Courne Supremacy

Now that I’ve got an iPhone 4 and I can take 720p video, I’m interested in seeing what I can post on Youtube and on this blog.

As a first test, this video isn’t taken with my iPhone, but rather my Canon A480 P&S camera. It’s a stop-motion animation of a Nanoblock 5-story Pagoda I bought while I was in Japan. I figured this would be a good test case.

Some lessons learned about uploading to Youtube:

I’m using iMovie on the Mac for starters. It doesn’t export H.264 but just a QT .MOV format. If you want to edit short videos with iMovie and expect to upload it to YouTube at 720p you’re out of luck. Youtube hates that. Every time I tried to upload from iMovie it would compress it down to crap. Even if I took the exported MOV file and uploaded it Youtube complained that it wasn’t in the right format and yet tried to work with the data anyway, but the end result was less than stellar.

So here’s what I did: I edited and exported my movie with iMovie as a Quicktime MOV format. I downloaded Handbrake and re-compressed the MOV into an H.264 MP4 file and I uploaded that to Youtube. Youtube still bitched about the audio not being correct and begrudgingly munched on the data anyway and uploaded it. Since there’s no audio, I didn’t give a rat’s ass and you can see the video here.

I want to try and upload a video from my iPhone to Youtube next and I’ll post something about that on here. I’d also like it if WordPress 3.0 with all its new-fangled capabilities to show the embedded Youtube or let me upload video to the blog itself, but the latter seems to be a no-go. From my experience it’s simply broken. I don’t know if that’s because my webhost can’t handle it, or if WordPress is a pile. Maybe it doesn’t like you uploading a 720p video. Maybe there’s some hidden MB cap that I need to increase before it’ll take the entire file. The Nanoblock video is 29 MBs so I figure it’s giving WordPress a heart attack about 40% of the way through (that’s how far it gets before it croaks).

Tags: Nanoblock, stop-motion animation, Youtube

So the post office re-delivered my other decorative anime figurine today.

Alter’s Azusa Nakano is three of five of my crazy attempt to collect all of Hokago Tea Time from K-ON. Thank God there’s only five. The box:

Below is Azusa Nakano in plastic wrap. She comes with a separate hair piece. You can take her head off and replace her bangs with a set of bangs with cat ears. Yui gave her the nickname “Azu-nyan” after realizing she looked better as a neko-girl. Did I mention K-ON is big on the moe-factor?

Azusa’s the new freshman the light music club picks up in their junior year at school. She’s much more serious about her music. Both of her folks play in a Jazz band so music runs in the family. She plays back up to Yui and considers herself a n00b. She’s amazed at Yui’s musical savant abilities and she’s not so hip to all of the moe-moe antics of her seniors and their daily after school tea parties.

She plays another Gibson Les Paul guitar. When the other girls realize they’ll be graduating leaving Azusa with nobody in the club they buy her a pet turtle.

It’s Tea Time!

I mentioned that she’s got some friends too. By friends I mean, other figures I collected while I was in Akiba. Those three are some of the bigger ones I’ve collected. Most of the other ones I have are smaller gashapon. For instance, Misato Katsuragi from Neon Genesis Evangelion. I recently watched Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone and Evangelion 2.22: You Can(not) Advance. I like what they’ve done with Tokyo-3 and the Evangelions through the use of toon-shaded CGI. It makes me want to go back to Blender and try my hand at modeling cityscapes for backdrops.

I’m also a big fan of Maria-sama ga Miteru. I didn’t think I’d like it because it was introduced to me years ago as a slow-paced slice-of-life drama. It took me years to sit down and watch it but I loved it when I did. What can I say, I love the over-the-top melodrama.  I didn’t think I’d like most of the characters, but each episode presents a new facet about one of the girls that makes them interesting.

When I was in Akiba I collected some of the Yujin series of figures for Maria-sama. Recently I collected select figures from the MOVIC series. From left to right: Touko Matsudaira, Sachiko Ogasawara, Shimako Todou, Yumi Fukuzawa, Youko Mizuno, and Eriko Torii.

Sei Sato and Shimako are amongst my favorites. I’m still waiting to get Sei from a Yahoo Japan acution. There also aren’t as many figures for Maria-sama since it’s about 4 years too late for me. Back in March, when I was in Japan K-ON! was the big thing.

So there it is. I’m turning  Otaku one figure at a time.

Tags: alter, anime figurines, azusa nakano, eriko torii, maria-sama ga miteru, mio akiyama, misato katsuragi, mizuno youko, MOVIC, neon genesis evangelion, sachiko ogasawara, shimako todou, touko matsudaira, yui hirasawa, yujin, yumi fukuzawa

Otaku fought over her. (BTW, if you’re at work, don’t even bother going to that website.)

But I got her right here.  This is Yui Hirasawa by Alter. I pre-ordered her back in January and it came in the mail today. How’s that for a wait? My “dream” of owning swanky Japanese plastic toys is finally coming to fruition. The unboxing:

More pictures:

I tend to just call it a toy, but it’s really something that adds otaku aesthetic value to a room. Some facts about Yui. She’s a high school student (of course, right?). Complete slacker in trouble of becoming a NEET because her only hobbies are doing nothing until she joins (i.e. is suckered into) the light music club at school by Ritsu. She’s easily bribed by cake and tea.

Yui learns to play the guitar and becomes lead singer of Hokago Tea Time (Afterschool Tea Time). She plays a Gibson Les Paul, which Yui calls “Gitah.” I understand that “Gitah” also costs a fortune. The show covers how she got her hands on a pricey instrument. Mugi’s family owns a local music shop and gave her a deep discount. Mugi’s also HTT’s keyboardist.

Yui is also a musical savant and her surname comes from Susumu Hirasawa. The show itself, K-ON! and it’s second season K-ON!! (you see what they did there?), is a slice-of-life, high school comedy. It’s all moe, all the time and every now and then has some funny moments. I can’t really recommend it though. It’s cutesy anime and if you want to veg out and feed your brain candy, it’s perfect for that.

I also have HTT’s bassist, Mio. There are in total five members: Yui, Mio, Ritsu, Tsumugi, and Azusa. My retarded-crazy plan is to get them all. In fact I’ve got Azusa coming and I’ve pre-ordered Mugi from amiami.jp.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. I took them with my Sony A200 using the basic lens. Yeah, I know. I’ve been thinking of getting a macro, but I’m lazy. Speaking of lazy, I really got hooked on the OP and ED (“Don’t be Lazy”) for K-ON, one of the reasons I like the show. The other reason: Japanese school girls + rocking out just seemed like a cool idea. Especially after watching Linda, Linda, Linda.

Alright, Yui, play us out…

Tags: anime figurine, k-on, yui hirasawa

You can watch Japanese Tv without living there. First there’s NHK World. It’s a web stream. Not the highest quality, but decent enough. The programs appear to be in English or subtitled. I was watching Cool Japan earlier today.

If you want more Japanese stations you can go to Livestation.com. You need to download their player and then you can find channels via their website or google. As far as Japanese broadcasting goes you’ve got access to these channels (at least the ones I know about):

• TBS
• NHK World
• TV Tokyo
• Tokyo MX
• Asahi TV
• Seebit TV

To find these stations, for whatever reason, it’s easier to google for them. Just look for “livestation Tokyo TV” for instance and you should find the Livestation stream for it. Of course the drawback for this is that, if you don’t understand Japanese, like me, what’s the point?

Still though, if you’re looking to see what’s on TV across the ocean, then happy watching!

Edit: Just a note, you’ll want to be hardwired into your Internet. Watching over wireless is probably not going to work very well. You can get Livestream on Mac, but you can’t use the web portal since it’s in Sliverlight. You’ll have to download the desktop player. The desktop player’s not bad far as I can tell.

If you try it out, tell me your thoughts or if you find any interesting channels, I’ve love to know about it.

Tags: japanese tv, livestation, nhk world

I like ramen. Ramen is a reminder of the good moments I had at home with my family.

When I was young my grandmother used to take care of me and she would cook ramen. It was Top Ramen, but the noodles were soaked in the salty broth. They were thick, soft, and tasty. When she left for Taiwan, and eventually died, that was the only thing I remembered about her. My dad showed me how to make ramen with ground beef after I went to college. Just dump a pound of ground beef in a pan and use a spatula to dice it up into small pieces. Put some green onions in with it and take a couple of spoonfuls and put it in with the ramen and the stow the rest for later. When we would have hot pot at our house the leftover hodge-podge broth would be dumped into a pot and made into ramen broth the next day. If we had duck for dinner the heart, liver, neck, and left over meat would be used in the ramen pot for lunch. Good times and good eats.

In college, ramen was el cheapo. Sometimes if I was lucky Market 32 would have ramen on sale — ten for a buck. I stocked up. I bought ground beef to be diced up and yeah, sometimes, I would have ramen every night of the week. When you’re in college that’s what you gotta do. I got the ramen to the point where it reminded me of how my grandmother cooked it up. But afte a year of eating the same thing, I found msyelf staring into a bowl of gloppy noodles and thinking to myself, “this tastes like shit.” I overdosed on it and started eating out or finding other things to try and cook with little to moderate success — I would consider myself a terrible cook, even to this day, and yet I cook well enough for myself that I haven’t died from starvation yet.

NorCal has a few good ramen restaurants. There’s Himawari on 2nd Street in San Mateo. Santa Ramen. There’s a place down in Mountain View which I forget the name of. It’s all good.

It really wasn’t until I was watching Galaxy Express 999 that I realized I really miss eating ramen. Hoshino Tetsuro eats it in bowlfuls. Old men that run ramen shops on distant worlds give him as much as he wants because he’s the poster child for youth and ambition and he’s fueled by noodles. Watching that anime made me crave eating the stuff again but I decided if I was going to have ramen, i was going to “age it up” and make it a little more of a fulfilling meal. I tried with modern success — it was still the same old college meal.

Japan is where the real deal is. I’ve had the good stuff there. I dare say even the airport’s ramen was good. I watched the lady at the food stand make it. They don’t get their broth from some little brown powder packet. She had a clear plastic bag of broth. She had a small basket of noodles and dunked it into boiling water. Microwaved the broth packet and put the whole thing together in a bowl. What a brilliant idea. No wonder even that’s better than the shit they pass off as ramen over here. When I got home a friend got me some Sapporo Ichiban ramen. I love the stuff. It’s a step up from Top Ramen, but seriously, when I say step up it’s like paying a dollar compared to a dime. For a poor college student this is as close as you would get to gourmet. I tried to eat the Ichiban ramen but it tasted like a nasty mouthful of salt and that was sad because I loved it so much before I went to Japan. That’s when I started researching how to make my own ramen broth. I wanted to go beyond Top Ramen and Ichiban. Making broth would take anywhere from 20 minutes to 60 hours for Tonkatsu. I’m not ready to invest 60 hours into simmering pork bones. I have yet to try the 20 minute broth, and I would, but then I found this:

It comes from the Marina asian supermarket in Foster City. In one of those packages you get this:

You get a bag of uncooked noodles and a small liquid package (in this case soy sauce). This might be a decent compromise and I’ve had the Miso flavor and soy flavor. It’s a step up from the brick ramen. I bought some naruto when I was there as something else to put in the bowl. I boiled up some eggs and dumped some veggies in to cook up and put the noodles in and this is what came out:

That’s not bad looking if I do say so myself. It wasn’t bad tasting either. It’s not Japan. It’s not Top Ramen. I didn’t have to cook broth for 20 minutes or 60 hours. I’d say, for me, for right now, I’m content with this compromise.

Tags: ramen