Off to Tokyo, Japan

Sitting in San Francisco Airport, waiting to grab my flight to Tokyo, Japan – and yes... I'm pretty stoked!

It's hard to describe my eagerness to get back there. I was grinning like a madman when I walked through security, which probably explains why rather than sending me through the metal detector, they sent me through some other monster that did magical wave stuff. One pat down later and I was through. America – they are not big fans of putting me into the country, but they're so quick at getting me out. And right now? I couldn't be more pleased.

I'm waiting to grab my JAL flight, and waiting for a new airline is kind of like waiting for a blind date. Will this airline be pretty? Will it give me my space, or be needy and stifling? Will it expect me to pay for dinner, or make an offer of its own? How does it feel about drinking? Will it want to watch a movie, or prefer silence and quiet?

Comparing dating to airplanes – clearly I did not date enough that this is the metaphor that strikes me.

Come on movies built into seats! That's all I want. 11 hours of god awful movies. And due to the wonders of time zones, I'll be rolling in to Tokyo around midnight, but it won't be midnight – it will be four in the afternoon. Oh yeah, after all those movies I will be all sorts of loopy, and that really, really excites me. Now if there are no movies, I'll have to read. But if I spend my time reading I will eventually grow tired, and then sleep, and then be much less loopy. And really, that's all part of the fun.

Also – I'm meeting friends at the airport, which means if I'm a wee bit crazy they'll help point me in the right direction.

In case of meeting problems I'm prepared with a print out of directions that will point me in the right direction. I have no real faith in this – but I do have faith in the phone number that is attached to it.

Boarding the plane, I delighted in the fact that there were built in movies. I selected Up in the Air, and watched corporate America go to work. It was charming, and didn't play out in the cliché way. For that, it gets my stamp of approval.

I then selected a Japanese Movie, A Good Husband, and began to watch it. Ten minutes in, I couldn't read the subtitles. I pressed pause, and fell off to sleep. Somewhere, due to the magic of time zones, March 31st ended.

Game Demo Day

[authors note: I am behind in blogging. In real life it's a few hours until April 6, but in this chronological blog date, it's only March 30th. I clearly have a lot to write, and would like to try and catch up. So, we'll see how this goes.]

Too many video game demos.

It's my final day in California, and it's my final day with video games. This means but one thing – play as many as possible before I lose the ability for some great time to come. I can't recall all the things I played, and that's probably for the best. There was a great collection of terrible in the mix. I'm now really starting to appreciate the difference between a good game, and a god awful game. And it's shocking that they still exist. Back in the day you could just flood shelf space and someone would buy your game, but in this world of demos, if you have a crap product – well then people will know.

It's a good thing most people don't research before they buy.

There was some terrible fairytale game that I thought was promising – it was not. There was a game called WET which you go and shoot people in bullet time, sliding, jumping, and wall running. If the animations were polished, and the game wasn't suffering from disconnected elements – such as the transition in and out of slow motion – it could have been something. As it was? Lame.

Then there was Just Cause 2. This had promise, but I failed at it, failed because I just couldn't get a handle on the Bionic Commander grapple hook. There seemed to be a lot of promise to this one though. As for Red Faction, which I'm told was lovely – I just couldn't get into it either. But I think this was just failing of the demo. The game seemed solid, I just didn't have a handle on the controls.

Then there were the good games. Games like God of War 3, which really made me want to go back and play 1 and 2 again. Well 2 for the first time. I noticed that the protagonist could fly momentarily using Icarus's wings. This implies that in an earlier game he killed said winged god and ripped them off. I would like to play out that section.

And Bayonetta. I was not expecting this to be as good as it was, but it was so slick and polished – and a whole lot of silly gun shooting, magic, tongue in cheek fun. Good for it being such a lovely game.

And then there were the downloadable games. There is a great number of cute little games that are small, and only a few bucks. The demos of these were pretty lovely too. Pixel Junk Eden? I highly recommend it. It's just a fun trippy game. And Fat Princess? capture the flag meets the internet shouting out ideas. The demos for both had a good amount of full game play – so even for one not looking to buy, it's worth checking out.

At six my buddy got back from work. It was at this point that I subjected him to the last two years of games, through demos. To this point the PS3 was mostly just a movie player for him. But this may have changed (and I'm not sure if this is a terrible terrible thing I've brought upon him or not.) But he saw Bio Shock, and Heavy Rain (what a demo – as wonderful as I thought it would be!), and all those mentioned above... except for the terrible ones, which I'd filtered.

Yes – that's me, filtering the terrible, bringing video game love to all the good boys and girls.

After more gaming we decided that would would probably be an acceptable thing. In this case? Burgers. Fridge burgers, with year old ketchup, and BBQ sauce that still seemed alright. Cutting mold off cheese made that just fine too.

Feast feast feast, and then that was that. Day over. Stay over. Tomorrow I will wake up and head on out to the airport. Huzzah!

It's a Digital Thing

So, today – big times. Woke up early, played some games. Played some more games. Ate a chocolate bar. Games were played. In all fairness though, these were co-op games so it counts as socializing.

Then it was seven o'clock and we both realized perhaps it was time for breakfast. And your assumption that this was seven o'clock at night? Yeah, that's pretty much correct.

But where did dinner take us? Oh where indeed. The place that I think I might need to visit at least once on every future American tour – The Olive Garden. I'd say I've not been there since forever, but we all know that's not true. Three months back in Florida it was just as wonderful.

But – this time – I'd learned my lesson. I knew the portions would be huge, and that there was no need to get anything gigantic. Nope, this guy went for the smalled thing he could get. But the bread sticks, and the potatoes and sausage soup – they just kept coming. By the time my ravioli showed up, it was a disaster just to think about. A wonderfully delicious disaster.

This blog – brought to you by the Olive Garden, over feeding people at cheap prices since – well a long time ago. It's for the best they're not in Canada anymore, I do believe. So much food. So very very much food.

And that was a wonderful escape. So then we headed back and cleared Lego Star Wars and all the bonus levels.

And then? Well then my gracious host went to sleep as he'd have work the next day. Me? I went demo crazy on the PS3. I downloaded and played the Ghost Busters demo, and the Heavy Rain demo. Ghost Busters – maybe not the greatest game, but the story looked solid, and as it's considered canon as “Ghost Busters 3” I will need to get around to it.

Heavy Rain? Well, I'm sold – sold on the controls, and the game play. Granted the voice acting is just as terrible as everyone has been saying (really? French accents all around? No better talent? Please.) but it was still enough to make me seek out an opportunity to get my hands on it some time in the future.

And there were others. Some good, some bad, but all important enough to experience. Just to know what they're like. And with download speeds faster than 1.5MB a second, well there's the bandwidth to support this newly discovered addiction.

Katimari came too.

Eventually, say five am, I decided it was best to go to sleep. Which I did.

Alone in a house with a PS3 and super download speeds, and so many games that I've not yet played. What oh what will tomorrow bring? Pray for me. It can only go downhill (read: uphill) from here.

Lego Star Wars and Hot Tub Time Machines

So that trip to Fry's the other day? It led to a terrible thing. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga was purchased. This, of course, meant that we had to play Lego Star Wars. And this meant that hour simply disappeared.

As if that was not bad enough, I also found myself saying, “Hey, what is Little Big Planet really like?” And then a terrible amount of downloadable levels were played. I will have you know that the Street Fighter Two levels? Superb. Absolutely wonderfully detailed.

And then it was seven o'clock.

The two friends that I had met over different days combined forces and we became a group of four heading out for good Italian food, and then over to the movie theatre. And what movie were we headed to watch? Hot Tub Time Machine, of course.

I didn't think I'd say this – but it was a super good movie. It doesn't take itself all that serious and it was a lot of fun. Alright – no I feel slightly dirty. What did I do today? I played video games, and I watched a terrible (read: delightful) movie. And that was just about all – except for when I caught up on my watching of LOST to get myself to the current episode.

So, not really doing all that much in Silicon Valley, but I can tell you it's everything I'd want to do. I do not need to always see the sights. I am more than content to hang out with good people and do regular every day things. It's a good life, and here's to good people.

Yup – that's all. After the movie more games ensued, and we cleared Lego Star Wars to the end of Episode IV. Big exciting day, and tomorrow? I'm expecting more the same.

CONSUME!

Alrighty, well let us look at today, shall we? Started off with a bowl full of cheerios, and over the next gew hours there were some chocolate bars involved. Delicious Caramilk bars. This would be food until night. And this was all good and fine, because – well – one meal a day sounds right for me.

Now it should be noted that breakfast was at around 11, as that's when I dragged myself back to life on the couch. I'd spent most of the night in and out of sleep uploading a good four or five gigs of videos that have been gathering on my memory cards for the last few months.

There's something nice about being in the tech capital of the world, and that is that there s some excellent internet access out here. Under normal instances those videos would never have made their way onto the web due to lack of ability to get them up – but now? In theory I'll re-integrate them with their correct posts – but not right now. You can check them out at my YouTube account if you please - www.oneyeartrip.com/oneyeartrip/

So there I was being awake, and of course that led to Uncharted, and then that led to watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off. And then there was some more media consumed, and some more video games – until the PS3 overheated and needed some time to cool down. So that was for the best.

Repeat this a few times and that brings us to about seven o'clock where it was decided that food would be a good thing. Food and a second PS3 controller. So off to Fry's. I had never seen a Fry's, though I knew of it from Douglas Coupland's Microserfs. Fry's is an everything store which has a tech focus. It also has themes. The one around here is Western theme complete with fake cactus, and wagon out front. Inside it continues with horses, and other such nonsense. My one comment as we entered, “why is this real?”

With PS3 controller in hand, and an impulse buy of Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga – value at twenty dollars – we headed off for food.

Another of my buddy's friends joined us for tasty Chicago style pizza. And it was there that my desire to head to Chicago grew. Not really to see the city as much as I'd like to eat the food there. I mean if this pizza was so good here, how could it be anything but perfection up there?

It was also at the pizza place that the guy at the table next to us drunkenly suggested that I might be an undercover cop he once worked with – and that if I wasn't, there was a job for me. Good to know. And part of me wondered, having watched a lot of COPS here, what would it really take to get a job working with the police? Infiltrating biker gangs didn't sound too appealing though.

It was then suggested to my buddy's friend that before he marries his girlfriend (dude at the table over had been paying good attention to our conversations) he should first go to Iceland, hook up with an Icelandic chick, eat some whale, and then get married. The drink dudes wife seemed to think this wasn't a terrible idea either. Strange things occur at the pizza shop.

The next six hours, until four in the morning, were consumed with watching media, games, and discussions about Star Trek, Star Wars, BSG – and how the last ten minutes destroyed the entire bloody series, and Star Gate.

While I recall that we watched a number of things ranging from Titan AE to the Family Guy Star Wars spoofs, I really only recall the Family Guy episodes. And how fantastic they were – what was I doing avoiding them for so long? During the other things conversation took over. I seem to recall a lot of time being needed to properly discuss the ramifications that the last ten minutes of Battlestar Galactica had on the entire series. It was that terribly terrible.

And then to prove that we were terribly geeky we scrolled though the plot summaries of all the Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes. Tragically when we were done going through them it was like we had actually seen them. There's a lot of tragic knowledge stored there.

I also had the pleasure of bringing the joys of Dr. Horrible to someone who had never seen it – and really should have. Unfortunately there wasn't time to watch Look Around You – also good. But, I did play some Robot Unicorn, and that – that made everything alright.

So yes, there it is – media consumption, terrible geekdom, and that's just fine. Hell, think of where I am – it's about par for the course, yeah?