hey all,
Winter vacation is almost over, I hate to say. The first few days, I played a lot of Skyrim and a little Dark Souls. There is only one boss left in Dark Souls, but he is fast and strong, and his attacks eat up a lot of your health if you get hit b them. Even if you block, they eat up a lot of your stamina, plus they do fire damage.
For Skyrim, there is no end in sight. Yes, I've completed the quest lines for the fighter's guild and the mage's guild, but the system is really well designed to suck you in and get you to explore everywhere. For instance, I'm now pretty famous, so occasionally, I'll get a letter from an admirer saying that they heard about me using one of my special powers in such-and-such a place, and they'd love it if I could discover more special powers. Then the letter lets me know that if I explore some particular cave, ancient ruins, fort, or other location, I'll be able to find another power to use. As far as I can tell, these are randomly generated, but so far they always point me to locations that I haven't explored yet.
Outside of gaming, Michi and I had a great Christmas. We ate a delicious curry dinner (very traditional, I know) and exchanged gifts. For New Years, we went to Hakone (for the second time), in order to see the first sunrise of 2012 from the top of Komatagadake, but we cancelled the hike over to the ropeway because of the cloudy weather. Later in the day, we were afforded some gorgeous views of Mt. Fuji and Lake Ashi from one of the art museums in the area.
On New Year's Eve, for lack of anything else to do, we ended up watching a Japanese program called (roughly translated) 24 hours of no laughing. The theme was that they took 5 comedians, and put them in a bunch of strange situations, and if any of them laughed, that one got hit on the butt with a rubber bat by a masked assailant. In the beginning, it was kinda diverting, but towards the end, they were doing things like having one of them climb into a washing machine with a bowl of steaming hot ramen and try to eat it without spilling it or getting burned once they machine was turned on. This brought to mind Jackass, which thankfully, I haven't had to put up with for the several years I've been in Japan. I guess these comedians do this show every year, but I've somehow managed to avoid it until now.
Right now, Michi is watching Gaku for the second time. We rented it, and I'm not sure when I'll be able to convince her to return it. I'll probably have to replace the rented copy with our own Blu-Ray or DVD in order to get it away from her.
Cheers,
