Numazu: Part 2

To get to Awashima Island, you have to take a ferry. And to take the ferry, you have to buy the tickets to the aquarium on the island. The Aqours actually came here to shoot a short film not so long ago (one of their videos was set in another nearby aquarium) so the Dia autograph was a nice little surprise. It was quite cute.

Got two nice shots of both the hotel and the aquarium, though neither Kanan nor Mari were anywhere to be seen. I mean really, aside from the lack of cute schoolgirls and actual sunshine, this place is exactly like the Numazu I pictured. The more I think about it, the more I am impressed by Sunrise's effort to tie the anime to its actual setting. Their attention to detail is crazy.

The aquarium itself wasn't anything special. Aqours might have saved Uranohoshi, but what they actually saved was Numazu's local tourism. In any case, they have a very well-stocked souvenir shop, with your typical anime mascots, clear files, wall scrolls and even Aqours bottled water. I heard that Kanan bottled them herself and every bottle is filled with love. I wish!

I wasn't really interested in sea-life in general, but since I bought the tickets, I thought I might as well give the aquarium a tour. It was okay. If anything I actually got a bit hungry since I kept on thinking about wanting to get sushi later. Fishes don't seem to like me very much - they do have some hilarious expressions that I see quite often when I try to approach women, ha!

A quick walk around the island. That's Uranohoshi Girl's High School in the far distance. Bit anti-climatic to be honest since the weather was so bad. They were hosting a seal performance which was really adorable - she even knew how to wave! Very well trained. There were about ten people watching in total, which was surprising since this wasn't a weekend and it was raining nonstop.

After that, another long walk to Chika's house. Unless you've actually been to Numazu, you won't understand what the Aqours meant when they say their school is remote and isolated. It was wet and cold, the day was darkening and the air smelled heavily of sea salt. It was actually quite a soothing experience listening to the sea waves and looking at cute girl posters on the windows.

Where's Chika-chan?

If you've watched episode one, you probably can notice the two locations shown above. The place on the left is another aquarium, the setting for their second single, 'Koi ni Naritai AQUARIUM'. The place on the left really needs no explanation. Even though the day had been exhausting so far, I was pretty excited to finally be here. I guess you could say my kokoro went all dokidoki, ha!

The aquarium itself was okay. It wasn't nearly as spacious as the Aqours music video, but it was interesting having a relaxing walk around the place. I think me and the other two Argentinians were the only people here who came for the idols. Everyone else seemed pretty normal . 

The seiyuus left their autographs here as well. I think they visited here in March 2016, so it's been a long time. The aquarium is quite well-decorated with various Aqours stuff, which was actually a little jarring since it looked weird next to all the fish and crabs and whatnot. Also, best girl to the left.

By the time we got out, it was already dark. Raining a bit hard than before, so cold. Very miserable. The bus from here to Numazu station takes nearly fifty minutes. No wonder one of the Aqours (couldn't remember who) complained that the bus costs 500 yen. It was a lot of money!

For the last stop of the day, I visited the Love Live cafe near Numazu station. Prices are about the same as Akiba's maid cafes. I ordered the Chika drink, which is basically orange juice. Tasted quite nice and for a moment I fantasized about Chika-chan squeezing the juice just for me. Hey, a boy can at least dream, right?

Well, that's it for the trip. On the rock train back to my hostel, I reflected back on the day. To be fair, the trip was a bit anti-climatic. It was exhausting, a bit expensive, and the weather was bad. If anything, my biggest takeaway from the trip was that the anime did a really good job showing Numazu as it is - a rural gem full of nature, now spotted with cute idols here and there. I definitely won't look at Love Live Sunshine the same again now that I've been to the actual location.

Oh, and here's a photo of all the stuff I bought on the day. Just helping to grow the local economy, that's all!

Numazu: Part 1

So it's been a while since I last posted. Six months, actually. Lots has happened in between. Suffice to say I've been very happy for the past three months. Not only was I able to land a job with my Arts degree that wasn't in retail/fast food, but it was also an interesting job that actually paid really well. Landing a job before graduation, and actually managing to enjoy my graduation ceremony with family and friends was a godsend. I'll be starting to work next month, which gives me another five weeks to take it easy and do things like exercising and reading, the good stuff. Oh, and I also went to Japan, China and Korea as part of my great vacation. Soon I'll be heading to the South Island too.

So let's start with my Japan trip. I went there on December 1st and came back on January 4th. So a little over a month of vacation time. The entire trip, as a whole, was actually really nice. I managed to see most of the things I wanted, didn't plan anything (which meant the trip was full of surprises) and met some pretty interesting people. Most importantly I got to make a few 'pilgrimages' to some rather obscure places ('obscure' by normal people standards, I mean). Anime pilgrimage, or 聖地巡礼, is a form of tourism where you go to places where anime is set in. I believe this nerdy trend started with Lucky Star and has only gotten increasingly worse as time went on. Anyway...

I decided that my first pilgrimage was going to be at Numazu, Shizuoka prefecture. Love Live Sunshine is absolutely huge in Japan right now. Go to Akihabara, and Love Live is everywhere. I actually thought it would flop (since Love Live had some very loyal fans) but boy was I wrong. I guess the weird thing is that Love Live Sunshine is actually a decent show. Touching drama, a charismatic lead in the form of Chika, and some very pretty scenery all comes together to make a great show. I hated Hanayo and Nico in the original Love Live, but no one in Sunshine is hate-able aside from the occasional Dia tantrum. Anyway, what better way to pay homage to your favorite idol anime than to travel three hours to a remote Japanese fishing village? 

I went on the 13th of December, was staying at Yokohama at the time. The journey from Yokohama station to Numazu was around one-and-a-half hours, and you get to see some very pretty scenery along the way. Atami is a well-known spa resort - I'll probably go there the next time I go to Japan.

Anime pilgrimages nowadays are very well tied in to local tourism nowadays. Back then, animators picked locations out of convenience. Nowadays, everyone from local businesses to the government are involved in making nerds like me spend money in some very obscure, rural places in Japan.

There is a temporary Love Live Sunshine cafe right outside of Numazu station. The setup is a little rough but it's got everything, including a fully stocked merchandise shop and your usual overpriced drinks. By the time I returned that evening, almost everything was sold-out except for Dia's handbag. Poor, poor Dia.

Say what you want, but locals have really embraced the idol thing. I had no idea Kanan and Yohane were so popular in Japan. I personally really like Ruby and Chika (I'm a sucker for baby-faces and genki girls generally) but I guess the Japanese have different tastes than me. And believe it or not, that's totally fine!

Numazu was much, much spread-out than I thought. In the anime, they often talk about how faraway the school is from Numazu, and how Numazu is really far away from Tokyo. In short, Numazu is a really rural faraway place. I actually wanted to walk all the way to Uranohoshi Girl's High School and trust me - do not make the same mistake I did.

Went into a random local cafe after 15 minutes of walking. Guess what: more Love Live! The owner seems to really like You. Her merchandise occupies an entire table and they don't seem to be up for sale. At this moment I felt like a weird outsider taking photos of these things, but that's okay.

A nice Japanese shrine. Reminded me of Kanda Myojin, which I would visit in a few days time.

Kept on walking until I was at a fish market a few kilometers south of Numazu station. This cafe appeared on episode five of Sunshine. Actually I had no idea this cafe was in the anime until a poster kindly reminded me to understand this is a landmark and that I had to walk in and spend money..

Here they serve a type of fried oysters called 'Fallen Angel's Pearls' or something like that. Basically a reference to Yohane. Pretty expensive for a few oysters but you get a nice plastic file on the side. There are three styles so I picked the one with Chika in it. The oysters were a tad greasy.

Waitress: "あなたはどれが欲しいですか？"

Me: "これです... 私は千歌ちゃんが好きです!! "

Waitress: "はい! 千歌ちゃんはかわいいです! "

My Japanese is terrible, by the way.

So earlier I said that you should never try to walk the whole way. I made that mistake after having walked about five kilometers and realized my pointer on Google Maps barely budged. It was cold, it was wet, there was no sunshine at all. So I waited for the local bus - which took about half an hour.

I got so impatient with waiting that I hopped on the next bus that came. Until I realized that it was the wrong bus and I was literally heading into the middle of a mountain. Got a bit scared and hopped off as soon as possible. Didn't forget to snap a quick photo, though. The scenery here was great.

At last, we're in Love Live Sunshine territory. It only took like three hours...which would've taken just 45 minutes if I had taken the bus instead. I got a good workout but I was exhausted. Then again, I was a devoted pilgrim and no amount of pain could prevent me from seeing the thing for real.

No words can describe how goddamn happy I was to see Awashima Island. All that hard work really paid off and finally I can ride the infamous Love Live boat to an aquarium I barely know anything about. It was actually a bit anti-climatic since I just wanted a place to sit down and rest.

Turns out the best way to advertise yourself nowadays (especially to nerds) is to make a cute anime mascot of your business. The aquarium has one, and as I shall soon learn, a lot of random places in Japan has anime mascots. Railways, high schools, other aquariums...the list goes on and on and on.

Turns out I wasn't alone, after all. There was a whole flock of Japanese otaku who came here as well, on this rainy day, on this pilgrimage. I also met two really friendly Argentinians who were heading towards the same place. Ended up visiting Akihabara with them as well but that's a story for another day. Actually, so is this blog post since I'll be writing up part two tomorrow.

So it's been a week since Hearthstone's newest expansion, Whispers of the Old Gods, was released. Overall, I'm pretty happy with how things have turned out. Not so much the cards themselves, but rather in the way Blizzard is making the game more accessible to newer players. From handing out new packs to giving everyone C'thun to rotating out old sets, Blizzard has given just about everyone another reason to play this game, if only for a week. So kudos on Blizzard on giving Hearthstone the longevity it needs to be a really successful game in the years to come.

Overall, I've been fairly happy with the nerfs. I've never been a fan of nerfing cards, simply because I think it's a really lazy way of altering player behavior. For example, the nerf on Leper Gnome (from a 2/1 to a 1/1) was clearly intended to hurt aggro. Now that we're a week into the new meta, however, the ladder is still full of aggro, early-game board control decks like Zoo and Shaman. Obviously cards like Leper Gnome facilitate aggro, but the real root cause in my view is the ladder system, and the fact that Hearthstone disproportionately rewards fast games.

With that said, I think that the nerfs have overall been pretty reasonable. The nerf on Knife Juggler is warranted and has effectively turned it into a combo card rather than an automatic 2 drop. And the change on Force of Nature, again, is a great decision to counter Druid while still keeping the card relatively playable (at least in Arena). The biggest 'nerf' to classes like Druid and Paladin is the decision to rotate out cards like Dr. Boom and Piloted Shredder. Those cards have honestly caused a lot of unnecessary havoc and I think we're all better seeing less of them in the future.

Now, let's talk deck lists, starting with Hunter. Barring the occasional Face Hunter (designed to kill Secret Paladins), Hunter has been pretty underrepresented on ladder. As a Hunter main, I've been crafting a Hunter list that would be good in a meta that will probably be dominated by Zoo and Shaman. Although Hunter lost Mad Scientist, Fiery Bat is a great one-drop and Infested Wolf is a decent curve-filler. Princess Huhuran can find value in a slower meta where cards like Sylvanas might see play in a Midrange Hunter list, and Call of the Wild is again a great card, definitely at least a one-of in just about any Hunter deck that isn't pure aggro.

The real problem with Hunter, I think, is that the deck has no inherent card draw. Just about every tier-one deck has ways of cycling/drawing cards - Arcane Intellect in Mage, Ancestral Knowledge in Shaman, and many decks run Azure Drake as well. Hunter doesn't have that type of draw power, however. I think Cult Master and Loot Hoarder are the only decent draw options Hunter has, and both cards have their problems - Cult Master requires a solid board, while Loot Hoarder is on its own a weak 2-drop. I think 1 copy of Tracking, as a deck thinner, is correct in Hunter. In all, Midrange Hunter just feels like a weaker version of Shaman.

The Shaman list is fairly standard. If I wasn't missing a few cards, I would probably prefer playing Midrange Shaman instead, which is a lot more versatile than the Face variety and packs just as big of a punch with a tech copy of Bloodlust. I think that Shaman is definitely the best class right now, kind of like how Druid was about a month ago. The class is just so incredibly versatile - hard removal, burst, strong curve, 4-mana 7/7, the deck has everything.. I think we'll be seeing a lot more Shaman in the future and whether a deck can beat Shaman will be the litmus test for any new decks.

Finally, the Mage list. I don't own Arcane Blasts, which are probably better than Mirror Image especially since Cult Sorcerer is now the go-to 2-drop for Tempo Mage. I have a lot of hope for Tempo Mage. For one, I think it should have a good match-up versus Zoo, which runs a lot of 1-health minions and are far more prone to board clears. Now that Mage can safely run Flamestrike without so many Deathrattles around, Mage can also be pretty decent versus Shaman. I am pretty iffy on the Spellslingers however, and that's probably the first card I'll take out in practice.

2016 is well under way. It's amazing to see how quickly the year has passed, really, considering that my last post was on New Year's Eve and we're already in the middle of March. Not a lot of things happened in between. I will be graduating in September, so right now I'm basically looking to secure myself a full-time offer before graduation. Honestly, it is a tough job market out there, but I'm pretty confident about my chances. I managed to land a relevant internship last semester, I have extracurricular experiences, and I studied abroad as well. I've also done a fair share of networking throughout last semester, although I didn't meet as many people as I wanted to. 

So overall things are okay. My grades for last semester had been pretty decent. The dissertation (which I literally wrote two weeks before it was due) managed to receive an A+, which (according to my lecturer) is a really rare grade. I was told that no-one had gotten that grade in two years and I must have been the first person to get it in a while. To be fair I really didn't think the dissertation was that good. In retrospect it looked a bit rushed, I hadn't fully thought through my arguments, and I hadn't done enough primary research. But I managed to somehow pull it out and they seemed happy. I guess I can't really complain, can't I? Can't hide the fact that I still feel a tad incompetent, though.

My lecturer and I met up about two weeks ago over coffee on where my career is supposed to go. To be honest I already knew where I wanted to work, but I wanted her opinion on how a career in academia might look like. She said that academia is really tough to break into, and that getting a PhD is basically the same as flushing 80k down the toilet at this point (well, she didn't literally say that, but you know what I mean). Then she briefly congratulated me on my grades before she subtly hinted me to take on the Masters program at my university. I really don't have any intentions of staying at university, though. I like doing research and all, but I want to start working full-time.

So I guess that's it for my share of real-life stories. I've met some pretty amazing people over last semester, and overall school had actually been really enjoyable. The transition into work life is going to be tough, though. I'll have to get used to walking around in a suit, setting up a decent-looking LinkedIn, and be ready to have conversations with people I may or may not like. I think the reality of working in a corporate environment is that you get used to doing things like that, and you learn to do everything in a professional (i.e. slightly polite yet generally emotionless) manner. And the scary thing is that I'm sort of getting used to that. I'm getting used to getting along like that.

Besides that, nothing really happened. My private life has also been fairly mundane. I came pretty close to having a girlfriend last semester. She's an accounting student, and basically PM'd me on how much she liked me and so on. I didn't really feel anything and while we're still friends, nothing overly emotional happened thereafter. I don't really know why I don't feel that romantically attracted to anyone. I don't think there's a void in my heart that needs to be filled by someone else, anytime soon. I have friends who basically can't get along without their arms around a girl, and I can't really comprehend that. I just don't understand why women or companionship is all that important.

I did end up going out with another, Japanese girl, though. Her story is actually really, really screwed up. I was introduced to her via a friend of mine, who works at the same company as her. My friend really likes her - she's timid, she's a really shy, which I guess makes her kind of cute in a weird way. So one day, I asked this Japanese girl if she wanted to go to a convention (i.e. date) with me. She instantly agreed. It was really fun. I gave her some pocket money and she spent it like the irresponsible kitten she is (and did I mention she wore cat ears to the convention as well?). Then we went into the city and ate ramen and told lots of jokes and laughed. Things started getting cuddly between me and her really, really quickly. It was a really, really weird feeling.

That night, I saw her walking in the city. She told me earlier that she was going home, but she was actually in the city for the whole time. She cuddled me. I asked her if things were going fine and she said yes. After that, she went drinking with my friend. She got wasted. She made out with my friend in the back of the car. She got home, and encountered her boyfriend. I don't know what happened after that. My friend told me, about a month later, that her boyfriend is Japanese and is really, really abusive. He hits her quite often and I'm sure that she must have been beaten up that night because she went out with two guys. After that encounter, I met her one more time. Then we broke off all contacts.

Sorry. There's just so much I wanted to take off my chest. The story is just so unbelievably screwed up. You can probably make a soap drama out of the whole fiasco. And the reality was, I actually felt awful for taking her out. If I had known she had an abusive boyfriend who wouldn't let her get close to another guy (even if he has the romantic attraction of a rock), I wouldn't have taken her out. It was just an awful experience overall and it nearly destroyed my semester. I actually have no idea how I managed to survive through last year when there was so much random stuff going on.

I finally got a new hobby, and I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't gotten this hobby I wouldn't have made it through last semester. I was hoping to take up a new, 'better' hobby like running or exercising, but K-pop ended up being a very therapeutic thing that helped me a lot. It's funny because K-pop is actually just as awful as anything I've liked previously, but I just really like some of the girl groups. A-pink is great, Lovelyz is great, and some of the newer groups are also good as well. I think Lovelyz is fantastic - For You has got to be the most beautiful video that's come out all year. Definitely worth a watch - it's filmed in Okinawa and makes me want to go there.