Posted by Asian Ed on December 25, 2009
Merry Christmas from Charlotte, North Carolina! Sadly, no snow here today, only rain. As with last year, some coworkers and I went to the Daniel Stowe Botanical garden to see the holiday light displays. I keep saying that I’ll bring a tripod or something with me to steady the camera, but alas, I forgot. It’s a step forward from last year, however, when I forgot the camera all together…. >.<
Posted in Life in general | Tagged: daniel stowe, garden, holiday lights, photography | 3 Comments »
Posted by Asian Ed on December 20, 2009
The past few months have been pretty eventful, though nothing in terms of figure acquisitions. I am, however, expecting a couple things in the near future, including a set of Summer Uniform Lucky Star Figma (Kagami, Tsukasa, and Miyuki), Yoko Real Image ver., and a bunch of BDs and DVDs from RightStuf’s 12+ Days of Christmas sale.
Black Friday also came and went, and while I didn’t actually go out, I did score a couple interesting items. The first of which came in the week before Thanksgiving…
Yes, that is a brand new DLP television in my living room. Just how big is it and how much did I pay? Keep reading…
Posted in Hardware, Life in general | Tagged: figma, ikea, media center, windows home server | 12 Comments »
Posted by Asian Ed on October 30, 2009
After almost a month after coming back from Japan, I’ve finally made time to tie up the loose ends from the trip. Photos have all been uploaded, Photosynths have been completed, and blog posts written. To bring things to a close, here are the things that didn’t make it into previous posts.
Beware, lots of multimedia ahead!
Posted in Life in general, Otaku, Travel | Tagged: 2009 japan trip, kyoto, tokyo | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Asian Ed on September 25, 2009
It’s now the start of my first full day in Tokyo. The jet lag is a bit hard to deal with (13 hour time difference between here and Charlotte), though I did try to force the adjustment by staying up for most of the 26ish hours it took to fly to Japan, get to the hotel, and have some dinner. Still, after going to be around midnight JST, I managed to get about 5 hours of sleep.
The passing time on the flight from Minneapolis to Narita was much easier since I chose to fly first class. Any seasoned traveler will know that First Class means super comfortable seats, in-seat entertainment systems, decent food, and all the drinks I want. That last item in particular made the flight very enjoyable. 
Yes, I know… I’m a drunk
The flight in wasn’t actually too bad despite it being long. The flight landed in Narita around 17:20 JST. Following landing, I breezed through the quarantine checkpoint (didn’t appear to be active), passport control, baggage claim, and then customs.
After meeting up with Eric, it was time to convert some money over and take the bus into central Tokyo. The ride itself took over an hour due to large amount of traffic in the city. By the time we hit the hotel, we were pretty tired and hungry. This meant going out and finding something to eat…
Our hotel is right across from a Tokyu Hands department store, which has a huge selection of restaurants. We settled on a tempura restaurant, which had some pretty good food.
After dinner, I was pretty much ready to pass out. I’d been up for most of the last 26 hours and was in desperate need of sleep. A quick shower was in order and then some channel surfing on the hotel TV. We stumbled upon what appeared to be the Bandai channel, which was showing all sorts of ads and reairing some older anime (including Mai-HiME).
I managed to snap some pictures in the wee hours of the morning after I woke up at 5am JST. This jetlag is going to stay with me for at least another day, I suspect. I’ll need to struggle through the later parts of today and try to get myself on a good schedule. Fortunately, today is all about Tokyo Game Show, so I’ll probably be pretty wired.
More pictures and updates to come later on in the week!
Posted in Life in general, Otaku, Travel | Tagged: 2009 japan trip, food, tokyo | 2 Comments »
Posted by Asian Ed on September 15, 2009
With a little over a week left until I leave for Japan, everything is falling in place. I got an email a few days ago from my travel companion with the following picture attached:
Thanks to his friend in Tokyo, we have our tickets for Tokyo Game Show 2009, which opens to the public on Saturday! I’m a bit sad that I won’t be able to make it there for the industry keynotes, but the public exhibition should still be awesome with all sorts of interesting characters showing up. I wonder if I can sneak myself into the Microsoft booth using my badge… ^.^;;
Our itinerary for the week has pretty much been nailed down as well, with only a few loose ends to work on. Here’s a rough outline:
It’s going to be a very packed trip, I think, and I’m getting pretty psyched about it. With our hotels booked and itinerary made, all that’s really left for me to do is pack and get on the plane next week!
Posted in Life in general, Otaku, Travel | Tagged: 2009 japan trip, japan, tgs | 3 Comments »
Posted by Asian Ed on August 25, 2009
Just as a quick update to my last entry about Japan, I now have confirmed dates and have booked my plane tickets! I’ll be leaving Charlotte on September 24 (arriving on the 25) and leaving October 4. Now that my airfare has been booked, it’s really going to happen! All that is left is to find a hotel, plan an itinerary, and pack.
…now, which camera equipment should I take, and should I bring a Figma along…
Posted in Life in general, Otaku, Travel | Tagged: 2009 japan trip, japan | 1 Comment »
Posted by Asian Ed on August 22, 2009
After a couple years of saying that I was going to go to Japan, it looks like I’m finally going to do it this year! I’m still working on finalizing dates and details, but it looks like I’ll finally be able to go next month. I’m very excited about this and picked up a couple of guide books to help plan my itinerary…
At this point, there are a few things that I’m looking forward to seeing. For now, the trip coincides with the dates for Tokyo Game Show, so I’m going to be hitting up the show floor at least one of the two days. Also on the agenda is a trip into Harajuku on Sunday, a possible side trip into Kyoto for sightseeing, and Saitama to visit the Washinomiya Shrine. Of course, no trip for any otaku would be complete without at least one trip to Akihabara!
Lastly, I found out this week that Do As Infinity will be releasing their first new album in three years while I’m there. After a little searching, I found out that the NHK is hosting an outdoor live event to help promote the new album, so I’m going to try to get tickets to the show!
I’m extremely excited about this trip, though I’m probably going to wind up completely broke when the dust settles…
Posted in Life in general, Otaku, Travel | Tagged: 2009 japan trip, japan | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Asian Ed on August 4, 2009
In yesterday’s post, I went into some of the daytime adventures from my trip to Seattle, so today I figured I’d focus on some of the ancillary events and things I didn’t have time to cover yesterday. Since this was a Microsoft event, most of our evenings were booked with networking opportunities with fellow employees. To facilitate conversation, copious amounts of food and alcohol were provided. More on that later, though since we did have two free nights to fend for ourselves, we decided to take advantage of a few great restaurants in downtown Seattle.
Outside the Brooklyn Seafood-Steak House
Being on Puget Sound, Seattle is host to a lot of excellent seafood. In years past, we’d always had dinner one night at the Brooklyn Seafood-Steak House on the corner of 2nd and University. Even though we were thinking of doing something different this year, we eventually found our way back on Monday evening. If you happen to be in Seattle and have a little money to spend on dinner (about $50 with wine and dessert), I would highly recommend checking out this little place. This year, I decided to have the Wild Alaskan Salmon and a cup of Clam Chowder. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten to take a picture of dinner since it looked so delicious and dug right in… I did manage to restrain myself on dessert and grabbed a quick shot before it all disappeared.
Posted in Life in general, Travel | Tagged: microsoft, photosynth, seattle, surface, techready | 1 Comment »
Posted by Asian Ed on August 3, 2009
Last week, I had the privilege of attending TechReady, a bi-yearly, Microsoft-only, technical training conference. In all, thousands upon thousands of content was prepared and delivered, from recently finished products like Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, to future products like Office 2010 and Windows Mobile 6.5, to ********* (sorry, can’t talk about that one!) 
In addition to the technical components, it was also a great chance to network with some fellow employees. Most of this was done, of course, over some good food and drink. Most of the technical details are pretty boring, so here’s a quick summary:
Nonetheless, I saw some preproduction demos and they’re really cool!Posted in Life in general, Travel | Tagged: artbook, kinokuniya, microsoft, pocky, seattle, tales of vesperia, techready, uwajimaya | 5 Comments »
Posted by Asian Ed on July 12, 2009
Last week, I did a quick update showing off the results of a days worth of work in laying down a new laminate wood floor. After putting in most of today on the project, I’m happy to report that I’m only a few steps from being completely done with this project. I’m very happy with the way it came out and the way it looks. Kitty really enjoys it as well, as her toys tend to slide around on the hard surface. I’ll often hear her entertaining herself by pushing toy mice and twist ties around down there. I’m going to be really glad once it’s all finished and I can move on to the next thing!
Posted in Life in general | Tagged: flooring project, home improvement | 1 Comment »
