Braaaainsball!

While flipping channels, caught the beginning of a baseball game between Nippon Ham and Lotte. Now that the Rakuten Eagles are the Pacific champs (YAY!!), I don't need to fervently  watch anymore regulation games so I was about to continue flipping when I espied ZOMBIES on the field. I quickly grabbed my camera and snapped off a few pics of the undead attacking players and causing havoc.

Much to no one's surprise, this was a gimmick to promote Fox's premiere of Season 4 of The Walking Dead on  October 20th. Not as good as when Darth Vader or Sadako threw out the first pitch, but not bad.

Still, it makes for a wonderful lead-in to the Countdown to Halloween 2013 that starts on October 1st (a mere 2 1/2 hours away.)
ps. if anyone cares, the game between the Fighters and the Marines is deadlocked at a 0-0 tie after 10 innings. Wow, almost as exciting as a soccer game.

Another nice coincidence was my visit to Baskin Robbins better known as 31 ice in this country. Even the most fluent of students of all ages remain oblivious to the name BR and only know of the ice cream salon as サーティワン (thirty-one). It is useful for teaching ordinal numbers. Click that link to see their homepage and I have here a few pics of their fare.

You may be surprised to learn that I can count the amount of times I've partaken of BR on my index fingers yet today I broke down and had a cup of American cherry with a ghost on top for 4 bucks.

It didn't come with the hat (not yet in stock), tasted gooey and was rather unpalatable. I won't be eating any ghosts again. I may try one of the other concoctions but not until the campaign is in full swing and I can win either a marker or a cup. Good news is that I was also given a strip of stickers! Hey, that's worth 400￥.

See ya in a few hours for my first countdown post!

My Pseudo-Fake Birthday.

September 29th is Archangel's Day or St. Michael's Day. It is also the day upon which my birthday was celebrated back when I was a wee waif. Having a Christmas birthday means that one gets ripped off for presents and parties so when I was a young lad, we'd celebrate it today. It worked out fairly well until my sister came along on October 1st and pretty much crushed all hopes of me getting a celebration. To her credit though, she's the ONLY one who acknowledged my birthday today!

Therefore, I decided to have a little celebration of my own and you can watch it in the following video.



I've now finished my beer and had my way with Squishy's mom and now to give you a closeup on some of those items. First the guests:

As you can see, my tablecloth is a Star Trek Into Darkness beach towel with the adorable Benedict Bandersnatch Cumberbatch.

The cake and candles were courtesy of Fujiya Bakery and since it didn't turn out well on the video, here is the cake. I've also added the bucket of candies and a few shots of Peko-chan as well.

As much as I'd like to believe that Randall et al. bought the presents for me, I purchased them at Book-Off when the Imonikai that I intended on attending was inaccessible due to lack of parking.

I have another Evangelion binder but this one was stuffed full of all of the series booklets for 5 bucks. Quite the deal.

The Japanese Horror was only 250￥ and is one of a series of Ghost stories. If it's any good, I'll be sure to pick up the rest and feature them during October's Countdown.

The Spider-Man box set originally went for 9500￥ (about a C Note) and I got it for 950￥ today. Not a bad deal, I must say. The DVD of the movie, I'll give to a friend but I may just watch the Stan Lee documentary tonight. The other goodies includes a flip book of photos, a sheet of postcards, an original piece of art, a mini-copy of Amazing Fantasy 15, a pin and a piece of film from the movie itself! Quite the haul!!

Finally, since it's getting cooler, I picked up this sweatshirt. Sweet!

Not a bad Pseudo-fake birthday after all!

I'm a Cross Guy.

Or I'm a Macross Guy. While digging through my boxes looking for stuff to showcase for the Countdown to Halloween 2013, I came across this binder for マクロス Macross that I intended on showing off ages ago. I know one guy in Toronto who would like to get his paws on this and I'd consider mailing it to him for his birthday next week if the postage weren't so dear.

Anyway, here are some highlights of the binder and accompanying magazine.

Amongst other details about characters, machines etc., there are some nice two-page spreads.

Of course, there are the obligatory shots of cute heroines.

Hey cool, here's a complete movie for you! Be sure to find the Close Captioning option to enjoy it in English.



Speaking of cuties, I also found a K-ON Blanket that I either won in a draw or UFO caught ages ago. My go-to guy for all things けいおん has told me that he has never seen it in the Otaku shops so perhaps it's actually worth something.

If anyone in North America would like this, let me know! (It'll go to the top bidder.)