Chibi Shin-Gojira figure

New capsule ball figure - "little new Godzilla". 200 yen, about 2" long. Intended to hang from a finger or the side of a glass, and be cute. 4 in the series. I got the one in the lower left corner.







They ARE cute when they're small, aren't they?

Niku no Hi, May 29, 2017

I've written before on the Lotteria burger chain's "niku" day sales campaigns. The numbers 2 and 9 can be read as "ni" and "kuu." When combined, they sound like "niku", or "meat." The idea is to have larger burgers on, or around, the 29th of the month, usually in the 500 yen ($4.80 USD) range. Generally, I've missed these niku days for the last several months either because I forgot and didn't see the advertising, I wasn't all that hungry, or the one Lotteria near me had sold out of the patties. Anyway, I finally remembered the campaign this time, and I was in the area at about 2 PM, when I was getting hungry. The burgers included something like a quarter pounder with cheese for 500 yen, a double quarter pounder with cheese for 800 yen, and a triple patty for 1,000 yen. I got the double, with a cup of water, because it looked a little more filling, and I couldn't justify spending the money on the $10 one.



And yes, it was as much of a mess as it looks in the photos. The cheese wasn't fully melted, the thing was incredibly greasy, the patties didn't taste like hamburger, and the only real flavors I could pick out were salt and black pepper. I asked for catsup, and the woman at the register said I could only get that if I ordered the fries. Sigh. For some reason, Japanese burger chains always go overboard on the pepper with their campaign burgers. I don't know why that is, unless it's to mask their use of cheaper grades of beef, in which case they really should hand out the catsup packets, too.

I do have the urge to order the "niku" special out of my system now, and I probably won't do it again this year.

Coffee is a Good Sign

Part of the decorations in Tully's coffee shop.

Soyama Dental

We Will Keep Your Smile. In case you ever want it back...

Off Course Bridal

It's a hair salon, apparently specializing in wedding hair styling. Off Course.

One Million Lawyers

I started this blog on July 17, 2008. It's taken a little under 9 years, but some time in the last couple of weeks TSOJ finally cleared the 1 million pageviews mark. Not setting any speed records here, but I'm not too dissatisfied. For a very long time, I'd been running between 240 and 350 views a day. As shown above, I'll occasionally jump up to 1,200 a day now.

I think I'll go eat some cake, and listen to Tom Paxton.

Direct youtube link

Tedman's T-Shirts

"Tedman's authentic U.S. shirts" seems to be a Japanese company appropriating the artwork of Hot Stuff.



I like the "Vanson Motorcycles Custom Design Death Rock One Eared Devil Rabbit Detached Force" shirt, though.

Yamakataya Cosmetics Ad

Yet another bad ad. It doesn't show up that well in the photo, but the super-enlarging of the make-up around the eyes made the foreground model indistinguishable from a mannequin, or a corpse.

The salon

"In addition, the salon which wants to come home."

But, it may be better if it stays where it is...

Another foam mascot

The Drops toy store in Tenmokan had a photo op with a foamhead mascot a few weeks back. I don't recognize the character, but it was a big hit with the kids that day.

Yamakataya Ad - Hint of Colour

If this is what the cosmetics department thinks is a "hint", I'd hate to see the paint roller they use for regular color applications.

Jump Ultimate Stars 3DS

(All rights belong to their owners. Images used here for review purposes only.)

Every few years, Weekly Shonen Jump magazine releases a new fighting game through the konbini (the Japanese version of convenience stores.) These tend to be pricey games when they come out new, and Book Off had Ultimate Stars for 2,000 yen ($19 USD) for several years. I finally found a copy used at about 900 yen and picked it up for the collection. It's pretty much the same as the earlier Superstars, except for the addition of a bunch of main characters from the newer manga.


(Game selection and options screen.)

The idea is simple. The universe is falling apart and can only be saved by the Jump Stars. The Stars land on a nearby planet in order to do combat with evil, and as they reconquer one planet, they go on to the next. If a friend also has a copy of the game, you can play against them. Otherwise, this is just a top scroller with a layout similar to the old Donkey Kong game. You jump up and down between platforms and fight it out against the other Jump manga characters. The first 30 minutes of the game was just tutorial where the enemy was often just a box or a barrel. After that, I had Luffy fighting the other One Piece leads.


(Stage selection screen. After you clear a stage, you can choose to go to the next one, or replay it to try to unlock any bonuses that you missed the first time.)

The problem here is that you've got a fixed timer and you're comparing the number of KOs against what your opponent gets, and if you knock the opponent character off the screen, they just come back again until the clock runs out. It gets repetitious real fast, and it was almost exactly a knock-off of Superstars. I got bored shortly after wading through the overly-dragged out tutorial and never picked up the cartridge again. It's not even worth trying to unlock the new character art.


(Battle screen. As you unlock various bonuses, you pick up more manga characters that let you make your own "deck," including new battle characters, and supporters (for healing or strength boosts.)

Summary: Jump Ultimate Stars is a blatant money grab from the Jump publishers to cash in on the popularity of their bigger manga titles. But, for all the skill and talent the company has at hand, the game itself just isn't very original or interesting. Not recommended.

Legend of Zelda-Ocarina of Time Master Quest

(All rights belong to their owners. Images used here for review purposes only.)

Ok, so, I finish Ocarina of Time, and when I restart the 3DS, I'm suddenly presented with two game load screens - one for the normal game, and the other for Master Quest, which originally had been designed as a demo for the GameCube, and was reworked as a port to the 3DS. The walkthrough I was using stated that the main point is that Master Quest is harder because all of the enemies attack for double damage. And I'm thinking, "Do I really want to start this up? I just finished the regular game. Does Master Quest have anything really new I want to investigate?" Naturally the answer is "Does it matter?" I start up a new MQ game just to see how quickly I get killed off, and eventually I'm defeating the first stage boss. So yeah, I keep playing.


(Game load screen. Again, this is at the end of the game, and I have 19 of 20 hearts, and I've finished all 9 of the dungeons leading up to the final boss.)

The world map and town layouts are the same, just mirror reversed left for right. The dungeons are all completely reworked, though, with different layouts, monsters in different locations, and all new switches (like, using cows embedded in the walls instead of crystal switches) and traps, although many of the major puzzles are still largely the same. There are a couple curious changes to some of the mini-games, however...


(When Link meets Zelda, from the closing credits after beating the game.)

Just as a brief refresher if you don't remember much about Zelda. Ocarina is an RPG puzzler. You play the hero, Link, as he tries to save Princess Zelda from the villain Ganon as he attempts to take over the world. Link starts out with a simple sword, a tunic and 3 hearts worth of health meter. As he goes along, he can buy or find two stronger swords, two stronger shields, and various tools that let him solve the puzzles (such as the hookshot, a boomerang, a megaton hammer, a bow and arrows, and some empty bottles). The empty bottles are actually key, because they let you carry things like bugs (used for finding gold skulltulas), fish, red faeries (they provide automatic healing if you fall during battle with 0 hearts), and red and green potions (red manually provides healing, and green replenishes your magic meter). To get one of the bottles, you need to collect 10 "Big Poes" (ghosts that carry around lanterns and occasionally attack you). But, the only way to fight the Big Poes is to be on horseback.



In the regular game, there's a horse ranch on the world map. You go there as a child and learn a song for summoning one of the horses - Epona (called Epona's Song). The game has two parts, where you play as Young Link, and as Adult Link (7 years older). You come back to the ranch as Adult Link and challenge the new owner, Inago, to a race. Beat him twice and he lets you keep Epona, but locks the gates so you can't get out. The solution is to just jump the outer wall of the ranch and ride away. So, I'm in Master Quest and I get to the ranch. And every single time I race Inago, I lose. Nothing I do has any impact on the results of the race. After losing for about the 10th time, I give up and just start wandering around the track, coming in close to 1 minute behind the leader. And the next thing I know, Inago is swearing a blue streak for my beating him. I challenge him to a second race and do the same thing, wandering off the track and coming in late. Inago screams in frustration at my beating him again, and locks the gate on me. I jump the wall and ride off. So, that was weird; the only way to win is to not play. (There wasn't any mention of this in the walkthroughs.)



Another little mini-game change that's not mentioned in the walkthroughs involves getting the last mask from the mask rental shop. The idea is that you pay money to rent a mask, and then you find an NPC that wants to pay you to take it off your hands. The final mask of the trading process is the rabbit ears, and you need to find a guy that's out jogging around on the world map. In the regular game, "running man" can be located easily as he runs around in the afternoon. Just wait for him to take a break and talk to him while wearing the rabbit ears as Young Link (doing so lets you rent the all-important Mask of Truth, which lets you talk to the Gossip Stone statues to receive clues to secret parts of the game). In Master Quest, I couldn't find Running Man anywhere at all. I eventually gave up and went back to just working on cleaning out the dungeons. Just by accident, I happened to be crossing the world map late at night towards the end of the game, and found Running Man sitting on the ground in a secluded part of the map, gasping for breath. I gave him the rabbit ears then, and went back to the rental shop in town to get the Mask of Truth. But, by that point I'd finished most of the game and there was no reason to seek out the gossip stones anymore, other than to just find out what they had to say for curiosity's sake.




It's the reworked dungeons that make MQ feel like a completely different game from the regular Ocarina of Time. There are fewer enemies in some places, putting the emphasis on solving the puzzles and evading the traps. So, in that way, MQ is a bit easier to survive. However, there's the issue of the gold skulltulas... Skulltulas are big spiders with human skulls on their backs. They hang up in the shadows of the ceilings and drop on you when you don't expect it. In the main town, there's a haunted house that's occupied by 6 brothers that have been cursed to spend their lives as skulltulas. The only way to break the curses is to find 100 gold skulltulas, kill them, and return the tokens they leave behind to the haunted house. When you have 10 gold skulltulas you receive a larger wallet (holds 200 rupees, up from the starting maximum of 99 rupees). At 20 tokens you get a dagger that alerts you to secret grottoes (underground caves you have to bomb to obtain extra rupees, healing faeries, or other items). 30 tokens gets you the largest wallet and the ability to carry 500 rupees max. 40 tokens is just some bombchus (mechanical bombs in the shape of mice). 50 is a piece of heart. All 100 is a gold 200 rupee. In Master Quest, some of the most obscure gold skulltulas are hidden in places in the dungeons so hard to reach that even if you have the walkthrough showing you where they are, it's still possible to never get them.

When I first started on Master Quest, I pretty much decided that I would NOT bother getting all 100 gold skulltulas. However, I needed the first 30 just to have the larger wallet for buying potions (50-100 rupees each) from the potion shop, and then I realized that I had to have 34 of the 36 heart pieces for the increased health just to survive the bosses this time, so that meant getting 50 skulltulas for that one heart piece. By that point, I figured I might as well systematically track the skulltulas I found, and to pick up as many as I could when I cleared each dungeon. So, when I finally did reach the end of the game, I had all 100. But, the reveal of the last cursed brother was such a letdown that I would have been satisfied in not having bothered. On the other hand, the quest for all of the skulltulas meant that I was visiting parts of dungeons that I wouldn't have explored otherwise, and that was sort of cool. Ocarina has a very strong Doom, or Quake, vibe that I haven't seen in any of the other Zelda games. The gold skulltula puzzles are the hardest parts of the game (excluding the later boss fights), so if you like difficult Zelda puzzles, and you like Doom, you'll like the gold skulltula challenges in Master Quest.

The stage bosses are pretty much unchanged from the regular game, but it felt like some of them had shorter reaction times, making it much harder to get close to hit them when they were stunned. I had a LOT of trouble with the thieves in the thieves den because they kept knocking me down and imprisoning me over and and over. Also, this was a case of incredible frustration leading to a letdown. After clearing out each of the dungeons leading up to a boss battle, I'd go into it with only 2 healing faeries in bottles, and just get trashed, ending with Game Over. After a couple rounds of this, I'd warp out of the dungeon, make the trek to the main town to buy more healing (or find a secret grotto to bottle faeries for free), then trudge all the way back to the boss chamber only to win the next battle with almost no damage at all. Go figure. Even double-damage Ganon turned out to be easy when I was fully prepared for him. I beat the game on the first try and watched through the closing credits, but they were exactly the same as for the regular game. So, the only reason to play Master Quest is to see what the reworked dungeons look like.

Again, I didn't bother with the fishing mini-game, so I missed getting 2 heart pieces there. I ignored the slingshot mini-game (gives a larger pouch for holding more ammo), and side quests for the deku nut and second bomb bag upgrades. None of which had any impact on my ability to get through the game. What I did find invaluable with Master Quest was: 1) Get the first 3 bottles as quickly as possible (2 are part of the story quests, the third is a reward for finding all 7 chickens in the main town as a mini-game). 2) Pick up all of the heart pieces available with the tools you have as you get them. 3) Get 10 gold skulltulas immediately for the first wallet upgrade. 4) When you become Adult Link, get Epona and find all 10 Big Poes for the 4th bottle. 5) As Adult Link, play the archery mini-game for the first quiver upgrade and the bombchu mini-game for the first bomb bag upgrade. 6) About halfway through the game, you'll have access to 30 gold skulltulas for the final wallet upgrade. 7) Three quarters of the way through, when you get to the thieves den, you should be able to get 34 of the 36 heart pieces (including 50 gold skulltulas), and the second archery mini-game for the final quiver upgrade. Being able to carry 30 bombs, 50 arrows, 500 rupees and 4 bottles makes the remaining part of the game MUCH, MUCH easier. Having a good walkthrough dedicated to Master Quest also helps, but I had to find one in Japanese for that... Anyway, stuff that was kind of optional in the regular game becomes absolutely vital in Master Quest.

Quickly also, the strongest sword in the game is Biggoron, which hits for double damage, but you can't use the shield with it. Which is kind of a toss-up. Your only defense, other than hitting your opponent's weapon with your sword as they attack, is your shield, and that only helps you if you press the R button to block. If you go "turtle", blocking with the shield and then sniping with the sword by repeatedly pressing B to attack, you can take out certain of the stronger enemy this way. Otherwise, you've got no other real defense, and attacking with the Biggoron sword lets you finish battles faster, which usually means taking less damage in the long run. There's a trading game involved in getting the Biggoron sword (finding people that want trinkets each of them gives you), plus a couple challenges where you have to run across the entire world map in 3 or 4 minutes before certain items, like frogs and eye drops, go bad. But you can do this quest any time after becoming adult Link. I held off on getting Biggoron until the last dungeon, but picking it up earlier might have been a better idea. If you do go through the work to get the Biggoron sword, you'll find the only shop that sells blue potions for 100 rupees. These replenish all of your hearts AND the magic meter, which helps a lot only when you're fighting Ganon at the end. For the Ganon battle, I had two red faeries and 2 blue potions, and I won with just one red faery bottle left over.

Summary: If you have Ocarina of Time for the 3DS, you'll also have Master Quest when you clear the first game. If you want an excuse to keep playing Ocarina after defeating Ganon, MQ gives you a lot of replay value that you wouldn't have otherwise. But, does MQ really give you anything that Ocarina doesn't (extra cut scenes, or a new ending)? Not that I saw. However, I'm now done with both versions of Ocarina, and I can see how it fits in with Mask of Majora. I definitely like Mask more, but both games are worth playing if you can get them used cheap.

Mihon

"Kochira wa mihon desu."

Generally, "mihon" means "example copy." You see "mihon" used a lot in bookstores for the copies of books that you're allowed to flip through. When you decide to buy one, you get a copy that's plastic wrapped and in pristine condition. I've never seen it used for food... This was taken at a grocery store, and I guess it's supposed to be an example of what you'd get if you ordered a vegetable package to be delivered to your home. With this interpretation, the sign reads "This is an example."

Sand and Flower

There was a sand sculpture and flower show down at Minami Satsuma (south end of Kyushu), and the organizers had a small sculpture exhibit set up near Yamakataya department store in Tenmonkan.



The writing on the sashes are the place names of the event.
The main text just advertises the sand show.





Minami Satsuma is too far away for me to visit unless I stay down there overnight.

Waku Waku Work 2017

The past weekend was actually pretty busy. Along with the Kagoshima Music Fest, we had the Waku Waku Work job search event at Amu Plaza, along with a local foods market, and a music stage at the west side of the train station associated with the food market.





Information desk not getting a lot of attention.



Not a lot of people in the audience. The ones here were only interested in watching the local mascots character show, where the MC was announcing the voting results of the "best character costume."





West Side


While over at the west exit, we had the small stage. The only name I recognized on the schedule is Zosan DX, which is a light pops group. That was at 5 PM, which is when I was celebrating Mother's Day. But, the only reason I was at the station is that I needed to get printer ink, and there was a lull in the music fest at Central Park. I didn't stick around here long to listen to any of the other music.



This probably would have been Dobu Dylan. He was doing acoustic folk songs.

Kagoshima Music Fest 2017, Day 2

The weather was perfect on Sunday, but I did have plans for Mother's Day in the afternoon, so I had to leave at 3:30 PM. Which was a shame because Bon, of ARTS and Bon DX, showed up at about 3 PM to watch Ai-chan, the only commercial artist scheduled for the weekend. She was supposed to go on stage at 7 PM, but a few people commented that they'd seen her sitting on the sidelines incognito. I talked to BON for a few minutes, then it was time for me to leave. I didn't mind missing some of the music though, because most of it was gospel and softer pop. In fact, the only reason I'd come out was that Toshi, one of the other singers I know, was going on stage at 2:40 PM. (Bon told me that his keyboardist for ARTS was in Chi-zou. I would have liked to watch that, but Chi-zou didn't go up until close to 4 PM.)

Above is Kafka. I've seen them before. Mostly soft pops.



Miwa-Man S.B. A bossa nova group.



Space Pirate Captain Herlock. He even had his own plastic saber.



Gold Lush Club Band. They were pretty good, doing 80's rock, like Aerosmith and Pat Benatar. I recorded them, but I know youtube is going to block the videos for copyright. I put this on facebook instead.





Kosha Band. I recorded them last year, and they did the same songs this time. They're a Tatsuro Yamashita tribute band.





Fuuraibou Toshi (Toshi the Wanderer). This is the guy I came to see on Sunday. Very friendly, nice guy who likes to do protest folk.







Toshi's logo.



Mercy Band. Kind of a male lead vocals soft rock group.





Over all a good weekend, but too short.


Direct video link to Gold Lush Club Band


Direct video link to Toshi