I thought they were coming from, it was the most honest satin jacket to feature an obsolete Parisian anthropomorphized cartoon rodent that I’ve ever encountered. But the trip is young, I suppose.
Soon, we shall deplane and then begin phase two of the trip -making our way through Customs, acquiring our Japan Rail Passes, taking the train to Shinjuku, checking in to our hotel, and undertaking the first of what I assume will be many trips to an izakaya in the next eleven days.
Unquestionably, the highlight of my nearly ten years in the video game industry was in August 2007, when I spent three weeks in Sherman Oaks, California directing voiceover talent. I had just spent six months writing the script to Space Siege, which then got recorded by PCB Productions, integrated, and then discarded when they laid me off with twenty other people.
Even with the disappointment of my greatest work never seeing the light of day (except for being a significant part of the portfolio I show off when I’m between jobs), it was a magical few weeks. Hearing professional actors act out the scenes I wrote was more satisfying than I had even thought possible.
However, there were also several out-of-studio moments that were memorable. Going out for drinks with Troy Baker and Yuri Lowenthal was definitely a highlight. They were as great outside of the studio as they were in it — and having someone with a résumé like Yuri’s say unprompted how great my script was stuck with me long after the sting of leaving GPG faded.
Anyway, meeting the voice actors was definitely a good time – but it wasn’t just limited to chatting up the people who were reading for Space Siege. Occasionally, I got to talk to some other actors as well. One guy in particular was at PCB reading for one of the Command & Conquer games, doing a thick Russian accent just like the one he did for years on Six Feet Under: Ed O’Ross.
The man himself. This was taken at the premiere of Curious George, apparently.
This was definitely one of the high points of the trip for me. Ed went out for a smoke break after his session and I joined him for a bit. He obviously had no idea who I was, but the reverse was definitely not true; I was having trouble restraining myself from quoting lines from Six Feet Under and Lethal Weapon at him. Somehow, I managed. Which was a good thing, because over the next 15 minutes, Ed exemplified the old, salty character actor in a way that I can’t recreate.
He talked for a while about how messed up Hollywood was, and about how he was happy to be doing what he was doing, and so on. It made me wish that I had a tape recorder so I could be his biographer. He was such a classy guy, with a hint of “I just don’t give a shit, I’m making a living” attitude. Awesome.
The kicker, though, was when he talked about what he was doing lately. Obviously doing lines for a forgettable RTS isn’t where everyone dreams they’ll end up, but the real kicker was what he’d turned down in order to have more time to do it.
It seems that he was offered a role on Heroes a few months prior, but only if he would do a thick Russian accent for the role. I guess the casting director had seen Ed do his thing as “Nikolai” on Six Feet Under, and figured he’d be perfect for a minor part in that horrible, horrible show. Ed turned it down for reasons that he shared with me in confidence — and if you met him in person, you’d honor his wishes, too.
At the time, I thought that while Ed had certainly earned the right to turn down whatever he wanted, he had made a mistake turning down a role on Heroes. After all, a slight misstep aside in the first season’s finale, Heroes was one of the shows that brought NBC back from the dead. Little did I know that two years later, the show would be as bad as anything on TV. Well played, Ed!
Anyway, I don’t really have a point to this story — I only bring it up because I came home tonight from hanging out with friends and found the lovely Virginia watching an old episode of Six Feet Under, with Ed featured prominently. It caused all these memories to come flooding back, and I thought I’d share them with you.
There are some commercials on TV that I think would be better off not existing in the first place. Pretty much any Bud Light ad of the last five years, for instance — I can feel myself getting dumber every time I see one of those.
I always thought she was kinda hot, if a little mannish. I was in the minority.
But you know as well as I do that sometimes, commercials can be brilliant. This Volkswagen ad from a few years ago, for instance — featuring 24’s Nina Myers! Everyone remembers this one. It was especially fascinating for me because I thought I was the only person who always watched out for things like turn signals and windshield wipers syncing up with whatever I was listening to in the car. In my life, it’s only happened twice.
Anyway, it’s with a conflicted heart that I bring up a recent ad for Toyota’s Prius. On the surface, I love it — a visually striking ad that encourages people to buy hybrids. Yes, please.
However, it’s the text at the bottom of the screen that I’m wondering about:
“Dramatization.”
Only in Japan, as they say.
Oh, really? This scene doesn’t actually happen when I’m driving my Prius around the world? There aren’t thousands of people dressed like the incredibly creepy Tingle from the Zelda series shadowing me wherever I drive? This isn’t real life? Great, thanks for clearing that up.
I’ve often wondered what necessitates these little warnings at the bottom of the screen during advertisements. Sure, most of them are there so kids won’t try crashing through a wall like the Kool-Aid man, or drivers won’t try to take their suburban curves at 130mph. But things like “dramatization”? Where does that come from? Did someone, somewhere get sued for painting a picture of something glorious in a commercial that never panned out? Like, did Timmy starve a rabbit to death instead of feeding it his Trix cereal? Did scores of first-time Macintosh buyers expect the wrong thing after seeing the classic “1984″ ad?
Like a lot of you, I use an RSS reader to stay informed these days. I don’t know if that makes me lazy, or smart — having the news come to me every five minutes instead of trying to find it myself is certainly easier on my mouse hand. Of course, I guess I’m also part of the reason why newspapers are dead. But I digress.
In the RSS reader I use (FeedDemon), there are occasionally small contextual ads placed at the bottom of posts. For instance, if Newt Gingrich is mentioned in the story (as is far too often the case lately) , then I’ll get a lovely image of his smiling visage with the message “FREE NEWT!”, imploring me to subscribe to his weekly newsletter.
I have to say that I would rather have my ass kicked by a gorilla than read more than a sentence of said newsletter. But I trigress.
One of the other sites I subscribe to is former civil rights litigator Glenn Greenwald, whose essays are always well-written, well-researched, and incredibly long — so long that it usually takes me three or four visits to reasonably finish them. That means that the Google ad that appears at the bottom of the post will rotate each time.
A few weeks ago, I saw a logo in the ad at the bottom of Greenwald’s post that was so incredibly amateurish, so misguided, that I was rendered speechless. I wanted to post it for your viewing pleasure, but by the time I had the spare moments to grab an image of it, the ad had changed — and I didn’t see it again.
Until this morning.
Ladies and gentlemen (well, probably “lady and gentleman” at this point, with how infrequently I’ve updated), I give you… the TEXAS BAR WATCH.
So as you may (not) have noticed (at all), I haven’t posted anything on here in a while.
This is mostly because most of my free time has either been spent doing pro bono work for web sites, or playing several entertaining video games.
For the most part, my writings, such as they are, can be found on Facebook or Twitter.
I’ve also fallen in hate with the general look of my web site (grey, orange, blue, and green — what could possibly go wrong?), and am going to redo it now that I’m done with the bulk of work on other people’s web sites.
Whenever I go home for the holidays, I try to play Scrabble as much as possible with my family. The skill level of various family members varies wildly — from one cousin who is clearly an expert, based on the tricks I’ve seen him pull, to another cousin who used to try to make up strange combinations of phonemes in the hopes that they’d magically become words.
However, no matter who I’m playing, when I’m playing my family I know that I have a pretty good chance of being competitive. This has had an unfortunate side effect of boosting my Scrabble ego to the point where I feel like I’m invincible. Whenever I play against pretty much anyone, I think that I’m going to win, and more often than not, I do.
I’m certainly not bragging about this. Just because I’m good at coming up with words that I can make from the current combination of seven letters in front of me, doesn’t make me some kind of genius. On the contrary — my lack of common sense in some crucial areas is enough to knock me down a few pegs whenever I’m feeling particularly witty.
Anyway, when I picked up Scrabble for my PSP the other day, I was feeling pretty confident. I figured I’d be able select a difficulty level and have it range from Jason to Dave. Three hundred points, here I come! Triple word score, you’re all mine!
So this evening, VA and I took a break from being as sick as dogs and made a little sojourn to Tukwila. We went to a wedding invitation store, but the less said about that place, the better. I mean, did you really need us to book an appointment if you were just going to sit us at a table and then ignore us for an hour?
The problem with visiting Southcenter is that we always seem to end up at Outback Steakhouse. I know, I don’t really understand it either. We live in Seattle, one of the great centers of cuisine in the country. Within reasonable walking distance of our apartment, there are probably 50 awesome restaurants. And yet, every time we get near the airport, we end up sitting in this dismal place, listening to horrible pop music and overhearing couples having breakup fights.
But I’m not here to talk about our attempt at the Bloomin’ Onion diet, alth –
Okay, I have to digress here. I actually debated mentioning Coldplay in the previous paragraph, because we always end up hearing one of their lesser1 works during the meal. But I decided against it — why beat up on Coldplay? Well, sure enough, as soon as I started typing2 the next sentence, this is what I hear.
So anyway. The Bloomin’ Onion diet. It’s working out great, let me tell you. And… okay, that moment’s gone.
In the middle of our meal, a table forms up to the side of us with what looks like a family and their patriarch. The older gentleman was late arriving to the party, since the wheelchair-accessible ramp was apparently placed oddly in this restaurant. So he was hard to miss once he made his entrance. His hair was a bit disheveled, but he generally looked like he was in pretty good shape.
However, a few minutes later, my eyes went to him again, and traveled a few feet down to the back of his wheelchair… to this logo:
It could have been a lot worse, I suppose.
Now, again, I’m not exactly mining new territory when I call into question the naming of companies or their products. I’m sure one could spend days on the internet being passably entertained by nothing but examples of the phenomenon. But I’m honestly stumped by the decision to name your company after what is now sort of universally accepted as a pejorative3 for a certain segment of people. Or at least to keep it that name in this day and age.
Naturally, my mind started to wander to other names they could have possibly chosen, and to the logos I could create in Photoshop. Fortunately, Virginia talked me out of it. But once you’ve got a name like “INVACARE”, it’s just a matter of degrees, right?
Then again, maybe there are other, more pressing examples of this situation to rectify first. One at a time, I guess.
1 I was going to make another joke about “lesser” being redundant, but when this guy is married to this girl, maybe I should just quit while I’m “ahead”.
2 Yes, I brought my laptop with me to Outback. It was supposed to be so VA and I could work on her new business venture while we waited for our food.
3 Ever have one of those realizations that you’ve been spelling a word wrong for years? …me neither.
Not too many of you may know this, but I actually had a job at a video game company before I “officially” started in the industry on August 25, 1999.
Back at the beginning of 1998, I had just been laid off from my position as a web designer at Erol’s Internet in Springfield, VA. My relationship with alarm clocks had not yet fully developed at that point in my life, so my second occurrence of tardiness had resulted in termination.
However, I wasn’t on the canvas for long. I don’t quite remember how I did it, but after a while, I landed a job at Bethesda Softworks as their web designer.
Now, to be honest, I was never really a good web designer in the first place. I was very good at taking someone else’s idea and making it show up on their web site, but I had (and still have) problems with starting from scratch. So I supposed I was doomed from the start at Bethesda.
But I didn’t know that yet on my first day there. It seemed like a pretty cool place — so cool that they immediately put me in the “XL Translab” part of the building. XL Translab was Bethesda Softworks’ sister company, which mostly did CG. This meant that there were a bunch of artists, and one fraud of a web designer.
(I did meet Eka for the first time while I was there, although neither of us remembered that until a year after we re-met at Gas Powered Games in ‘06.)
Gleaming the cube
I was already feeling a little intimidated. My experience as a web guy in the past had basically been “cut up these images and put them in tables so they line up properly”. And they stuck me with people who are capable of stuff like this?
Come on now.
So one of the first things they did was show me the kind of site they wanted bethsoft.com to be. Back then, web sites were still trying to find their sea legs, so a lot of companies were trying a lot of things — but the example they showed me was the site for a little game you may have heard of called Unreal.
I wish the Wayback Machine would cooperate and let me show you the horror that awaited visitors to the Unreal.com site in 1998. But alas, they don’t archive everything. I can try to approximate it by linking you to these two sites:
(And by the way, I think the fact that the first Google search result for “navigation cube” takes you to a Geocities page tells you all you need to know.)
As you know, I work in a pretty creative business. So day in and day out, I deal with all kinds of creative people. People whose intellects and imaginations put mine to shame. People who push me to reach new heights of inspiration.
So as you might imagine, when I realized that I wanted to take the plunge and propose to Virginia, my girlfriend of 2½ years, I knew I had to do something special to live up to the expectations I’d set for myself. Plus, I knew I had a reputation to live up to when it came to being clever.
With that in mind, what was I to do? Should I rush the stage at a concert and shove an undernourished, scraggle-bearded indie rocker to the floor, grabbing his microphone and declaring my love to a few dozen Seattle hipsters? How about programming a custom proposal-based Flash game for Virginia to play? Or perhaps aim my projector at the wall of the eight-story hotel on the other side of I-5 and let an army of commuters in on the moment?
I did think about all of these ideas for a while — some more than others, admittedly. But ultimately, I wanted the moment to be drawn out as long as possible, so we both could enjoy it and have a story to tell to our friends, family, and eventual children. I wanted it to be fun for me to do and fun for her to experience.
So I came up with the idea of a multi-part proposal process. It would begin with an innocent note in a mailbox, and close with an unforgettable ending.
Interesting strategy for the second episode of Walking Dead: boring action movie beats, questionable actors, and terrible pacing. 2010-11-07
If your child actor gets the emphasis wrong in half of his VO lines, maybe you shouldn't be using someone that young for exposition. 2010-11-07
@kuraine What's funny is that the woman who voices Madison in heavy Rain has a thick accent that she does a great job of masking. in reply to kuraine2010-11-06
On the McRib hunt for house-hunting fuel. I guess I should be happy that there are zero McDonalds within two miles of the first tour stop. 2010-11-06
I think I'd pay $10 for an "Unpretentious and Much Less Voice Actor-y VO Pack" for Alan Wake. 2010-11-06
@cwgabriel @rkhoo Could you guys please use your giant follower counts to encourage people to vote for real things today -- not just comics? 2010-11-02
Congratulations, fellow nerds. You are all the first person to ever make a "I don't really understand sports" joke. Excelsior! 2010-11-01
Attention, political candidates:
You will win my vote if you run on a platform of "clicking on an image always makes it larger". 2010-11-01
No RB3+keyboard from Play N Trade today either. I can only assume that the UPS truck was blown off a cliff in a Midwest windstorm. 2010-10-27
Wish I was more cynical so I could swear off giving them my money ever again, but I'm taking the high road.
...
Man, it's boring up here. 2010-10-26
Was very much looking forward to picking up my Rock Band 3 + keyboard bundle on the way home, but Play N Trade didn't get it in stock today. 2010-10-26
