Sakura

Its been raining a lot lately so I haven't really been going out that much but I did get a chance to go to a lighting event recently. The whole cherry blossom, sakura, thing is pretty big here. People will all get together under a tree and drink and hang out, yes they can drink in public here. It kind of had a feel of a fair or something like that. Anyway enough talk here are some pictures.

 There were a lot of people here and it was kinda of too much at times. They also had snacks and such which again was a lot like a fair back home.

My wife said that a lot of times the newest member of an office will be sent in the afternoon to reserve a good spot for the rest of the team to join later in the night. Most people were trying to get a spot over here.

 It was pretty cool but it was over before I knew it and we were heading back home.

Today I went to Subway which was actually pretty good though a little expensive. I will likely go back again only down side is my sub club card doesn't work here. I feel like they give you more meat here too.

I also was going to mention this in the past but forgot, I saw a really awesome air hockey table at one of the arcades here. Its pretty big and is designed for 4 players, 2 vs 2, the really cool thing is it has a multi puck mode where a bunch of pucks slide down in to the play surface. I would love to have one of these but in the past I had an air hockey table and while its cool the down side is it is something you can not play unless you have someone to play against. Still it seemed really fun, Ill have to give it a shot at some point.

Costco Trip

Last week I had gone into Tenjin and though I am trying to not spend money on games at the moment I found Star Parodia ($12) for the Super PC Engine. I also came across Super Donkey Kong 3 ($5) in the box so having both 1 & 2 in the box I had to pick that up to complete the set.

So this weekend my wife and I went to Costco with one of her co-workers, I haven't been to a Costco in forever. It was pretty far away about an hour by car so I don't know how often we will be going to shop there, put it this way we are not signing up for a Costco card just yet.

Anyway, when we got there we got lunch at the food court, I got a 1/4 pound hot dog they had all the toppings you wanted and came with a drink with unlimited refills (a rare thing here in Japan). The cup they gave you was a large size cup too, I was expecting it to be a small so that you would have to keep getting up to refill and then maybe say its not worth the effort but nope. The hot dog set was only 180 yen which is like $1.80 so that was a really nice price. I was pretty hungry so I also got a slice of pizza, it turned out to be about 1/6 of a american size large pizza which was a little bit overkill for my hunger but I choked it down. I think that was about 300 yen again not a bad price. Not only did you get a lot for a low price but it was actually pretty good too.

Yesterday I went for a train ride to go over to Hard-Off and Eco-Book, I know I said I'm trying to not spend money on games but it was a really nice day out and I wanted to do something. Besides I was really good about not buying everything I saw and pretty much only got stuff for me well kinda. Anyway first place I went was Hard Off where I saw a Hori PS2 arcade stick which I should have got but I passed on it. I want to do a Xbox 360 arcade stick hack project but parts are expensive and I would need to buy some tools so I have been putting it off. However if I get a old stick that will give me the parts (not the best parts but not bad I mean its Hori so...) and most of the work would be done just need to gut the board and cables then hack in a 360 controller and rewire the buttons. Maybe I'll go back next week and if they still have the controller pick it up.

I did however find the allusive white Sega Saturn I have been looking for and it was actually white. It was pretty dirty and was in the junk section but the junk section doesn't necessarily mean junk its just old and untested so its the buyers risk basically. They wanted $5 for it so I figured worst case scenario if the laser is dead (which would likely be the issue if it was not working) I could use the shell on my black model 2 Saturn back home. Today I finally got around to cleaning up the Saturn which took about 10 minutes nothing crazy just a magic eraser and some paper towels.

Before:

 After:

(PSA: there is a gray spot that is put on some pictures some of the time by my crapy camera, the spot in the last picture and the one above it are not actually there.)

After it was clean I went upstairs and swapped out my model 1 system to test this one. I probably should have tested it first rather than spend the time cleaning it before I knew if it worked or not but it wasn't an issue as it booted up and works great.

Also it looks pretty sick with the white arcade stick I have for the Saturn. Side note I still haven't tried the Twin Sticks out, I really want to but its in a box in another room and just...so...far.... away....gah maybe next week.

Anyway after I left Hard Off I made my way over to Eco Book, it was actually pretty bare. I found another copy of Super Fire ProWrestling X ($.48) for the Super Famicom and Rockman Zero 2 ($5) in the box for the Game Boy Advance.

I also grabbed Yoshi's Cookie ($2.78) and Yoshi's Egg ($2.78) both in the box for the Famicom.

In the Saturn section I picked up another copy of Street Fighter Zero ($.98), I had sold my last one. I also found Lunar Silver Star Complete ($1.98), the "Complete" is the part that makes the difference from the version I already had. Basically there were two versions released in Japan on the Saturn, the "Complete" version utilized the optional MPEG card add on. The only real difference between the games is the cut scenes are full screen if you have the MPEG card installed in your system. The "Complete" version is harder to come by than the standard version and so is worth more, though no where near as hard to come by as the MPEG card add on.

I also picked up a regular version of Sonic Adventure, note it doesn't say "International" under the title like the last one I bought, and another copy of Space Channel 5 both for the Dreamcast as they were only $1 each.

Today I went back to Tenjin as it was again a nice day out and I wanted to do something, I went to Mendarake and picked up Super Mario USA ($4, this is Super Mario 2 on the NES in the US). I actually passed on this game a week or so ago because I thought I could find it cheeper but that was not the case, everywhere I saw it they wanted $10 plus for it. This was another game I needed to complete the set as I had 1 & 3 and wanted to sell all of them together. I also went to Book Off and found Gun Blaze S ($5) for the Saturn.

After shopping I went to get some dinner at Freshness Burger which was good but a little pricey at $12. Still it was good, just not an every day kind of thing is all.

When I got home I decided to check the recycle shop near my house just for kicks. It turned out they had got a bunch of Dreamcast and Saturn games. The Saturn selection wasn't that great however I did find a copy of Three Dirty Dwarves which goes for about $45. On the Dreamcast I picked up JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Dynamite Deka 2 and another copy of Jet Set Radio. All three of those games go for about $40-$50 each so it was a nice find. The games were all $3 each so I was pretty excited about the way it turned out. Oh yea I also ended up with a bonus half game, I say half game because inside the Three Dirty Dwarves case was disc 1 of Policenauts for the Saturn. That is a game I would love to play but its a 2 disc game, I guess I can look at this like a really long demo version right. Not much I can do with it as I won't be able to sell it but hey free is free right.

Lets finish with a cat in a box, which started to slide off the bed once he got in it

A New Bag of Goodies

Xbox Update:
I forgot to mention it in my last post but I have received my replacement 360 and (knock on wood) all seems to be fine. I did notice on the last one that the tray didn't look like it was closing all the way which is probably what was causing the read error. Sis it looks like you can un cross everything again.

As I mentioned in the last post I had finally got a new messenger bag. My old one was nice but it was just that old and there were a few things I didn't really like about, for one it was really hard to get inside while it was on my shoulder. I had been looking for a new one for the last 5 months or so, I didn't think it would take that long but I just couldn't find anything that looked and felt right. My wife and I were out for dinner the other day and afterwards we just happened to walk past a leather shop that had a bunch of bags. There were a few nice ones but I finally and I mean finally settled on this one.

Its all hand made blah blah.. the leather smells great. Its smaller than my last bag which I think my wife is hoping well lead to less game purchases, which no joke may do just that. The key for me was it was easy to flip up the top and get to the inside while walking with it on my shoulder. I couldn't help but feel like I was shopping for a purse at times. "Officer that man stole my European carryall!"

I also had picked up a few games last week so lets quickly go over those. Lets see, first up was Shikigami no Shiro Episode III ($20) for the Xbox 360 which I got at the same store I had gotten a bunch of Xbox games for reasonable prices. I had been hoping to pick up a different game that I had seen there awhile back but it was gone when I got there. Also while I was there I found a copy of Dodonpachi Daioujou ($35) for the PS2 which was a game that I had been looking for since the first time I came to Japan so I was kind of shocked to finally see it in the wild.

The next day I headed to the regular places in Tenjin first up at book off I found Super Mario and Super Mario 3 for the Famicom (NES in the USA) both were only $1 so I picked those up. They also had a Super Game Boy 2 which goes for about $20 on eBay I picked that up also for just $1.  Finally I picked up a copy of Mario Golf ($5) for the Game Boy Advance which was in the box. After I got home I was able to see that the copy was in fact complete as it had the included wi-fi adapter with it.

I then headed over to Mandarake where I picked up a few Sega games. First up as always I went to the Saturn section and decided to finally pick up Pikura ($12) which I have been debating since the first time I walked in to the store. Its a nice set and it came with the original packed in calendar which was never used so is like new. If you need to schedule something with for back in 1997 I'll be able to mark it on my calendar now so just let me know.

I also came across Pretty Fighter X ($3) and another copy of Gals Panic SS ($5) I sold the last copy I had for $40 so this was an easy pick up.

Moving over to the Dreamcast section I grabbed another copy of Shenmue II ($10) and another copy of Space Channel 5 ($5) I had sold the other copies I had bought before. I also picked up a game that was the reason I bought a Dreamcast back in the day, Jet Set Radio ($8, known as Jet Grind Radio in the USA). It was not the more valuable De La Jet Set Radio but the only other copy I have seen while I have been here was going for $20.

A few days later I went back to my favorite recycle shop to see if they had got anything new in. It had been awhile or at least it felt like awhile. When I got there I was surprised to see they had got a good amount of new things in. There were 2 black Game Cube consoles, loose, and a few games for SFC and Saturn. Nothing that was too interesting but they also had got some Game Gear games in, looking though them I picked up Sonic 2, to go with the copy of Sonic 1 that I had got a while back. I also got Mortal Kombat II with the manual and found a copy of R-Type II for the original Game Boy. As usual all 3 games were just $1 each.

Then yesterday I went back to Mandarake and picked up a HORI mini N64 controller ($20) it had the same color scheme as the N64 controller I got a few weeks ago. Anyway these mini controllers are pretty hard to come by and are really nice to use with games. The joy stick is more like the one on the Game Cube only bigger.

I also finally decided to pick up the copy of Rockman X3 ($10, MegaMan X3 in the USA) for the Saturn. I also got I Love Mickey and I Love Donald ($12) for the Saturn which is just a port of some Mega Drive (Genesis) games. Then in the Dreamcast section I picked up Sonic Adventure 2 which was a nice pick up at $3. To round it out I grabbed Gradius II ($5) for the Super PC Engine.

After I left the game store I went to pick up my wife, we were going out to dinner. Once again we were going to go to the Italian place so I was excited. When we walked in they were pretty busy they only had one table open, I had forgot it was Saturday night. Now, we have only gone to this restaurant twice before but we did talk with the people that work there, they were interested in the usual foreigner things. Where are you from? English? etc. So I had talked to them but nothing major, so I was surprised when we walked in and asked if there was a table to have the owner say "Oh, Michael. Hello". Yep thats right its a first name basis kinda thing, I'm pretty much a rock star. "Oh Mr. Michael right this way sir we have been saving a special table for you", at least thats what I heard anyway.