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		Exploding Garrmondo Weiner Interactive Swiss Army Penis
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Peter's

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Page 11 of 13

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Aug 26, 2007 - 09:24 AM

On voice acting in games

Voice acting in video games has always been a subject of discussion, especially when it comes to RPGs, where staunch defenders of both sides (original Japanese VA or voice-overs) just can’t seem to agree on anything. I never really bothered with the debate (I am after all a lazy bastard who dislikes discussing basically anything with fanboys). However, since I am incredibly bored today, I thought I’d share my opinion on the matter. Since I mainly play RPGs, I’ll limit my ramblings on the VA in this genre.

Hardcore gamers always seem to prefer the Japanese VA, no matter how good the English translation is. A game like Digital Devil Saga or Final Fantasy XII offers excellent VA, but some people keep insisting on having an option to listen to the game in Japanese, “because that’s the way the game was intended to be”, or whatever crap they can think of. Doesn’t matter if they understand a word Japanese, they convince themselves that that is the way that it has to be. I personally disagree with this and one of my main reasons is a problem of the language.

In English, it’s much easier to use different accents to portray people from different regions, to give the player a feeling that he is exploring a vast world. Granted, not many games use this the way I would like, but FFXII is a huge step forward, with a clear difference between the Empire and Dalmasca. This really enriches the game, for example for those who played it; would Balthier be such a cool character if he sounded like just every other generic American? I think not.

The problem with Japanese is that you can’t really do it with this language. Even though the accent is generally the same in the various dialects, but expressions and words are far too different. A person from Tokyo can’t understand Kyushu-dialect, just as much as someone who was raised in Kansai-ben will have difficulty with Shikoku –or Okinawa-dialect.

So if you try to use these in a game, you will get difficulty understanding it, even native speakers will struggle, let alone foreigners who try to learn Japanese. Of course, there are the occasional characters who talk in Kansai-ben or another dialect (which is, btw, the coolest Japanese you can imagine), but they mix it with standard Japanese so that it’ll be still understandable.

So no matter how big the world is, no matter how many different races you’ll encounter, they will all talk in the same Japanese, whereas you can use English accents to differentiate. But despite this, people will still insist on having Japanese VA, they don’t understand anything, they can’t notice the subtle differences between the accents, they just don’t UNDERSTAND it. Which is why I can’t really understand their point of view, it doesn’t have anything to do with bullshit like “this is what the creators intended”, it’s just some silly insistence on having Japanese VA, for no good reason really. Some people are reasonable, and can acknowledge good English VA, but others are just too caught up in their stupid ideas to realize that there can also be BAD Japanese VA.

[3]

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[public entry #27]

Aug 23, 2007 - 11:02 AM

Recommend me a cellphone (Europeans only)

So, my old cellphone has offiically died, and I need a new one as fast as possible. Since I've become a spoiled brat with my shiny Japanese cell, I'm looking for something nice, internet, e-mail, maybe mp3-player. Anyway, I'm used to Nokia, so if anyone can recommend me a good model for a reasonable price, let me know!

(3 runes)

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[public entry #26]

Aug 22, 2007 - 10:25 AM

Home

Nothing more to say really =/.

(4 runes)

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[public entry #25]

Aug 9, 2007 - 09:19 AM

About handling my ex: the history

About a month and a half before I came to Japan, I broke up with the girl that I was going with for little more than a year. It was something that I had seen coming for long, but being the spineless coward that I am in my weaker moments, I kept putting it off, but when there were 8000 kilometers between us, it got a lot easier! Short version of why we broke up, she was getting completely and over the top obsessed with everything that I did. If I didn't appear on MSN on the time that we agreed on, I would get a hysteric phone call, and the thing that finally put me over the edge was when she started accusing me of cheating on her with a girl that I only met a few days before (even I'm not that much of a scumbag).

After taking advice from some people here, we thought of the simply brilliant idea of me proposing a break (you know, the whole cliche thing Ross and Rachel did), After sobbing, accusing me of god knows what and other crap, she reluctantly agreed. This was basically the ideal situtation for the both of us, I would finally get some rest, and she would have the time to get use to being apart, because that would be inevitable, I never really believed in all that crap about giving it another shot in a couple of months.

So, when I went home for Christmas, she called me and asked what I wanted, and I quite boldly told her that I wanted to end it. As expected, more tears, accusations, insults, yada yada. Then something rather unexpected happened, I fell sorry for her. I am not a person who is bothered by a conscience, and I never feel sorry about any of my decisions, but for some reason this kept bugging me. So I called her to apologize, and she invited me to her house to talk.

She started with the tears yet again, talking about all the good times we had, and to my relief, the scumbag in me won again, and my conscious had disappeard as it was supposed to do. I decided to play along, hoping to get a quick shag of it, and nowing how mentally unstable she can be, it worked. She was happy and all, and I started to fear that it would backfire to me, but three days later, just before I went back to Japan, she called me, as she had done way too many times before, and I finally picked up, figuring that I could at least put her down gently. Unfortunately, subtlety is not my strongest point, and the second break up (at least for in her opinion, I just thought that a final shag was closure) went pretty bad. I told her that it would be best if we just stopped all contact, but of course she couldn't agree with that, but she didn't rely have a choice in the matter, me being the selfish bastard that everybody loves. However, for some reason that I don't really understand myself, I didn't block her on MSN, which would turn out to become the source of a lot of entertainment later on.

Next update: a new contact

(4 runes)

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[public entry #24]

Aug 1, 2007 - 03:41 AM

Countdown + Plans for the coming weeks

In exactly three weeks I'll be leaving Japan. I'm really looking forward to going back, but at the same time I feel like I'll be missing something, even though I complained a lot about this country. I had my final exam the day before yesterday, and everything went as well as expected (seriously you would have to make a bigger effort to FAIL a class than to pass one here). My closing ceremony is scheduled for next wednesday, after which I will have no official reason to stay here any longer. But, since I am still here for a couple of weeks, I thought I travel around a bit, that is if I get my scholarship on time since I'm pretty much broke as usual.

This weekend, I'll be going to Nagoya, to stay with a good friend of mine for a two days. Hana's a volleyball player that I met in Belgium, and we hung out a couple of times since he came back to Japan a couple of months ago. He signed a contract with a team in Nagoya, and he's having a little housewarming party this weekend, so I thought It would be cool to hang out there for a while.

Next up is my big trip to Kyushu, one of the four main islands of Japan that I haven't visited yet. Since Japan has a great train ticket deal going on right now (11500 yen, 70 dollars, for unlimited use of all local trains for 5 non-consecutive days), I can go across the whole island really cheap, although it'll take a bit longer than using the Shinkansen. For now, the schedule's basically:

1 day in Fukuoka, not very touristic but appears to have a really nice atmosphere.
2 days Nagasaki, to visit the Peace Memorial, and to take a walk in Unzen-Dake, a volcanic area.
2 days Kumamoto, to see the castle there and to hike near Aso, a huge inactive volcano
1 day in Kagoshima, to climb Sakurajima, an ACTIVE volcano
2 days on Yakushima, a small island famous for diving, nice beaches and hiking.

This'll still cost me a shitload of money, but I hope that I'll manage somehow. I really like volcanic areas, with hot springs and what not, so I'm kinda looking forward to it.

I want to see Himeji, the most famous castle in Japan but I have no idea if I'll have the time for that, let alone have enough money to get there.

After getting back to Belgium, I will probably need a week to recover from my jetlag, and after that I'm going to Prague for a couple of days with my parents and brother, so I don't think that I'll be that bored for the next few weeks.

[1]

(3 runes)

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[public entry #23]

Jul 30, 2007 - 04:50 AM

Pre-ordered my first game

Sorry for the shitty cellphone camera quality. Since I haven't played the original yet, I thought I would actually buy a newly released game for once instead of plundering the second hand bins (plus a pre-order gives me a 10% discount).

[1]

(4 runes)

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[public entry #22]

Jul 23, 2007 - 06:44 AM

Slightly annoyed.

With the release of the final Harry Potter book, it is to be expected that there are idiots who think it's funny to spoil the ending. GFF is no exception, Benjamin tried it in his own little crude way (which anyone can expect seeing as Ben is a sad excuse for a human being who can only complain about his problems but is too lazy to actually DO something about them), and SimdaddyGT was actually disappointed that he couldn't be the one to spoil it. But of course, being the smart kid that he is, he decided to get out for once and ruin the book for people waiting to buy it. I'm actually surprised that it's not as bad as when the sixth book was released, but still, I just can't see how it can be funto ruin a book for someone. People who amuse themselves this way are most of the time people who nearly get heart attacks when one of their games, anime or favourite TV shows are spoiled, so WHY do this to other people? What annoys me the most is people who spoil it for kids waiting to buy the book, that's just one of the more pathetic things a person can do.

For the record, I wasn't spoiled, I knew what to expect from certain people like Ben (and sadly the low opinion that I had of him was affirmed yet again), so I stayed away from anyone I think would be stupid enough to spoil a book just because it would be funnyand read it the way I wanted.

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[public entry #21]

Jul 16, 2007 - 12:58 AM

Climbing Mount Fuji: A Pictorial journal + Meet (56K DEATH)

As some of you know, even though Mount Fuji is 3776m high (12388ft), but you start climbing at around 2305m. Even though it seems to be only 1467m, you will still be spending at least 5 hours getting to the top. This is our starting spot, Kawaguchi 5th station. The mountain itself is usually covered in mist. We started climbing at night, hoping to reach the top before sunrise, since that’s your best chance of seeing a cloudless sky.

The sunset as seen from the fifth station. You could see for miles, and the higher you got, the more you could see of the lights of Tokyo.

Our little group of mountain climbers. We tried to ask Japanese to go with us but they were all going “abunai” (dangerous) or “yabaiyo” (risky), so we ended up with foreigners only. Most of them are my fellow students form Belgium, except for the guy in the yellow shirt (Suisse), and the girl with the pink sweater (Australia).

A pic of me looking like shit. I took the night bus from Osaka to Tokyo the evening before, and I hadn’t been able to sleep, so at this point I had been awake for about 40 hours, not my finest moment. The guy next to me is Wim, one of my classmates and one of the coolest persons I know. Second pic is me with Judith and Ruben.

Taken from the top of the mountain, first one’s a shot of the sunrise that wasn’t so clear since it was still rather cloudy, second pic shows the final part of the route that we climbed, and some of my friends heading up. I was the first one on top btw. There wasn’t much to be seen on the top since it got misty really fast. Too bad, since I kinda wanted to see the actual crater, but we didn’t want to stand around waiting for the mist to clear up (it was absolutely freezing)

This was our route down. Zigzag roads of volcanic ashes, that were perfectly to run down from. This was one of the nicer parts since we basically jogged down really fast (two hours, and one more before we got back to our starting point).

Some other pics taken on the way down.

The evening when I came back, I met up with Jazz and his sister. They're in Japan for 4 weeks, and I contacted him thinking it would be nice to meet an American member for once. We went out for some Yakiniku (barbecue), and had a really good time, talking about Japan, GFF, games, etc. No pics, although he did bring his video camera.

[7]

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[public entry #20]

Jul 13, 2007 - 04:12 AM

Veni, Vidi, MOTHERFUCKING VICI

Yes, I succeeded. It took us 7 hours to reach the top of the 3776 meter high mount Fuji, would have been a lot shorter if some bitch had not been slowing us down. Details and pictures coming up soon, I have to prepare for a meet...

[2]

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[public entry #19]