Great Changes

Hi! Yes, I still have an account and it is still a paid account. I must be stupid, but i do enjoy having no ads. Anyway, my regular blog is going through some annoying issues at the moment. I wanted to post this awesome trailer for Rurouni Kenshin :-D

Rurouni Kenshin will be debut in Japan on August 25, 2012. I so wish I could see this film at the same time. It looks AWESOME. What do you think?



( Video under cut )

In a desperate attempt to lure tourists back to a country plagued by radiation fears and constant earthquakes, the Japan Tourism Agency‘s proposed an unprecedented campaign – 10,000 free roundtrip tickets.

The catch is, you need to publicize your trip on blogs and social media sites.

10,000 Free Round-Trip Tickets to Japan by Akiko Fujita

I was just posting on my Facebook that I wanna go to Japan and someone sent me this news article. I would LOVE to get a free round-trip ticket. I don't care about earthquakes and tsunamis, I just really want to go!

Would- be visitors will have to detail in writing their travel plans in Japan, and explain what they hope to get out of the trip. Successful applicants would pay for their own accommodation and meals. They would also be required to write a review their travel experiences, and post it online.

Um... right, so saying that I want to go there isn't enough? I have to actually plan a trip I may not be able to take based on an idea of when I might be able to get there. I don't mind the accommodations and meals and stuff since I have already had offers of help when I get there.... if they are still available... and I would love to do hostels.... Writing about the travel experience... I don't have a problem doing that. I love posting randomly on my blogs and journals. This one would even be cross-posted to every media since I would be so excited :-) Prolly updates during too.

Oh wait... what is this?

“We are hoping to get highly influential blogger-types, and others who can spread the word that Japan is a safe place to visit,” said Kazuyoshi Sato, with the agency.

...are there really 10,000 'highly influential blogger-types'? ... No one reads my blogs even my crossposted social media can't be called "highly influential". Oh well, not like I am not gonna try anyway. I hope I will get support. But really, such a comment really crushes those earlier feelings of excitement....

Hey all, I did something I thought I would never do. I cleaned up my friends list a little. Not much mind you, but I had several friends who left the LJ-community and I decided to cease bothering some other people in the meantime. I never get to update regularly and even when I finally catch up things get behind again.

Anyway, I may have accidentally deleted some people and sorry if I did. Just friend me again and I will check it out and fix it. (don't send a note, I never check my inbox anymore)

Cheers.

I am reading Bakuman. It took me a while and I really should've gotten there sooner, but hey, I was busy... with something... just don't know what.

A quick synopsis: Bakuman is a manga series written by the dynamic duo who wrote the insanely popular DEATH NOTE. (you've heard of that right??? Right???) But they are not doing another dark cult hit like that, instead they are taking a tour of the manga publishing industry. Sound boring? Wrong. We follow Mashiro, nephew of a one-hit-wonder mangaka, and his new buddy Takagi as they team up in middle school with the goal of being the most popular manga team of their era. Mashiro's drawing ability came to the attention Takagi who was looking for someone of quality to illustrate his many story ideas. Mashiro was hesitant, but Takagi finally won him over and the pair step into an intense adventure, from research to submission, from joy to defeat, but through it all, they are determined to get a serialization by the time they graduate High School. Gambatte!

After reading the first vol. I knew one thing for certain, I would never be able to do any professional manga, comics, writing or editing. Also, I realised I will never get away from Manga now that I found it. Yeah, I know. YOU know I couldn't do professional manga, heck -I- know I couldn't. I don't have the drive, I don't have the creativity required, and I am getting older. I didn't really want to do that anyway. And I am still amazed it took me as long as it did to get into manga in the first place. Can you say late (late, late, late, late, ...) bloomer?

So, if I am not gonna try to do such things professionally, why do I have Manga Studio? Why am I practicing drawing manga style art? Why, after reading the first volume of Bakuman, did I start DRAWING WHOLE PAGES from manga???

For that matter, why am I learning Japanese? Just to read Manga? Am I really that insane? and yet, I just grabbed one of my old manga phone books this morning with the intent of translating pages. I am spending that kind of money to learn a language just to read silly comics? Ok, so I wanted to read Light Novels as soon as I realised what they were... and yes, the dramas did pull me in for a while, but really. Why? what could i possibly use this for??

While I am at it, why have I been learning about story making and story techniques? I never use them. I attempt NaNoWriMo every year and every year there is a different outcome with ne'er a finish.

Seriously, who am I fooling? ;-)

My brother and I went in on a bit of software together, its pretty awesome from the demo I saw at the con, but there aren't really instructions on how to use it. I found there are some nice tutorials out there for the older versions, so I can't wait to hook everything together and give it a whirl on my own!

Every time I sit in front of my computer to try to write ANYTHING, I just can't. I even tried writing a thought stream for five minutes non-stop... and while that worked, by the time I finished I was exhausted and I had no desire to continue. I tried writing lines of story at work and ended up with "The tower was tall and empty." um... yeah, not useful. Especially since I didn't feel like elaborating and just thinking about it exhausted me. *sigh*

Well, I can't really blame tiredness or anything, I have really been concentrating on finishing the box I am doing for a friend. It is mostly finished and I have an extra week to finish it more. I was gonna be content just to burn and sand the box to a nice finish, but with extra time I can get a stain and a sealer to make it even better.

I will have some pictures up at some point. But right now, the consensus of those who just see things: Oooh, Pretty. The consensus of those who see art: Amateur work, selling this for what? $10? (NO! Too much time spent on that to be only $10! Please don't go for that cheap!)

I am also forced to learn block/ink shading to make future pyrography look more pretty. So yeah, despite my failure to write, I am happy to report I am pretty decent at the rest of creativity.

I know I haven't been posting a while, but I am sure you didn't want my twitter to spam you. I figure if you want to keep in contact with me via Twitter you could prolly just follow me on twitter.. and I don't like the fact that I can't create a format for it to post like I used to do with third-party apps. Actually, that app is still running, I just haven't posted anything I wanted to go to LJ in a while.

If I had a choice, I would make it Cut to hide and allow you to view if you wanted, have a subject of "What's the Tweet?" or something equally silly so you know its only a twitter post and/or make it f-list or private instead if I chose. Nice try LJ, but I'll wait some more.

Sorry for spamming you all.

So, what the NaNo? Are you in? I seem to be sidelined. I am trying to complete a project before a deadline and several other things so I am writing like a hundred word a day instead of the 1667 I should be writing. I'll try to catch up and get closer to the count when my project is finished and sent.

• Tue, 12:19: RT @chooseadventure: BEWARE- It's almost hand turkey season.
• Tue, 12:19: RT @thinkgeek: We're cranking out new shinies for the site today! Stand by for things that roll, cut, light up, blast, wrap, flavor, & t ...
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• Tue, 17:09: RT @yenpress: Do you like music? Do you like 4-panel manga? Do you like free stuff? RT @yenpress to win a copy of K-ON! 1! One winner ch ...
• Tue, 21:36: Watching Fortune Arterial 4 on Crunchyroll! http://www.crunchyroll.com/media-560226 #crunchyroll
• Tue, 21:40: Watching Otome Yokai Zakuro 5 on Crunchyroll! http://www.crunchyroll.com/media-560252 #crunchyroll
• Tue, 22:43: Watching Occult Academy 4 on Crunchyroll! http://www.crunchyroll.com/media-543200 #crunchyroll

• Mon, 17:10: RT @bookpage: “The truth is, unless you’re wincing just a little, you’re not writing about something that matters." —@LisaScottoline in ...

• Sun, 13:00: Gah! Day one of NaNoWriMo and I TOTALLY didn't even THINK of it! .... does NOT bode well for writing... #fb
• Mon, 11:20: Pyrography is deceptively simple. Put blade to wood, burn. Right... Oh did I mention you need to practice to make SMOOTH curves. #fb
• Mon, 11:20: I wonder if I can work pyrography into my fantasy adventure #nanowrimo story....
• Mon, 11:25: Ok.... the blog posts I made to automatically post are not posting... except the one that says I was gonna post every day. FUn FUn fun!

• Sun, 00:07: Watching Otome Yokai Zakuro 1 on Crunchyroll! http://www.crunchyroll.com/media-560244 #crunchyroll
• Sun, 00:36: Watching Otome Yokai Zakuro 2 on Crunchyroll! http://www.crunchyroll.com/media-560246 #crunchyroll
• Sun, 01:00: Watching Otome Yokai Zakuro 3 on Crunchyroll! http://www.crunchyroll.com/media-560248 #crunchyroll
• Sun, 01:25: Watching Otome Yokai Zakuro 4 on Crunchyroll! http://www.crunchyroll.com/media-560250 #crunchyroll
• Sun, 01:52: Watching Fortune Arterial 1 on Crunchyroll! http://www.crunchyroll.com/media-560034 #crunchyroll
• Sun, 02:17: Watching Fortune Arterial 2 on Crunchyroll! http://www.crunchyroll.com/media-560222 #crunchyroll
• Sun, 02:41: Watching Fortune Arterial 3 on Crunchyroll! http://www.crunchyroll.com/media-560224 #crunchyroll
• Sun, 03:06: Watching Fortune Arterial 4 on Crunchyroll! http://www.crunchyroll.com/media-560226 #crunchyroll
• Sun, 04:03: Watching Occult Academy 4 on Crunchyroll! http://www.crunchyroll.com/media-543200 #crunchyroll
• Sun, 13:00: Gah! Day one of NaNoWriMo and I TOTALLY didn't even THINK of it! .... does NOT bode well for writing... #fb