Shoppiiiiiiiiiing

Today I had no plans besides Wesley coming over here so I could show him a store full of old toys and figures that had some Kitarou stuff he might want.  He did want it.  After that, we looked around Popola (the department store with all the used games) and Tsutaya (the CD store).

Here are the things I bought!  It was all very, very cheap, because in Japan, buying things used is actually a tremendously good idea.

                                           

On the left are some Code Geass playing cards, which I bought because Anya was guaranteed to be on at least one of them.  I was right; she's the seven of diamonds.  Anyway, next to that is a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask , which is still one of the best games ever made.  Like Donkey Kong 64, I own an American copy of this (and have since it came out), but playing it in Japanese would be a great learning experience since I already know the game so well.  Below that are some Pokemon finger puppets; on the right is Mewtwo, who is on my Pokemon team and thus I had to buy him.  However, he was packaged together with the Pokemon on the left, which is totally unrelated to him.  That Pokemon's name is Spoink, and it's a pig with a spring for a tail that can never stop bouncing or it will die.  Next to those is a Pokemon card featuring Spiritomb, because in addition to owning a figure of each of my team members, I want a card to place behind the figures.  Under the card is a Goomba from that brand of tea that has the Super Mario keychains -- two more and I'll have the whole set!  Lastly, we have Nana Mizuki's Impact Exciter, which for whatever reason dropped in price by about half since I was last in the store.  I have always wanted to own this CD, so I pretty much had to buy it.

As for that green blob, that's a thing I bought for my friend, but since the picture was taken I have decided to keep it a surprise until his birthday.


Let's talk about Nana Mizuki for a bit since I still feel like typing.  She is a voice actress (whose first important role was in my favorite anime) that branched out into music thanks to her experience as an enka singer.  Enka is hard to explain to Westerners, but it's a bit like what would happen if you combined the more introspective bits of country music with the traditional music you'd hear at a kabuki play. Miss Mizuki got her start singing in this style (and even released a song when she was thirteen), but for whatever reason that didn't seem to take off.  However, many voice actresses in Japan will also get the opportunity to make a song or two, and due to her background this suited her very well.  It's gotten to the point where most average Japanese people recognize her as a singer without even knowing that she's also a voice actress.  In addition to anime roles, she has dubbed a few movies and is one of the primary announcers for NHK, Japan's public television channel.
Though she started with enka, the songs she makes now are in a completely different style.  Her current songs have titles like "Metro Baroque" and "Next Arcadia" and, though they fall under the category of pop, sound much more Yanni-esque than anything else you'll find on the Oricon (Japan's music-ranking chart).  The best way to put it is that her songs all sound like their titles, even when the titles are hard-to-decipher things like "Phantom Minds".

 Let's watch some videos!  I am done messing with the formatting, so you'll just have to deal with the wonky link placement.

                                                                       Shin Ai  (That's Mika Agematsu on the harp, by the way.  They're best friends.)                    Orchestral Fantasia
                                        Discotheque  (This one is...weird.)

Okay, so while I was typing this, Tokyo Brandnew Girls, that show where Wesley's favorite member of After School tells you about fashion and stuff, came on my TV.  The other members were on today, so I watched too.

E-YOUNGGGGGGG

E-YOUNGGGGGGGGG