The Fryhole

So Andrew and I have been investigating japanese game centres… otherwise known as arcades (in North America).  They’ve got the standard games, of course (Tekken, Soul Calibur, Foosball, House of the Dead, etc.); and they also have a stunning number of the “crane” games where you:

1. Guide the grabby-claw with a joystick.
2. Press the button to grab the item under the claw.
3. Hope that the claw picks up the item and if it does:
4. Hope that you can safely maneuver the claw to the proper drop point for the item, and if you can:
5. Profit!!!

The first weird thing that we saw is that they seem to have a lot more feminine-oriented arcade games.  I’m not sure what happens in them.  They look sort of like photo booths, but they have curtains all around them; and I haven’t dared to even approach one (nor has Andrew).  So, some girl somewhere go check them out and let us know what they are about.  You’ll be sure to recognize them; as they are pink.  With many flowers.  Ponies are often involved as well.

What really grabbed our attention are the games that are “more” than any that we see in North America (typically), though.

The first of relevance is a mech-combat game that looks insanely in-depth.  Each player has their own P.O.D., which is a totally-enclosed chamber that the player sits in (presumably with screens on all sides and amble controls) from which they control their mech.  Normally there are groups of about 4 of these.  What I assume happens is that a group/guild forms a team of 4, which then all go to this location and each of them climb into a P.O.D., so that they each control one of the 4 mechs.  Then they join up with their opponents across the network (a red-vs-blue sort of idea) and duke it out; their team of mechs against their opponents.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the P.O.D.’s were voice-linked as well (remember, they are enclosed — when a player is inside you cannot see any of what they are doing or hear anything from within), to aid in the team-play.  Outside of the P.O.D.’s, spectators can view what is going on by way of a large screen that displays the map that the mechs are combatting on (each mech represented by either a blue or a red dot and that mech’s name) and intelligently “zooms in” to view action as it occurs (i.e. on firefights).  It looks very cool.  Andrew and I haven’t tried it; as it would take a far better understanding of the Japanese language than I have (and quite possibly more players than just us two); but it looks great.

The second relevant thing is that many arcade games over here let you actually save your progress on a card.  The first time that you start the game; it prompts if you want to use a card.  If you have one; you just insert it and pickup from where you left off.  If you don’t, then the machine will make you one for a small fee; or you can choose to continue with no card at all (in which case your progress will not be saved).  Seriously, these cards are everywhere — shooting games, racing games, etc.

The third, and by far the most exciting of the things that we have seen, also has to do with cards.  Specifically, it appears to be a strange combination of CCG and arcade game.  So far we have seen football, soccer, mech-combat (gundam), warlord-combat (samurai, as in Dynasty Warriors), and role-playing (as in D&D or other similar RPGs) implementations of it.  The basic premise is that each player has a station where they sit down and produce a deck of cards (their personal deck of cards).  In front of them is a black matte surface that looks sort of like a mousepad and is roughly 2 feet by 2 feet.  In front of that is a screen, and there are various accoutrements/slots/buttons on the side.

The player picks out the cards that they want to use from their deck and place them on the black matte surface in front of them, insert their coins, and the game initializes.  Using the warlords game for an example, the screen shows a scenario (i.e. besieging a castle), with either a computer (or, I expect, an opposing player) playing one side and the seated player playing the other.  The player’s units on the screen take up positions matching the cards on the play surface.  I don’t know what they use; but there is some manner of instantaneous detection of what card is where, and what each card represents; and it is instantly portrayed into the game on the screen.  So the player arranges their cards on the surface, and the screen shows their starting formation; and then the player OKs it and the game starts.

Basically what it boils down to is a tactical combat, where players move the cards on the surface, which relays to movement on the screen, and then all the units attack each other and finally (eventually) a single victor arises.  Special attacks can be carried out by using the buttons to the side; and I suspect (though I am not sure) that the formation and relative locations of the units may play a role in what special attacks can be launched when.  It also appears that the winner of the game receives their loot as booster packs of cards, which can be used to supplement their deck; and I think they also have a personal card that keeps track of their experience, progression, etc.

In some cases, the game goes even further — in the gundam one, not only are there individual stations, but there is a huge screen/combat map in front of all of them that displays the current state of the world between the two sides (players need to choose one of two sides to play on) with markings for contested areas and combat zones; and the players work at fighting the other side to try and win the entire map for their side.  Judging from the number of individual combats visible on a single combat map; I would guess that the game is completely networked; as well, so that the game centres all play in the same (dare I say it?) consistent world.

To be blunt, it is phenomenal.  I’d never seen anything like it, and all I really want to do is to try and play it — but the language barrier and the threat of spending too many hours and too much money are stopping me from doing so.  Andrew’s the same way (particularly with the mech/gundam version).  If these games ever come to North America, I think we’ll be in trouble.  All that is saving us right now is the fact that we don’t really know how to play; and that we are leaving the country in a few days. 

I did purchase a starter pack of the warlord CCG/arcade game, though — more as a souvenir than as an actual attempt to play.

Anyways, I’ll leave that there — very cool game centers over here. 

On our second day in Osaka, we got up and did Osaka castle right off the start. From the outside, it definitely looks very nice…

… and here we are, about to enter into the castle proper.

… and some of us pretended to be tall once we got to the top of the castle.

Honestly, though, I think that Osaka castle was a little disappointing. It was very office-building-esque on the inside (hence no pictures). The entire inside of it had been renovated into a six- or seven-story museum; all with very nice hardwood floors, etc., but it has lost pretty much any pretense at authenticity.

Which is not necessarily to say that it was not interesting, however — the entire museum was basically dedicated to explaining the life and times of Hideyoshi Toyotomi, which is quite the story in and of itself (see the link for Wikipedia’s information on him). Quite interesting stuff, but it would have appeared more “natural” without the elevators, fine hardwood flooring, etc.

After we finished going through the museum inside, we headed off to eat dinner at a little okonomiyaki restaurant that we found on one of Osaka’s side-streets (although Angela is the only one that actually had okonomiyaki [sort of like an omelette], the rest of us had yakisoba [fried noodles]).

… and then the group split up. Andrew and I went in search of arcade goodness; and everybody else went in search of a rice museum, with basically no success (the exhibit was not where it was supposed to be).

After we met up again for supper (which we had at a not-very-good curry house), we decided to spend our last night in Osaka out on the town… so we went and got tickets to the movie The Devil Wears Prada. Having a bunch of time to burn before the movie started, we found quite a cool place to hang out — there was an arcade on the first and second floors, and an Australian restaurant/bar on the third floor. So Dad, Andrew, and I played at the arcade (taking the odd break for drinks in the restaurant/bar); and Mom and Angela got quietly tanked on wine. Everyone wins!
The movie itself was a curious experience because I don’t think many other people in the audience found it very funny. Ah well, you get used to laughing alone.

Our first day in Osaka we went off to Universal City, which is actually close to the same as Universal Studio, but of course it is in Osaka.  :)  It’s quite the place — has it’s own subway stop and everything (here’s a hint: get off the subway at the Universal City stop).  We spent the day going on rides; and unfortunately don’t have many pictures to show for it… some of the hilights were the Spiderman ride and the Jurassic Park ride.  The other rides were good but didn’t touch those two — and the little “movies” (15-minute action and comedy clips) that we went to were all in Japanese, so a little tough to follow (although the really high-action ones like Shrek really don’t need the conversation to be funny).

My personal favourite was the Jurassic Park ride, no question.  It’s basically a waste of time except for one huge drop at the end, but that drop makes it all worthwhile.  You even get wet… except for some of us that were wearing waterproof pants.

I don’t think Andrew will ever forgive me.

Angela liked the Spiderman ride most, I think, and it was pretty good — basically a 3-D romp around where you have to help Spiderman fight all his worst enemies.  It’s fun, but to be honest there were two problems.  The first being that if your legs aren’t stubby, they hit the car that you are riding in quite sharply when the car makes sudden stops/turns, etc. (leaving you with bruised legs); and the second being that the 3-D’ness gave me headaches.  I don’t normally get it from 3-D glasses/etc., but I think this ride was a special case…

Anyway, after Jurassic Park, we had to have… meat!  Yum…

… and then we messed around in the gift shop a bit.

He’s be-a-utiful, ain’t he? After the Jaws ride we found a similar cap (the Jaws ride was not spectacular, which is why I didn’t really mention it…).

If I would have been thinking we would have bought both and then fought to the death.  Alas.  Maybe next time…

So, we’re here in an internet cafe (in Kyoto) for the second time, writing up posts, uploading photos and cleaning things up so that we can continue on with all of our fun times (Kyoto again tomorrow and then Nara the day after that). I thought I should post some of this stuff before I forgot about it though, so here we go.

In preparation for this trip, I took a few steps. First I allocated a Gallery2 area in http://gallery.fryhole.org/ which is dedicated to the photos for the trip, and I figured out where I was planning to log/blog it (obviously, http://www.fryhole.org). Then I got ahold of a USB mini-drive (4GB), and installed GalleryRemote to it (along with a fairly annoying-to-write batch file to execute GalleryRemote, as it isn’t good about being installed in a “roaming” way), along with a port knocking suite, puTTY, WinSCP, and other essentials. Finally, I went out and got a 15-in-1 USB mediaGear card reader, to get files off of CF/SD/whatever cards and onto the computer in the first place. It all worked flawlessly at home, and then it (of course) all got bolloxed up when we got to Japan; and all my carefully-laid plans were ruined.

The main problem is that the USB mini-drive that I had setup for all of the fancy scripts/applications/etc. that were going to make it oh-so-easy to connect to this server from anywhere doesn’t work on any of the systems over here. It should simply show up as a USB mass-storage device, but it doesn’t. Hasn’t worked once.Ever.  I don’t know if we jostled it wrong and broke it on the way over; or maybe it just doesn’t work on computers running in the Japanese region for some arcane reason.

What I do know is that it made things a royal pain, although hopefully that is at an end now, as I have (just now) managed to rebuild some of it on a recently-purchased SD card (which is readable through the mediaGear card reader). Which brings us to my list of tips:

1. Limit points of failure - There is no reason for a USB thumbdrive/mini-drive if you are bringing a card reader. Use a card that the card-reader can read. Then you only ever need to have a single thing that works on the foreign systems (the card reader), and you should be fine.  If it doesn’t work, buy one that does on-site at your travel location (which should work great for things like card readers).
2. Publically accessible backup for convenience and recovery - Rebuilding my convenience scripts on the SD card would have been child’s play if I had compressed a copy of what was on the USB minidrive and put it somewhere publically accessible. I could’ve downloaded it, decompressed it onto the card; and been completely done. Now, I’ve munged up a quick-and-dirty workable solution; but it isn’t as clean or elegant as the copy that I originally had setup. And it took quite a long time (comparatively). Clearly, be careful with this if you are including SSH keys or passwords in it. This will also be useful if you do have a card and it gets destroyed (get a new card, uncompress to it, and you are done).
3. Simplify Passwords - Extended characters can be extremely hard to get out of keyboards in foreign countries. Simplifying characters to letters/numbers can help you type them immensely. This is less secure from one perspective; but think about what happens if a computer in a internet cafe has a key monitor running? Change your passwords back to your normal ones when you get back; and you’ve made it easier on yourself and protected against others having found out your password (albeit with slightly weaker passwords during the interim).
4. Use Throwaways - Use throw-away keys and port-knock sequences. Allocate them, use them while on your trip, and then disable/change/expire them when you get back. This also protects against losing a thumbdrive or other storage medium that contains them.

That’s all I have right now; I might update later if I think of other things. I want the list for the next time that I need to do this.

We were woken up in Tōya by the massive rolling wave of Angela.  Futons make that entirely too difficult, but I suppose it is one of the hazards of sleeping on them… no cover against the roiling violence of a sister.  After beating her into submission with a hail of pillows, we got ready to move out and went downstairs to have breakfast at the Ryokan and then left for the bus station.  Once there, we spent some time locating the correct bus back to the Tōya train station… train schedules are quite a bit easier to read than bus schedules; but eventually Angela and I came up with the same time from two independent sources of information, so we were pretty confident it was correct… and thankfully it turned out to be, as the bus that we caught got us to the station 8 minutes before our scheduled departure.  It turned out to be lots of time; but still is a little closer than we wanted to cut it.

We took the train to Hakodate, which was a very nice trip along the coastline of Hokkaido.  Once there we checked into a nearby hotel (we knew the next morning was going to earlier than usual, due to the trip to Sendai, so we wanted a hotel close to the train station) and immediately headed for the pentagonal fort that had been the Tokugawa loyalists last stand against the Meiji troops.  Along the way, we chose a restaurant that we thought the guidebook was directing us to, but we’re really not sure… because we still don’t know the name of the place that we ate.  It was a little bit off of the main road, but noticeable because it had an aquarium of live squid out front (no pictures of that, sorry).  In any case, the restaurant was great service and food!

Dad had a beer and a grilled fish that he and Ma were able to subdue with joint co-operation.

Angela had squid.  No doubt one from the tank outside, the poor little cutey.

The fort was just down the road, and we headed there forthwith after lunch.  There isn’t much left of it, but it looks to have been quite impressive at one point in time.  You can rarely see the original stone-working, but what there is looks very well done.

The moat surrounding the outer perimeter of the fort — viewed from above, this forms the pentagonal shape.

Some of the original stonework, partially obscured by trees.  The fort would be much more impressive in the spring, I believe, because 4,000 sakura (cherry blossom) trees have been planted around the fort and its area, which would be very impressive to see during full bloom.  One time I’ll hit Japan at the right time to see it… next time.

Mom and Dad under some of the foliage that currently lords over the fort.

We wandered through the fort a bit more, and then we saw the cannons.  They were remnants of the original fort and looked interesting; and we only had to wait a little while for the area to clear so that we could take this picture.

There was no sign saying we couldn’t.  I swear.

After the fort we were somewhat at a loss where to go… the only other thing on our list of things to do in Hakodate was the nightview, and it wasn’t yet late enough to warrant going up the tram to the top of Hakodate-yama to see it.  Luckily we ran across a sign for “the cape”… and we were off!  After a street-car ride and about 1.5 km of walking we ended up at the end of the cape, which turned out to be quite the scenic spot.  There are a variety of photos in the album; I will just choose a few of them here…

Angela and Mom out on the rocks at the end of the cape.

The cape, with a lowering sun behind it.  The sun was setting the whole time, which leads to my favourite picture of the bunch…

The sun setting behind the isle of Hakodate, across the Tsugaru straights.  I wanted to wait around for the sun to actually set, but it was still up in the sky enough that we had some time to burn, so we decided to head for the top of Hakodate-yama and try to see the sunset up there.  We headed out, and we actually managed to see a shrine dedicated to the fallen retainers of the Tokugawa and a Buddhist temple and Shinto shrine along the way.  Hakodate is one of those cities where you cannot round a corner without running into something historic.

We made it to the tram and to the top of Hakodate mountain before the sun had finished setting, but unfortunately by that time the horizon had clouded up, so I don’t have any fantastic pictures to add of that. :(  The nightview of Hakodate from Hakodate-yama was certainly magnificent, though!

The city of Hakodate, bracketed by the Tsugaru straights on either side.

After checking out the night view we headed back down the tram and back into the city proper, heading back towards our hotel… but then we were struck by a religious epiphany as we contemplated supper.

The Church of Beer.  Normally I am not one to be very religious; but if there is one thing that would make me so… Angela can still feel its warmth deep in her soul.  It’s actually a micro-brewery inside, and we ended up sampling multiple different beers, but the ones that really stick in my mind were Green Apple Beer (it was OK) and Grapefruit Beer (it was good).  Why oh why don’t they bottle these things for export?

It was getting late, however, and we knew it would be a long travel day tomorrow for the trip from Hakodate right through to Sendai, so we headed back to the hotel and went to bed.

Have managed to be un-Dellz0red in Sendai!  See the posts that have been done.  :)

Currently we are in Hakodate (tomorrow we head for Sendai, leaving Hokkaido for the main island of Honshu).  We had full intention of using this time to post about the vacation thus far, but the hotel provides Dell workstations for people to use (of all things), and for whatever reason they are not recognizing any of my USB dongles.  So no pictures… and without pictures to discuss I find that I don’t know what to write about!

So what we are going to do is try again from Sendai tomorrow and see if we can get things working.  I’ll leave you with these teasers, one for each day that we have been here:

1. Sapporo, Hokkaido - Welcomed by a well-known Japanese hero.
2. Otaru, Hokkaido - No snow (yet), but we went skiing.
3. Toya, Hokkaido - Quite the steamy undertaking.
4. Hakodate, Hokkaido - “Hey… see that sign?” quoth Herman, in The Simpsons.

Andrew, if you are reading this… practice the following saying for your arrival later this week:

Hiragana: もうひとつおねあいします。

Romaji: mou hitotsu onegai shimasu

Sound-alike: moe he-taught-sue oh-ne-gai she-moss

Trust me,　you shall need it.

Otaru is only one hour of of Sapporo on a fairly slow-esque JR train, so it was a quick trip to make during the afternoon of the 27th.  We ate lunch as soon as we got to Otaru; stopping in at a buffet near the waterfront.  Otaru is a sea-side town, and we concentrated mostly on sea-food at the buffet… to the extent that everyone ended up eating too much; so we’ve since placed a ban on buffets for lunch.  :P  Otaru has a canal (see the picture below), and there is a thin strip of buildings between the canal and the waterfront, which is where our lunch restaurant was.

After eating we spent a few hours walking through the Otaru crafts district, just back from the waterfront.  There were a few areas of distinction — first, they take great pride in their glass-blowing in Otaru, and we stopped for a few minutes to watch a few Japanese teenagers create glasses with the help of the expert attendants… it was interesting to watch and would have been fun to try; but really where would we keep something like a glass that would not involve it being broken as we back-packed south?

Secondly, Dad made a brand-new friend.

… and I was almost successful in getting Ang eaten by a bear.

After wandering through the crafts district we headed back to our hotel to complete our check-in (they were holding our backpacks for us at the counter), and encountered a bit of stunning advice.

Yeah, that’s right… you heard the sign!  Get lubing…

After checking into the hotel we decided that we had some daylight left to burn and so we headed to Mount Tenguyama (literally means Mountain of Goblins), which is a nearby mountain that is a skihill in the winter but open for tram rides in the summer.  The tram was still running and we took it up to the top, where we found ourselves dropped off in a building containing a museum full of goblin masks.

Leaving the tram drop-off building ruled by goblins, we found ourselves with quite a sweeping view of Otaru below, nestled between the mountain and the sea.

Daylight was fading fast, though, and we had a job to do.  See, the tram ticket operator had offered us either a one-way or a round-trip pass to the tram.  I urged us to take the one-way… not sure why, entirely… but Mom and Dad had been complaining of not enough hiking, so I anticipated that we could find a hiking trail down the mountain and sate that particular desire.

So we had to find our way down the mountain.  With limited light, and it was fading… we hiked around a bit at the top on some trails that were laid out, but didn’t see anything that led downwards much… so we finally just bit the bullet and descended the ski slope.  It’s not as easy as it sounds!

It was clearly at a steep angle; and it had very treacherous footing as well… mostly because of the imperfect job of clearing it of brush that had been done.  It looked like people had gone through the entire slope with machetes, hacking everything down to a few inches (but no smaller — there was always at least an inch or two of stem remaining to trip any hiker up), and then leaving the now-detached stalk/trunk/whatever on the slope.

It really doesn’t matter for the ski-slope; I suppose that it is all covered with snow before anyone tries to ski on it at all; but for us hiking down it was… difficult.  It was slow, extremely difficult going; but eventually we made it to the halfway point.  That point is of particular importance, because it got us two things.  First, the slope lessened significantly for the second half, making it a less dangerous road to follow; and second we gained some light, thanks to the buildings that lay below us and cast their light-pollution upwards.

We sat down to rest for a few moments, and as night darkened we got a very nice nightview of Otaru.

… almost makes the painful descent worthwhile. 

After descending the rest of the way and grabbing a bus back into Otaru proper; we headed out to another waterfront establishment for a quick snack — we hadn’t eaten since lunch; but then again the lunch buffet still had most of us quite full.  We were pleasantly surprised to run across a restaurant that had live jazz entertainment, which made the light snack more enjoyable.

We arrived in Sapporo rather tiredly — me perhaps moreso than others!  We ate at the Tokyo airport (NRT) before catching our flight to Sapporo and I had had a drink — I shrugged it off at the time; but after ascending to cruise altitude on the flight from Tokyo to Sapporo the alcohol hit with a vengeance… even though it was just a single drink!  We did manage to find our reservation for the night, although that may be thanks to the proprietress, who came running out to greet us.  We stayed at a Ryokan the first night, using the communal baths (they are really quite nice once you get past any hangups) and then sleeping immediately.

When we got up the next morning, a hero known around the world welcomed us to Sapporo!

We wandered around Sapporo for a bit, eventually seeing the clock tower…

 … and thereafter deciding that Angela is, in fact, a turtle.  Lookit here…

… if you tipped her over directly onto her back, do you really think that she would be able to get up again?!?

After exploring Sapporo a little bit we headed to the brewery of Sapporo brand beer… and in exploring the history of Sapporo beer we found that they had created the ultimate brew known to man kind:

Afterwards we sampled the complete selection (currently) offered by Sapporo breweries (sorry, it turns out that Cock Brand is actually no longer offered).

… but, it was still early in the day, being just starting on the afternoon, so we took off to Otaru.

So we’re in NRT (Tokyo internation airport), waiting for our connecting flight to Sapporo.  We head to a noodle shop to have some soba, and in the noodle shop they are playing a cover of the Spice Girls song named “Wanna be…” (or whatever else the name of it is; something like that).

 Very strange — there’s a nice elderly family of Japanese people across the aisle, a lone twenty-something guy flipping through a manga as he eats to our left; and there’s this “Wanna be your lover…” crooning over the loudspeakers.

 Luckily, they had Chu-Hai.  And the alcohol on the JAL flight from Vancouver to Tokyo was free.

OMGWTFDRINKING.

What a weekend. We don’t pretend to understand Roger’s Law, we just enforce it.

“The chosen drinks of the night are Jagger, Absinthe and Tequila, anything else will result in my mocking you.”

So it is written, and so it was done. Fortunately, Dr. Mupper (Dr. Pepper, Mug Rootbear, and Jaegerwulf) was invented just in time to help.