New Dragonball Goodness

There’s a new set of small Dragonball statues coming out soon. It cover the whole length of the series. It also seems to have a figure for pretty much every character. Even so strange minor characters. They look really cool, I might pick some up when they come out. It’ll probably be a random “what’s in the box” kind of thing. Sometimes I wish I could just choose the one I wanted.

Strange Signs

This is a picture of a Japanese stop sign. When I first drove in Japan a few years ago I thought they were yield signs when I saw them the first time. Yurie then explained to me that it was actually a stop sign. It’s interesting that the shape is completely different from most countries.

Most countries use the familiar octogon (as you can see in some examples on this site), but I guess Japan wants to be different.

Lots Of Temple Statues

Every temple or shrine you go to has statues of animals or deities to protect it from mysterious forces. I like seeing all of the different kinds, and often snap photos of them.

There are the typical lions.

This one almost seems like he’s smiling.

I thought from far away it was a monkey, but it turned out to be another lion.

Here’s a funny statue of Ebisu, one of the gods of good fortune. Some statues are so old and worn away that it’s a mystery to what they originally were. Like this one.

It looks like an alien now. Some get scarier too.

All of these are from temples around Kakuda. For some reason there are a ton of temples and shrines here. I’ve been to so many, but I still haven’t seen them all.

1000

There’s an old Japanese belief that if you make 1000 origami cranes, you wish will come true. Usually people make them when some one is very sick. Sometimes you’ll see them hanging at a temple, much like in the photo below.

I wonder what these were made for.

New Camera Action!

I don’t know if you noticed in yesterdays post that in the top left corner there was a blurry spot. No it wasn’t a ghost appearing in my pictures, it’s a nefarious air or water bubble. Not being able to fix it myself, and a cost prohibitive repair fee, I bought a new camera. I introduce my new Canon G10.

Please forgive the blurry spot, I used my old camera to take these pics. The G10 is basically the highest level camera that isn’t a SLR. In fact the quality of the photos are in-line or higher than some SLR cameras.

The body is fully metal which makes it very durable. The screen is a huge 3 inches and very high resolution. The controls are very easy and intuitive to use. Like the handy ISO dial on the top of the camera.

I took some test photos to try it out and see the image quality. It was night time when I got home, so I took this shot down the street at our house.

The next day I took some other pics around Kakuda.

In the mountains too.

It’s a really great camera, and I’m looking forward to taking many photos with it. Hopefully for many many years.

Yoshitaka Amano

Yesterday we went to an art show in Sendai. It featured the art of Yoshitaka Amano, character designer and concept artist of Gatchaman, Cashern, Final Fantasy, and many many more. He was actually on hand to greet the crowd and sign some autographs.

Unfortunately only people who bought prints of the paintings and a few lucky people who won at group rock, paper, scissors got autographs. I was however lucky enough to be able to snap a picture of one of the autographs, thanks to a very nice lady.

It’s Ken from Gatchaman, one of my all time favorites from when I was a kid. I would have asked for the exact same thine if I had been able to get an autograph. Even though I didn’t get an autograph I did get a poster of one of the paintings (which isn’t pictured because I’m having some camera lens troubles), and a set of zodiac postcards.

The drawings are really beautiful on them. Here’s a bigger version of one of them.

All in all a fun event. I got to see some beautiful artwork, see a legendary artist in person, and snap a picture of the Gatchaman signature.

KISS Kubrick

These were also spotted in the “figure” magazine that I was talking about yesterday. It’s a set of KISS Kubricks. Kubricks are similar to the Be@rbricks I’ve shown before, but they aren’t bears.

They look really cool. The magazine states that the set of four is 5040 yen, which is a little expensive. I like how all of them are wearing platform shoes.

Jojo Figures

I recently bought a “figure” magazine, because they had a special feature on all of the “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” merchandising over the years. People that have read one of my previous posts will know I’m a huge Jojo fan. They had some great picture of some of the figures for Jojo, like this one of Jotaro from the third series.

It looks beyond awesome. If there’s one thing I can say about Japanese figure makers is that they have a good eye for detail. They also had this even more elaborate Gyro Zeppelli figure from the “Steel Ball Run” part of the series.

I wonder who at the factory has to sew these tiny clothes. Looks like hard work.

EGM no more….

There was some sad news for me all over the video games websites over the last day. My favorite video game magazine, the one I have been reading almost non-stop for 20 years is now gone. After being bought out by another company the magazine was folded. Also they binned all of the podcasts from their website “1up”. My train rides and drives to work a much sadder for it. The worst part is, I still had a year of subsription left.

Real Gold

Here’s one of my favorite drinks in Japan, Real Gold. I previously wrote about Read Kiaida. Unfortunately that drink was just for during the Olympics. I mourn it’s disappearance everyday. Thankfully Real Gold will always be around.

You could consider Real Gold to be the parent to the child which was Real Kiaida. It’s also a sweet and delicious energy type drink. There’s no screaming wrestlers on the label though. I like how it comes in a brown medicine looking bottle. I love it!