Day 116, 117 - Christmas Day, St Stephens Day

Yes, it's a pretty late update, but I wasn't sure whether to mention this.

Well, Dublin is pretty much deserted on these 2 days. The only people you'll see are beggars, hobos and people like me who have nothing to do but stroll alone on the streets of the empty capital. The usual crowd and traffic are reduced to less than 1%. Even the night life in Dublin had more activity than these 2 days. Shops are closed, buses don't operate, families snuggle in their warm houses.

I had expected something to be going on, like events at a mall or park or something, so I decided to go to town. That's when I learned that buses do not operate on those days. The same for taxis, but they're too expensive to consider anyway. The only option left was to walk and so I did. It's surprisingly easy to get there. All I did was follow the main road for about an hour and I arrived at St Stephen's Park, which was closed. Unbelievable! They even closed the park!

And so I headed to O'Connell Street with little expectation. It was worse than I thought. Only 1 shop was open along the entire road which takes 15 minutes to traverse on foot. Luckily, it was the shop that sold the cheapest baguette in Dublin. Lucky! At least I wouldn't have to starve walking back.

Like an attempt to further dampen my mood, it began to rain. Foolish heavens. I may not like the wind in Dublin, but the rain is always welcomed. As my response, I played Motteke Sailor Fuku at full blast. I needn't worry about disturbing others, since the path from the city to UCD was entirely devoid of human activity.

Too bad I couldn't buy any sweet wine. Then I remembered the carton of grape juice I had back home. A lousy replacement, but since it's sweet and it looks like wine in my French housemate's wine glass, that was good enough. After that was just a whole day of sweets and anime. An excellent otaku Christmas, I must say. The perfect otaku Christmas would, of course, be a cosplay Christmas party.

While I'm at it, I might as well summarise what I've been doing up till today. Anime, manga, video games. Details?

-Naruto
Not bad, but Bleach is better. Contrary to rumours, I think the second part is not much better than the first. Sure they killed off some characters, but they revived most of them later. And Sasuke isn't really that despicable yet. When people told me that fans of the manga began to hate Sasuke, I thought he killed Iruka, Kakashi or anyone important, but all he's done is say, "I'll destroy Konohagakure!"

- Seitokai no Ichizon
Now this is nice! It's a parody-themed anime that makes obvious parodies. The jokes are funny and the characters are lovable. Kinda sad that there won't be a 2nd season, or so they say. And I'm gonna have to learn that pose! "Konjitsu no Seitokai shyuryou!"

- Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu
Not too bad overall, but it's not my kind of anime. I actually thought this was a parody anime. Turns out it's a romance anime that just features an otaku. Tch! Disappointing but since I already started, I didn't feel like dropping it just like that, so I finished it and the 2nd season.

- Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu: Purezza
The first season was better, but I am amazed how many ways they can interrupt the kissing scene. Every time you think "There's no way they can stop it now!" BAM!! Door/window breaks, phone rings, secret agents rush in etc etc. Seriously! Just let them kiss!

- Toradora!
I see what the hype was about. I have to admit that it is an excellent piece of work. I don't like romance but I enjoyed this so much that I forgot to sleep! Seriously, all the lead girls here are WEIRD. They give you this weird impression which I can only describe as "You'll never want a girlfriend like that, but you'll never regret having a girlfriend like that." It's the first time something made me wonder what it feels like to be in love. Well done. I express my regret for not having watched this when it was released.

- Umineko no Naku Koro ni
The title came up in Seitokai no Ichizon, which prompted me to try. Since I couldn't find Higurashi, I settled for Umineko. The OP and ED themes were very appropriate although they suck as songs. The story is basically a mind battle between a human and a witch, where the witch continues to create impossible crime scenes while the man seeks to disprove the existence of magic by applying logical deduction. Interesting concept, but the delivery was kind of confusing. Basically, a serial murder case has occurred on a secluded island, and the man is the only one of the victims who didn't believe that it was done by magic, so the witch challenges him to deduce each crime scene. And she will keep repeating the incident as many times as it takes until the man surrenders, so it's just a repetition of the same case with minor changes such as order of victims, location of murder and surviving members before the last murder. The witch calls it "eternal torture". I don't really understand how it is so. I mean, if I was the guy, I'll just keep retrying until I get the right answer. I do have to admit that the conditions she set make the crime scenes ungodly difficult to solve though.

...That was a surprisingly short list. Ah well, Naruto took me 3 days and all the anime took 1-2 days so no time wasted at all :)

Nothing new for games though. Just continuing FFTA2 and some of the replayable games.