Happy Berated Birthday.

Last week I had, for the first time in decades, a birthday party! Sure, only a half dozen showed up and two of them skipped out after dinner, though it was considered to be a natal anniversary for me. (#65, don't ya know, so I didn't want it to pass in silence.)

I was even given a few prezzies. A care package of cookies and treats including the following:

The top three items are almost finished, I have yet to sample the others. Best present of all was a Piggiless Bank. I'm not sure how Zane knew I'd like it.

If you click this link, you can see it in action.

After dinner, we went bowling and I am definitely out of practice! The other attendees skipped a trip to the pub, but Zane was kind enough to buy me a beer or two. Two young lads got chatty with him, though once they slithered away, I decided to take my celebration in my own hands and convinced some lassies to take a photo with us.

When their third pal joined us, they all sang "Happy Birthday" to me and we left shortly thereafter (sans ladies, alas.)

I grabbed a cake on the way home and sang the tune again, solo this time.

I held off writing about my prezzies until now for yesterday, another friend who was visiting her daughter in Okinawa, gifted me with these:

I am very pleased with this mascot, ルーティ (Rooty) and she brought me an Orion beer 

SO, Happy Birthday to me!

My New Years was wholly uneventful by choice. I watched a dorky movie

and drank a few brew.

Unfortunately, Bib flew off the handle when I was washing him. Sigh.

New Year's Day was spent hanging around the apartment and I broke out a couple of my Dragons. 

Happy Ryu Year! (Ryu = 竜 = dragon)

Hey my blog is approaching a million hits! I need to figure out how to monetize this. (Sure most of the hits may be Bots, but it still seems impressive!)

Have a great 2024, cuz 2023 sucked big time for me!

Crayon Shin-Godzilla-chan!

On Sunday, I happened to be wandering S-Pal in Sendai Station and discovered a new shop embedded between a Snoopy Store and a Rirakuma Shop. It's the Crayon Shinchan Original Shop.

I'm not a huge fan of Crayon, but I browsed around just to see if there were any unique Halloween goodies. Nope. But I did discover this pair of socks!

Hey Michael, didn't you write about Crayon Shinchan vs Godzilla about 5 years ago? The answer is Yes I did. At that time, I didn't bother to look into any merchandise though, thanks to one of my roving reporters, this has been discovered...

Okay, unless you are able to enlarge that, you won't know what I'm talking about. Here we go again.

That tailless kaiju is actually a coin bank and by removing the buttocks, you can access the loot.
One lucky recipient of 怪獣シリマルダシ (kaijū shirimarudashi) shows off his purchase:



Wait a sec., how come I'd never heard of this before? Shinchan vs. Shin-Godzilla!



Just in case you couldn't figure it out, here is a subbed version of one of those previews:



There is a full-length crossover movie out there somewhere, I just need to research further...
Meanwhile, here are a couple of pics:

Ya know, speaking of crossovers, here is a independent comic written about a young gal with a Shin-fetish checking out a bunch of military vehicles. It's called Einsatz Gruppe and Manitou vs. Shin-Godzilla and it is pretty wacky.

Here's a sampling of its contents.

The author/artist hard at work.

Finally a friend reminded me of this crossover between Kemono Friends and Shin-Godzilla.

You can see a few more pictures at the bottom of this blogpost.

Stay tuned, it isn't long until the Countdown to Halloween!

Crazy Crayon Kaiju Clash.

I've never been a big fan of Crayon Shin-chan but this movie may make me one.
Crayon Shin-chan: The Legend Called Buri Buri 3 Minutes Charge (クレヨンしんちゃん 伝説を呼ぶブリブリ 3分ポッキリ大進撃 Kureyon Shinchan: Densetsu o Yobu Buriburi: Sanpun Bokkiri Daishingeki) 

Here is the cast and here's a clip including Shinchan's transformation into a Super-hero. You really need to see this. (Skip to 1:10 for the best part.)



First a look at the heroes:

Warning: NSFW!

Now the villains. These are all spoofs of several different Kaiju. Pretty well done, I must say.

This is the theme song by Ai, "Crayon Beatz". I lasted about 30 seconds before I gave up listening. Can you beat my record?

The END!