A couple items from Japan

So, due to coming down with something flu-like, I haven't been able to update as much as I wanted.  however, here's a couple things I picked up from Japan.

First, this is the Di Ezeldi, from LBX Danball Senki.  He's a neat looking floaty robot with some pretty cool flying sword bits.

And this is the Kabaya Transformers Gum DX model of Overlord from Transformers Masterforce.  Pretty neat little figure.  He can recreate pretty much all of the gimmicks of the original toy.  He even has the teeny, tiny little Powermaster figures that fit into his chest and his vehicles.

Playing with dogs

About few weeks ago, I signed up to volunteer at a local animal shelter.  The shelter in a no-kill shelter that takes in dogs and cats.  I did my first round of volunteering two weeks ago, just before going to Japan and today I did my second day.

It makes me feel good to spend some time with the dogs at the shelter.  The things people have done to many of the dogs are horrible and a lot of them come in pretty bad shape. This is the kind of organization I wish I could work for because I would much rather be helping these animals.  These animals need and deserve help.  Unfortunately, I can't work for them and what I'm able to do as a volunteer is limited.  Essentially, volunteers spend time with the animals, dogs or cats and generally play with them and get to know them.  So, I thought I'd post some pics of some of the dogs I've been able to meet so far.

 This handsome guy is Brody.  He's a Boston Terrier.  My parents were thinking of adopting him, but from what I've learned, he doesn't get along very well with other dogs.  So far I haven't seen him get aggressive though.  He's pretty good around people though.  The entire time I was playing with him, he wouldn't let go of his tennis ball.

 This guy is Max.  His placard says he's a Boxer, but he's definitely got a lot of Boston Terrier in him.

 This is not his natural expression.  I swear he's smiling for the camera since he doesn't have an underbite.

 Max absolutely LOVED the water.

 I think this guy might be one of my favorites.  His name is Roscoe, and he's a German Shepherd/Airedale mix.

 Really, he just looks to me like a Shepherd with a wire/rough coat though.  He's incredibly sweet, too.  When I went into his area, the first thing he did was sit at my feet and try to get me to pet him.  If it weren't for the fact that A)I can't afford to have a dog and B)he'd be too big for my apartment, I'd adopt him myself right away.

 This is Hannah, and she is a German Shepherd.  She was very recently brought in to the shelter and seems to still pretty much be a puppy.  She was initially really hyper, but once she calmed down, she seemed to be a really good dog.  She didn't seem to be in the best shape though.  Her coat was pretty dirty still and she appears to have recently had an operation.  I kind of suspect that her previous "owner" may have been using her for breeding.  Unfortunately, I also discovered about four very fat ticks on her and had to hold her while one of the employees removed them.  Poor thing.

 This funny looking guy is Spunky.  He seems to be pretty shy and meek.  His kennel-mate is Chatty, who seems to be the boss.  Spunky was pretty shy when I met him on my first day, but walked great on the leash once I got him to let me put it on him.  It didn't photograph too well, but he's got a very odd looking face.  He's a pug/terrier mix and has sort of a frowny face.

 This is Chatty, the boss of the group.  I saw him for the first time today.  I hear he's a bit of a bully, but I haven't experienced it for myself just yet.

 This guy is Rob.  His placard says he's a Jindo, but I'm not so sure.  One of the things that really makes me think he isn't is his hind legs.  You can sort of see it in the picture.  He's actually got dewclaws on his hind legs.  What's stranger, is that he has two dewclaws per foot.  So, he has a total of twenty-two toes.  They looked fully formed, too.  I'm thinking he might actually be related to the Norwegian Lundehund.  I'm sure it isn't a common breed, but they are known for having six toes per foot (or more, or less).  Not sure though.  His color is certainly off and his head is different.  It's hard to tell in this shot, but he is white with tan markings on his back.

This next guy is Joey.  He's a 1 year old Boxer mix.  This guy has way too much energy.  All he wanted to do was jump on me and roughhouse.  He was pretty crazy.

 This little girl is Sandy.  I noticed her as I was heading out today.  She's one of the small dogs at the shelter and one of the few who didn't automatically bark.  In fact, she seemed to outright like me.  I'll have to see if I can get some time with her next time I go.

Speaking of next time, I think I'll have to see if I can spend some time with these two.  There's a few huskies there, but these two are the only ones I've seen consecutively.  I'm not sure about their background or if they come together or what.  The placard on the pen only had the name for one of them (I forget what it was), so it's possible that they were only in there temporarily.  The larger of the two seemed to be the dominant one and has an amazingly blue right eye.  The smaller one kind of reminds me of my own dog.  Both were extremely talkative.

My Swag!

I'm home now and back at my apartment.  I got most of my stuff back with me, though a few items are still at my parents' house.  I thought I'd post some pictures of some of the swag I got while I was in Japan though

 This is most of it laid out, minus accessories and stands

 Kaempfer Amazing still needs to be built.  You can see he's got a fairly good sized box

Batsh, a brand new all plastic kit just recently put out by Volks.  I'm pretty sure that's a mistranslation of it's name though.  I've seen it more commonly romanized as Vatshu.  Really, both the name and design are based on the Bat-Shu from Heavy Metal L-Gaim.  I'd say Vatshu or Batshu would likely be the appropriate name for this thing.  Obviously, this still needs to be built.  This guy looks to be both complex, and huge.  He should look damn impressive though when he's done.  Hopefully I won't be tearing my hear out in frustration while building him.

 A vinyl kaiju I picked up of the Baltan Battler from an Ultraman arcade game that looked a lot like Monster Hunter and used cards to control the gameplay.  It looked difficult as all hell, but the redesigned monsters looked really neat.  There's a much cooler, smaller figure of Baltan, Guts, and Magma as well, but I didn't actually find the Baltan one, just the other two.  I really wish Bandai would make an Ultra-Act figure of this design, because he looks really cool.

 Alien Pestar, from the Ultrabone line.  He's a modular, skeletal Ultraman monster.  Not much else to say about it except that he glows in the dark.  I wanted to get the Dadas from the line, but wound up with Pestar and (I think) Black King instead.

 A small model of the flying battleship Wunder from the third Evangelion movie.  It's weird and neat looking.

 A Mojibakeru I picked up.  I don't know what the kanji is, but it turns into a humanoid lion guy, which is cool.  This series of Mojibakeru are able to combine to make bigger stuff.

 The Galaga.  Yeah, this is based on the player's ship from the old Namco game Galaga.  This is a kit put out by Wave and the ship was redesigned by Kow Yokoyama of SF3D fame.  I will need to paint this.  I actually got this thing built this afternoon.

 A Crossbone Vanguard Den'an Gei from the Black Vanguard Squadron.  This is a semi-articulated figure from Bandai's G-NEXT SD Gundam line.

Kamen Rider Gaim from G-NEXT's Kamen Rider themed sister line.  He is also semi-articulated, but has a hard time standing up.

More to come as I get to it.

just about done in Japan

Well tonight is my last night here.  This trip has had some interesting weather, but, it's been fun.

yesterday rained a bit in the morning, but stopped pretty quickly.  The rest of the day was just windy.  Like, really windy.  And all the snow was gone.  Yesterday I did some more shoping in Osu and Sakai.  Had some pretty good curry for lunch.  I managed to find a really good arcade in Osu in the same building as Dennys.  Most arcades these days a re lame and only have crane games and (to me) incomprehensible card games.  But this place I found was a proper man's arcade.  I say a man's arcade due to the fact that the place was nothing but old school shooting games and fighting games and reeked of cigarettes.  There was also a sign in front that said nobody under 16 was permitted.  Today i found out that was only part of the arcade and there was actually even more, though it was large linked games like Border Break, music and rhythm games, and the funky mmo looking things that tend to have dudes spending hours at a time at them.

after dinner (authentic Chinese), my brother and I set out to find this working class izakaya bar we'd found last summer.  Surprisingly, we actuallu found it!  The place is totally no frills, but I love it.  There is a very down to earth atmosphere there.  The food we got with our beers was really good, too.  Pictures to come eventually.

Today was an adventure.  We tried to get breakfast at a family restaurant called Gusto, but we were 5 minutes too late and they wouldn't serve breakfast anymore.  So, we wound up with more of a brunch.  I ended up having a "Cheese in Hamburg".  It wasn't bad.  Hamburg tends to taste like meatloaf, and this one was no exception. I was a little disappointed because I was hoping to get a traditional Japanese breakfast with a whole grilled fish.  That stuff is amazingly good.

After that, we had no real plans, so my brother (half jokingly, I think) suggested going back to Osu by bike.  However, I took him up on his offer.  So, we biked from his apartment all the way to Osu where I played the newest Gundam Vs game.  I got , my assroyally handed to me by someone using the Gundam Epyon.  I did some real quick last minute shopping as well.  Then we biked from Osu all the way to Nagoya Station where we met my brother's wife and daughter for dinner.  We ate some really good ramen.  Then we had the pleasure of biking all the way back to the apartment from Nagoya Station.

It has been a looooooooong time since I rode a bicycle, and even then, I wouldn't ride the thing long distances.  So, I had a ligtle bit of a rough time, but I did pretty good, I'd say.  My legs and butt are really sore though.

I'll be getting up early tomorrow.  I've got a long and uncomfortable flight ahead of me.

on vacation

Been a bit quiet on here.  I'm actually on vacation in Japan right now. I'm visiting my brother in Nagoya.  I'm at the end of my second full day now.  I got some shopping in yesterday.  Went to Mandarake and Volks' hobby shop that isn't too far away from  there.  Naturally, I spent some money.  The weather was cold, but not too bad.

Today though?  Today it snowed.  That was unexpected.  As a result, today was a slower day.  We didn't do a whole lot.  The main thing was that we went to Nagoya Dome.  I wound up doing a little shopping.  Bought some cheap instant ramen that might come back home with me.

Tomorrow, it isn't supposed to snow, but there's supposed to be rain. Hopefully it won't be too bad.  I plan on buying a few , more model kits.

From the Volks shop, I picked up what should prove to be quite the impressive robot once it's built.

Catching up on a couple items

I needed to catch up on posting a couple items.  These have already been posted on my Dakka Plog, but I ought to put them here as well.

Last week, for some reason I got hit with an urge to work on my beat up old Landraider.  I actually wound up putting a significant amount of work into it.

At this point, it's actually almost done.  It needs more work, yeah, but it's almost finished.  I have more black to add and the new guns need to be painted.  Plus, I have to make a new top to the las cannons on the sponson and sculpt some dust covers behind the heavy bolster on the front of it.  I'm still not sure if I want that gunner to be glued in or not though...

The other thing I need to post is my Haqqislam Lasiq.  This guy is part of the Hassassin sectorial for Haqqislam.  They specialize in using viral weaponry.  The idea behind it, from what I gather is that their weapons are lethal regardless of whether or not they get a kill shot.  So, they're basically guaranteed to get a kill with every shot that hits.  The pictures I took really don't do the figure justice.  He looks much better in person.