Well, in my case, I decided that I wasn't spending enough time in front of the computer as it is, and so volunteered my services for an online translation (fan) project. Japanese to English. On lj. Of a certain someone's blog. So I spent something like 4 hours last night labouring over bizarre sentence structures and even wierder katakana words [katakana: the alphebet/script used in Japanese usually for foreign words and loan words]. I'm heavily dependent on the online J-> E dictionary, and am struggling to make the text sound natural in English. Booh.
In other news, I spent quite a long while (maybe amost an hour?) in Kino yesterday looking at manga and trying to find stuff by Yuki Kaori (she who wrote the Count Cain series I was blithering on about in an earlier entry). Was about to give up scouring the shelves when I found her books nestled right next to Hino Matsuri's (of Vampire Knight fame) and realised that she was for some strange reason out of the alphabetical order. But anyway, I chose to go with Neji, a single volume standalone, as they only had the fifth title in the Count Cain series, God Child.
It has 3 seperate but continuous stories, and I've finished 2 so far. It's science fiction as opposed to the fantasy/horror/gothic genres I know her for, but I'm enjoying it a lot. The stories centre around Neji, a young boy who was cryrogenically frozen along with his girlfriend after they were brutally killed in 1992. His corpse is appropriated by a government body that carries out research into ESP and other powers, and they experiment on him. When he finally wakes up 40 years later, his memories are wiped, and they coerce him into training his powers and try to make an assassin out of him. Her art's pretty, but it has the problem of having characters that are hard to distinguish from one another.
In other news, I spent quite a long while (maybe amost an hour?) in Kino yesterday looking at manga and trying to find stuff by Yuki Kaori (she who wrote the Count Cain series I was blithering on about in an earlier entry). Was about to give up scouring the shelves when I found her books nestled right next to Hino Matsuri's (of Vampire Knight fame) and realised that she was for some strange reason out of the alphabetical order. But anyway, I chose to go with Neji, a single volume standalone, as they only had the fifth title in the Count Cain series, God Child.
It has 3 seperate but continuous stories, and I've finished 2 so far. It's science fiction as opposed to the fantasy/horror/gothic genres I know her for, but I'm enjoying it a lot. The stories centre around Neji, a young boy who was cryrogenically frozen along with his girlfriend after they were brutally killed in 1992. His corpse is appropriated by a government body that carries out research into ESP and other powers, and they experiment on him. When he finally wakes up 40 years later, his memories are wiped, and they coerce him into training his powers and try to make an assassin out of him. Her art's pretty, but it has the problem of having characters that are hard to distinguish from one another.
Edit: I forgot to add that I was really surprised to find that the volume I bought was from the first print run, way back in 2001. So does that mean that the book's been sitting on the bookstore's shelves for the past 7 years or so? Hmmm.
And here we have a shot of a yummy green tea flavoured mooncake!!! Bought our first box of mooncakes a few days ago. Gosh I love green tea mooncakes! Anne and Pygmy might recognise the saucer in the picture. :p I realised it was the perfect size for these miniature mooncakes! Wehey!
Oh, I -did- manage to get a clam/flip phone in the end! I threw my vague sense of brand loyalty into the air and went with Sony Ericsson. ^-^ I'm still not used to their predictive text platform, though. Hrmmm.
Looks like the rainy (more like stormy) spell we've been having is still going to continue for a while. It was annoyingly sunny for a while earlier this morning, but the felines and canines are now descending upon this tiny little splodge of a country once more.
And here we have a shot of a yummy green tea flavoured mooncake!!! Bought our first box of mooncakes a few days ago. Gosh I love green tea mooncakes! Anne and Pygmy might recognise the saucer in the picture. :p I realised it was the perfect size for these miniature mooncakes! Wehey!
Oh, I -did- manage to get a clam/flip phone in the end! I threw my vague sense of brand loyalty into the air and went with Sony Ericsson. ^-^ I'm still not used to their predictive text platform, though. Hrmmm.
Looks like the rainy (more like stormy) spell we've been having is still going to continue for a while. It was annoyingly sunny for a while earlier this morning, but the felines and canines are now descending upon this tiny little splodge of a country once more.
6 comments:
Your translation services are a totally valid form of computer-gazing time! That sounds like very good Japanese practice, even if it is rather laborious.
I'm not really a humongous fan of sci-fi (with some important exceptions), and tend to prefer fantasy/horror/gothic-y stuff. That does sound like a pretty interesting storyline though... Perhaps I'm in a sci-fi mood at the moment anyway cos I'm reading Dune.
You seem very happy about the mooncakes! (And yes I do recognise that saucer.) I had green tea flavoured ice cream today at brunch with my boss (her apology to me for not being boozey enough lately, as I feel is only proper), it was nummy!
Ahh, mooncake... gotta love it. Use dto gett hem in Vancouver but in London I've just found one place in Chinatown and it's super £££. And I've never tried green tea flavour...
@Anne: Haha, I used to be a total Star Wars geek, and used to read the novels as well. I never went on to the whole Isaac Asimov stuff and all, though. Mm, this manga artist did some retellings of Grimm fairytales, which remind me a little of Angela Carter. There's a series with a necrophilic narcissistic prince who encounters Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding hood, and so on.
Yes, this sci-fi volume is really quite interesting. The main character has just encountered his brother's grandchildren, and they're the same age as he is! Haha.
Yup, mooncakes are wonderfully sublime. xD Yay for green tea flavoured ice cream! Haagen Daz does it here and in Japan as well! Mmmm. *wipes drool off keyboard* :p
@Juno: Boo, London stinks in that respect. The stuff in Chinatown is disgustingly overpriced!! Green tea flavoured mooncakes are a pretty new introduction. Think they only started making them about 5/6 years ago. The 'craze' seems to be dying down, though. I didn't see that many around when I was shopping the other day, which worried me.... >.< Now new fangled flavours with chocolate, champagne, cognac, pomolo, etc seem to be in. I'm slightly suspicious of those. Haha.
Ooh the retellings of the Grimm fairytales definitely sound interesting. I love stuff like that! I may have to check her out... (Or rather add her to the ever-growing list of things that I must check out. Argh.)
I like the idea of encountering the next-next-gen. I'm going to claim that it's a vampire story trope that's clearly been stolen by sci-fi, even though I doubt that it's true. But vampires clearly win at everything.
I don't think that I've ever had mooncakes. I feel so left out. Cognac flavoured anything doesn't sound too bad to me though!
Haha, you can read that series oh so legally online here: http://www.onemanga.com/Ludwig_Kakumei/
:p
Yay, I have someone on my side in the battle of Vampires vs Werewolves against Lyca!! Hehe. Vampires obviously pwn werewolves.
Mmm, I'll look into sending some over your way!! I'll have to get mooncakes with baked skin as opposed to the soft 'snow' skin ones.
Danke! Will bookmark and come back to it later.
You definitely have me on your side for that battle, as long as it doesn't turn out to be as lame as Underworld.
Moons with baked skins! This sounds like a fantasy novel...
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