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Yes, it was such a pleasant surprise; they didn't even have it in the LA airport.

I know, it was so epic. XD And even if I hadn't liked them (which was unlikely, considering I love both Kit Kats and green tea desserts), I still would've been happy for fulfilling my big goal on the very last day. Green Tea Kit Kats was literally the first thing I decided I wanted to buy in Japan.

Ah, I suppose it is a bit different when you're capable of translating Japanese, but even before then, I liked Japanese doujinshi for the pictures. XD And it will take me forever to translate anything, but at least it's practice... But yes, I got tons of awesome stuff. I got like five DS games that aren't in the US, two stacks of books/manga, a bunch of action figures, a wallet that looks like a gas mask (I got Karma a grenade one), a yukata, and a kitsune mask, plus a bunch of smaller things.

Oh, oh, speaking of Steam, Team Fortress 2 is now permanently free, so you literally can just sign up for Steam and download it! It was announced when they updated with the Meet the Medic video, which I've been waiting for for two years by the way and was hilarious.

You must tell me about how the trip was when you're done!

I totally agree. Especially since a lot of people in different countries can only use internet to contact home with important information. Geez, that's so ridiculous, stupid internet fails. Tokyo was really nice because after you registered your email address, you had permanent free internet. It would 'expire' after three hours, but then you just had to re-confirm you were using it and it would start again.

Haha, maybe you can order them online? I forgot, have you had them before?

Haha, doujinshi plots are normally awful. At least the sex ones are easy to translate though. XD "Aaaah, ooohh..." And for DS? Nope. 3DS has them, but not normal DS. I think region codes are stupid anyway. Sony's got the right idea, none for PS3 or PSP. I think Microsoft has them, and Nintendo has them for Wii and 3DS. Boo.

Yes, it is. And yes, you may. Heehee, that will be so fun to play together! Can't wait then, so hurry and get on your dissertation! Haha, it's really quite alright to watch the 'Meet the' videos now. I watched all up to Meet the Spy before I played the game (I watched Meet the Spy before I even knew what Team Fortress was), and I still loved them. Hell, they were just an introduction to the characters and gameplay a bit more than anything, and you can always watch them again once you play the game and are able to understand everything. It's like you watch them and get the general point and characters and definitely understand the hilarity, but then after playing, you just understand all the other little things included in the videos. Either way, I've watched them all a number of times, and they have never lost their entertainment value. Lawl at the Sims and Bejeweled though. I remember when I used to be addicted to those, but I got addicted to less casual games instead and promptly forgot about them. XD;;

Hmm, looked stroopwafels up and they sound absolutely amazing. Speaking of the most amazing foods ever, in Japan, Hiroshima style okonomiyaki was like OMG wonderful. I'm gonna find a recipe for it now. (side note of lawl, Firefox said stroopwafels was spelled wrong, and when I right-clicked to add it to my dictionary, the only listing they had as a correction was Stormtroopers) XD

Ah, right. Yeah, fair enough. XD Now that I've tried them, I don't think I'd be willing to get them online either.

Yeah, it's kind of sad, but you kinda gotta determine what the best doujinshi are, not by what has the best plot, but what has the best characterization. They almost always have virtually no plot (or just small ones to get the sex going), so it's all about how the characters react to the situations that make it interesting. One of the best ones I've ever read was just about Thief King Bakura getting captured and held captive. He was wounded and too weak to summon his ka, so a guard just raped him and stuff. What was the interesting part though was he made friends with a snake that the guard ended up killing, and Bakura got so angry he suddenly summoned Diabound and killed the guard. Diabound wasn't his original ka; it was the spirit of the snake he had made friends with, so it was like an origin story for how Bakura got such a powerful ka. A sexy, dirty origin story. XD But I mean, that was so minor of a plot, yet it was one of the best doujinshi I've read... just sad. *shakes head*

Ah, no, I meant Microsoft as in X-Box. XD Not a big deal for Americans, but that actually sucks for Japanese, because they miss out on all the good X-Box games like we miss out on all the good DS games. Then again, X-Box is no where near as popular in Japan as DS is here so yeah. Oh, actually just did some research, and it looks like that while 360 really is region locked, it has a number of games that aren't. Weird.

Alright, fair enough. XD Probably for the best; the videos are so awesome, they would probably make you give in and just start playing TF2 now. Um, my guess for the game being free is because it's such an old game, yet it is still extremely popular and people are still always buying it. They've made more profit than I think they ever intended, plus they have virtual items that you can buy. They're very expensive (even by like, Gaia standards), but people buy them anyway, so they're still making a lot of money off that. I think it would actually benefit them at this point to just get more players in to buy their items and such, and for their players to join free. Plus TF2 was really just an Orange Box game to begin with; it was just one minor game within the other games, so they weren't really expecting to make much money off it in the first place. That's just how Valve works. XD

Haha, lucky. Sims is super slow on my stuff. Then again I don't think I've tried it on my gaming computer, so it'd probably be fine there. I just kinda lost interest. Haha, silly Bejeweled though.

Haha, how sad. Yeah, okonomiyaki is just amazing, especially Hiroshima style. I like it with the batter and egg, light on the cabbage but lots of sprouts, then with some bacon, lots of soba, and then lots of sauce and nori sprinkles. Ugh, but no mayo or green onions, that's just gross.

Hmm, after hearing about stroopwafels, I'd consider ordering them online, though mostly because I don't have any real intentions to go to the Netherlands (there's too many other countries I wanna visit first), and I'm more curious to try them than anything. But hell, I bet you could find them in a specialty market or something in the states, so maybe I'd look that route first.

Hmm, I'm a firm believer that a character can remain character in virtually any plot, even if being in character for them is literally just being confused and weirded out the entire time. To me that's just a challenge, one that most doujinshi/fanfic writers do not meet. So yeah, I'll give even the worst plots a try to see if the characters are believable, though that doesn't generally end up happening. But either way, I'll still enjoy doujinshi if the art is good, because to me, that's about half the entertainment value of them. The just don't have enough meat to them to be supported by story or characters more than art. Mysterious Skin, huh? Never heard of it. Sounds... interesting? XD

Eheh, well I'm not most people then, seeing that I had five must-buy games in Japan while I was there. I actually refrained from getting the tens of others that caught my interest because they're so expensive there. I understand that localization costs are often greater than expected profits, and it would be stupid for companies to translate them, I really do. But damn, that just really sucks when they're not releasing a game you're really looking forward to, especially a sequel of ones they've already localized before. I don't know what I'm gonna do with the Ace Attorney game I bought there; it's a text adventure, so it will probably take me years to translate. A friend of mine got lucky, because her favorite game series, Fatal Frame, the fourth one wasn't released here, but some insanely dedicated fans translated it and created a patch so the translation could be added and the region code removed, as long as you bought the Japanese game. I really, really hope that happens for Ace Attorney, because yeah, it's great translation practice, but the series is just too important to me for me to want to spend that much time translating instead of enjoying it. But anyway, my point is, I understand why realistically it's ridiculous to expect gaming companies to release all games in different countries, or even just all games that did well in their home country, but I just wish so much that wasn't the case, because I am most certainly not happy with our DS and PSP lineup here (yeah, PSP, you know how few good games it has here? It's games are awesome in Japan, so awesome I might've considered getting the system if they had them here), or even Wii, and I'm not happy with Japan's 360 and PC lineup. To me it's focusing so much on profiting off the 'safe' games that it's refusing to share cultures between countries, and gaming styles at that. Did you know they weren't going to release Ace Attorney here at all, because visual novels were so non-existent in the states? But Capcom got some balls and tried it, and Ace Attorney made DS the leading visual novel system in the US, and not just leading, but successfully leading, as in people here are actually loving these games and buying them! I mean, who knows how much FPS could catch on in Japan if they got gems like Left 4 Dead and TF2? I didn't like FPS until those games, and I had Halo and Resident Evil and all that s**t. And OMG I just realized how much I am ranting, so sorry. XD;;

But anyway, I do agree on Xbox. I'm more of a solo gamer too (hence why I'm not poor and homeless, given how many party games my favorite systems have), and Xbox just has far too many games that rely on online to give you the full experience. Plus having to constantly pay for online, and getting only a fraction of the downloadable content you get on PC? No thanks. I like playing online for a select few games, ones that are too fun not to play, but really more fun when you play online, but overall I need far more single-player games. And even though Wii is definitely the 'play with people in real life'/party system, it has far more single player games than Xbox does, and DS is just crawling with them, probably as much as PS3 has. Honestly if I liked Sony's 'style' of games more, I would probably be more of a Sony person because of how independent it is. But anyway, Japan is an extremely social community with more internet usage than what we have here. Xbox would fit them great if they actually had some good games for it, and maybe were willing to try some more western-style games. Not gonna speak for places like China and stuff, but at least places where internet gaming is feasible, I wish Xbox or PC had a better lineup. South Korea's got the right idea there.

Yeah, I mean TF2 was already totally fair (pay once, you can play online forever), but it's even better to live off optional content. And they don't even make you feel bad for not buying the content, because they don't sell levels or upgrades or anything. You can buy hats, and you can buy weapons, and most of the hats, as well as all of the weapons, you can also get without buying them; it's just difficult and rare to get some things. I think that is completely fair, especially with how cheap the game was to begin with. Oh, and those of us who bought it? We get a free hat. XD Kind of lame, but at least it's something so we're not just completely slapped in the face after spending money. I agree about WoW though. That's just ridiculous, subscription fees. I don't believe in those at all; I believe in one-time payments. If WoW was like $100 instead of $60, I'd see that as fair since you can like play forever and it always updates, but not just having to pay as long as you play. Or hell, even paying an initial charge, then paying a fee for updates would be more fair than it is now. And I'm afraid more and more companies are starting to go that route, since it's most profitable, and they'll try to keep you engrossed forever like WoW and Farmville so you keep paying. That's what I love about Valve, they've got the right idea with what's fair; sometimes they're even unfair to themselves, and even though their games rely so heavily on internet usage, it's still a one-time cost. That's another reason I like Nintendo too; they do have online, but they still focus on keeping games with the old cost system, paying and playing. They even encourage you to play with friends still. You know, that system that *doesn't* require more than one copy to be bought to have multiplayer? I miss that with Xbox and Playstation.

Haha, nice, you must have a nice laptop then. Mine didn't even have a good enough graphics card to display Sims 3 without the character glitching if you changed their height or weight. XD But I think game speed is more about RAM than hard drive space anyway.

Ew. Hate all kinds of onions.

Ooh, that sucks. You had to write it twice?

AZ doesn't have so many Japanese markets. I know of one, but it's pretty small, and then we do have a grocery chain, but it is for any Asian country, so it has two aisles dedicated to Japan, and then the rest is everything else. Japan's not too big here, not surprisingly. And I know what you mean about the same products being different; Coke tasted a bit different in Japan. It was less fizzy and less sugary, I think. Almost reminded me of Coke Zero; didn't care for it much. Other than that, only 'American' thing I tried was Kit Kats, and they tasted the same if they were the original flavor.

Oh, yes, I could see your point there. I was going under the assumption that I'm reading a story that has characters in it that have already been reasonably developed. I mean, yeah, obviously if you don't have enough character to work with, you can't really keep them in character to something you don't know. However, I'm not the same when it comes to plots; I would honestly read that Kaiba as a fry cook story (which cracked me up, by the way, imagining Kaiba standing at a little Spongebob grill with a little apron and a little hat, and a little Spongebob spatula) if it was written well and the plot and characters moved in an interesting way. I guess the main 'description' plot, while it is something that will attract or detract me to looking at a story to begin with, is not something I let determine if I would like the story or not; I need to see how it plays out. If there were less stories to choose from (as in there were few enough that I could read all in the world), I wouldn't even use the description of the plot to determine if I want to read it or not.

Hm, Mysterious Skin actually... sounds pretty interesting. XD I guess that goes right back to my above point though; the description catches my interest, but I could still hate it. Want to try seeing it though.

Yes, region blocks are the worst. It's like you do all that work to learn another language aaaaand... you still can't play foreign games/watch foreign DVDs in exchange. Sucks for you. Or even between countries that speak the same language, it's ridiculous. I mean, if one stable government sees it fit to show something to their country, can't the other stable governments accept that? It's not like those same countries don't already have porn or anything!

Dude, not weird. Gamecube's my favorite console of all time. Probably the only system that beats it all together is DS. Everyone always either talks about the glory days of N64 or the great success of the Wii, but no one remembers poor Gamecube and its Pikmin and Wind Waker and Smash Brothers Melee and Falsebound Kingdom and just so many others... I think my Gambecube collection is also biggest game-wise. And well, if I ever go to China, I'll just be thankful to have Gaia at least.

Haha, oh, true, but Farmville makes plenty of money (I think they're the highest profiting 'game' in existence right now), and by adding new content they get you to keep coming back. At least so I've heard.

Ah, well that's not too bad then. I would've personally been pissed though. XD

That is one thing I love about California. I want to try going to Japan Town. Been to China Town and Little Italy in New York, but that was the extent of my 'mini foreign countries within the US' experience. Wait, so the soda in France tastes crappy?

Exactly. In theory I still think that even in strange plots characters can be in character or a plot can be good with crappy characterization, but often bad characters and bad plots go hand in hand, because it's all just from bad writers. So I guess I idealize too much, and it doesn't work so well in practice, but I like my idealizations anyway. Totally get what you mean about the porn thing though; porn is far more interesting (and more of a turn on) to me if I know the characters, and a lot of times with fanfiction, even though I do know the characters quite well, it doesn't seem like those characters, so suddenly it's these two strangers with familiar faces bumping uglies.

Haha, thanks for the link. I plan to see Karma tomorrow, so maybe I'll make her watch it with me.

Ooh, that sounds interesting. And yeah, governments just fail a lot... angst.

Hm, for me it goes... Gamecube/DS (can't choose between the two really), Wii, Nintendo 64, Playstation 2, PC, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Playstation, Playstation Portable, Xbox. Can't really include any other systems in that, as I have not had enough playing experience to make an opinion. Plus systems older than the first 3D generation are difficult to compare with the newer stuff, since there's no denying things have improved extremely greatly. I also am counting 3DS with DS at the moment, since I only have one game for it right now and it's a remake. But yeah, I pretty much prefer consoles on everything except for FPS and games like The Sims.

Yikes, Farmville is evil. And Cracked reported today that those Facebook games are extremely bad with your private information.

Epcot? So is that the Disneyworld in France? That's too bad though other country sodas aren't as good. It might just be the tastes we get used to growing up with our soda though.

I have a totally visual imagination. Not sure if that really benefits me though, because then it gets awkward imagining characters acting so weird.

If it was a farm game, it was probably Harvest Moon. Animal Crossing is more a neighborhood game. For me handhelds are just as fun as consoles, so I get them depending on if they have games I want exclusive to them. More often than not I'm just sitting on the sofa at home playing DS, and it doesn't bother me if it's the console experience or not, because I get that too eventually. But then handheld gives me the added bonus of being able to play away from home/in bed before I go to sleep. Though usually I'll be constantly playing the system that has whatever game I'm hooked on at the moment. Though it seems it would be hard for you to rate a lot of systems since you haven't played them much. I feel like the game variation is the most important thing in determining what systems you like, so if you've only tried one or two, probably hard to tell in that sense. Then again the controller and typical gameplay styles are important too. Either way, as far as PS3 goes, it's cool, but it just doesn't have very many good games. PS2 just rolled them out; PS3 takes its sweet time.

Oh, well that's kinda a relief to hear Cracked had things wrong. I mean, yeah, dissapointing to get misinformation from Cracked, but it's a good thing for them to be wrong about. Either way, I'm not worrying too much. The only things on that list I even did were use public wifi and government forms. Government forms are kinda necessary, and so many people do it that chances of you being individually targeted are slim. As for public wifi, that's not something I do often; only when necessary, and it's usually at school where you need to be a student to access the internet to begin with.

By the way, Karma and I watched Mysterious Skin today. We actually liked it a lot, and the quality wasn't too bad. I wanna get it on DVD or something now. XD What was weird though was it was sooo, sooo similar to a side plot we have going in one of our RPs. The side plot is where these two older kids (in their early twenties during the RP) were raped/molested by this guy as children. One of the kids is this guy's stepson, so it happened to him constantly (like how it constantly happened to Neal that summer), and the other was, I kid you not, in a baseball team the guy coached, so it only happened to him once (like Bryan). The one who it kept happening to grew up to be a tough guy who gets into a lot of trouble, but is also gay and thinks he might be because of what his stepfather did. He's also really close to his mom, but almost in a friend way, like where they gossip and cuddle in stuff (also kinda like Neal). The other one is a wimpy kid who always gets bossed around, and is really traumatized from what happened, like Bryan. It was just... so weird, like even the baseball coach thing fit in. XD