Aino Minako-chan

Help, what does one get for a 5-year-old tomboy for her birthday!? My little niece is turning five extremely soon, but if I rush, the present won't come (too) late! My sister says they all like Ghibli films, and suggested getting "Princess Mononoke". (She's seen all of the others; I got her "Totoro" last year, and she apparently nearly passed out from the excitement.) But I'm thinking Mononoke is a bit too bloody for a five year old. I mean, my sister has a doctorate in psychology, so she fully believes in treating her obviously genius child like an adult, and probably would see nothing wrong with watching animated guys getting their animated heads chopped off. But the rest of us think my sister is rather nutty, and I want to at least pretend that I'm not contributing to my niece's future therapy.

In other news, I moved back into my apartment on Friday. Hurray! I'm home, freaking home! I exhausted myself cleaning and unpacking on Friday, then spent Saturday and Sunday mornings making trips to the store to stock up on groceries and other supplies. I can make my own food now! The glory...

Anyway, in the afternoons, I spent time playing video games. Saturday was The Sims2. (No offense, kinomakoto, but your sim is really freaking stupid. She finally crashed at about 3 am one day after nearly 48 hours of no sleep. But if it makes you feel any better, MY sim tends to burst into tears for no apparent reason.)

On Sunday, I started plowing through Shadow Hearts 2. I really love that game, and want to take my time to finish it, but I panicked on Sunday when I discovered that a NEW Shadow Hearts game was just released. This time, they appear to be in the Wild Wild West; there's two Native American-ish characters, a Spanish-ish guitar player, a saloon whore, and a ninja. Anyway, it looks extremely good, but I always confuse myself enough when I play two RPGs at the same time. Playing two SHADOW HEARTS RPGs at the same time would probably short-circuit my brain. And I still need to get the Katamari Damacy sequal, too... Too... many... video... games...

I like to think that it's the lack of home.

I simply cannot concentrate well enough to translate a damn thing these past two days, and I'm thinking it's the excitement/impatience of moving back home on Friday after the great flood of '05. The translations at work aren't that challenging or pressing, so I keep getting twitchy and having daydreams about hooking up my computer and vacuuming my newly carpeted bedroom. (Yes, I'm not only geeky, I'm rather anal retentive, as well.)

My life's been going pretty decently, though. Saturday we had work (ugh) so that we could have the quarterly all-company meeting (triple ugh). They're the most hideously boring things, ever. It's an honest struggle to try and listen to your company president's two hour meandering speech in your native language; in your second language it becomes damn near impossible. At least afterwards we had food and games. And when I mean games, I mean "Taiko no Tatsujin" and "Dance Dance Revolution". I was the big winner for our team that night; frankly if I hadn't beaten the 30-40-something-year-old salarymen, I would have to be ashamed of myself. So I won a yukata (hurray~!). But the biggest excitement of the day was a fairly large earthquake. From what I could tell, even from the news afterwards, there was barely any damage to anything. Still, the trains were shut down for a good 3 hours or so, which did nothing but piss me off when I was trying to get home. Ah, well. Such is life. ^_^

Sunday I went with johnabe to "The Island". Even though I know it flopped at the box office, I have to say that I thought it was a great movie. Lots of action, lots of explosions, even a small sprinkling of thoughtfulness. And Ewan! And TWO Ewans!! (Hysterically enough, Ewan speaking with a Scottish accent sounded far faker than his American accent.) I will admit that the movie hit about every single one of my worst nightmares (from snakes to nail guns to waking up in surgery to getting pooked in the legs by sharp objects), and John and I were sitting so close to the screen (2nd row) that I felt on the verge of motion sickness the entire movie. (Ironically enough, the action scenes were the least nauseating; they were actually SO fast and frenetic that my brain apparently short-circuited and refused to even acknowledge the movement.) I think the most amusing part of the entire movie was the sheer volume and audacity of the in-movie advertisements. I mean, when you can barely see Ewan McGregor behind the pile of AQUAFINA, you know you've got a problem. Having said that, I still can't remember exactly which beer got an honest-to-god closeup, so that should tell you what I think about the effectiveness of in-movie advertising. It really didn't bother me at all; it just made me laugh.

In my latest excitement, as a result of my boredom combined with my "We're sorry we flooded your apartment" windfall, I decided to buy myself a candy pink Nintendo DS. ^_^ My very first game is the DS Wario game. I really haven't played that much, but let me tell you, I am the Queen of the freaking waving mini-game. I can wave like no other. How well did I do? I finally gave up at level 200, simply because I had gotten really bored. That's a freaking lot of waving.

Well, here's the latest on the apartment front: I'll be back at home, oh, August-ish. (T_T) They'll be tearing up the floors AND the walls, so I'm completely moving everything out of my place on Saturday, and won't be moving back until early August. B-but, there are VIDEO GAMES that I want to play! And WEB SITES that I want to update!! And SIMS that I want to watch voyeuristically!!! Dammit, this just screws up ALL of my plans... Having said that, I'm doing quite well, and have been amusing myself by reading large amounts of manga and playing Final Fantasy I on my Game Boy (I finally figured out how to use the Monk class fighters; hurray, for you are no longer a wuss!).

Also, my coworker showed me how to work the http://maps.google.com website. Try and find your own house on the satellite option! I did and, quite frankly, it was really freaky. They're watching us, EVERYWHERE...

Boy, am I glad that I'm renting my apartment from my company. Two guys from the construction company that caused the mess at my apartment came over to apologize at work today. Backed up by his pet bulldog Takayama-san, our company president proceeded to REAM a new hole in those guys. Shachou-san and Takayama-san basically bullied the guys into replacing the walls and light fixtures, too, and then told them that they were going to finish in a week. THEN Takayama-san informed them that he would be stopping by daily, and he would personally approve each step of the reconstruction process.

I almost felt bad for the construction guys, but then I saw the pictures of my poor gutted apartment and thought about my boredom with the lack of computer or PS2, and I decided I didn't feel THAT bad. After leaving the guys with slightly less manhood in the conference room, I felt much better. And as I left the President's office, he smiled in a manner that both cheered and frightened me.

Having said that, I am getting kinda bored in the hotel. Maybe I'll go back to the apartment and hunt down my Game Boy tonight.

I had a pretty crappy day yesterday, but how are you?

I got a somewhat convoluded call late at work yesterday, but I finally understood that while they had been doing work on apartment 408, they flooded the place, and wanted to check my apartment (308), but couldn't get in because not even the building manager has a key. (I did not know this.)

I honestly wasn't too concerned, headed home, my motto being "Prepare for the worst and hope for the best" (my worst case scenario being walking up to my apartment and finding a puddle of water leaking from the doorway). And in all reality, it wasn't the worse. But it sure as hell wasn't the best.

There was a mini-pond in my living room, covered with scattered pieces of paper from a magazine that had apparently taken the main blow. There was water scattered absolutely everywhere (and I'm most concerned about my computer, since I didn't get a chance to check how wet it may have gotten).

The bedroom was probably worse. I'm not quite sure how, but the bed, the TOP of the bed was completely soaked, and the water had soaked through to form puddles below the floorboards. They'll have to rip up and replace a good 75% of the bedroom floor.

By some stroke of luck, however, my closet was dry as a bone. Not even a drop of water inside.

Long story short, I'll be staying in a hotel for the next few days, and am feeling slightly depressed, but I'm trying to concentrate on good things, like what to do with my sympathy money. (Buy good food like they suggested? Or splurge on something fun for my hotel-induced boredom?)

**UPDATE**
They're apparently replacing most of my living room, too, and are saying that I'll have to spend a bit more time in the hotel. On the plus side, it's a nice hotel. And I'm going to use the laundry service and make them pay out the nose for it.