Happy Halloween! I haven’t celebrated in years but I’m hope you guys enjoy yours. I’ve already gotten my bag of goodies (at the grocery store) and made plans to dodge every trick or treater that comes my way. Maybe I’ll watch Asian horror movies if I man up a bit (don’t count on it).

I promised I will be dedicating this week’s round up to Tara because I called her a non-gamer. Gomen! However, nothing about the videos below have to deal with her (not really at least). ^^v

As always, enjoy.
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Tags: berryz koubou, Charice Pempengco, choi hyun joon, halloween, Jay Chou, lee min woo, weekly music round up

This article brought back the incident of the February 10, 2008 Namdaemun or Sungnyemun Arson. More than half a year has gone by, and I still can’t believe that this arson happened to the Namdaemun gate. This whole incident feels very surreal. Even when I heard the news back in February, I was in a state of a dream-like shock at how someone would do such a thing to Korea’s National Treasure #1.

Couple weeks after the fire, I was with my best friend. We rode a bus from Myeong-dong back to my place. The bus, #143, has a route that goes around Namdaemun. We were on it, and when it first went past the area where the gate should have been, we didn’t see it. I grew confused. I was wondering how it was possible to miss seeing something big like that. But then bus turned around to head back to where we first came from. That was when we saw just what threw me off for a loop. They had one of those gigantic construction walls around the gate, preventing us from seeing the burnt down gate.
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Tags: arson, jung-gu, korea, myeong-dong, namdaemun, seoul, sungnyemun

Dan Pink says the key to creating a good speech is brevity, levity, and repetition; however, the ex-speechwriter for vice president Al Gore doesn’t know that the key to creating great western manga is well, Dan Pink. 

In the U.S, manga is still a rare medium; it takes a special type of gaijin to appreciate these graphic novels on a mature level. In the manga created by Dan, ”The Adventures Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need”, potent lessons are brought to life in a lighthearted and universal way.

There are several reasons to love the graphic novelette in that this fictional tale is more than just an impersonal, quick keyword search. Unlike a reference guide, it isn’t a over-expensive, obsolete, bible-size book stuck on some dusty bookstore shelf. With this manga you will get tactical information, a bit of fantasy, and common sense wrapped up in a quick read. The viable concepts don’t outweigh the fun either. Many of us can relate to Johnny’s experience in working all-nighters and eating take-out food that we never get to truly relax and enjoy. Also, I am sure that we all wish we had magical genie that exploded from a pair of chopsticks.
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Tags: anime, career guide, Dan Pink, diana, japan, johnny bunko, manga, rob tem pas

Oh man oh man it’s finally out - the latest installment of the DJ Max Portable series on PSP - Clazziquai Edition! Loaded with songs from Korean Acid Jazz/Electronica/R&B fusion band Clazziquai, DJMPCE isn’t the “official sequel” to DJ Max Portable 2, but rather a side title of the main series (similar to Guitar Hero Aerosmith). With new modes like 2 button and 4 button FX, CE is geared towards newcomers that might have been scared off by the difficulty of the first two games.

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, DJ Max Portable is what I would call “DDR for your thumbs”… or better yet, a much more polished version of Beatmania. Notes fall down from the top of the screen and you must push the corresponding button at the right time - proper timing results in a song that sounds on-rhythm! Clazziquai includes 2 button (up/left and triangle/circle), 4 button (left, up, triangle, circle), 5 button (left, up, right/square, triangle, circle), 6 button (left, up, right…), and 4 button FX (adds R and L) modes to suit your skill level as you familiarize yourself with the gameplay. Trust me - it’s not easy when you first start out, but once you get the hang of it, pushing those buttons and hearing the notes becomes some kind of aural crack…

What really makes DJ Max special is a combination of great songs, amazing gameplay, perfect execution, and endless replay value. That, however, doesn’t make Clazziquai Edition perfect - it’s far too easy, there’s only 48 songs (compared to the 100+ in DJMP2), the note charts aren’t as fun - but make no mistake, it’s still a fabulous game with great music.
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Tags: black square, clazziquai, dj max portable, fever, music, psp

When David wrote this entry up couple weeks ago, I decided that it’s a really good thing I am not a linguist. Really, I would make a horrible linguist because it took me eighteen years of my life to realise this uber-late revelation about myself and other people. Or at least most of the people I ran into fit this category. And no, I am not talking about drug addicts, although with the amount of meds I had to intake in the last year alone makes me feel like one.

Ahem. The point is that when I was at a karaoke / no rae bang when I was about eighteen, I was singing Final Fantasy X’s “Suteki Da Ne” in Japanese, and I noticed that I was able to sing at a higher pitch than most English songs. In fact, that was when I realised that I can sing higher in Korean and Japanese than in English. Even when I talk normally in Korean and Japanese, my voice pitch is higher. That’s when I started to pay attention to my other bilingual or multilingual speaking acquaintances and friends.

I noticed that a lot of people who speaks Japanese/English, Korean/English, and Tagalog/English all speak in a higher tone with the Asian language and in lower tones with English. Now with some people, there might be no differences or it could even be the opposite, but from my experiences, that’s what I came to the conclusion as. I am aware that this finding has to do with the differences in the language’s wavelength and all those other linguist terms I am not familiar with, but it still kind of fascinates me. Now, whenever I know someone is bilingual or multilingual, I listen and compare different pitches in the languages as my personal experiment!

Now here are two video examples . . . which some of you may have seen. I was trying to look for better videos, but in the end, this won over because they are so cracktastic, especially with the the second one.
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Tags: bilingual, english, final fantasy x, hangukuh, japan, karaoke, korea, language, multilingual, nihongo, no rae bang, tagalog

Residents of Albuquerque, New Mexico, please take heed. Clear the way for Jackie Chan as he chops and kicks his way to your city soon. The Hong Kong action superstar will film his new flick “The Spy Next Door” in your ‘hood in November and December. He is expected to bring an entourage of 150 local crew members and more than 600 actors, including principals and extras. I believe this will be the most exciting event that has happened in Albuquerque ever since the first travelers on Route 66 appeared in the city in 1926.

In the movie, Jackie plays a man who is asked to baby-sit for his neighbor’s children and winds up having to protect them from secret agents after one of them accidentally downloads a code. I am sure there will be many funny fight scenes — one in which Jackie accidentally hits an object instead of a person and writhes in pain — a trademark of Jackie Chan’s flicks.

If I were Jackie, I would load up on the microwaveable Asian food and vodka. I heard Albuquerque is freaking boring and has a shitty selection of Asian restaurants. But fear not, the “gourmet” Chinese food purveyor Panda Express is there, and its Orange Chicken is simply to die for. I gagged a bit when I wrote that.

Tags: Albuquerque, Hong Kong Action Superstar, Jackie Chan, New Mexico, The Spy Next Door

He’s bad, he’s nationwide….or is that WORLDwide? In my previous interview with Sung Kang, I made a brief reference to Kang’s ad campaign with China-based Jump Shoes. But this recent collaboration is much more than “Kang as spokesmodel.” It truly is a sharing of ideas, and a new way for Sung to exercise his many creative gifts. Here’s the first short film from a series developed by Kang and the Jump Shoes marketing team, and produced by Arowana Films:
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Tags: advertising, Arowana films, Jump Shoes, short films, sung kang

Big Bang, the Korean 5-man hip-hop unit was interviewed by Osaka’s Daily Sports Online on the 27th of this month.

Their debut Japanese album “NUMBER 1” was released earlier this month. Their tour of Japan starts on the 28th, and all of the tickets were completely sold out in one day, showing how their popularity in Japan continues to rise. Tae Yang himself stated in the interview that “The live performances in America this coming year have been confirmed.” No other details have been revealed yet, but we’re all looking forward to it!

Tags: big bang, kpop, number 1, tae yang

Short version: Around 1am Tuesday morning we took our servers down to allow us to work on preparations for the new design and new features. During this time a hard drive problem was discovered on our lone database server. While we have multiple web servers, we only had one database server. Because it was the hard drive that needed replacing, we basically had to install and reconfigure everything all over again. However, no data was loss during this entire process as we made a complete backup before taking the server offline. All in all, Ningin was down for about 36 hours - 4 hours spent diagnosing the problem, 18 hours waiting on a new server, 8 hours setup time, 4 hours originally scheduled upgrade and maintenance, and last but not least, 2 hours of intermittent sleep. Sorry to keep you waiting, but that’s how it was.
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Tags: downtime, funny story, maintenance, server, upgrade

Square Enix really knows how to impress an audience. At Tokyo Game Show, they featured four Kingdom Hearts trailers, one of which was the upcoming DS game: Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days.

The trailer featured various mind blowing teasers that included Organization XIII members, the return of Riku and Mickey, various ass kicking and a new character, Xion. The drama didn’t just stop there, at the end the words “February 2009” flashed leaving me completely thrilled and depressed. Note that this is first to be released in Japan leaving the rest of us non-Japanese speakers to wait it out in the cold.

In addition to the DS game, Square Enix plans to release Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep for PSP and Kingdom Hearts 3 for rumored PS3, both of which are still TBA.
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Tags: games, kingdom hearts, kingdom hearts 358/2 days, nintendo ds, psp, square enix, teaser, trailer