I’ve been spending the past two weeks burning my way through a long list of backlogged games I want to clear before school starts and I lose my NEET badge, including Shadow of the Colossus, Red Dead Redemption, Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 2 and L.A. Noire.

Valkyria Chronicles 3 is one of them. And this time I am actually reviewing it in an almost timely fashion and nowhere close to the release date of the next game. Go me.

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Post tags: psp, sega, valkyria chronicles, vc, vc3

Sharp is releasing an Aquos Android clamshell phone with a 16-megapixel camera running Gingerbread. This is the latest step in Android’s quiet and gradual takeover of the Japanese phone market. I believe that Japan will eventually become a strategic stronghold for Android and in turn this will serve to shore up Google’s historically weak performance against Yahoo in search and online services in Japan.

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Post tags: android, docomo, google, japan, kddi, keitai, mobile phone, sharp, softbank

A short press conference was held today for the opening of AKB48′s official merchandise store in Singapore and their first permanent theatre outside of Japan. There was also a short photography session with Misaki Iwasa, Mika Komori and Miho Miyazaki from AKB48 who were present for the opening ceremony.

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Post tags: akb48, idol, singapore

A small Japanese start-up called Neurowear is marketing what it calls “Necomimi” — head-worn fashion gadgets that move in response to brainwaves. The company calls it “Augmented Human Body”. Or to put it in simpler terms: goddamn nekomimi cat ears that you can learn to control telepathically with your mind. This is serious science at work.

Videos and more information after the break.

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Post tags: fashion, japan, nekomimi, neurowear, transhumanism

I am months late to the game, but I found this interesting Japanese-learning website set up by the Japan Foundation called Erin’s Challenge! I can speak Japanese. It has a few dozen short skits with copyable soft-subs in Japanese, kana, romaji and English and a bunch of Flash learning apps. The corny acting is so amusing. The website also comes in Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and Korean.

The Flash video player it uses to do soft-sub and line-by-line playback makes me wonder if a similar interface might be helpful for anime/drama playback. Everything is soft-subbed these days; maybe it’s time we do something with it.

© DarkMirage for Ramblings of DarkMirage, 2011. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: erin's challenge, japan foundation

I was bored yesterday and wrote a little summary of my thoughts for the future. This was partially inspired by the upcoming Singapore General Election taking place tomorrow and a certain online conservation I had with someone. After I finished writing it, I realized that it bears some similarities to the Dune timeline, so perhaps I was just agreeing with Frank Herbert.

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Post tags: capitalism, dystopia, future, marxism, sci-fi, wtf

So not too long ago, I was in Kagoshima, the southernmost prefecture on Japan’s four main islands. It is a rather backwater place despite the abnormally large role it played in Japan’s contemporary history, but it is very beautiful.

Kagoshima is also the location of Nishi-oyama Station, Japan Railways’ (JR) southernmost train station.

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Post tags: japan, japan railways, kagoshima, kyushu, trains, trip

Clichés make a show boring. The more clichéd a story is, the less interesting and enjoyable it becomes. But my theory is that this relationship only holds true until you hit a certain magical event horizon where the laws of the universe break apart, one gets divided by zero and clichés become art.

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Post tags: comedy, harem, infinite stratos, osananajimi, quad drill, romance, sci-fi, tsundere, twin tail

So I am finally back in Singapore. Experiencing post-trip lethargy as usual. I figure I should get started on blogging now before it becomes impossible for me to return to my usual weekly schedule and I fall into the eternal dark void of procrastination.

Nagasaki was the first city in Kyushu I really visited, not counting a short transit at Fukuoka, and it was pretty awesome.

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Post tags: atomic, japan, nagasaki, night view, peace, trip

Gunkanjima, officially “Hashima”, is a tiny island just outside Nagasaki Bay. Consisting mostly of man-made concrete-covered landfills, the island was a coal-mining operation run by Mitsubishi Heavy Industry and once boasted the highest population density in the world. Today, the only way to land on the island is by forking out 4,300 yen for a cruise tour that departs twice everyday from Nagasaki Ferry Terminal.

I was there a few days ago and took some pictures.

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Post tags: gunkanjima, hashima, japan, nagasaki, trip