Pokémon Black and White 2 - More Updates!

Hey all,
The past week has been a big news week for Pokémon Black and White 2, with some reveals by Oha Suta, CoroCoro AND the long-awaited gameplay reveal from Pokémon Smash. If you haven't done so already, check out all the Bulbapedia and Serebii.net posts and their video links for pictures - I'll only be providing one here.

First off, White Kyurem and Black Kyurem have been revealed to have the signature moves Ice Burn and Freeze Shock, respectively. No surprises there, although they're the most powerful Ice-type moves in the game - PokéSma showed an example battle of Black Kyurem vs Reshiram, and it OHKOed Reshiram with Freeze Shock!

The games are set in the Unova region, same as in Black and White 1, but 2 years in the future. Long-time Pokémon fans will remember that there was a 3 year time gap between Gen I's Kanto and Gen II's Kanto, and plenty changed there. A new official Unova map has been posted. Brace yourselves:

"Tonight's forecast - a FREEZE is coming!"

That's right folks, Unova is now half-encased in ice (Bulbapedia says this may just be to hide areas not yet revealed, but I have ice theories which I will share later). I can't find any really big, high-quality images. so I can't look as closely at the map as I'd like, but Bulbapedia has listed some of the apparent differences between the old map of Unova and this one.

• The water around the Entralink tree has dried up, and the tree itself is different. I'm pretty sure the Entralink tree appears in one of the new trailers for the game, and Global Link connectivity has been mentioned for the games, so I think it's safe to say the area is still important.
• There is a new area to the south-west. This contains the PC's home tow, Hiougi City. Not town, city. It's the size of a city too, complete with a Pokémon Centre and a Trainer School, and a lookout point which gives a pretty cool view over meadows and distant mountains.
• The road through the desert between Castelia City and Nimbasa City. It looks like it's flanked by containers, or they may be buildings; I can't tell very well at this resolution (Bulbapedia refers to it as a settlement). Either way, the desert itself may be a no-go area, although the Desert Resort area still appears on the map, so who knows...
• There've been some aesthetic changes to Nimbasa City itself - a gatehouse-looking building connecting it to the desert road, and what looks like a small area next to the ferris wheel.
• The lighthouse in Driftveil city is gone, and there are a couple of craters around the city, including where the Cold Storage used to be. I'll talk about this a little later.
• Liberty Garden and United Tower are now shown on the artwork, on the two islands south-west of Castelia City, and apparently Liberty Garden has been revamped. Maybe we'll get a new Victini event? Or is it canon that the PC from B/W1 caught the one in the basement there?
• There's what looks like a small town on the side of the mountain to the east of Unova, just on the edge of the ice sheet. Perhaps this could be where a new Gym has been put, to compensate for Striaton City, Nacrene City and Icirrus City being iced over?
• Challenger's Cave has disappeared. As it served no major purpose in the game, that's neither here nor there. HOWEVER! In the new intro to BW2, the Musketeer trio/Muskedeers are shown in quite a prominent light, and apparently a legendary Pokémon was training its student Pokémon there... Maybe, if the trio play a bigger role, the cave's been sealed off and more reference will be made to the trio's mythos. Apparently, the event Keldeo does have a function in the new games...
• The webbing over Chargestone Cave is gone. I guess this is just because it's destroyed when the PC gets there in BW1.
• Although not mentioned on Bulbapedia, someone on Facebook brought up a very good point. If you look closely at the ice sheet, where the Abyssal Ruins are, where there was once just a dark patch of water, there's now what looks like an island. Did they rise out of the sea?
• There appears to be some sort of arch structure to the south-east of the map, under the ice, just up from where the P2 Laboratory ought to be.

Anyway, on to other points. The Pokédex has been expanded to a total of 300, including all the Unova Pokémon. In the trailer, it is shown that Azurill is available early on, and from other material, such favourites as Tyranitar, Metagross and Lucario are in the updated Dex too!

Another very interesting note is the presence of two new Gym Leaders - a Poison-type (Homika) and a Water-type (Shizui). Homika's Gym looks like a rock café, and Shizui's contains a lilypad platform puzzle which looks quite fun. Interestingly, Homika is due to make an appearance in the anime soon, with her Pokémon... Koffing. Remember how in the anime, Giovanni told Team Rocket not to take their non-Unova Pokémon to Unova because they were rare and would draw attention? Now we'll have another non-native Pokémon, in addition to Pikachu and Meowth. I'll be interested to hear the rationale behind this; maybe Homika isn't from Unova originally? Or it'll give the producers a reason to introduce more non-native Pokémon to the season so Ash can use his old Pokémon in the Unova League ^^'

The new protagonist PCs look around the same age as in the last game - older than is traditional. The new rival is a hot-head, but he's a friend of the protagonist (apparently his little sister is, too).
Another new NPC was introduced too, who I'm very excited about - Akuroma. Although this brings to mind an angel from Magic: The Gathering, this guy is anything but angelic. He puts me in mind of Ein from Pokémon Colosseum, and is apparently also a scientist, researching the hidden strength of Pokémon. He is described as mysterious, and says a few things in the screenshots that makes me think he's going to be VERY important. He talks about 'a tool to activate the Pokémon I made', which makes me think of Black and White Kyurem and activating their overdrive mode. Although he says 'made', I don't think it's going to be Genesect; it's event exclusive, so I'm not sure that it'll play a heavy storyline role like that. The book Akuroma holds in the game's opening puts me in mind of Ghetsis, for some reason. Or at least, it's an older book, perhaps containing some ancient lore from the time of the Two Princes? Also, his name struck me as interesting. A-, as a prefix, means 'not' (like asymmetrical), and chroma is related to colour. As Kyurem is the representation of wuji (the absence of yin and yang, represented by Zekrom and Reshiram, respectively), perhaps Kyurem also embodies the absence of colour, as Reshiram and Zekrom are black and white. If Akuroma's name is romanised as Achroma, and does mean 'absence of colour'...

Finally, I want to talk about the star of the show, Kyurem. As anyone who's reached that part of the game knows, Kyurem is found in the Giant Chasm, to the north-east of Unova. Where does the ice sheet on the map appear to originate from? The north-east. Also, remember how I said there was now just a crater where the Cold Storage used to be? No reason was ever given for why this warehouse was specifically cold, not just a normal warehouse. Could it have been housing Kyurem? Giratina's storyline was changed between D/P and Pt, so maybe in the canon of BW2, Kyurem wasn't always in the Giant Chasm...

That's about all I have to say on the new games for now, but rest assured I'll be back with more info and theories as and when there are more reveals :) Ciao for now!

New Poem

It occured to me that I hadn't posted over the Easter weekend, so I decided I'd post a poem I wrote this evening for my girlfriend ^^

For Mia

Dark is the path I have trodden,
Foolish, the things I have done -
Mistakes that will ne'er be forgotten,
As always I searched for the one.

I once turned away, went without you;
The sin weighs my heart down with stone.
Yet now, our sweet love doth continue,
And with my whole life, I'll atone.

I swear to be with you forever,
The one that my heart so adores.
I long for the times we're together;
Maria, my love is all yours.

Disney

Hey peeps,
I had absolutely no idea what to blog about today, but I felt I wanted to write something, preferably something that a lot of people would enjoy, so in the end I settled on talking about 10 of my top Disney movies ^^' So yeah, enjoy :)
(These are in order of release date rather than in order of preference)

1. Fantasia:
   This musical movie's been one of my favourites since I was a little kid. Apparently I used to know plenty of classical music as a kid based on where certain songs appeared in the movie ^^' Although, being a little kid when I watched it, I always fell asleep at roughly the same point in the movie, so I don't really remember much of it past the dinosaurs part. Two of my favourite parts are probably the Chinese Dance with the mushrooms, and the part with Bacchus (although I can't actually remember the music that plays there, just the animation XD)
   Ironically for one of my favourite movies, Fantasia was released exactly 50 years before I was born - November 13th 1940. More recently, Disney released a sequel - Fantasia 2000. I wasn't quite so enthralled by this, though it wasn't too bad. Certainly not as memorable for me though (the only musical part I really remember was the city piece, and only because it appeared in my GCSE Music exam)
   
   
2. Alice in Wonderland:
   Once again, this one has always been a favourite of mine. We don't have the VHS of this (despite having a sizeable Disney video collection), but we have it recorded from the TV, though I don't know from what year. This movie's the reason I decided to read the two Alice in Wonderland books, and by extension, probably why Jabberwocky is my favourite poem. I've since seen the recent live-action movie, but I still prefer the animated version. The movie also provides characters and backdrops for one of my favourite old-school video games - Mickey Mouse's World of Illusion for Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (perhaps I'll talk about Sega in a future blog...)
   
   
3. The Sword in the Stone
   Okay, this one's definitely got to be in my top 3. As a kid, my favourite parts of this movie were undoubtedly the parts where Arthur gets turned into a fish/squirrel/bird, and the wizard's duel. And Archimedes' epic laugh still makes me crack up XD For those of you who haven't seen it, behold the hilarity!:
   
   
   
   
4. The Jungle Book
   This one's one of my favourites if only for the musical numbers. Bare Necessities was one of the Disney songs we managed to find in English at karaoke, if I recall, and I wanna be like you is a classic. Again, this is a movie I used to fall asleep to as a child, at the part just before Mowgli meets Kaa for the second time (there's even photographic evidence of this fact in one of our family photo albums XD). I've never seen the sequel, nor read the book; I should probably at least do the latter ^^'
   
   
5. The Aristocats
   Again, one of my top 3, I reckon. I even made a very amateurish Youtube Poop of this a few years back.
   
   
   
   As with The Jungle Book, the music is one of the main draws for me - Everybody Wants To Be A Cat. Oh, and the part with Uncle Waldo XD That makes me chuckle muchly.
   
   
6. Robin Hood
   This is probably one of the ones I've watched most of the ones on this list, and as with The Sword in the Stone, is based on an English legend. Not sure what to say about this one, really, except that it comes highly recommended. My favourite part's probably the archery tournament, especially when Hiss gets drunk, and Little John starts calling Prince John PJ XD
   
   
7. The Great Mouse Detective
   Being a huge fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories, this one had to feature on my list. I think this must have been my first introduction to the series, come to think of it. For a Disney film, it's actually kind of creepy in places, such as the opening when *spoilers* the toymaker gets kidnapped *end spoilers*. There is one slightly facepalm moment in the movie which I just have to mention though - when Olivia asks Toby if he wants a 'crumpet' which is blatantly a muffin. I blame spies from 4Kids Entertainment trying to sabotage Disney ("These donuts are great, Brock!"). Aside from that minor complaint, great film :)
   
   
8. Beauty and the Beast
   This is a movie I've not seen in entirely too long, and hence there are large parts of it which I can't entirely remember. My two main reasons for including this movie in the list are 1.) the countless YouTube poops which usually make me laugh, and 2.) the Gaston song. Even being a villain's ego trip, that part of the movie is probably my favourite. Another karaoke moment too, with Derek playing my Lefou (no homo). I definitely have to watch this movie again in the near future...
   
   
9. Aladdin
   This is one I have a pretty good recollection of, probably from having watched it a lot of times. "Friend Like Me" was yet another karaoke song, and I used to be a fan of the Saturday morning cartoon show. Although, I've only seen the sequel once, and I've never seen the third movie. But as with most sequels to classic Disney movies, I'm willing to bet that the original is the best. I'm sure there's got to be a drinking game in this movie somewhere *evil grin*
   
   
10. Mulan
    This movie is the one which has the most recent memory attached - that of mine and my brother's hilarious drinking game. We came up with a set of rules (which I think I posted as a note on Facebook), but did NOT think them through beforehand, meaning we got pretty decently buzzed by the end ^^' My brother's idea of each choosing a word the other had to drink to certainly backfired on him though - turns out the word 'father' turns up a lot more than 'dragon' *evil laugh*
    

Well, that wraps up today's list. Just because I've not mentioned a movie, doesn't mean that I dislike it. I'm still a big fan of movies such as The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, and The Rescuers, I just don't have so many memories or such a good recollection of them. I know there are plenty of bigger Disney fans out there than myself, but I'm certainly a fan of the animated classics ^^
Ciao for now!

Blast From The Past: Animorphs

Hey peeps,
For today's blog I'm going to talk about a fond memory from my childhood - the book series Animorphs. The series was brought back to my mind recently because of a conversation I was having at Roleplay Society with one of my friends, in which it turns out he was a fan of the series too.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the series, I'll give a brief summary - a bunch of friends are walking through an abandoned construction site one night when an alien space ship crashes in front of them. The dying alien inside tells them (telepathically!) that Earth is being secretly invaded by brain-slugs called Yeerks, and so they must use the power he gives them - the power to change into animals - to defeat the evil aliens. The good alien is then swiftly eaten by one of the bosses of said bad aliens. And thus begins 54 or so books of covert warfare between a group of 5 teenagers (plus one alien they find in about the 6th book) and a whole horde of mind-controlling Yeerks and their range of deadly hosts, includng voracious giant centipedes and 7-foot tall bird-reptiles covered in razor-blades
Okay, so maybe I didn't do the best job of making it sound like an interesting series, but to my 10ish-year-old mind, it was amazing. I love animals, so the idea of being able to transform into animals really appealed to me. Plus, being a sci-fi fan, the array of alien species was also pretty awesome. For example, the main good-aligned alien species - the Andalites - basically look like blue deer with stalk-eyes instead of antlers, and a bladed tail. And as I mentioned before, they're telepaths.
I've read the main series of 54 books, plus the side stories The Hork-Bajir Chronicles (which I picked up cheap on Cambridge market recently for the sake of nostalgia) and The Andalite Chronicles. There are still half a dozen or so books I've yet to find, but will attempt to track down in charity shops at some point. Of the ones that I've read, I think my favourite is #26, The Attack, where they're transported to an alien world by a good demi-god who uses them as pawns against an evil demi-god and his soldiers which have an ear-splitting scream... literally. After a little investigation, it turns out that, as I had suspected for a while, the evil demi-god (Crayak) was indeed based on the Eye of Sauron.
The books spawned a TV series (of which I saw a few episodes and wasn't overly impressed with), and a few video games, none of which received very good reviews (I had the GBC version which was a bad Pokémon rip-off, I'm sad to say). However, I still think very highly of the books, and after Wikipedia-ing them in order to write this article, I have half a mind to read the series again over the summer. Guess we'll see :)
Anyways, that about does it for this time. Maybe I'll return to other childhood hobbies and such in another blog, if I can think of any good ones. But for now, cheery-bye ^^

Pokémon Black and White 2

Hello all
As many of you are no doubt aware, the next main series Pokémon games - Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 - were announced a few weeks ago, due for release in Japan this summer and the West this autumn. Sadly, information is still thin on the ground at this point, so all we can do is make guesses about what's in store for these games
Firstly, the things we do know - the games are not going to be a mere third version (à la Yellow, Crystal, Emerald and Platinum), so they will contain an original storyline. Personally, I'm pretty happy about this; as much as I love Pokémon, I love original storylines more than the rehash of old ones we see in third versions (remakes are a different story - enough time has passed to enjoy the same stories anew, in my opinion). The mascot of these games is going to be the third of the Tao Trio - Kyurem, the Boundary Pokémon. As you can see from the picture below, Black Kyurem (on the left) is the mascot of Black 2, and appears to be a Kyurem/Zekrom hybrid. White Kyurem (on the right) is the mascot of White 2, and appears to be a Kyurem/Reshiram hybrid:


The first thing you'll notice is that, unlike Black and White, the version mascots' colours match the title - Black Kyurem for Black 2 and White Kyurem for White 2. I have a theory about that, but I'll save that for a little later.
Sadly, that's about all that's known at this point. The only other snippets are that Black and White 2 will be connected to the Global Link, and that the soon-to-be-released event Keldeo will have some functionality in the game too. Therefore, I'll move on to a few theories.

Just as a warning, there will be ***SPOILERS*** from this point onwards

First off, as I mentioned before, is the reversal of the colours of the version mascots. At the end of Black Version, N rides off on his newly-captured Zekrom for 'a distant land', and in White Version, he rides off on Reshiram. The Tao Trio are so-named in the fandom because they represent the Tao concepts of yin (Zekrom), yang (Reshiram) and wuji - the absence of yin and yang (Kyurem). Now, if one of these Dragons left the region, perhaps Kyurem mutated to fill that void and maintain the dichotomy? Also, we can look at Kyurem's origin stories - the official line is that it fell to Earth on an icy meteor, the one that created the Giant Chasm. However, the fan theory is that it is the skeletal remains of the original Dragon Pokémon which split into Reshiram and Zekrom when the two princes of Unova were fighting. Suppose that a space virus, not dissimilar to Deoxys, took over the skeleton of the Dragon Pokémon and animated it? Viruses are known to mutate, and Kyurem may indeed have changed into the other two Dragons once before...
Secondly, a theory from a Facebook group I'm a member of, originally devoted to 'Pokémon Grey'. Take a look at the official box art for the games:


See the part behind the number 2 on both boxes? Is that a shiny patch of blue and red, or is it... a Ruby and a Sapphire? I admit this is a slightly far-fetched theory, but it's not an impossible one - what if the new games are set in Hoenn? If N has indeed gone to a distant land, then Hoenn (and all other regions, admittedly) fit that bill, as Unova can't be reached easily from the previously-known Pokémon regions. Plus, most of the fandom's expecting Ruby and Sapphire remakes in a year or two anyway, following the trend set by FireRed/LeafGreen and HeartGold/SoulSilver - it would explain there being two 'third versions', in any case, if they're putting their resources into two games at this point instead of one. I would like to see the so-called MagmaRuby and AquaSapphire, I'll admit, but I'd also love to see Hoenn a few years down the line with a different storyline. Although, I've just realised that it would make it rather hard to implement the inclusion of the Unova Dex Pokémon, unless they revert to the Hoenn Dex with the addition of the new Kyurem Formes... In any case, a 3D Hoenn would be a welcome sight, in these games or the next ones.
Also, as a footnote to the speculation, I think we can be pretty certain that the moves Freeze Shock and Ice Burn, introduced in Generation V but not yet seen in Black and White, will be the signature moves of Black Kyurem and White Kyurem, respectively.

Well, those are my thoughts thus far on the next Pokémon games. Doubtless I'll blog on them again once more is known, but for now, sayonara!

(All the pictures I've used in this blog are, of course, the property of Nintendo)

Japanese Cuisine - More Memories

Hello once again, people :) Today I'll once again be remembering good remembrances about my time galavanting in Japan. On this occasion, however, I'll be focusing on a much more specific subject, hinted at in my previous entry - food!
When I hear people saying that gaijin don't like a lot of Japanese food, I cannot for the life of me understand why. Maybe it's just because I'm a fat bastard, but I really love Japanese food, and if it weren't for the fact that I cycled everywhere every day in my year abroad, I'd be the size of a house by now ^^'
As well as being amazingly tasty, there is a lot of... unusual food in Japan, as I'm sure a lot of people are aware. I discovered this first hand a day or two after I arrived there, with this little beauty:

Behold - the pizza danish! (not the first time I'll be discussing pizza in this blog)
Found this little gem in a combini, definitely worth the 105 yen it cost me

Pizza danish is just one of the many delicious items I picked up in combini. As well as Japanese staples such as onigiri riceballs and cup ramen, I fondly remember melon-pan and yakisoba-pan ^^

In and around the Tsukuba campus there were a multitude of different restaurants that my friends and I would frequent. As there are a lot of them, I'll try to be brief lest this post end up as long as the last (sorry again ^^'):

• Big Boy - American-style restaurant, serving mainly burgery-style food although they did have an all-you-can-eat salad bar which I took advantage of a couple of times
• Kuraudo - Okonomiyaki ('Japanese pizza' - bad description) restaurant. Huge portion sizes, and so many different choices on the menu, although the gyoza one was a definite favourite, for reasons which shall become apparent
• Fuji-sen - A little Japanese restaurant just off of my first dorm. It had a nice, homely feeling about it, and they had a cute kitty that used to walk around under some of the tables :3 And of course, the food was amazing - my usual dish of choice was gyuniku piman (pork and green bell pepper). Also, this was one of the restaurants where we discovered ソース, a.k.a. awesome sauce, a.k.a. okonomi sauce, the most delicious condiment known to man
• The Chinese place on the other side of the dorm, whose name I still cannot remember ^^' Whenever a group of exchange students entered the place, the owners knew exactly what we were going to order - karaage fried chicken, which came with rice (refillable) and a side salad with another amazing condiment which we believe could have been sesame mayo, but were never 100% sure... Also of note, a dish I never tried consisted of broccoli, squid and... strawberry XD
  

A small dish of noodly things from a day I was hanging out there more for the company than for the food (accompanied by Makkurokurosuke)

• The Korean place, whose name I also cannot remember ^^' My dish of choice was the ishiyaki bibimbap, although there were about 3-4 dishes my friends and I rotated between. As well as yet another kick-ass condiment - 'Korean ketchup' - they had both refillable rice AND refillable side-dishes (different assorted vegetabley things, including kimchi, which were largely unidentified and entirey delicious)
• Hanazushi, the conveyor-belt sushi restaurant. Of course everyone knows Japan is famous for sushi, and of course, it's better in Japan. Rather expensive, naturally, but very good. Can't say I thought much of the sea urchin sushi, but I did get to try horse meat sashimi
  
• Shakey's Pizza - Perhaps my second favourite restaurant which we frequented in Tsukuba, for a very simple reason - ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT pizza. Of course, this isn't just any pizza, this is Japanese seemingly-random-toppings pizza

Case in point - Strawberry, Oreo and Marshmallow dessert pizza

• The restaurant which tops this list - White Gyoza. Part of a chain of Gyoza restaurants in Japan (including the epicly-named Fight Gyoza in Tokyo), it is common opinion that no Western gyoza/pot stickers could ever hope to compare to such heights of awesome
  

For those of you who are health-conscious, we worked out that gyoza contains all of the vital nutrients :D

Anyways, moving on from restaurants, I want to briefly talk about a couple of other Japanese tasties. First up is bento boxes, the famous packed lunches. As well as people making them theirselves, it's also possible to buy pre-made ones. Apparently each train station in Tokyo is famous for certain kinds of bento, although I didn't go and investigate that. On the way to Shimoda, however, I did pick up this 30-piece healthy bento box:

Healthy, colourful AND delicious (and the cheapest thing on their menu ^^')

Speaking of Shimoda, the food at the Marine Research Centre was also just as good, if not better. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were a delight

The one example I managed to photograph

During my New Year's trip to stay with my friends in Yokohama, I got to experience the Japanese New Year traditional foods - osechi-ryouri. My friends were surprised by the fact that I tried a little of everything, but as I said at the start of this post, I can't understand why - it's so damn good!

Case in point

One brief point I'd like to mention at this point is the ice cream from the Sakura Matsuri in Kawazu. We passed by an ice cream vendor just out of the station, and decided to try two of their interesting-looking flavours - sakura (which tasted mainly of cinnamon but was still great) and wasabi... that's right, wasabi. And honestly, it wasn't as bad as I would've imagined ^^'

Om-nom-nom!

The last piece of deliciousness I'll mention in this blog is something I mentioned in my previous post - nomihoudai, a.k.a. all-you-can-drink. Expensive, but worth it. In addition to the pretty sizeable drinks menu, food is served throughout the course of the three hour drinking session. What's more, it differed pretty much every time we went; while the staple of edamame was always there at the beginning (in much the same way as we in the West have peanuts), we got everything from fried chicken and vegetables to a hot pot!

You have to admit - for a pub, the food was pretty classy ですね。

And with that, I'll bring another long blog post to a close. All this talk of Japanese cuisine is making me hungry! XD

Kanpa~i!

Memories of Japan

Wow, it's hard to believe that almost a year has passed since the earthquake in Japan... I guess now's as good a time as any to reflect on my time in Japan. It gives me something to blog about anyway :)
I guess a good place to start would be exactly one year ago - 10 March 2011, the day before the quake. I don't remember anything about the daytime, really, except that I was in the lab, naturally. I do remember that the evening was a blast, though. A bunch of us went out to the all-you-can-eat pizza place, Shakey's, before hanging out in the Dayztown video game arcade and a little bar nearby. Strange how things can be so normal one day, then go so badly wrong, huh...
Anyone who I talked to while I was in Japan knows how I used to whine about the labwork, which I really did hate - killing mice is not for me - so for today's blog, I'm going to try and think back to the good times, of which there were many :) So let's take a trip back through time, to late summer 2010...
I think the first really good memory I have of Japan was the matsuri. Being a lover of manga and anime, I'd heard a lot about them, and seen pictures of them, but to actually experience it myself, it was awesome. Plus, being in the evening, it wasn't so oppressively hot as it was in the daytime, which was perhaps one of the first negative points I discovered upon reaching Japan. Sadly, I didn't take my camera with me so I have no photos from the matsuri at all, just memories ^^'
Going through my photos, I guess the next positive point is Tsukuba University's campus. Though I didn't really appreciate it when I first got there, on account of the aforementioned heat, and the drone of cicadas, the campus really does beat the one here at Manchester hands-down in terms of greenery and scenery. Being a country boy, I like lots of open spaces and trees and such, so cycling around Tsukuba, the campus and the city itself, is so nice :) Here are a couple of good example pictures (albeit from later on in the Japan experience):

Sakura tree in full bloom in the spring :)

The road out of the northern dorm of Ichinoya

The pond by Ichinoya

Hmm, I think Tokyo should be next on the list. As luck would have it, Tsukuba is connected via the TX Tsukuba Express line to Tokyo, specifically Akihabara Electric Town, a.k.a. otaku heaven :3 In addition, two of the stores I frequented the most are a stone's throw away from the station - Yodobashi Camera (an enormous skyscraper of a store with electronics and such, and an entire floor devoted to toys and games (where I bought Pokémon Black and my Snivy plushie)) and Book Off (part of a chain of second-hand book stores in Japan, with the Akihabara one being far larger than the Tsukuba branch).
As well as Akihabara, a couple more places of note which I visited in Japan were Harajuku (although this was for the Meiji Shrine rather than all the fashion outlets), Hamamatsucho (where the Tokyo Pokémon Centre is :D) and Keio Chutobu (which I'll cover in more detail later)

The bridge by Harajuku Station

Meiji Shrine, Harajuku

Ah, I see the next block of photos I have are devoted to our ascent of Mt. Tsukuba. That was quite a journey, to be sure! The cycle ride there took a good hour, and the ascent took quite a while too (well, for us men, who DIDN'T take the cable car XD), but the scenery was great, and as some of you know, I love to walk :) The view from the top was beautiful, naturally ^^ The cycle ride down was a bit dodgy though, as it was very steep and punctuated by the squealing of everyone's brakes XD However, the evening was just as fun as the daytime ^^ A couple of us went from the mountain to a party with some of the permanent foreign researchers in Tsukuba, then on to a couple of the local bars - Hot Staff and Gold Rush, which I visited several more times after that night. But anyways, back to Mt. Tsukuba for some pretty pictures:

On the way to the foot of Mt. Tsukuba

Almost at the top!

Me at the peak of Mt. Tsukuba :3

View from the top ^^

I can't remember when this happened exactly, as I have no photos, but there was a big fireworks festival in the neighbouring city of Tsuchiura, another long cycle ride away. Despite being in a bit of a bad mood that day, the festival was still a lot of fun; I don't think I've ever seen more impressive fireworks in my life :D After walking through the mahoosive crowd of people who were standing on the (cordoned off for the occasion) roads, we managed to find a place to sit on a grassy bank, albeit about half a mile from where we'd parked our bikes XD Again, I don't have pictures of the event, but suffice it to say that it was spectacular!
Now, as fate would have it, my brother happened to be homestaying in Japan in the same year as I was studying abroad, so at the end of October we got to meet up in Tokyo, which also meant I could meet up with my secondary school Japanese teacher, and an old sixth form classmate of mine who was also ryuugaku-ing at the time. Although things were cut a bit short by the onset of a frigging typhoon, we still had a blast - got to see Kaminarimon and Asakusa again, along with Keio Chutobu, the same school I homestayed at in my youth. There's only one word to describe it -　なつかしい！ And, of course, it was great seeing my brother again after the couple of months we'd been on the other side of the planet from each other :)

Kaminarimon, Asakusa, Tokyo

The shopping street behind Kaminarimon, at the start of the typhoon

My brother in a very fetching Anpanman mask XD

Following swiftly on the heels of this was my 20th birthday, the age at which people can legally drink in Japan, so I could finally have my first *cough*legal*cough* alcoholic drink in Japan. Being the party animal that I am (ha-ha), I decided to split the festivities into two nights - the Friday night-Saturday morning, to welcome in my birthday, and the Saturday night, to see it out again. We were at Hot Staff and Gold Rush for the former and, much MUCH more fun, an okonomiyaki place and Cybex for the latter. I could talk all day about Cybex, so I'll just condense it into three main points:

1. Pool and table-tennis tables
2. All-you-can-eat ice cream and all-you-can-drink soda and soup
3. KARAOKE!
   

Aside from the introduction of (I shit you not) 96% alcohol vodka to the party (incapacitating three people, no less), it was pretty much the best birthday party I could've had :D And in case there was any doubt, here be pictures:

Early December saw my visit to the Shimoda Marine Research Centre for the Asia-Oceania Biology Student Network (AsOBiNet) casual conference. I signed up originally thinking all of the Manchester ryuugakusei were going, but it turned out just two of us were. I was rather reluctant to go after I found out I'd have to present my research (I hate presentations with a passion and I had nothing to present, really), but in the end, it was awesome. It was winter and starting to get very cold, so being by the ocean wasn't quite as nice as it would've been in the summer, but it was still a very fun few days, plus it let me see another bit of Japan I wouldn't've otherwise visited.

The Centre had its very own beach :D

Mike striking a pose XD

The scary-looking island. We can only assume that this is where they hide the monsters :O

Although I didn't take any pictures, Christmas was a lot of fun. It was weird and rather sad not being with my family for the occasion, but I got to spend it with a few friends, old and new, plus a very unconventional Christmas dinner of gyoza (I will speak of culinary matters in another blog post, as there is so very much to say on that, and this post's turning out to be very long as it is), followed by karaoke on Christmas Eve AND Christmas Day :D
I did a little more travelling for New Year, going down to Yokohama to vist my Japanese friends who I homestayed with back in secondary school. Seeing them again after so long put a big smile on my face, and to top the trip off, they took me to a place caled Kamakura, a very pretty town with lots of temples and shrines, which I adore :D

The queue to the local shrine in Yokohama, with people waiting for Hatsumode

Me in front of the daibutsu (big Buddha) at Kamakura

Although not restricted to any particular time of the year, some snowy pictures here remind me of my many late night/early morning excursions with my good friend Derek. Most of the time this consisted of a quick cycle down to one of the many 24/7 convenience stores for soda and candy, but on this occasion we went for a ride around campus to see how it looked in the newly-fallen snow. Naturally, it was both very pretty and very cold, although there was a slightly creepy moment in the pathway under the library where we were a little concerned we were about to get attacked by zombies ^^' Fun times.

Outside my dorm, in the snooow :3

Ah, the British vs. American rivalry XD

The icy descent into zombie hell beneath the library XD

At some point in the year, I forget when, my tutor (another guy in my lab) took me to a place called Tsukuba YouWorld, which I'd heard of but not found previously, to check out an electronics store. After the first cycle following the road, I eventually found a shortcut which was very beautiful, cutting through woodland and parkland. Next to it, as luck would have it, there was a small bookstore undergoing a closing-down sale with... wait for it... about three-quarters off the price of EVERYTHING. I got the whole series of Love Hina (15 volumes) for the price of a single book, as well as some books of... questionable content... for a friend (there was nothing in that section which tickled my fancy sadly ^^'), and took several trips to that store in the month or so before it closed.

Again, not restricted to a particular time of year, the next part of my Tsukuba photo file is composed of (admittedly blurred) shots from one of our many nomihoudai (all-you-can-drink) parties. As the name implies, once you've paid the set price, you're able to drink as much as you want for a period of two or three hours, which also includes quite a bit of food served throughout the evening, conveniently. Although I did end up drinking more than I should have on a couple of occasions, it was one helluva laugh! And, to make a good night even better, most of the time these parties ended with a trip to Cybex for some good ol' karaoke!
After weeks of delaying, February saw my return to Izu Prefecture to see the Kawazu Sakura festival with a couple of friends. The town has a bunch of early-blooming sakura trees so, rather than waiting until March, we got to see our first sakura in February. The word 'sakura' should instantly evoke images of beauty for any of you who know anything about Japan, and with good reason - they look absolutely stunning. Kawazu is just a few stops on the trainline away from Shimoda, meaning that we also got to see the ocean again :D The trip was definitely worth the hideously long train journey to and from the place ^^'

Right after walking out of the station, we were met with the beautiful sakura ^^

Perfect time to get me a new display picture XD

We three intrepid explorers, and Bear-Cat

Not too long after that was the earthquake, but as this blog's for reminiscing about the good times, I won't dwell on that, other than to say that Tsukuba was comparatively unharmed, being mercifully distant from Fukushima.
Anyway, happy thoughts - the weekend before I left Japan, most of us who hadn't already left the country got together for hanami - flower-watching - as the rest of Japan's sakura trees burst into flower. Seriously, it's something everyone has to try and see at least once. Just for good measure, here are a couple more photos:

We all ended up playing frisbee XD

Lastly on my list for today is the day before I returned to the UK. I wanted to see my friends in Yokohama once more before I left the country, so the day before I was due to fly home, I stayed at their house once again. It was, of course, sad to say goodbye, but I'm glad I got to see them again before leaving. As if they hadn't done enough for me already by that point, they put me up in the Narita Hilton the night before my flight so I'd be well-rested before the long journey home :')
And thus ended perhaps the best year or so of my life thus far. Seriously, all things considered, it was an amazing time. The only major thing I'd change would be that I wish I'd've been taking classes rather than doign a research project there, but then, had I done pure Japanese at Manchester, I wouldn't have been able to study at Tsukuba, and wouldn't have met all the awesome people I met there... But anyways, the project there is long since over, and I still have the amazing memories of all the happy times :D
Phew, that was quite a post. If you read that all the way to the end, then thank you for being so very patient :) If not, I won't hold it against you, and I'll try to be briefer in future ^^'
So, until next time, sayonara ^_^

Japan in a nutshell - lots of smiles with good friends ^_^