Time travel delivery service from CD Japan

After posting about the Advantage Lucy stuff last Thursday I managed to track down a couple of albums, one on ebay and one on CD Japan's website. Bought them both, as I was feeling flush.

Check my emails yesterday, and noticed that the CD Japan one had despatched at 5.13 am, with a note stating delivery was usually 4-12 working days, but could take up to 8 weeks. Fair enough I thought, as I HAD gone for the cheapo budget delivery option, and I was in no rush.

Fast forward to today, and guess what turns up? Yup. One CD Japan package, containing advantage Lucy's "Tobitatta 7 To no Cho Tachi" CD. It arrived here before 12 noon. Halfway round the world in just over 24 hours. And all that on the budget delivery option. Why can't it be like that with UK companies?

Next time, I'm picking their full express service - I imagine it will arrive before I finish placing the order. Got the next Perfume CD on order with them, so hopefully it will be just as speedy!

Good stuff CD Japan, you is highly recommended.

One day we'll all have one...

Coffee making Japanese super cute robots are coming to take over the world! NEEEED!

Kõhii o kudasai robotto-chan!

Jangly j-pop double header of the week - advantage Lucy

Last year I went to Tokyo with my lady, and we wanted to see some small local gigs to try and get some local flavour. After scouring the thoroughly useful Tokyo Gig Guide website, we found a small gig with 4 bands we'd never heard of playing on a night we had nothing else to do.

Buying gig tickets in Japan is weird. We got ours by finding a Lawson combini (convenience store) in Asakusa near where we were staying, then using instructions printed out from the internet, we used their bizarre interactive machine. Entering the correct code brings up the bands name, then you have to select the venue and date you want, then enter in your details and phone number etc. THAT bit we blagged :D This then prints out a voucher which you then take to the counter, where the nice lady (or man presumably, but it was a lady in this instance) scans the voucher and prints out your tickets. VERY strange, but ever so Japanese, and it was a mini adventure just doing that!

Off we popped off to the gig, half an hour outside Shinjuku station in the suburbs of Tokyo , and after a really cool wander through some twisty little streets packed with arcades, Mister Donut emporiums and various eateries, we found the venue. We almost missed it though, due to a street festival taking place right in front of where we needed to go! What a day to forget the camera.

Anyway, I digress. The first band were terrible, an American guy and a bunch of Japanese kids playing really wanky sub C86 crap. Second lot on were an acoustic trio, with percussion performed by a woman sitting on a box and hitting it, occasionally adding in some chimes. They LOVE chimes it would seem - we kept seeing them after that. They weren't bad, although the English lyrics made me laugh "I love my job, although my job is hard" ^_^

Next up came advantage Lucy, and things took a dramatic turn for the better. A four piece, who it turns out have been going since the mid 90s, they were totally my kinda thing. Jingly, jangly, shimmery soft indie pop, with plenty of 60's overtones and cool guitars all round. Me likey.

I've not yet been able to track down an album, although I think there's some on ebay so i might just have to stump up the cash, but here's a video with two songs on it, both of which are lovely. So enjoy, or else.

Oh yeah, the last band on were fucking shit. Worst female singer EVER. Someone clearly had no ears when they decided they could release an album and headline the gig. Mad, mad fools.

Still, never mind, the evening ended fantastically with another wander through a delightful Tokyo suburb, in blissfully cool drizzle, and a stop off at Mister Donut for some honey and Strawberry Glaze, and a few Custard mucky ones for Jodi. Yay!

Ridge Racer ear worm of the week -

After months of Street Fighter devotion I suddenly have a new obsession - Ridge Racer 6! Been tearing round Ridge and Rave City with and without the boy Rag`, and it's soooo nice to be back.

One thing you can rely on with the Ridge series is the that the music is always good, and never more so than in Ridge Racer Type 4 - Kohta Takahashi and his cohorts at Namco's sound team came up with quite possibly the best selection of tunes in any game ever. Hell, even the menu music is memorable. The intro is one of Namco's PSOne classic FMV's too, with Reiko Nagase acting all bashful as she walks round a race track in heels, before hitching a lift with one of the drivers. I assume that the extra weight and the positions lost by stopping for her were compensated in some form. The flirty tease.

Anyway, enough waffle - here's Lucid Rhythms, a thoroughly chilled slice of drum & bass from RRT4 OST.

Farewell to arms. Well, legs really.

And so it comes to pass. I've had enough of Street Fighter IV for now. Online mode is making me slightly unhinged, and I fear for my mental health if I play much more!

It's been enjoyable and excruciating in equal measure, and I'm sure I'll come back in a few months, but in the mean time I'm out. I've got up to G2-B rank, and I totalled that offensive German Blanka player to get there, so I can't complain too much.

I'll miss Ms Li no doubt, but I need to step away. Ridge Racer 6, Beautiful Katamari, and Project Sylpheed are all beckoning.

One last time... KIKOUSHOU! :'/ *sniff*

Kick, punch, it's all in the mindgames

KIKOUSHOU! Chun Li and me are riding the G2-C wave now, and we've got another replay up against a 14000 point Abel! That felt good.

Unfortunately, my skillz seemed to dry up after that, as I've been taking some serious beatings from allcomers, and some of them really shouldn't be causing me so much grief. Got properly tiger-spammed by an uber cheap Sagat today, much to my annoyance. I just couldn't work round the shots to get in, and when i did break through, I got a standing HK for my troubles. Meh!

New areas of trouble for me are El Fuerte and Bison. Bison is usually a fairly easy match, but I've had a few demonically good ones recently, including a humiliating Perfect defeat, and it's really made me nervy fighting them. Mindgames, and they're all of my own doing!

Fuerte on the other hand, jesus... If he gets you down once you can expect to get Tostada Pressed until eternity. Apparently Chun Li can only hope to Focus then dash out of this, and so far, I've not got the timing at all. My usual "fuck off ya bastard" tactic of EX SBK is useless against Fuerte's splashes, so I'm gonna have ot get some practice in. *sigh*

Ah well, maybe a break away from online is in order. Some training mode shenanigans, some FADC practice, a few beers and a couple of rounds in single player might just get me back into it.

Either that or it'll convince me to pack it in once and for all and get on with something more important. Like cleaning the bathroom. >_< *plugs in 360 and gets stuck in*

E3 Shmee 3

So if you have any interest in videogames at all, you can't have failed to notice that E3 is on. Between slathering packs of forum fanboys watching live keynote speeches from the platform holders and publishers, and every games website under the sun reporting on the slightest bit of heresay and rumour (MGS IS 360 exclusive! No, wait it's not. Oh hang on... Um? AAARGH, it's unavoidable.

Worse than that, it's kinda tedious. Endless promises of "megatonz" and incredible exclusives rarely match up to the hype, and the ones that DO actually surprise are often not what anyone actually wanted.

MS have gone first so far, announcing a motion sensing camera system called Project Natal, which everyone from Spielberg to Molyneux seemed to believe was the second coming.

To me it looked impressive, but it WAS a tech demo, not final product, and having been stung by the EyeToy previously, I'm less inclined to believe that it will work in every living room with bad light, smaller than ideal floorspace, etc. Still we'll see.

Speaking of Molyneux, the goblin king of half finished ideas has created a virtual boy called Milo for use with the system. Or girl, if you aren a equal oppurtunities saddo. In the video shown, Milo responds to a girl in the real world talkingto him, and reacts to her voice pitch to tell if it's a question or a joke or whatever - not exactly REAL AI, but still eerily interesting. The way the screen reacts to human movement was impressive, but it doesn't look like much of a game to me... Again, time may be the decider on Milo's actual impact, but it didn't particular interest me.

If they could make a robotic voiced Japanese girl who'd tell me that my life isn't a waste of time and that honestly, I look better bald then they might get a sale. Until then, no dice.

Elsewhere it was business as usual - More Halo, more Need for Speed, more Assassins Creed, more Tom Clancy shite. Yawn. Guess they can't win with me tbh - the new crazy stuff is all a bit emperor's new clothes, and the popular franchises are not my thing. Still, there's a rumour of a new Tetsuya Mizuguchi game, possibly a Rez sequel called Project Eden. That's got me excited. And Lost Planet 2 looks loads better than the dull first outing. Roll on the demo!

Nintendo are live now, but I've got better things to do. Like write this for no-one to read. Fuck me, my priorities are WELL out of whack. I need that Japanese girl robot virtual thingy more than I ever realised...

J-pop earworm of the week - Capsule: Starry Sky

I've had the entire Capsule discography sat on my PC for months now, since I discovered that the chap behind Capsule is also behind Perfume's electro-pop techno racket. Never actually listened to it though, until yesterday when I was walking to the shops for some picnic snacks. Starry Sky burst out of my earphones, drilled straight into my brain's "repeat, repeat, REPEAT" node, and set up camp for good.

Shame there's no proper video, so this'll just have to do...