Some might call it odd to make a post wishing yourself a happy birthday, but oh well! I really feel my birthday is a good point for reflection over what has happened the past year. Not to mention it lines up well with anime because my blogging here started in the fall season last year. Quite a bit has happened over the past year. But there is no doubt I’m glad to have helped blogging here since it’s only increased my interest in anime and wanting to express those thoughts better. So while I’m a year older want to say thank you to everyone who has read and commented to my posts.

So hopefully there will be many more birthdays celebrated on the site as the years go by. Not to worry though, I will be adding some actual anime related posts quite soon. As the character above are making clear it’s time to enjoy some cake.

I was very surprised to see this online, at several places that carry anime goods. This is the third, official Cospa dakimakura of Hinagiku. She is far more popular then I had imagined. I mean, there is of course a Nagi and Maria dakimakura, then a Hina one to match them, with the same kind of attire, but then there are two more Hina pillows, one with a slightly open Kendo uniform and the other in a very scantily clad maid outfit. I thought that would be enough, I mean that’s two covers she is getting when the others only have one, and some characters still don’t have any….like Isumi….But then, I run across this fairly new one. And this isn’t even one of the many fan made copies you may find out there with dozens of different pictures, its an official Cospa release.

How many pillow covers will Hina get!? The sad thing is since I have one of them, and kind of want the other; I’ll probably end up buying all of them…damn Hina’s charm. Imagine though, sleeping with three Hinas…..

Anyways, what’s kind of interesting about this newest one is it seems to come in two variations, a normal one and a “smooth” one, for 1000yen more. I’m not sure what the difference is, as there are no details as to what smooth means exactly, I assume it’s simply the material. I’m not sure which one I would want to get. Although it seems smooth would be best, on the other hand I have at least 3 Hayate no Gotoku dakimakuras, and I’m guessing they would be considered normal, so I either go with normal and keep her like the others, to match, or get smooth and differentiate her.

Either way, this was a surprise seeing a third one coming out, but very enticing. What are your thoughts? Will you get her, and if so “Smooth” or “Regular”?

Well, as the title of this post says I am back from my vacation. It was very fun and I saw and went to many museums. I had a good time. As I mentioned in my post announcing I was going, I took my Nodoka plush with me to take pictures of in front of the various monuments and sites, which I indeed did do. I’ll share those pictures, but first some of the vacation highlights.

The fireworks show was very impressive. I was able to get a seat in front of the Lincoln Memorial, with the reflecting pool and the Washington Monument in front of me. The fireworks were shot pretty much in that area so I saw them very close up and with the Washington Monument in the background as they were going off. They had some very impressive ones.

One of the more fun parts of my vacation was going to a restraint called Fogo de Chao. It is a very nice and fancy restaurant where effectively you get all you can eat steak. The best part is they have like 15 different kinds of meant, different steaks and so on AND you never have to leave your table to get more. In fact you can easily go without ever having an empty plate. The waiters simply walk around the restraint with giant skewers of meat and if you turn a little disk on your table to green they’ll stop buy and ask if you want that particular meat. You say yes and they give you some, you say no and they walk away and soon another kind of steak graces your presence.

Well, here are the pictures of Nodoka. I warn that most of them are fairly blurry, as I had to hold her up with one hand and steady the camera with the other. Plus the lighting was very different depending on where I was, plus lot so people waiting behind me, giving me weird looks as I held up this weird thing and took pictures of it in a museum. Some are good, most are ok, but there are a couple that are bad but I included them because they are all I could get of her and a particular sight.

Here is the first picture I showed again, Nodoka in front of the Smithsonian Castle

Nodoka in front of a mural at the Air and Space Museum.

Nodoka in front of an actual Lunar Lander. Obviously not one that landed on the moon, but one real enough that it was designed to do so.

Not sure what EXACTLY this was, one of the exhausts of a rocket though.

Here are a couple of shots of Nodoka in front of the actual Wright Flighter.

It was hard to get a good picture here. This is Amelia Earheart’s plane. It was in an area where they are working to do slight restorations so the light wasn’t very good.

Nodoka in front of Stephen Colbert’s portrait. I love the show so thought this was cool to see.

Nodoka in front of Archie Bunker’s chair.

Nodoka in front of Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers. The lighting here wasn’t too great so the picture is kind of bad.

Nodoka in front of the actual Kermit the Frog.

Nodoka with Oscar the Grouch.

Nodoka with a cast of a life mask made of Lincoln. This one was made when he was still younger, seeing as how there is no beard.

Nodoka with another life/death mask of Lincoln, this one was made a month before his death.

Nodoka with Lincoln’s rifle, this was a good weapon in Fallout 3…

Nodoka with Lincoln’s top hat.

Nodoka with a old canon.

Nodoka with a bust cast from Washington.

Nodoka with Washington’s saber.

Nodoka with some old guns.

Nodoka in front of the White House.

Nodoka with an old plane.

This is one of my favorites. Nodoka in front of the actual model of the Enterprise used in the original series.

Nodoka at the Jefferson Memorial.

This one is pretty bad quality, but I only visited the monument at night o see it lit up so the lighting for the picture was bad. But here it is anyways, Nodoka at the Lincoln Memorial.

Well, as the title says I’m just about to head on vacation. In fact as I’m writing this, at 2am, I’m hours away from having to leave for the airport, having yet to pack anything. I’m going with my family to Washington D.C. for a whole week over the 4th of July. I have no idea what we’ll actually do other than just visit museums, but it at least should be a good change of pace from normal boring stuff that happens.

I plan to bring with me on my trip my small little Miyazaki Nodoka plush. That way I can take some pictures of her at some of the sights. Kind of like that one commercial with the gnome… Anyways, along with Nodoka I’m planning on bringing along my two Shugo Charas. Oh yes, I have my own Shugo Charas. No, I don’t mean pluses of existing Shugo Chara characters; I mean I made my own Shugo Charas, Xebek and Xeby. They’re coming along for the ride as well. Look forward to pictures of them at some of the sites as well. No…..I don’t think I’m crazy…

In order to prepare myself for the trip to D.C. I’ve been playing a lot of Fallout 3. My hotel is actually within the downtown D.C. area, just blocked by ruble so it’s not in the game, but by location it is. I’ve done this so that I can be prepared and know where the Super Mutants are going to ambush me as I’m walking around. Maybe if I crouch while walking no one will see me. Aside from that I hope playing has helped ingrain the area and dangers of the Capital Wasteland into my head. Let’s just hope my three followers, Nodoka and my Shugo Charas can make it though fine as well.

I will have another post upon my return. I have internet in my hotel so I may do an occasional post on some series running, like normal, but with more of a delay. Until then I’ll probably make updates frequently on my twitter, twitter name of course being: Xebek.

I’ve always wanted to use programs like Twitter and Flickr, yet up till now I haven’t very much. Now that I have a much more capable phone in which I can use Twitter and Flickr more, I’ve decided to…well…use it more. I figured a good jump start to using both more, probably Twitter more than the other, would be posting my information here so anyone who reads can follow me or just check it out.

I figured it would be good to not only make this post about my information, but mention another writer here’s information. Scottfrye has been using twitter a hell of a lot more than me so I figured I’d put his information here as well as mine. If you want you can follow either of us on twitter or flickr, as we both have accounts. Scott doesn’t use flickr much, but uses twitter a lot, and I’m planning on using both, twitter a lot and flickr for some of my figure pictures. Anyways, if anyone wants to follow us, I encourage it, especially as I have practically zero followers on twitter and would love for more, enough for people to maybe actually comment on stuff.

Xebek’s Twitter & Flickr Information:

Twitter: Xebek
Flickr: Xeby-chan

Scottfrye’s Twitter & Flickr Information:

Twitter: scottfrye
Flickr: scottfrye

Anyways, that’s pretty much it. Flare isn’t a big user of either site so he’s not included, but if you want to add and follow either me or Scott, here is our information. Feel free to post yours here too for anyone who reads and wants to communicate with us at the site and others who read it.

It’s always nice to celebrate a birthday. Get to reflect on how busy things have been over the course of a year and you get cake. Personally I’m a fan of them for the cake, but I suppose it’s a different experience for everyone.

So decided to make this post to wish Xebek a happy birthday. At least this was said before the day was over. I hope that Xebek will enjoy what is left of the day.

Why, yes there is a new writer joining the site. He is none other than scottfrye (hi there). I think most people know me from my former blog, AnimeLife. That site is now gone but I’m here to add some spice to this blog. I was asked to come aboard to write some editorial and non-episodic stuff. Xebek basically asked: “Could you please save my blog?” I said (boldly): “Why, yes. I will save your blog from the monotony of episodic posting.” (That’s not really how it happened but let’s just say that it did.) Really, it was more like put up or shut up but in a nicer tone.

Moving on, let me formally introduce myself. My name is Scott (aka scottfrye) and as I said I will be here to write some of the non-episodic and editorial posts. I’m from the southeastern US and I’ve been watching anime for about 10 years now. I guess you could say that I’ve seen alot of anime (see my Anime List) but there is still so much more to be seen. Anyways, I would say that my favorite genres are slice-of-life (more specifically iyashikei), comedy, scifi and yuri. I like to spend my free time watching anime, reading anime & tech blogs, occasionally playing a video game, and occasionally reading manga.

Hopefully, I can live up to everyone’s expectations and write some good stuff. I will try my best. Not sure I will out write Xebek and FlareKnight, due to mass amounts of episodic posts they do, but I will try to help add to the site. Here’s to a better blog!

About a week or so ago I got a new giant monitor for my desktop and decided that it would be a good chance to show it off along with the rest of my stuff, so I decided to give everyone a peek at my room, saturated with electronics and anime. In the past couple of months I’ve gotten quite a lot of new things that I want to show off, which you will soon see. More then just the pictures I’ll go into a bit more detail on them in paragraphs with the pictures, so lets get started shall we?

(btw, the pictures will be AFTER the description of what it is, it can be kind of confusing if you don’t know what sentence is talking about what picture)

Here’s a shot of most of my giant closet. Some of my shirts and suits/sports jackets there, as well as a purple lab coat. Why do I have a lab coat? I have no clue, I just do.

Here, we see the top part of my closet where I have shoved all of the boxes I’ve accumulated from figures. I have to keep the boxes for the figures as it seems to be the only safe way to store them if I ever put them away or need to transport them like moving, though I’m pretty much out of space now.

Here is my little table of video game stuff. As you can see I have a 360 on top with Eternal Sonata faceplate, and a Wii there on the second shelf. Then, on the bottom, which you can’t see, is a PS2. Both the PS2 and Wii fitted to play downloaded games, used for legal purposes of course. I couldn’t stand not playing Tales of Symphonia 2 without Japanese voices, as I need to hear Shana as a video game character, so even though I bought the game I use a downloaded undub version. Anyways, that’s this little section.

Here’s a shot of my custom built desktop, on a very dirty carpet as you can see, next to a subwoofer. I built the computer myself, named Reinforce. When I upgrade it in a year or so I’ll name it Reinforce Zwei. It’s got 4GB RAM, a Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ video card, and dual core CPU. I made it mainly for gaming, as I have a laptop too but my old desktop just was so weak I had to get a better one. I don’t know how much you can tell from the picture but the case is pretty damn big.

Here, is the thing that started this post in motion, my computer monitor next to my surround sound speakers. The monitor is 26 inches, 1920 x 1200 native res so it supports 1080p and it has a built in TV tuner so at the hit of a button I go from PC desktop to TV. Although its not as big as the giant monitors some may have, it’s actually almost too big for this space, as I sit rather close and can’t push the monitor any further back on the desk. It’s not THAT much bigger, so pretty much just fine as it is. Games looks absolutely amazing on it, with that high of a resolution and a desktop powerful enough to handle it, it’s great.

Here’s Konata cheering for the new monitor.

Here’s my laptop, it’s rather old, over two years, but it still works. Her name is Ilfa, after the To Heart 2 android.

Here is the small pedestal next to my desk where I keep a lot of my electronics. There are five of my external hard drives, I have more but those are the ones I’m using now, filled with anime, TV series, and *cough*downloadedpcps2wiigcpspdsgames*cough*. You can see my DS and PSP there, and usually my iPod Touch is there but it was in my pocket at the time. My phone, keys, and three remotes for my two TVs and TiVo. Also there’s a little Nanatsuiro Drops postcard calendar thing that came with my Sumomo Nendoroid/DS game package.

Another shot of the pedestal, and you may have noticed that there is now a second DS on top of the black one. Well, I’m not going to tell you why I have two DSs, you’ll just have to always wonder.

Here’s a shot of most of my desk in which you can see the laptop, desktop, monitor, and pedestal.

Here we have my bulletin board next to my desk filled with a bunch of anime pictures torn from some Japanese magazines that came with some of my purchases of other anime merchandise. Also my work schedule there, so I suppose if you knew where I worked you could come hunt me down since you know what time I’ll be there, but you don’t know where I work so you can’t. Not to mention this post is going up at the end of that schedule anyways, so by the time you read this it’ll be a different schedule, so HA. *ahem* anyways, yeah…

Here’s a bad picture of my coat, it’s a leather trench coat/duster. Since this post is about my new stuff, I included this as I just got it for Christmas.

Here’s a rather blurry shot of my anime art books, along with a giant tomb of a book and Japanese tea cup.

Here are some quick shots of the figures displayed on top of my dresser and shelves, if you notice the Figure Page here on my site, pretty much all of them I have yet to take full pictures of.

Here are more figures on top of my bookcase next to my bed, as you can see some Dune books at the bottom there and you may notice two odd looking “plush” things there. They were made by me, and are my own personal Shugo Charas, Xebek and Xeby-chan. Yeah…that’s right, I made my own Shugo Charas. You can also see that four of my figures are pretty much completely hidden, which is because I’m quickly running out of room for them, it’s also very dusty.

Here are some wide shots of the room to kind of show where those things are I’ve shown you.

Well that’s about all, I just leave you asking what kind of anime set up do you have at your residence?

As I mentioned in a previous post about a convention I went to, I made a sola AMV. AMV being of course Anime Music Video. It is the first AMV I ever made but it was apparently good enough to win an award there, as it won in their category of “Grave of the Fireflies/Slit Your Wrist” for the saddest more tear jerking AMV. Which is kind of odd because I didn’t actually intended for it to be sad. The credits are there for the information about it, but I guess I’ll say it here. The anime is of course sola, and the song is Nemo by Nightwish.

Anyways, there isn’t much else to say other then here it is. Tell me what you think in a comment here or at the page in YouTube, as that’s where it’s hosted. I’m not going to post it here, embedded, because it kind of messes things up. I really recommend that you view it at YouTube andto view it in HD, high def, and that’s how I submitted the video so it may look kind of crappy if you don’t view it in HD.

Well, without any more delay, here is the link to my sola AMV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE7kmuMtcU8

Overall it was pretty fun, like other years a majority of the anime “fans” know nothing of the shows that currently airing in Japan and just care about the crappy stuff airing in the US, but still fun. I ran/co-ran four panels. One, was one I did by myself, an Anime blogging panel where I just talked about my site, how I ran it, how running a site can make anyone more involved in anime, and so on and a couple people actually showed up, which was good considering it was opposite some other popular panels. I also did a dating sim panel which talked about dating sim/visual novel games and anime adaptations of them, an anime review panel which I used my expertise of the shows currently airing and just talked about the good ones with some others, and finally a squaresoft panel as a lot of the anime fans there are also squaresoft fans and I know quite a lot about the games.

One of the biggest parts of the convention for me though was the AMV contest they hold. For the first time I submitted the first AMV I made, a sola AMV. My AMV actually won in one of their categories. It won the “Grave of the Fireflys/Slit You Wrist Award” for the saddest and tear jerking AMV. Which is kind of odd because I didn’t intend for it to be sad at all, but hey, a win is a win. I’ll post the AMV in another post soon, but winning that was one of the high points.

As for the merchandise, with the pictures of the items below, I got far too much. I bought four figures: Aries Djirbril, a character from an H-game and animation, one that I haven’t seen but the figure was cute enough I had to get and learned of her origins later. Siesta from Alter which will lead me to have to get the new Alter Louise coming out in February. Iriya Kana from Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu which is one of my favorite short series and a figure I’ve be been looking for FOREVER that is discontinued, so I got it. Finally, Nendoroid Haruhi which has thus led me to be addicted to Nendoroids. I already have seven of them, but later on that in another post. I got a wall scroll of the Haruhi live action concert poster, two t-shirts one of Tsuruya and another of Hatsune Miku. Then I got three art books, a Zero no Tsukaima one, Cardcaptors (because, let’s face it, I’m a lolicon), and a Lucky Star artbook of original sketches used for the animation. For the figures, I just took a quick shot. I’ll do a full big photoshoot eventually when I get the time, as I have for several other of my figures whcih can be found on my figure page along the bottom of the title banner. So here they are after the jump:

Wall Scroll:

T-shirts:

Artbooks:

Figures: