broke my electronic dictionary =(

Read the title... yup.
I was struck with the tragedy this morning. I accidently hit my knee on the outside of my Canon Wordtank G55 and... the screen on the other side of where my knee hit cracked. I hit the back of it, and the screen cracked. Flimsy.
But... now I'm doomed. I bet my parents are really upset I broke such an expensive gift... and now I'm without an advanced language translator in a foriegn land. Sure I still have my DS Lite with Kanji Sonomama DS: Rakubiki Jiten, but... its mostly only good for looking up kanji. Now I have to carry my bulky dictionary everywhere.

Well, how about we move onto some better news.

After class, I decided to drown my sorrows by joining a few friends on a raid to Shakey's Pizza. We each on average ate a whole large pizza for only 2000 yen each. Mm... it was good.
After that we went to Capcom plaza, and I had my first good luck of the day by winning some little plush Baby Marios. Hm, they would make good mini-gifts.





I had to edit this video too thanks to Danny swearing at the beginning. I mean, jeez, my 15 year old sister presumably reads my blog. And... maybe a few other young'uns.
EDIT: Um... looks like the sound didn't work anyway. Huh.

Nintendo and emu (emu as in emulator, not a mispelling of emo) freaks rejoice... I have been playing Super Metroid on my DS. Yup. A Super Nintendo game on my Nintendo DS. Check out this video. It isn't perfect though, the emulator is still in production. I recently beat it... 98% completion with a time of 2 hours 49 minutes. I'm playing it again even faster, going for that 100%.

Tools used: emulator software called SNEmulDS, my R4 Revolution card with a 1 gig micro sd card, and my DS Lite.
Now if only I could get Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6 (called 3 in America) to work... that would be teh awesome. Yes, teh. Cause "the awesome" doesn't exist. Well, I guess same for teh...

May 5th '07 Part 2: Children's Day

I remember it like it was only yesterday...
Which means with my memory I don't remember it very well.
I'm writing this a day late.
Well, after the whole WiFi quest, I returned to TUFS, then almost immediately back out to the train station to go to Fuchu to visit the Children's Day festival.
While in America we have... Cinqo de Mayo... or something... Japan has Children's Day. Dolls in display cases are set up... and... they fly carp flags called koinobori... and every major temple has tons of festival stuff set up. Here's my photos...

photobucket link: Here.

Portable shrines? What?	Monkish-dude.
Lotsa masks. I should buy one.	Stalls everywhere. LOTS of stalls.
Another one of my nice sun shots.	They were carrying some kind of... casket?
Giant Taiko drums!	Really old tree.
LOTS o' people.	Mmm... Takoyaki. Fried batter veggie balls with chunks of octopus in them. I like 'em.

May 5th '07 Part 1: The Quest for Wifi

The events this morning have caused me to want to create my own super rant blog. You can see that here. My first post there is about Nintendo's magical online abilities. (/sarcasm)
Anyway, this morning was spent looking for a place I can get online with my Nintendo DS. According to Freespot.com, there are numerous free Wifi hotspots that are even compatible with the Nintendo DS all over Japan. The website showed 4 in my area. I picked the one that looked closest, and me and a friend set out on a zany whildwind adventure through the rural Fuchuu city. Our destination: Freespot user Tokyo West Hotel.
The Hotel was located in an area called Shiraitodai. So... naturally, our first thought was to head for Shiraitodai station.
BOY were we wrong.
The magically unhelpful thing was... we had an address. Its address was:
Shiraitodai 6-12-8
...get it?
The Japanese adress system is explained in my rant blog, here. Check there later.
Well, we were to all sorts of places. We had to head for area 6... which... god darn, was RIGHT near a different station we use, Tobitakyu. We ended up going to Tobitakyu after an hour of walking... when it only takes 20 minutes from TUFS to walk there directly. Wow. So... we look around... and later found out we were walking the wrong way the whole time. We were so confused about the adress system... ok, theres Shiraitodai 6-42 over there, and Shiraitodai 6-20 over there, and behind us theres Tobitakyu 2-30 over there, oh and to the right is Shiraitodai 3-25 over there... THERE WAS NO ORDER! We were lost around the Shira-Tobi area for about say 2 hours.
In our wanderings, he took some interesting pictures... I like the kids playing in the empty trash cage...

So... after asking directions for like the 3rd time... we... find it. We actually found the hotel. And it was only a 10 minute walk from TUFS! WE SPENT 3 AND A HALF HOURS LOOKING FOR A PLACE THAT WAS 10 MINUTES AWAY!!!

Exhale... inhale... exhale...

So we checked it out. FREE. WORKING. WiFi. Every floor. I could use it outside the door, in the lobby, outside on the steel stairs... and thats what we did! We took an elevator for the top floor, sat out on the stairs, and chilled. The Wifi worked on my DS. But my laptop's network card is acting all funky, I couldn't get it to work. =(. But it SHOULD HAVE worked. Just gotta fix it.
We didn't go on the roof... on a full clear day we'll try and see if we can see Mt. Fuji.






It was kinda scary sitting on the stairs... didn't wanna loiter in the lobby... but it was peaceful. Nothing but the wind and the city and... a 10 story drop below us.

Pics:



So... any of you out there play your DS online? Wanna share friend codes? Send me an email of which games you play and we'll share friend codes.
So after all this, we geared up for the Fuchu City Children's day festival! Next Entry!