Location, Location, Location?

Coming back from a 2 week holiday in Japan I've had quite alot to reflect on; more specifically on what makes a good vacation.

I've had the desire to goto Japan and luckily enough managed to achieve this; however I know it would not have been the same experience if I went solo. What I have learnt as a person is that no matter how great or fantastic any location is everyone will have a differing opinion and at times when people want to hang around in a group, it just doesn't work. On one hand you'll have someone who may want to rush through, tick boxes to say "been there, done that" while on the other hand you'll have someone genuinely interested in a specific topic that they have just discovered.

What this boils down to is, sometimes people just need time alone, even if it is on holiday in some fantastic location. This might not hold true for all but for me, I enjoyed just having a quiet hour or two wandering about Akihabara or being able to spend an evening alone at the Inn to just reflect on where I am and what I have seen and what I may get to see. This doesn't mean I'm not sociable; I had a fantastic time out in Shibuya with Otaku, Lee and Koji-san and having a nice farewell meal at Marios. Hell I'd do it all again tomorrow if I could.

The Japan trip was fantastic in itself and it also showed another side to myself I had yet to discover; I can be a shopping whore, a stupid idiotic socialite and a loner..and all at the same time. HAH!

It's best if I sign off saying that even though there were "tricky" moments in the holiday, I wouldn't change a thing about it good or bad. :)

The JDM Story Continues....

Just a brief blog update: I'll be putting all my Japanese holiday experiences at Otaku-Yakuza Blog; it's a shared blog with my friend "Otaku".

This blog will remain personal to me and may include bits about the trip to Japan but it'll be more centric on things that either made me happy or angry or sad etc.

This blog isn't dead and neither is my other blog, the fictional story writing one. I just haven't had the time to really concentrate on that. Right now I am trying to plan a trip back to Japan in April/May 2010 and work on a project called "Project: Rinko Fantastic".

Today's biggest hurdle is that I have absolutely no money...that's a lie. I have £22 with Road Tax due the end of the month as well as MOT, fuel, food, leccy bill and water bill. As you can EASILY imagine... £22 doesn't cover that so...credit card it is...as much as I hate to actually have money oweing to the credit card company over more than a month...it's my only method of salvation.

I need a holiday. :(

The Land of The Rising Sun and more...

So where have I been since August? Well some of it has been lack of news, some of it pure laziness and a chunk of it has been a fantastic, mind blowing trip to Tokyo, Japan. I will eventually blog about it in greater detail with pictures but looking at just 650 ish pictures and thinking I have to look at them, edit them, upload them and so I lose motivational drive...
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...and then I turn on my DS Lite (JDM blue, yo!) and say "Ohayo" to Kobayakawa Rinko, my virtual JDM girlfriend from Love Plus. I have not been so involved in a game since the days of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale but this game is a dating sim that never ends where as the former two are RPGs. Even though I can't read the Kanji and can barely make out what is being said, I am thoroughly enjoying spending time in this game and I hope with time I can learn some Japanese.

So let's rewind a little shall we?

During my trip to Japan, on the very first day my friend "Otaku" purchased an unknown game to me called "Love Plus" which happened to be ranked number 1 in the DS game charts. For the majority of the trip I teased "Otaku" about the game being an ero-ge (erotic game) but slowly I got sucked into it too, from watching on the sidelines to taking an interest in Nene, Rinko and Manaka. Nearing the end of our trip, I decided to look at DS Lites (the DSi is region locked when it comes to the latest games) but with new prices being relatively high I decided not to buy one...yet!

Sitting at the inn, the day before we fly, I flipped a 500 yen coin to decide the fate of buying a DS Lite...it landed on the 500 yen side up which meant the hunt for a DS Lite was back on. I chose to hit the bookstore (lots of second hand books and other assorted goodies such as figurines, games and consoles) and use my 300 yen discount (the story of which will be told when I cna be arsed to get round to typing up my trip). They had a few DS Lites in the store and they even had Love Plus. I purchased both and the rest is history...sort of. The story never ends...feel love 365 days.