Post-Vacation & Christmas!

Well, I've returned from the state of Florida, aka what keeps FARK alive :), and all went quite positively alright. My one day stop to Disney World's Epcot was quite exciting, and as far as this blog is concerned, the Japanese place at Epcot, while not very culturally stimulating, was certainly commercially interesting especially since they have updated the massive store to incorporate a plethora of pocky, ramune, instant ramen, & other Japanese food items. More importantly, since right now I'm South Beach-ing it and cannot have sugar, there is now a nice presence of anime type material, including Bleach, Naruto, and even Inuyasha plushies and shirts, while also filling out with the higher price items such as figures and models from Evangeleon and Final Fantasy VII. I was looking for any more Bleach or Naruto material at the time, so instead I reached out to their book section and picked up "Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation" by Helen McCarthy. Already, I've realize 1) I need to check out more about Miyazaki and 2) this is also just a good general introduction into the basics of how animation is made, at least the early chapters, so I am enjoying how this is giving me more than just Miyazaki, although obviously that is what I bought the book for. I also picked up a couple pretty cool, artsy postcards which I'll have to scan and post up, while my brother bought a Japanese novel translated into English, one of the early Japanese novels as its mentioned on the book, so that should be pretty cool. Otherwise, we just enjoyed our trip to warmer climates, only to return to the more mild-cold that I'm living in currently.

Of course, today is Christmas day which is always exciting for me. Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate out there by the way. But yeah, back to my Christmas. Basically, celebrated with friends, messaged some people to say hey, and I have been playing, or preparing to play, with my presents since about 10am this morning. My main grabs were the Dark Knight (Special Edition), the 1st Bleach Movie (Special Edition?), the book "Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide", and 25$ worth of iTunes music to buffer my radio show with more J-Rock & J-Pop tracks. I'm quite thankful for all these gifts and I have already begun to avoid Karasu-tengu breeding grounds (thankfully not living in Japan makes one less susceptible to Japanese monsters, usually), but I was really excited as well with some of the gifts I gave my brother, which maybe a bad thing but oh well.

Essentially, last year I ended up getting him 5 gifts, and I thought I wouldn't do it again, but alas I failed, so this year he got 6 gifts including the box set for Full Metal Panic: Fumoffu, the Bleach Wii game, a Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad pin, which I also found one more myself, and a Leek Girl shirt, which turns out was for girls, thus my mom will be the likeliest, and still unlikely, candidate to wear that, but even with that last little error, all stuff I like, and thankfully he loves, so good buys even if some were a bit more self-oriented than they should be. He can always return them so even if there was a problem it could be solved by a receipt and a nearby store. All in all though, pretty awesome Christmas as usual, and I know I'll be enjoying the little I have of my break left with gifts, family, friends, & anime, so all's well.

That said I don't have much more to offer now, but hopefully you all are enjoying these hours of Christmas we have left (East coasters and westward), and I'll try to be back soon again!