Blog

Here there be writings of all kinds, but mostly my own thoughts and ramblings about art, sketches, video games, animation, and design.

Japanese Nature: Bugs

Mushi! 虫! Bugs! They’re all over the place! And the Japanese variety are just as abundant and cool. I’ve always been a fan of bugs, but sometimes people in Japan have a different level of fandom going on… Popular Mushi Japanese rhinoceros beetle If you’ve got any familiarity about Japan or even just anime, you […]

View Item

Kobayashi Not Allowed to Put Other People’s Hot Dogs in His Mouth

News about this is EVERYWHERE. Takeru Kobayashi, famous Japanese hot-dog-eater, wasn’t allowed to eat in this year’s Coney Island Fourth of July hot dog eating contest! According to THE NEWS, it’s because he refused to sign an exclusivity contract with Major League Eating, the major leagues of eating contests…because there’s more than one, apparently.

Continue reading

The Mario Violinist (and More Mario)

You should know, I’m on a real Mario kick right now. With the recent release of Super Mario Galaxy 2, not to mention E3 with all the other great returning classic platform heroes, I just want to play video games all day. But such desires of the id are played down and subdued, only to be lived out in my fantasies while I watch video game related media at work.

(Nah, I’m working, honestly… with a little peep here and there.)

So anyway, I got a real kick out of this:

Continue reading

Awesome Website: Wonderwall

Wonderwall is an interior design firm established by Masamichi Katayama. And it’s AWESOME. And what’s more, its website is also AWESOME. I do enjoy a well-presented Interior Design website, so this is excellent. What’s impressive about the site itself can be seen in motion, so go and click around. On top of all that site-ly […]

View Item

Quaff in Nashville

Heard of Quaff? I hadn’t, until it was announced they were coming to MTAC. Quaff: a Japanese visual kei band. Officially described thus: “Quaff is a band like none other. They bring elements of traditional Japanese music and culture into their heavy hitting music and live performances. Quaff rocks out with dual vocalists emphasizing their […]

View Item

Japanese Bar Codes

I like to see practical things with a creative/cute design spin. I was going through the backlog of one of my favorite websites and saw these adorable Japanese barcode designs, created by Japanese design company D-Barcode: What a cool way to enhance such a common thing! My favorites are umbrella-related!

View Item

Muscle March: Catch the Imp!

You know that game Muscle March that I posted about earlier? Well, I finally remembered to buy it. It’s just as challenging as I thought it would be, with a dash of “oh gawd” near the third parts of stages.

I’m mainly making this entry because there’s a hot pink kappa in the village stage, which amuses me to no end:

Continue reading