Now on TV?!

by Jkun on March 4, 2013 at 8:43 am
Posted In: Blog, Japan

Hakkoda Snowfall

Last week, Aomori witnessed the eye of the storm as it hailed balls of snow the size of walnuts, coupled with incredible wind speeds and the largest recorded snowfall in modern Japanese history.

If you read last week’s comic then it will come as no surprise why the next few weeks will be quite tough with being able to update Crazy Sunshine, as real life priorities need to take place in order for me to, well, not die.

I’m not even being dramatic, it’s true! Wanna see what it’s like living in a tiny, broken down village in northern Japan during winter? Now you can! A small news story was featured on the BBC homepage earlier last week. You can see it by clicking here!

During the report, they showcase the amazing 5 meters of snow that fell recently, and show shots of a small town similar to mine where houses are encased in mountains of snow.

Living alone has its perks, such as being able to stay up all night without the need for headphones while listening to music, but also means in winter I have to battle the snow 1 vs 1, shovel only, final destination.

I mentioned the pain of snow shovelling in a blog entry last year, but this year with the record breaking snowfall it’s gotten even worse! My day-to-day schedule is something like this:

  • 5am: Wake up, strech, tea, shovel snow!
  • 7am: Finish shovelling a tunnel to my car, dig my car out of the snow.
  • 8am: Shower, head to work.
  • 8:15am-5pm: Work work work.
  • 5pm-7pm: After school activities, English club!
  • 7pm-9pm: Return home, and either cook dinner or if it snowed while I was at work, get back to shovelling!
  • 9pm-11pm: Draw comics/write scripts/reply to comics/fix the site/social media stuff!

tldr; winter sucks! This is why I am taking the week off to try to get a buffer up and not to let my house collapse underneath the massive amount of snow on my roof. I can already hear it creaking…!

From now on each week will be touch and go with updates and replying to comments. I want to do my very best to keep to the schedule and work especially hard on weekends, but please don’t get all mad if I can’t update on time. I wouldn’t wish this kind of weather on my worst enemy!

I also don’t want to start uploading guest strips as I am uninterested in them. Fan Art always brings a smile to my face, though!

Wish me luck! I hope you enjoy the update that’ll follow, it should be up the following Wednesday, along with a proper schedule change announcement.

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Valentine’s Games

by Jkun on February 18, 2013 at 11:08 am
Posted In: Blog, Gaming

Another year, another attempt at writing frequent blog posts, even if I have to literally slam my head on the desk to find an interesting subject.

Nope, I’ve got nothing.

Valentine’s Day was pretty relaxing this year, mainly because it landed slap bang in the middle of the end of semester tests, which means I had a ton of spare time at work to do all my errands and shopping without having to worry about going to school clubs or working overtime.

My girlfriend made this incredible Gears of War cake with a little chocolate Ticker as we’ve been trying to find all the collectables in the third instalment before Judgement comes out next month. Japanese releases will be slow so it looks like I’ll have to rely on importing if I want to play it spoiler-free!

So yea! How about them videogames, huh? It’s tough playing games with someone who can’t speak English. Recently we are working our way though both the Gears and Halo series, and most of the cutscenes involve me listening, translating, and then trying to add Japanese accents to each character to help enhance the experience. Even then, some words like heretic (異端者), ammo pack (弾薬/たま) or incendiary grenade (焼夷弾) always leave me drawing a blank, making it quite frustrating at times, especially since there is usually a lot of action going on.

“So why not just play Japanese games then?” is what you’re probably thinking. Well, we do! In addition to the hundreds of random Wii party games and my ever-expanding Vita collection, some of the latest and greatest games to hit the Japanese market aren’t on major consoles but are mere, free-to-play smartphone applications.

Unlike western smartphone games which are aimed at a younger and more casual audience, Japanese applications punish you for not logging in each day, and reward you for really grinding your ass off. Complete and utter time sinks, but gosh darn they are fun. If you want to get better without putting the effort in, you can buy your way to the top of the leaderboards with real money – but where’s the fun in that?

One of the bigger, mainstream releases, Puzzle & Dragons (パズドラ), has been released worldwide on both iPhone and Android. It’s free, so why not give it a go? Some gameplay footage from the English version since the Japanese commercial doesn’t show any actual gameplay:

Developed by Gungho, P&D combines puzzle solving with Columns in order to advance through turn based combat stages, peppered with RPG elements, collectible monsters, and even the ability to adventure with friends you make along the way. I was blown away with how much content and genres it takes on board, especially for being a free game, and it’s entirely possible to get really good at it without spending a single yen or cent. If you ever have a spare 10 minutes each day it’s a great little time waster. well, until you hit level 70 then you can play for up to 3 hours a day if you really want to!

I like talking about games. Maybe I’ll do this more often!

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