today i was lucky enough to stroll past the himeji dokkyo brass band playing a couple of songs.  apparently they do it quite often so ill have to make sure to listen to the whole thing next time.  they played sakura (N’s aoi ed by kabukuro) and pop star (hirai ken) amongst a few other cool non-pop songs.

back to study/ds for me :d

nice view

this is the sign that i am all too used to seeing in front of ds and dslite shelves..  sold out, wait for next shipment.  therefore it was very surprising when we found a few left in the department/variety store “Tokyu Hands” in kobe.  as this was my mission for the day outing to kobe, i was very happy to fulfill it in the first shop we visited.

what can i say?  its a nice little machine – the screens are so bright that games look different to what they did on the original ds colour wise.  i was kind of planning on getting the white version, but this store only had light/dark blue.  this colour is actually a lot nicer than i thought it would be though – a very pale shade of blue (probably looks a bit different to the picture above even).

i already bought ouendan second hand last week, so i wasn’t really planning on buying any games today.  then there was a change of plans when i found children of mana on sale for 2980yen ^^;.  at least i had a game to play on the way home .  children of mana is interesting – the fighting system is quite unique and doesnt get boring, the graphics are awesome and colourful.  if i have one problem with the game, its the simplicity of transport between dungeons, which involves a main map where you can choose a location and instantly be transported to it.  the story is also quite.. shallow?  but i guess i’m not *that* far into the game yet.  the dungeons are fun when it comes to replay, as you can try to beat your time in order to get higher ranks and earn item rewards.

tonight at the shops i saw that big band game second hand – is it worth buying?  i never really got a chance to play it :/

so today we had 3 classes at uni. while they are almost double the length of lectures at uwa, they are somewhat bearable (depending on the sensei though). we then went to visit “The Mall” – a largeish shopping centre with a department store called Livin and a variety of specialty shops. i dashed straight for the games section of course, but they didn’t have any ds lites . the woman gave the usual reply “no we don’t know when we will be getting more” as well. i wasn’t surprised though. how the hell nintendo is making profits at the moment if they aren’t even selling their console… this store did have ouendan for 4400yen so i was happy to be able to think that i saved 1300yen buying it second hand .

well episode 2 of the anime化 nana was on tonight (although somewhat delayed by the baseball -.-) so i was glad my palm reminder woke me up from an unplanned nap. at first i was wondering if i had the wrong channel.. so i started to do some hardcore channel surfing. the tv system (at least at this house) is somewhat strange; there are three services – 地上(above ground broadcast, or normal tv), BS and CATV. as you’d probably expect, the 地上 service doesn’t have the best image quality, but luckily all these channels are available via CATV. the only small problem is that the picture doesn’t fill the screen… i’m not sure if this is a problem with this particular settop box or the tv, but its kind of annoying. i really have to look into getting a HD recorder and sticking it behind the STB… around 30-40000 yen for a cheapish 200gb one which also has a dvd recorder. sounds goodish?

as for the BS service… i’m not sure why but it wasn’t working tonight ^^;. the catv specific channels aren’t really that interesting, but i guess thats the same as most cable services? there was some anime channel which i was watching earlier – rockman was on at the time. these little kids came over from across the road and were watching it all afternoon. i fell asleep >< .

i want to go back to the video rental store already :d

omake: my humble media collection from this trip. its sure to expand

nn

update: i found out how to access the BS channels ^^;