Long before I had the luxurious job of emptying out hot tubs and scrubbing them by hand on Paradise Island, I grew up in a small town. One of those one stoplight towns – the type of place you read about in Stephen King novels and such. But no killer clowns stalked us as children and we didn’t form some sort of killing cult in the cornfields surrounding the hamlet.
No, we did basically what all the other city kids did and still do. Be discontent, listen to punk rock, drink, do drugs and walk around at night like the little miscreants we were. But there were a few perks to rural life – at least in the absolutely forgotten (but not forgettable) Upstate New York.
Small race tracks permeate upstate – from the western frontier to the mountain ranges of central and north east New York. While never being thought of as anything more than “NYC” – the state of New York is gigantic. Sprawling woods, The Catskills and Adirondack mountain ranges. Even Appalachia runs up through the southern part of the state.
Weaving in between all of this ski country are little towns and villages and many of them have their own little hometown arena of sorts: A racetrack. Usually dirt, some times pavement. Growing up in rural New York the races are just sort of rite of the land. Even if you’re not into them you’re well aware of them.
While easy to dismiss as just a muddy oval with a bunch of hicks driving around in circles (which it is) I challenge the most disinterested to not feel the rise in heartbeat and rush of adrenaline when the roar of thirty cars greets a green flag. The tension and white knuckle competition of dozens of men and women just going for it. That drive is intoxicating and in a small way still apart of me.
FANCY INTRODUCTION VIDEO
Now don’t get me wrong. I am about as far away from a country boy as you can get. Immediately moving to a city weeks before barely stumbling across the high school graduation stage. Fifteen years ago you would have seen me vehemently deny any such upbringing. But times change.
And in the gaming world nothing has changed more than my feeling towards the Test Drive series. A series I loved growing up with, enjoyed immensely and played regularly.
A month or so ago I received a big bulk package of games I purchased from Goodwill. There were a few titles I was very excited about adding to my collection (X Files: Resist or Serve being one of them) As I was going through doing inventory of repeat games and checking discs I saw Test Drive. I was overjoyed with seeing an old favorite. Sure that it’d be an enjoyable arcade racer that I could waste hours on.
I was wrong
Now to explain why I have to take you back in time a little. You see in the 90’s there were plenty of racing titles, arcade or simulation that featured American muscle, British luxury, German engineering marvels and Japanese speed. Typically these games were set in a few iconic places around the world where you would race beautiful rare cars against one another on lush English back country roads. Occasionally dodging livestock or a police car. It was sort of like some unspoken millionaire racers club.
This was just kind of the way it was. No one even questioned it. You just sort of assumed that anyone driving a Jaguar XJ-220 around was probably just some rich dickhead.
Until 2001 rolled around and the first of two hundred Fast and Furious films came out. Once that happened – arcade racing games would be changed forever.
Ha! This old thing? This is just my winter car.
“The Fast and Furious effect of 2001” or “FAFE 01”(as I would refer to it years later in my college thesis at Yale University) not only changed the landscape of racing games dramatically but the entire world around us.
First off, men the world over shaved their heads. If shears weren’t an option then men and women rushed to their nearest skull cap store. Donning the new Diesel look. Vin Diesel mania had kicked off.
Real time photo of him driving to my house to kick my ass.
By the winter of 2001 not only was most of the world bald but they were pumping iron as well and even more damning for the Test Drive series – the globe was demanding less luxury and pomp in their racing games and simply more Diesel.
So video games developers had to respond to the rapidly changing market and fast and here is where Test Drive screwed up. Instead of doing any sort of research whatsoever on street racing culture, the long storied history of street racing in iconic locations like SoCal and Tokyo (“The Midnight Club”) or I don’t know, even just watching a movie about racing they said the hell with it. We’ll figure it out as we go and it’s pretty damn obvious.
The plot is pretty simple. You are some guy named Dennis Black and you are contacted by some guy named Donald Clark. Clark is a rich idiot that reminds me of Elon Musk. He’s rude and mean and apparently wheelchair bound. I give the writers credit here for making a handicapped character a total dick. That’s all the credit they’re getting from me, though.
Basically Donald is injured and wants you to race for him. Never mind the fact that we’re assuming at this point he is some sort of ridiculous millionaire that is wasting his time street racing – which the prize is a measly $1000 per victory. I just feel like a guy that could afford to own Dodge Vipers and a Hemi Cuda would be interested in higher stakes money wise.
But what do I know about being a millionaire street racer? The answer? Absolutely nothing. I’ve never been a street racer and I’ll never be a millionaire so maybe these people do exist. Who knows?
So the story sucks but that’s of little consequence. The game ultimately is just not fun. The cars take no damage whatsoever – I hit a semi truck going 210 miles per hour and the semi truck flew backwards. The racers on the track are supposed to be these characters from cutscenes but they don’t drive with any personality. It’s a very dull, repetitive and lonely experience.
It’s sad to see what once was such a strong racing series fall from grace at the turn of the century.
SHOP TIL YOU DROP
Are you kidding me?
DESERT ISLAND SONGS
The soundtrack is probably the best thing about the game. But it’s not great. It’s a strange mix of Saliva, Ja Rule, Moby and DMX. Being an old lame ass dude my favorite of these artists is Moby. So, alas the Moby banger, “Bodyrock” is my favorite song on the game.
PERIWINKLE’S LOW HANGING FRUIT PUNCH INGREDIENTS V. 2.0
1.) Vin Diesel Skull Cap (Test Drive)
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Recently playing the classic Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation had me daydreaming and wondering about the history of the real Alaskan Peninsula Islands the game is said to take place on. Upon reading the Peninsula’s history I stumbled into a forgotten chapter in World War Two history and by re-examining the past I find new perspective of where we are in America today.
The fog never seems to end on the Aleutian Islands in the Alaskan peninsula but the low visibility has never seemed to slow nomads and explorers throughout history. Even at times acting as a strategic cloak or even a blanket burying the remains of soldiers long since forgotten.
Most of the islands themselves now belonging to the U.S. state of Alaska. While some farther west belong to the Far Eastern administrative district of Russia – known as Kamchatka Krai.
But hundreds of thousands of years before oil rigs, English colonists, Russian traders, merchants and Christian missionaries danced across the isolated piano teeth islands, the archipelago itself acted as Gaia’s horizontal ladder between worlds. The only land linking the continents of Asia and North America.
But it wouldn’t be the last time North Americans and Asians would find themselves co-occupying the territories for better or worse.
The “Alaskan Bush”
For gamers this setting would be most familiar with Metal Gear Solid fans. With the original PlayStation, writer Hideo Kojima realized that the 32-bit technology finally had caught up with his story telling and he aimed to redo and expand on his original MSX game, Metal Gear. He saw the updated technology the perfect platform to expand on the game’s lore and story in a more cinematic manner.
He wrote the entire game taking place on the fictional Shadow Moses Island. An island that is said to belong to a part of the real Fox Island Archipelago in the Alaskan Peninsula. Foggy year round, the adverse weather makes the destination extremely hard to navigate and naturally isolated.
But unlike Kojima’s fictional military conflict set in 2005 a real conflict unfolded between the United States and Japan in the same area sixty years before.
June 3rd 1942 began the Aleutian Island Campaign in the American and Pacific Theaters of World War Two. In only the second invasion of American soil ever, the campaign saw a small force of Japanese soldiers occupying two small islands on the archipelago.
Both Attu and Kiska islands, two of the westernmost islands in the territory of Alaska were occupied by Japanese forces. The Japanese reasoned that control of the Aleutian Islands would prevent the United States from an attack across the Northern Pacific.
Japanese troops raise the Imperial battle flag on Kiska Island in the Aleutians (6/6/42)
At first very little changed for the Unangans (the indigenous people living on the islands) under Japanese rule but that would soon change. Many Unangans would be captured by the Japanese and shipped to Hokkaido where they would be kept in internment camps in harsh conditions. Fearing the Japanese advance the American government forcibly evacuated the remaining Unangans into internment camps of their own where many would die due to exposure of Measles and Influenza. It would take nearly eighty years for the United States Government to formally apologize for the internment and treatment of their people.
Vehicles couldn’t maneuver across the island’s rugged terrain. United State’s soldiers here carry supplies by hand through Jarmin Pass
At the time the American and Canadian fears were growing to a fever pitch. They feared having most American troops already in engaged in the European and Pacific theaters of the war that there wasn’t a lot to stop the Japanese from moving up through the peninsula and overtaking Anchorage, moving south to Vancouver and ultimately settling in Seattle, Washington.
The Japanese opened up the aggressions with bombing Dutch Harbor in the city of Unalaska, Alaska. The aerial bombing which made use of the foggy weather conditions as cover lasted over two days – the second of the two days being much more effective – leaving a burning hospital, oil storage tanks and a breached barrack ship left burning in their wake.
140,000 American and Canadian troops were sent to the islands to meet the Japanese. Rugged terrain and ruthless weather would have devastating effects on both sides of the war effort. By March of 1943 a Japanese fleet was engaged in the naval battle of the Kormandorski Islands. One that would cut off Japanese supplies to the Imperial ground troops on the island indefinitely. Setting the stage for the largest forgotten battle on United States soil ever.
Operation Landcrab
On May 11th 1943 – “Operation Landcrab” began with the sole objective of recapturing Attu island from Japanese forces whose numbers only estimated around 8,000. Japanese forces despite being outnumbered and outgunned held the higher ground while Allied forces struggled with booby traps and frostbite.
Finally on May 29th following fierce entrenched combat the Japanese without warning led the largest banzai charge recorded in the Pacific theater. Led by Colonel Yamasaki the charge penetrated Allied forces so deep they wound up face to face with American rear-echelon support troops. The fighting that commenced there after was barbaric. Furious Hand to hand, face to face battle. Completely outnumbered, the Japanese troops were virtually exterminated.
Shortly thereafter Allied troops landed on Kiska island only to find it abandoned. Under the cover of fog the Japanese chose to remove their remaining troops from the area. Like ghost ships drifting back to the expanse of the sea the forgotten battles were now left to the mercy of time and history books which would bury them soon enough.
LEGACY
American military propaganda during WWII. (We’ve come a long way.)
In a foggy, frozen hell hole killing one another with their bare hands it would surely seem unthinkable to both American and Japanese soldiers that less than fifty years later both countries would be incredibly close military and economic allies.
But a theme Kojima constantly reminds his gamers of is that the enemies and politics constantly change yet the battlefield remains the same. Despite a time period’s politics and conflicts – despite yesterday’s rivals making todays greatest allies – despite what propaganda and claims of righteousness on either side of a battle may be – war is just as barbaric as it ever was.
After all of the decision makers and mouth pieces lay down and go to sleep at night it still all ultimately comes down to men and women – human beings – brutalizing and killing one another over an ever changing political landscape and societal policies that are bound to change soon enough on their own.
After the war the wounds began to heal and culturally the times changed as they always seem to do. With the increase in trade, the meteoric rise of the internet, video games, anime and more the love between our two cultures has never been stronger. I, like millions of other Americans LOVE everything about Japanese culture and Americans and American influence is met with an equally enthusiastic adoration in the Far East.
In a particularly heartbreaking week following the senseless murders of eight people in Atlanta – six of them women of Asian descent – it’s imperative for us as a melting pot to mourn the senseless loss of life together and to be angry on behalf of the victims together but most importantly use this time to embrace one another more than ever. To reach out to one another. To love ourselves and each other. To not let the despicable actions of not just this psycho but any racist shit head divide anyone.
To use our common loves as a constant reminder that we all are human beings and none of us are alone in this world. Sometimes the news cycle can make it look bleaker and darker than it is – but seeing the propaganda and history of the past one hundred years – even if we have a ways to go – we’re still heading in the right direction. Together.
Hello my Little Lights! I haven’t been in much of a movie mood lately! Nor did I want to sit through a big series, I just haven’t been into a lot of western content recently at all to be fair.. could it be that it is because I have Kaiju blood running through my veins? I do really prefer East! There is one thing I still like to do a lot though and that is seeing Western Content creators on YouTube! So I will be taking you on a trip between some of my favourite creators on the platform that holds my dreams. However instead of just highlighting the person I decided to pick “series” on their channel that I like. I call it the YouTube Series Series… because I found that funny! … I am a weird Moth… Welcome to the first Episode.
The Content Creator
The Princess in Japan series is done by a YouTuber named Princess Peachie. She started her channel in 2010 and produces content on an irregular basis. She is a geeky lifestyle vlogger, having diverse content such as Lolita Fashion blogs, reviewing Polly Pocket toys and a tour across her home. Peachie doesn’t Vlog in a professional capacity, meaning she doesn’t make a living by it and relies on another job as her main source of income. Her channel has about 71K subscribers so she is like 70.5k followers ahead of your beloved Moth.. and well since I am not even really on YouTube yet, maybe even more! An average video does about 12k likes and between 25 to 75 five people interact on her videos. She is currently ranked 69.366 on the famous Birthday ranking list.
Peachie is a Scottish content creator that I really vibe with because of her witty and humoristic blogging style with a hyper cute aesthetic. She is a big Pokémon fan, she is pretty deeply into D&D and she is a fair bit of a gamer! HEAVILY into animal crossing but recently taking a liking to the Final Fantasy VII remake as well. She is very active on Twitter and I have had some interactions with her that always feel friendly and warm and her person is someone I think I could be easily friends with, had I been Scottish. Though bagpipe music totally makes me anxious so perhaps it is better that I am not Scottish.. also being Peachie’s friend seems to be rather expensive! She is a lovely person who you often see buying gifts for her friends or significant other though. All in all a pretty delightful person to witness on screen, and with some skill in video design she is pretty good in editing as well, showing some more advance stuff such as motion tracking objects onto moving people etc.
The Series to me
By far her most popular content on the channel is the subject I want to talk to you about today.. the Princess in Japan series. As you can imagine by the name! It’s a travel vlog, showing off her adventures while in Japan back in 2018. Though recently she has started editing and putting out Princess in Japan Redux a second season in which she returns to Japan as well. For convenience sake I will treat Redux as part of the same series. I included an episode in this post.. but like always! It won’t show up on reader! In the first series however she travels to Japan with her best friend Jewels, and in the second series she visits the land of the rising sun with her boyfriend. Jewels being a film-girl herself also shoots footage so the first season has a lot more dynamic camera work, showing us a lot more of Peachie in third person while the second season is more of a “first person” travel report. Content also varies slightly as well with Jewels being into a lot more girly things than “The Mister is” As a result though both offer a fairly different take on a trip to Tokyo (and some neighbouring areas).
What makes this travel vlog so special to me is that is is really done by someone like me. So Peachie visits many of the places I would visit. Including the Pokémon Café and Sanrio Puroland. She also visits Disney Tokyo… which I would not visit or the Barbie Café but those are all short and very nice and are super entertaining as well. In all honesty, I don’t think my Japan dream will ever come alive for me, my health is keeping me from working, both Mentally and physically it has issues.. and things need to change for that to properly happen. So Peachie offers me a taste of what I might never see with my own eyes.. trough a lense that is super close to my own eyes. Her content also feels like one of those old school family vacation shoots but with some really fun editing put on top of it. It feels reachable and sincere. She is a huge weeb, and can get pretty socially awkward at times at it is nice to see that side of things. I love virtual YouTubers as well but in Peachie I see a lot of the person I want to be in real life. It offers a sweet little fantasy!
The Series to You
Of course Peachie will not be a proxy to everyone.. yet I still would recommend the show to you all! Why is that?! Because regardless if she is like you or not, Peachie is one of us.. geeks and Otaku. She sees so many interesting things in Japan. Are you into Lolita clothing.. there is an episode where she goes to a weird Mall to get Lolita gear cheap, are you are game nerd? There is an episode that is halfy dedicated to Pokémon. There is a Pretty Cure episode for the anime fans and she does stuff that all of us might find interesting. She visits the Monster Café.. that unfortunately went out of business due to Covid at the start of this year. She visits regular combini’s and talks about how shopping in Japan works. She joins a pack of Harajuku girls. She visits a big tourist Onsen that includes a pain pool. Shinto temples, wearing classical kimonos there is so much to see! I love how often they go and grab little Gachapon to bring home towards their friends for example or how we get a talk about airport bathrooms. Why? Because she just films her trip as she tries to entertain herself. She is having an amazing time rather than to try and entertain us and it really shows! That is the type of content I want to make! I want to have fun and share that with you! I think she can be a great inspiration for anyone who feels like they don’t know what to write or create!
Because Peachie is a small content creator, we do not see her get special treatment, we do not see her yell catchphrases in the lense or pick attractions that will do well in the algorithm.. we see a journey through Japan as we would experience it. No filming in restricted areas and no real knowledge or studied script beforehand. As a girl it is nice to see them get up early.. but snooze their way through their makeup time.. so now they are going to have to find some subway station bathroom to put their makeup on for a day in Disneyland. You see them making plans but then it begins to rain so the plans adapt and we see them walking into a lot more niche places. Places you would never plan to visit during a trip to Japan but might stumble upon! I would never visit the Barbie café for example and I found it a bit creepy and underwhelming.. I think there is one dish on the menu where you eat the clothes of a barbie doll! It is fascinating to see though and it’s nice to see these girls take it on with a massive enthusiasm but also a lot of humor.
My Favourite Episode
Obviously the Episode in which Peachie visits the Pokémon Café is my favourite of them all! There is so much fun to be had in seeing all the Pokémon, seeing the food and seeing Peachie spill her MooMoo milk flavouring almost on the person sitting next to her.. I bet I would do that too! I was delighted to see all the Pokémon toys and hear her apologise to the food shaped like Pokémon, feeling bad she has to tear apart Pikachu’s head and making body gore jokes about it! I felt so connected with her at that moment! She did order the wrong desert as the only correct option is the Jigglypuff Cheesecake of course but I will forgive her for that one! The mimikyu crepe Jewels ate looked delightful as well! After a good Poké-meal they go shopping in the Pokémon Center and Jewels picks up an Alolan Vulpix to check out how it looks, instantly falling in love with it.. she knows she has to buy it now! I would get into that type of situation! The wall of evil Pikachu’s also really got me! I’d need to go in the Pokemon Center DX with a supervisor and without a credit card. Cash only! So much cute stuff to be found!
Later in that same episode they visit a made café, no special treatment for them so they can’t film the whole Moe Moe Kyun ritual thing but at least that made things a bit less cringe to watch. While I would love to go along with the atmosphere while I sit at the table seeing other people do it when you can’t vibe the atmosphere isn’t as swell. Because of rain they also end up in a random shop that sells cute cosplays for dirt cheap so that would be a great encounter for me… though I would have spent all my money in the Pokémon center already! It just highlights two aspects of Japanese culture that I like very much, Pokémon and the Maid/Idol culture so this episode scores high points. The one where she visits the Monster Café and the one with the Onsen are other personal favourites of mine! They are all good but those three I hold closest in my heart. If you want a nice down to earth Japan travel blog with a lot of girly sweetness and innocence poured on top.. be sure to check this creator out! I will leave you with the 5th episode as a little idea of what she is about! Let me know what you think! Do you know a creator like this?!
Elon Musk if you are reading this and are like… “Now that I have beaten Jeff Bezos” I need a new thing to do.. but charities are so passé! Help this girl’s dreams come through! I’d figure I would need about 6000 euros for a trip to Japan? That would include spending money! Maybe a bit more maybe a bit less it depends on the season. I’d need to have something similar to become a professional VTuber ..but I will put Space-X or Tesla logo on my VTuber outfit! Then maybe a few thousand to improve my health with medical treatments and quality of life improvements.. Email me and I am sure we can work something out! OR you can make a large Donation on Kofi!..if you do it fast I’ll promise to take Peachie with me.. your welcome for me recommending Peachie to you Elon!
Greetings once again mortals! Pokémon is a tricky subject to put in a Halloween context, I could talk about Creepy Pokedex entries but I have been over those several times already so it is time for something a bit different. A creepy story surrounding Pokémon. A Urban Legend if it were. A legend called “Lavender Town Syndrome”
A mysterious event
In the year 1995 Junichi Masuda was working on a track for a spooky town in the game of pokémon. However his hearing doesn’t pick up certain frequencies that are in this mix. Little did they know this would have serious consequences. February 1996 Pokémon Red and Green are released in Japan and everything is great, the game is a huge success. Yet in the spring of that same year the country is suddenly terrorised by a string of suicides of young children. They have no real connection or so it seems.Many of these suicides came completely out of the blue with some of the childerens having never even displayed somberness before.
A link with these children however is made when more and more children start showing up at the doctor’s office complaining about serious headaches. As it turns out, all these children have been playing Pokémon Red and Green! By the time a link is found over 200 Japanese children are said to have committed suicide. All of them have their game files saved in or near Lavender town. The theory was made that in a high frequency register there were a few tones that could only be heard by the untainted hearing of your youngest. On a binaural level their little brains were harmed. Nosebleeds headaches and various mood swings were detected in the children all across Japan, and Nintendo and Game Freak rushed out a fixed version where the tune had been changed into a lower register, cancelling the effects of this cursed song.
A risky test!
A creepypasta that came out in the year of 2010 dubbed “This the Lavender Town syndrome” While this disease was confirmed to be a hoax there might be more to this story. The song actually does seem to wors on a binaural level. As tested by several people, standing long enough in Lavender town with the original rendition of the song leaves people with a mild sense of dread. In some cases with more troubled listeners it is even said to have provoked anxiety attacks. This song has since leaked to YouTube so of course I decided to listen to this song for an extended period of time. I can feel rather somber, and I have over the past year on several occasions considered self harm or even beyond. So obviously I would be vulnerable if I had perfect hearing! Would it affect me?! I could post the link here, but just in case there are very sensitive person with a compulsion to click on every YouTube Video.. I rather not!
When I started this test I did not not believe the myth. It has been more or less busted already, yet something did not sit right about me about the theorie! But more on that later. I listened to the song while I was doing other research for this post. About twenty minutes in I started to experience something! No it was not melancholy or headache, in fact it might not even be dread, instead I began to feel rather vulnerable. I was super grateful for my can of diet coke.. glad I still had that and that it was properly cold! I also really loved my little snack I had with me. I did not experience a forced emotion but I felt slightly amplified in my own. That was still pretty weak though! I could just be under the influence of my own body craving something sweet. So I took a risk and I looked up an edited version which claimed to have an amplified effect.
Once more up until the twenty minute mark nothing really changed..except for the fact that since I appreciated my snacks so much they depleted rather fast and I was upset about it. Yet 21 one minutes in I began struggling with my internet research, I did not remember what search prompts to type anymore. I forgot the existence of some of the simplest words. I began to feel a vague feeling of dread but as it progressed it almost seemed as if I was experiencing sleep paralysis while I was awake. For some reason I felt I was going to die. The enhanced track is 11 minutes long and after the fear set in I finished the track but after that I had to turn it off. That certainly was an odd experience.
The explanation of Lavender Town Syndrome is rather wrong but the creepy pasta is cleverly developed. The Version of the Pokémon game we got in the west, is basically a 2.0 or 1.5 version from what Japan originally got. The first version they had was quite a big mess filled with even more glitches, ugly sprite work and other flaws. This let to an update being published that did include a slightly altered version of the original lavender town syndrome. This already creates a credibility that there was something wrong with that song. It was something that had to be fixed. Yet there is no real clear explanation of what happened with the real song. It seems some complaints were shared between the real reason and the fake one.. but we do not know for sure. Yet why would you release an entire new game that just has some slightly better sprite work?! In 1995 the Virtual Boy was a thing and those complaints about headache induction were also never fixed.
My grandpa used to be a hypnotist and while I never really had the audience or the patience to read trough the dry material that he had on how to practice that he told me that we can make people do just about everything if you can set up a suggestion well enough. For example he would do this act where he drew a circle on the floor and put people in. He would tell them they could not exit the circle. He experimented a bit with that and found out that a black or red circle.. or a white one worked more consistently than if he used other colours. Green and Blue were less efficient. Red means stop.. so it is much easier to convince the brain to stop! This to an extend can explain “validation” of the Lavender Town Syndrome as well. We KNOW something is wrong with the song.. so it’s not hard to be fooled into thinking it is more harmful than it actually is. Could we be hypnotising ourselves into these effects without knowing it? Or is someone else trying to hypnotise us?
The Science of Sound
The issue with the legend is that it only seems to apply to kids! This is where things go wrong. It is implied that in the high frequency range subliminal messages are hidden. Soundwaves CAN affect the body, however when it comes to sound the higher the frequency the easier it effect is “scattered” and lost. What is inaudible to us most of the time means you have to touch whatever is causing the sound. So already can see the chance of it having an effect being decreased. However Pokémon did appear on the Gameboy, a handheld device. Making range.. improbable but maybe still possible. If ever played a Gameboy in the dark you know how close you need to hold it to your face or how you have to play with it. The second problem is that in my research I never found a documented proof of high frequencies, being used as tools to induce depression. So the myth that kids here do something that tells them to kill themselves seems busted. It is most likely something to make the story a bit scarier! As it targets something so innocent as a kid! If we assume that Lavender Town Syndrome could affect to everyone though it strangely becomes more realistic.
There is a counterpart to Ultrasound sounds in the form Infrasounds. These are tones played at a frequency of below 20 hertz and are outside of our hearing range. However these tones have a big range and can reach you more easily. It seems that these sound waves can affect the gasses in your lungs and to a lesser extend the liquids in your body as well. Turbines or certain engine sounds are known to have these types of low tones and these can result in people getting headaches and experiencing nausea. Prolonged exposure can also produce feelings of anxiety and confusion. These symptoms are all very similar with the beginning stages of Lavender Town Syndrome. Could it be that the original Lavender Town song did not use high tones but instead got it’s effectiveness from it’s low tones? Could they have accidentally put in these sounds that make people anxious and can give headaches?! Well a little more research shows it might not even have been accidental. While an engine/generator or a Wind Turbine creates sound as a byproduct there is one fairly well known entertainment source that in fact uses Infrared for it’s anxiety inducing effects. Infrasound is fairly commonly used in haunted houses!
Lavender Town is the haunted town so it makes sense and even seems that they probably designed their song like one in a haunted house. It hits that brief for me as well. So maybe they just overdid it and a few sensitive kids got sickish. Yet could it drive people to suicide? Unlikely.. at best it might be able to push people over the edge. Which is much more likely to happen from something constant like a Turbine than a limited area song such as lavender town. Can sound make you depressed? Well .. I did not find any documented causes of a song or sound causing a full on depression however.. the counterpart of Infrasound.. the earlier mentioned Ultrasonics have gained results in combating depression. People exposed to high doses of Ultrasonic sound can get cheerier. With these two sounds basically being counterparts I think it is fairly plausible that in high enough doses the opposite can occur as well. It will probably require serious extended time that is unlikely to occur but it might be possible.
Over the Edge
Now for a possible hands on experience with what I shall refer to as “sound poisoning”. It occured about 11 years ago. Over my life I have experienced a few times where I wanted to end everything.. but never did I have difficulty to fight off that compulsion except for one time. I was on a vactation with friends! I knew I was prone to seasickness but my friends really wanted a boat trip and did not believe I would get super sick. They wanted to have a fun day with me.. so I took some travel medicine and hoped for the best.
We decided to sit in the middle of the boat as much as possible as a compromis so I would not get sick.. however since my motor skills are clunky I was slow in navigating the ship and the bow spots were taking So we had to move to the back. We were sitting close to the motor and this boat had the engine basically right beneath us. Just 10 minutes of shore I began to feel queesy and before we even began to talk about the stop at the “secret” beach.. I was sick as heck! I was so sick and nauseous that I just wanted to stop feeling like that .. at any cost. I REALLY wanted to jump headfirst into that screw so this horrible feeling would be over. It wasn’t THAT long of a boat ride either just about an hour…and by the time I was giving up the ghost we were already halfway there. Still even a minute seemed to long! I wanted to end it all right now just to stop feeling so increddibly sick! I have never been AS sick on a boat.
In actuality , I should be in a rather favourable spot! I had taken medicine to alleviate travel sickness and I knew I was prone to this so the night before I even went light on the drinks and the partying. Yet for some reason.. I felt so horrible to the core that I still remember that feeling as the most misserable I have ever been..and I’ve been trough a few other things. It got to a point that I asked my friends to go deeper in the boat with me and not sit by the screws or things I could harm myself with because I needed a way to stop myself. My friends told me to fuck off because they wanted to look over the water and did not feel like moving to a spot with less view, one friend saw how bad I was and decided to come along though. We looked for some crew and in my best Spanish I tried to explain what happend..he helped me to an English sailor who took me to an off limits cabin in beneath the bow that the crew would use to get away from the annoying drunk people on their boat and have a little moment of quite. It also doubled as a lot of other things… but there was at least a table and some chairs in there.
My friend went back and I had a brief talk with the sailor who got me some water, as by then I was full on crying and so colour shifted that small kids on the boat were scared of me. I spend the most of the remainder of the trip there alone, and later on the way back I was completely alone.. but within a minute or 2 of being in the room and sipping my water I began to fell better. The secret day at the beach was wasted for me.. there was free barbecue and booze but I may have drank two small bottle of water and other than that spend the day recovering from my feeling horrible.
On the way back I thought. .. I am gonna die again.. but while in the cabin I felt was less sick. Sure I just lay on the floor of that room with my eyes closed waiting for the trip to be over.. but when I emerged as we were docking.. all my friends were sick. Except for one. They came to check up on me and after they took a stroll across the boat, spending some time in the front. My friends who sat above the engine all felt sick and one even glum. Could it be that our negative feelings were amplified by the Infrasound?! I can’t confirm it.. but while I have been forced on a boat after that.. I never felt THAT horrible! I did not even feel the same on return trip when I was “less” exposed to a source of Infrasound. So while I did not end up jumping to my death.. I am fairly certain that IF it was “Sound Poisoning” that day.. prolonged exposure can definitely push you off that edge. There are also sound devices that make you sick .. as some sort of prank device.. and my friends who never get sick plus some other people in the back got sick as well…so I always assumed it was plausible.
Theory
In an extrapolation of that let’s take a look at the Lavender Town Syndrome again and make it sound a bit more probable. From experience I have experienced anxiety and a crippling effect to my mental fortitude by a prolonged exposure to the original and enhanced Lavender Town Song. It triggered a need to escape from it and after which within minutes my fortitude returned to me. It also was nothing strong enough to compel me to any acts.. it just made me feel significantly worse. More so an amplifying effect for the negatives than creationary. However from first hand experience I have also been pushed very close to that edge with similar complaints with or close to a possible source of Infrared sounds. So the myth is not without ANY merit. While playing through the game however the song isn’t played long enough to really receive a high enough dosage of sound to notice any effect as they only become apparent after the 20 minute mark. The way the town is structured no one will be out that long and exaggerated effects only trigger after 40 minutes.. which makes it near impossible.
However if we apply a simple modifier to this story things begin to make sense again. You see Pokémon released in February of 1996.. and in the early spring of that month the suicides have been registered. So these suicides happened somewhere in between February and the end of April. So I wondered.. could people feel bad in that period?! A little research does show that those months are within the Japanese flu season. It would account for the increased amounts of doctor visits as it already is flue season more people will go to the doctor. “Sound Poisoning” enlarging your complaints seems possible so that kids felt sicker than with normal flu sort of makes sense. My dad told me switching a device on and off uses more battery power than letting it run for a bit so if I took a five minute break I would often leave my gameboy running. When your sick you play more sluggishly and eat soup in between and maybe watch some tv as well… shiver in a blanket who knows. So if we assume these are just sick children staying at home playing video games and idling about a bit .. I can see their symptoms get worse. For those very susceptible to these things I can see them get VERY sick and hopeless.
Perhaps they semi doze off with their handheld besides them and take on longer concentrations of sound. The need for peace and quite in Japan is already a bit higher so there being little to compensate might be possible and given how stressful the japanese school system can be they are already more inclined to depressive thoughts, as a known statistic. It requires some unlikely change of events to occur but the myth might not be fully impossible. If we take the super gameboy into account for example, the SNES peripheral that allowed you to play Pokémon in semi colour..with pokemon having their correct base colour all of the sudden.. it makes a lot more sense on why you would not briefly turn off the device when you eat a bowl of soup. That is also THE way to play at home without draining your batteries. In a set up like that Lavender Town Syndrome would be more likely to occur. One does not simply get up when feeling super sick to turn that off.. you just go limp and wait for the strength to turn that off. as for how effective sound can be.. there are prank devices that use Infrared sound that are pretty crippeling. There are devices using it that are as effective as a bottle of Epikek and I have experienced how depressing intense nausea can be.
So while it is unlikely that there is a Pokémon induced string of suicides.. it is not impossible. It would be improbable enough that this could easily be covered up or discredited as a hoax. By simply helping spread the rumour that it is from high tones and making it exclusive to kids it becomes an impossible story. However! Pokémon back in the first generation was almost exclusively played by kids, whom are both under a fair amount of pressure with the school system an are much more prone to become sick due to flue season. Back in those days, consoles had no sign of stand by mode and often a game could not even save as amazing as Pokémon could! You would lose a lot of progress so by instinct we already let our game run if we could not play for a tick. Prolonged exposure is quite possible in the mindset of the time.
How Pokémon would look on the SNES
So if we explain the myth that way, let’s look at actual change it would have caused in Japan. If we look at the suicide rates in 1996 in Japan about 3500 people in the age of 10-19 (deemed kids) commited suicide in Japan. That equals 291 each month. Now it is hard to exclude teens here as those take the biggest chair. .but children suicide is a HUGE problem in japan. Let’s say teens take 75% of that figure that still would mean that somewhere between 140-and 210 kids would end their life in the period Lavender Town Syndrome was said to occur. This is within range of the myth’s 200! This doesn’t even include younger people still so even if teens take a bigger slice of the pie (and when I say teens I count 16 to 19 year olds) the number of 200 never fully seems out of reach. It’s on the high end of the estimate but if we consider that Lavender Town Syndrome simply makes you more likely to take your life rather then forcing you to do so.. it doesn’t seem that odd that suicide rates would be at that specific number. The numbers of the myth DO work out.
Lavender Town in the first game requires you to get a certain device to make progress, however this is the most cryptic part of your journey so far so I can see it as a bit of a bottleneck. It makes sense that children get stuck there for a bit. Especially in the first wave of players with no guides out yet. So among those unfortunate souls that were lost it would make sense in a way that they are in our around that part. Except for maybe victory road it is the most cryptic and tricky part of the game after all. So perhaps Lavender Town Syndrome could simply be a statistic that got interpreted the wrong way. Perhaps it is a mere case of unrelated events happening at the same time… yet perhaps everything did influence each other , more then we can ever know. In that case Lavender Town Syndrome would be less about killer cartridges and more about a freaky.. Final Destination like event…which would go mostly unnoticed.
So could it be that Lavender Town Syndrome is in fact real?! No.. most likely not. Yet there are situations surrounding it that make it simply less impossible than one might think! Given that a suicide in Japan is 3x more likely to be caused by a health induced concern than anything else only adds to this story for example! We might have misunderstood or told the story wrong but there might me more to this myth than we might think! Nintendo or the Pokémon Company if I have discovered something I am fine with deleting this discovery.. in return for a trip to Tokyo and visiting the Pokémon Café and Poké Center at your costs! .. After the world has returned to normal of course! Because I also want to hug Chef Pikachu or server Pikachu! Of course if you want me to investigate more Ghost Stories about Pokémon my dearest Nintendo I am also very willing to that.. same price!
Hello again my dear island guests! As some of you know , I am not very much of a modern gamer, I really tend to stick close to gems of the past and in the past of this blog I have discussed a fair few of these. Recently I replayed one of these classics again. As a kid this game was bundled in a special rental promotion set with Mystical Ninja Goemon in some of my video-stores staff favourite bundles. That game was called Pocky and Rocky.
The Priest and The Tanuki
Pocky and Rocky is an odd game, manifesting as a scrolling shooter but for once not playing space or a warzone. Instead you move to colourful landscapes and you should down a slew of varying monsters, navigate around certain traps and use tools to defend yourself. However other than that it does still play like a typical scrolling shooter. You collect power ups to upgrade your weapon in two different ways, you fight bosses and like all space shooters this game is tricky as heck! It is commonly seen as a bit of a niche hit for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System but upon release was popular enough to spawn three sequels. One on the SNES one on the Game Boy Advance and one on the Playstation 2 and Wii. The game was produced by Natsume and published by them as well. Upon its release it got reviewed pretty well, easily scoring an average score of about 8 out of 10. More often going higher than that then lower. This is a perfectly fine score for this game that is mostly praised for its amazing two player mode.
I reviewed the game Single Player as I don’t have any friend who wants to come play this with me in person and the person who might play this with me lacks the patience for such a title. It should be noted that both the American version and the Japanese version are much better than the European version of the game. In Europe the Japanese version never got translated and as a result while there are cutscenes the European version does not feature any text or story! To explain the story I will use a Let’s Play of the American version , thus characters will be titled like their American counterpart. To be fair I had a lot of fun imagining what the story would be in the European version but seeing how far I was off made me chuckle a bit. Some of the terminology used comes from the Pocky and Rocky Wiki and not from the game as even the American version never uses any terminology for weapons or anything except the enemies.
When you are alone you can take the role of Pocky , who is a little priest girl who fights by throwing sealing cards, called Ofuda, at enemies and she can defend by swinging her priestess staff or Gohei. Rocky is a Raccoon Dog and instead of cards he tosses out leafs and he defends by swiping his tail. There seem to be minute differences between the characters, for example I think Pocky is faster but Rocky can dive a bit further and seems to defend more effectively. .but I honestly am not sure if I made that up in my mind or if it is actual reality. The story moves independent of what character you pick as both storywise seem to stick together. Which brings us to a bit of a problem.. this game is very VERY hard if you single player it! I really would have liked it if the lonesome player would have gotten an NPC ally to aid them.. however because of how some challenges are designed I guess an AI could not cut it! While you can play the game by yourself.. the easy difficulty will already provide you with a very steep challenge.
Let’s Rocky
The story of the game is wonderfully weird and very mundane at the same time! A long time ago wicked creatures called the Nopino Goblins spread mischief across the land. Yet they were all subjected by a priest named Pocky. All seemed well until one day Pocky the Tanuki shows up telling her his fellow Nopino Goblins are out of control! The first Nopino Goblins that go out of control are these Umbrellas with a big eye and a scary mouth. As well some weird ass cyclops monks! They are aided by guys in baskets that should at you and spooky scary skeletons! The boss of the first level is a guy with a big brown head that shoots seeds at you! When you defeat him.. he tells he has been mind controlled by a guy in a Black Mantle.. so that is what the villain of the game is called Black Mantle! Pocky and Rocky then venture into the water domain to fight some creatures that look like a cross between a turtle and a duck……wait a minute!
Tanuki..Kasa Obake, Oi No Bakemono, Hitotsume-kozō and Kappa! Nopino Goblin is the English translation for the word Yokai! That is hilarious! The second stage makes you fight the cutest monkeys before eventually turning into a water stage quickly restricting your movement. Since a game over doesn’t abide by any checkpoints or subareas getting a game over means you go back to the beginning of a stage! You have unlimited continues but..Nopino Goblins can be tough sons of Yokai! The game is hilariously translated and the dialogue feels SUPER cheesy! Especially after you finish the third stage and things seem more dire! That stage took me SO Many attempts though! It has two pretty hard minbi bosses, and grueling gauntlets of flying enemies. After you deal with that you dodge some traps and shifting walls that can push you off the stage so you have to master the dodge technique here to avoid the deadly twomps like skeletons and shifting stage. It is a very good stage that has some amazing designs though and some funny Nopino Goblins!
It gets even better though , as you advance past the third stage you find out that the evil organisation is the Gorgonzola Goblins, living in the Gorgonzola Fortress and to get there you have to use a cursed airship! This is probably the hardest stage in the game, Narrow spaces, few options to dodge and lots of Yokai Pirates and turres with crazy attack patterns. It is guarded by a bird Yokai which requires you to be pretty good at your shield and dodge techniques. Of course that pales in comparison to the skill you have to show against the second to last boss fight! Black Mantle of course works together with Dracula! This fight. quickly turns into a bullet hell! With a twist. Entire sections of the map at time become electrified so standing still and defending will not get you anywhere.. so you will have to zoom across the arena.. while using your defensive tail swipe AND attacking the boss! All tools have to be used at the same time. The final stage is a simple climb facing some tough enemies that fire attacks that cover half the screen. Getting hit by them drains a massive amount of health as well and health power ups are very rare! With a miniboss and the big boss himself.. this one might take a few attempts. The ending is wholesome and cute and after a bit of ending dialogue Pocky and Rocky share some Dango together in the moonlight!
Sweet as a Pocky
Pocky is a sweet japanese candy..well it’s bread with chocolate on it but the Pocky in this game is just as sweet. The presentation of this game is phenomonal! The cutscenes are super cute, the sprites are fantastic and the game has some pretty nice tunes. It really has a cute anime esthetic that also reminds me of Saturday morning cartoons for very young kids. The way the story is presented also seems very much like one of the cutests tales for kids you have ever seen. The story is very much non-violent but there are some creepy like bosses and creepy imagery as well it is very balanced out!
You never get bored! Every stage feels significantly different from the others even if lots of set pieces are reused across all stages. It really works, you can see what areas lie close to one another but you also feel like you have made progress. Pocky and Rocky both look great themselves. If you play with two players you even get some team moves where one character uses the other to launch themselves forward as if they were a skateboard of sorts.. It looks buttery smooth. The frame-rate can stutter a tiny bit if there are too many enemies on screen but that is almost never an issue.
The gameplay is rather pleasant and while it is difficult as heck, it never feels really unfair.. that said it is one of those , remember the patterns , kinda game.. but to be fair that rings true for most of the genre and the genre itself is known for being pretty difficult. Basically how this game works is, you make progress until you die, you find out why you die or how these enemies work and how to best get around it , you lose less health and the next time you progress further. You die again facing this new enemy or a bit in the level and you come up with a strategy for that section again. You start the stage over again and combine your knowledge of before to get even further.. and so you get a little bit better every time you die. You really have to remember how these things work because health is fairly rare and there is no regaining life during a stage. Playing alongside a friend will make things a bit more manageable as you can remind each other how to get around an obstacle and the team moves really make you able to dash through things you can’t do alone..but that is actually a nice reward for playing with two. You really can use each other!
The controls all work pretty nicely as well, pretty much every button is used and if you don’t like a lay out the game allows you to remap them yourself to fit your preference. For example I remapped the dodge to something that worked a bit better for me. I gradually ended up remapping a few things, just to fit my playstyle and it worked. I really felt myself improving.. but there is a lot to improve for just one sitting.
Nope-Ino
There are a few minor gripes I have with this game and for one is there is no save feature! That is rather common and if you are familiar with the game you can beat this entire game in just under an hour. To learn all these patterns of thought takes a lot longer. I needed several hours to gradually improve myself enough to beat this. It’s possible.. but as I grew more tired focus began to fade. At stage 4 I had to call it quits the first day. Replaying Stage 1 through 3 was a lot easier the next day but there is no real reward for playing through them well. You can’t take extra lives, at least not above your maximum and continue being unlimited even if you could.. it doesn’t really matter if you don’t start out with max lives you just learn and progress later. Stage 4 and Stage 5 are WAAAY harder than the previous once so after progressing through stage 4 and most of 5 .. I had to call it quits on the second day! The third day playing through stage 1 till 4 felt a bit .. tedious.. It’s part of the genre but a password after stage 3 might have been nice. Even if it was just the one.
The fact that there are only two upgrades .. plus a shield is also a bit .. thin. Blue orbs improve your cards or leafs so you can throw multiple while orange orbs turn your projectiles into fireballs. While both characters have a unique main weapon the fireball is the same, which is sad as it does more damage, but it looks way less unique! You are usually better off with the bigger range of your main weapon anyway. I just wish there were more upgrades. Upgrades decrease if you take hits so for example I can see a slower but homing attack being a nice upgrade or perhaps a less damaging projectile but one that also blocks enemy attacks much like your swipes. It would give us a bit more variation to play! It doesn’t really affect how fun this game is.. and it is really fun.. I just think.. it could even be more fun if you and your friend could go different weapon upgrade routes and get a bit more creative rather than just skilful!
Of course for the european version the lack of text is a BIG issue. While the dialogue is nothing to write home about, it adds a really innocent charm to the game that isn’t really there in our PAL version. While the cutscenes without dialogue are still pretty cute, the bosses in the American version usually say some fun lines as well .. a threat right before you start, which feels like some extra motivation.. since the european version apparently had to translate from the japanese version and they said nope we are not going to translate it. Which is a shame.. it isn’t a good text.. but it is really cute!
The final gripe I have with this game is the box art! It really is quite ugly and doesn’t represent the style of the game at all. The Japanese box art looks so much cuter! The art of the game is much more reflective of that Japanese style so why make it in this weird semi-cool box art. I get it in some games where a sprite is open for interpretation but given the high quality presentation in the cutscenes, and of the sprite itself , I don’t think this is something you can pull off successfully!
The Boxart we got!
The Japanese Boxart!
Two can play THIS Game
This title is a super strong and quite overlooked one in the SNES library! Due to it’s arcade like feeling it aged very well and is very fun to play to this day. Buying a cartridge can be a costly affair with prices ranging going well above that of a full priced game, and including a case you can easily buy two full priced console games. So it does hold some collector value. I am sure however people can find a way to enjoy this game none the less. Pocky Rocky and Becky the second sequel for the Game Boy Advance has been released on several virtual consoles. If you manage to get your hands on this game however it will provide a few hours of good fun! While relatively short it takes quite a while to master and the colourful graphics and varying stages make everything a delight to replay. Even by yourself.
The real fun however starts if you play this with a buddy! More strategies unlock, extra moves are handed out and there is just that much more fun to be had with the game. Single player the game is great but you can feel it never completely reaches it’s full potential. Some enemies are extra rough to dodge because you really miss that team up move set. A choice I think is very brave and makes sense A single player has much more reason to master this while a two player game can be more casual fun. It might not be able to escape some of the classic genre tropes and the lack of a password system or a save feature prevents it from getting my highest rating but it got darn close! Pocky and Rocky is one of the better Co-op multiplayer games on the system and Nopino Goblins is an amazing english word for Yokai!
Welcome again my dear island guests. Pinkie’s Paradise does not only have the sweetest coconuts, most delicious cocktails and best staff you get in a resort! We also really like our gadgets. Well at least me the manager does! The Japanese culture is something a lot of us people here love and strange gadgets are a part of that “Japanese” Lifestyle! Since I love randomness so much I decided to create a series in which I solve every day trouble.. with odd Japanese gadgets. Since last week I talked about my inability to flirt.. I decided this week to start off with gadgets to help me….and you guys.. date a Japanese girl.
This post will feature some YouTube Video’s so reading this post on my actual website is advised
Getting Ready for Your Date
All these gadgets came from the same website! Japan Trend Store! The first step towards a successful date comes with preparation of course. You want to look nice for your date. If you are a bit like me though.. you HATE ironing! It is so awful. I go out of my way to avoid having to iron and for the measly price of €206 euros or $243 respectively I can look pristine without having to iron again! All I need is a Laundry Dryer and Wrinkle Remover. Just place an airbag over the steaming device, put your blouse or pants on the air bag and bam! Within “minutes” you have a dry outfit.. and if you look at how it bloats around the bag a lot more body confidence as well.
A blouse or a gentleman’s shirt will only take about 30 minutes to dry and it can even blow dry denim jeans within 100 minutes! If you have a dryer though you can even use cold air and do it even faster. And look how amazingly fun it looks! It’s like you have a bloated friend over! I would definitely build a head for it! Imagine your mother coming over and she sees two legs sticking up from behind your couch! This can be used for dating AND pranking! If you use cold air, you get a perfectly huggable buddy if the date doesn’t go well either.. and based on the comments I got on my flirting post we all should very much consider that option.
Now we are all geeks here so I would assume like me, the prospect of dating terrifies you all and causes immense stress. Stress that can manifest physically! When I get stressed I turn into a wooden board or even a brick! Muscles cramp together and I look like one of tangled up marionettes. Not very attractive to my date to say the least. I know Japanese people are a bit more tense.. but that does mean I won’t be able to get a relaxing massage after! So I should massage myself before and I have found the perfect one! A quadruped chicken! It’s name is Rilacocco! You can relax those tensed up muscles by letting it waddle on your skin!
Setting you back €96 euros or $114 dollars this is not a cheap massager, or from the looks of it a particularly good one! Maybe if they are really finely built but I doubt this counts as a deep tissue massage. It looks Kawaii as heck though so you can even bring it to your date and show it off! With stickers you can customise it’s looks! What kind of eyes do you want it to have? It is yours to choose! You can even have a great conversation on why you customize Rilacocco the way you did! She is a Japanese girl after all.. I mean these things might not work AS well on a Western Girl.. or in actual real life… but for fictional Japanese girls.. it’s perfect! You can compare your massagers! She might even have a Rilapiyo the Duck variant, which is cheaper and comes in pink and instead of wiggling it beams heat into you… okay.. I gotta steal my date’s massager now!
Now one thing you need to do before you go on a date is the Sniff test! You know! Sniff your armpits and see if it’s passable! Yet what if you are scent blind to your own smells?! That could easily ruin a date! You could ask a friend but we are all geeks so chances are we got those in short supply! Let alone that they would like to smell our armpits and are available on the day of a date! Plus they are our friends! Those who’d do that for us would probably have been our friends for years so maybe they are also scent-blind.
Luckily one again there is a gadget that now can tell us how stinky we objectively are! Introducing the Konica Minolta Kunkun Body Odor Checker. A device that analyses your scent and rates your body scent on a scale from 0 to 100%. Now I am not sure if 0% means that you are 0% clean and you stink like that villian from Dragon Ball or 0% noticeable so that could be awkward but we can experiment. Like I wash and sterilize and then measure it and if it’s closer to 0% I wash and sterilize till we reach that or if it’s closer to 100% we wash and sterilize till we reach the big score!
I am not sure if it detects perfume so best not perfume before I use it! Then during our date check a few times and if needed visit the bathroom to clean my pits! So this device seems kinda pointless at first when you think that a normal human would regularly shower and clean their pits and stuff.. but apparently in Japan , body scent shaming is a very big thing! Nothing kills romance harder than your date calling you Nioi or Stinkui. Well her being a psychopath murderer maybe.. but I would be kinda into that to be honest. Her calling me Stinkui.. instead of Pinkui would crush my soul! This gadget comes with a price tag of €487 or $576 dollars which is a rather soul crushing price to find out if you stink or not..and I still prefer the sniff test.. but this is objective! Maybe she carries one with her herself and if the reads are too high she will dump you and leave you with the bill of that cute Izakaya you visited. The thing sends data to your smartphone from which you can read stinkiness so you can also hide this device in the bathroom and use the app to make a documented list of who takes the stinkiest number 2. Or if you hate baths you can say! Mom! I don’t wanna take a bath. I am only at 12% stinkiness!. This device is worth its weight in deodorant.
Going on the actual first date!
So now you might be wondering! Pinkie .. did you make her a Japanese girl just so she can counter every argument not to buy these silly gadgets.. to which I say… mostly yes! But it is also so I could promote a very special gadget. You see the Japanese people have many skills. Most of them involve writing amazing 2d characters or deciding who in the world is gay and what not trough the art of Yaoi and Yuri art. They are also very good with using dead fish in creative ways, like making it go across little conveyor belts in the most colourful forms! Also making it very delicious! Yet they aren’t very good at speaking english! Luckily they are good at making gadgets so they made a device that seems like something out of Star Trek. The Startalk Voice Translator Hatsune Miku! A Translator that can translate 53 voices using an interface of 9 languages. So English is properly required to operate the device.. but it can help you understand your date.
What is even better is that the device is equipped with the voice of the adorable vocaloid. So if your Japanese Date whispers sweet nothings in your ear as the date progresses Miku will electronically repeat them understandably! So if you ever wanted to hear Miku say.. I think you are very handsome/pretty, this is your best chance! Plus your date can hear your compliments in the voice of Miku too! If you ever have seen a concert of her in Japan we know Japanese folks LOVE her! So if she on a subconscious level ties you to the idol you are golden! Even if your date doesn’t go well you can always talk to Miku.. she will just repeat after you but you can make her speak another language so you can just pretend it is something else! Let just hope Miku never tells you your date thinks you are stinky, but since this gadget will run you about €382 or $452 you might have to cut down on a certain scent detector.
Now if you are like me you will be pretty nervous during your date. Miku might translate things with a bit of a stutter! However, nerves means sweating! Even though we can detect our scents to wash all the grime away.. and new sweat doesn’t stink.. only old sweat does.. you still can see stains on your coloured clothes. I like wearing brighter colours so sweat stains kind of stand out! For a date I would also usually wear something fancy.. which usually means it’s a lot hotter. I will never wear a short sleeve to a date so I either have to wear a vest or a long sleeve dress. Make up will also make me hotter hopefully also in the figurative sense.. but also in the literal sense.. so bodyheat is a thing that quickly goes out of control! Most Japanese cooling gadgets do not look very sexy! I will discuss more of them in a future post but today I will discuss something you can wear under a dinner jacket or a nice pretty vest. It’s the Surei Water Cooling Vest Lite!
This vest can move water around it’s lining with temperatures as cold as -10 degrees celsius. Which is like 14 degrees Fahrenheit! Which means I definitely won’t sweat. It might even make you shiver with cold so she is forced to give you a warming hug! It won’t help because -10 is being created underneath the hug but hey you gotta take your victories. Also since it is so cold you can’t really put it on your skin as that won’t end well.. but this is invented for people that want to wear a jacket.. but don’t want the heat the jacket provides. That kinda seems like a bit of an jackass thing to do..to wear a jacket just for the looks but wanting to negate the heat and it definitely will come to haunt you in the ass if it is a date that ends in the bedroom.. because.. a cooling pack is not sexy.. but for date number 1..it will keep your pits clean! Plus and this is a big one.. it can be worn inside a Hazmat suit.. let’s face it it is 2020 after all. For just $376 euro’s or €318 if a blonde man doesn’t destroy your currency value you can have this sweet vest. With icy temperatures us girls can even use it to perk up a little!
Securing a future!
Now one successful date is not enough to get a Japanese girlfriend! I think at least.. There are bars where us Gaijn can go to pick up ladies looking for some western meals but let’s be honest we all want love and not lust right?! *Pm me for the bar name I can help you out if you don’t* So.. how do we make our date our girlfriend. Well I was born in the 80’s. Back then and in the early 90’s the way to secure a date is to give her a romantic mixtape! However providing her with a YouTube playlist isn’t exactly the same. Since we want to go retro all the way and you want her to have some cute song quality.. why go for a mixtape when we can upgrade it to Vinyl! Presenting the Gakken Otona no Kagaku Toy Record Maker! A toy that allows you to make an actual record for your lady love using recordings you have on your smartphone! This means you can just put your favourite love songs on there.. but you can also sing a song yourself and put it on a record! So if you always wanted to be printed on Vinyl while not having a girlfriend I guess you can do that as well you narcissist meany! For just €168 euros or $198 dollars you can blow the mix tape people out of the water and give your love a record album of your love!
It also melted my date!
Skipping ahead a few months you are now in a relationship but of course your visa has expired so you had to go home for three months. Things are still good as she still has that record with your voice on it! Everytime she listens to Hatsune Miku she thinks of you too! So everytime she listens to either she calls you up on Zoom! How sweet! But also really annoying because that is the time you would go out drinking with your friends..or play a western game. Yet you can not blow your girlfriend off! You need a ruse to talk to her for a bit.. then go do your thing without doing the I love you more thing.. No I love you more! Yuck! So you just say your internet is very bad and you buy the Loading Circle Online Meeting Escape Machine! It costs $75 which is just €63 and while chatting with her you freeze up and pop the button on this machine then pause your camera.. and she will be none the wiser. You can then send her a text on discord or whatsapp saying my phone just crashed.. I am going to bed. I am sorry Uwu! I wuv you! Then you go out with your friends, have fun and your relationship will not suffer for it either!
The final gadget can be for yourself if you are a girl or for her if you happen to be a guy! It is the Ravijour Love Tester Bra. Three months have passed and you can move back into Japan..and it is time t o wrinkle the sheets. Yet being a geek we are all devoid of the knowledge of opening bras. Nothing is as unsexy as you wanting to get things on and you are yanking on a bra of your significant other trying to get it off. Most of us will lack experience in that department.. so instead of letting her undo it herself.. you gift her this electronically locked Bra that is controlled with an app! She can undo it herself with the app but if you can get her heartrate up enough within a certain interval for a little while.. the app will make the bra pop off itself. The sad thing is though.. as for right now this thing isn’t really for sale! It was a promotional thing in 2014 aimed at offering protection to intoxicated women who could easily be sweet-talked into doing something they don’t want! Yet for us geeks it could also be a sexy toy that lets us avoid our kryptonite so I say bring this back!
Don’t worry! I have no Japanese girlfriend yet.. I first need to gather upwards of 1757 euro to go on a date in Japan and that is excluding the ticket, and of course the actual date. So you got time! Until then I hope I made dating a bit easier for you people! Now you can find your Japanese Angel! If you want to find these gadgets for yourself go to Japan Trend Shop! I am not sponsored but I love this website and will make more of these posts in the future! So maybe one day.. they sponsor me.. and I could actually GO on that tech date! Of course you can help as well by supporting my Kofi!
Hello Island Guests. At the time I am writing this and posting this , it is valentines day. The day of love. A perfect little day for such a loveable and loving little Weeb like me. Yet in the western day also a sad day. Pinkie tends to celebrate Valentine’s by herself. I love the amounts of heart in the store though when I go on a little walk about so I still love the day. More so I love the days after.. in which heart shaped chocolate gets discounted. But did you weebs like me know that Valentines is a lot different in Japan? It’s not just about that one true love! It’s about all love! And I love it!
Gimme Chocolate!
(No valentine’s Ddy would be complete without this)
Valentine’s day in Japan is basically nothing like we know it. Where the western world puts the focus on the guys providing something nice for their girls most and foremost in Japan it’s the girls who have to cough up the gifts. Valentines day in Japan is very much focussed on chocolate. So not a lot of heart plushies, no giving expensive gifts. You give chocolat. But not just to your lover. Valentine’s day is about giving chocolate to those who matter to you. In any sense of the word. This means your family gets chocolate, your boss gets chocolate and all your coworkers get chocolates for your classmates.. chocolates for everyone!
(It took me a while to find a picture that actually showed a Chocolat Rain)
The funniest part about this whole thing came to be due to a translation error. I guess the Japanese misunderstood the point.. kind off.. Even though the message is lost here as well. I know that my best friend Bean is giving her boyfriend like a 500 dollar gift.. (he would have been so fudged if he lived in Japan). Now in Japan this would be a REALLY stupid idea.. well or kinda smart.. but more on that later.. you are just supposed to choc it up! And of course there are rules! It’s japan after all!
You have to give everyone chocolat that is a rule.. but you can give them gradations of chocolates. There are levels of chocolateness which will tell a person how close you are to them. So let’s take a look at all the gifting types!
Cho-Giri Choco is the cheapest to give.. the most toxic to get. Giri stands for obligation and Cho.. I think in this context stands for being far away from the gift giver. It’s the cheapest chocolat that you give to people.. not to exclude them. The thing you give to the female colleague who keeps showing your pictures of her cat, that woman who keeps hosting her Grey’s Anatomy watch along.. where no one ever shows or that blogger you kinda always just leave a like for but that you never really read because she is just to weird. Cho-Giri is basically the chocolate for the Meg Griffin’s of society.
Shut Up! Have some Cho-Giri Choco
Giri Choco is the social obligation chocolat you don’t actually mind giving.. for example to the colleagues you like and of course something extra for your boss, your mother or your teacher. Even if you don’t like your boss you do not give them the cheapest Giri.. because he will know! You give them something just a bit fancier because otherwise they will destroy you! Basically it’s a treat for anyone who is on the “wedding guest list” in the “we have to invite them” part of the list rather than the “I want them to be there” list.
Tomo Choco is a treat meant for friends and those who have a non romantic place in your heart. While it is still okay to buy them chocolate this has to be more luxurious than that of the obligated ones. There has to be some love into this gift. This means you have to write them a handwritten note, or spend a lot of time making, some cool gift wrapping and a real tomodachi would go through the effort to hand craft chocolat for their friends as well. Still Tomo Choco can still be pretty relaxed in some circles as long as it shows at least a bit of a personal touch to really showcase your affection.
Honmei Choco is the chocolate made for that special someone. Traditionally Valentines Day in Japan was used as a way for shy girls to confess their love to boys by offering them a tribute of chocolates. Of course also that special someone you deeply care for also had to become included so somehow this ended up being the highest gradation of chocolat. Looks are very important for Honmei. When bought it has to at least look expensive and fancy and it has to show very much care. Yet in the more traditional interpretation you really have to make this one yourself. You have to put your love into it while making it .. and it is believed that if a boy likes your chocolates maybe you can get together.. but we will return to that subject in a bit. Let’s start looking at what the guys have to do in return first.
If you love Chocolate should you give Chocolate chocolate?
I love you three times over! The white day story!
One month after Valentines Day it’s the turn for boys to treat the girls. On the 14th of March Asia celebrates White Day. It started out as an invention of the marshmallow industry in an attempt to up their sales numbers like how the chocolate industry did. On this day guys return gifts to the girls who gifted them stuff. This started out with paying them back with marshmallows but as it turned out, girls did not enjoy marshmallows as much as they did chocolates. So the whole Giri thing got replaced by flowers, cookies and chocolates.. anything would do as long as the packaging at the very least was white.
Now I am unsure if this is an invention of the marshmallow industry because that would seem rather unpractical.. but there is a rule of three for white day. At least for Honmei class gifts as far as I am aware, a boys gift has to at least cost three times as much as the gift the girl gives. See now how Bear.. the boyfriend of Bean would be in trouble if he had lived in Japan?! He would have to spend more than I get in two month’s of income on a gift for her. On White Day the girls are treated by the boys. Restaurants are overbooked and basically all that stuff we get here on V-Day. There is a lot less focus on crafting and a lot more focus on commercialism. You have to make sure you spend more than your girlfriend.
(White day when your girlfriend gave you an expensive gift)
As far as I am aware White Day mostly seems about reciprocating gifts. While Japanese Valentine’s Day is about confessing feelings, White Day is much more about reciprocating feelings. You do not ask people to celebrate the day with you.. you just return a favor….. how romantic. Though I do think it might be for the best.. otherwise Yaoi couples would end up in an endless loop of gifting. Guy 1 gives boyfriend a gift.. who has to gift back something three times as expensive.. than guy 1 has to get a gift that is three times as expensive as that other gift and so on!…Maybe they did think about this more than I thought .
This system kinda does make sense! But now I’ll never get expensive gifts!
A Day for the unloved: Black Day
South Korea even has a THIRD Holiday in the season and this one is called Black Day. I know South Korea isn’t japan so you all probably care a whole lot less but it is kinda cute and sad at the same time. Black Day is unofficially celebrated on the 14th of April. Black day is for those who did not receive any gifts on Valentine’s Day or on White Day. It brings people together to fairly cheap restaurants or places and everyone of these single people than eat Jajangmyeon together. This is Korean Dish filled with Chinese Noodles, Vegetables and Pork.. it all gets covered in a thick black bean sauce hence the name black day. From Chocolats to beans is quite a downgrade!
The dish does look good though!
There is something oddly charming to an event like Black Day. It allows singles together and support each other in their “loneliness” and maybe even acquainted with one another.. perhaps even planting some affection and love to harvest in the next season of love. From what i have seen though this is still mostly a guy thing!
Still I will make sure that in two month I have some noodles with pork and black sauce! Ever since I learned of it .. I actually have made black sauce noodles every 14th of april that i am single. (Which basically was all of them..after learning of this holiday). I haven’t always used chinese noodles or pork though! No one notices anyway. Now Black Day isn’t the only Black chapter in the book that is Japanese in 2011 some tweets began to circulate the internet… for a handful of girls in Japan.. Valentine’s is about BLACK MAGIC.
Uhm You can keep your Chocolates… Arigato Desu!
Now we all know that putting a little love in the dish makes it taste a lot better. Mothers home cooked food tastes better because she puts in her love for you when making your favorite pasta or your beloved sunday roast. We can almost taste that bit of personality she puts into it.. taste her essence… and to a select few girls in Japan Valentines day has a ……………similar connotation. For the most part putting your love into a dish is good enough for the girls, yet in 2014 a message became very trending on Twitter. While blown out of proportions I unfortunately can pretty much confirm the legitimacy of using black magic in Valentine’s Day candy. Luckily only from second hand experience. A friend of mine (At the time) had some enchanted candies. (Not the really really bad kind fortunately) The Black magic of Valentines believe that if you put something of yourself into the candy,(Homei only) it will help those who eat it fall in love with you.I do not mean this in a spiritual sense.. there are some Honmei out there in Japan each year that contain.. physical personal essence.
Now my friend was lucky and he found a hair in his chocolat. At first he thought it was an accident as if it just dropped in there by mistake. later he realised the girl was actually very superstitious and believed he would fall in love with her. Unfortunately the 2014 tweet popularised putting other parts in as well. Pieces of skin, .. the type of hair that is less likely to land in the chocolat by accident but also stuff like tears or finger nails. Alas… that was also not what the 2014 tweet was about. They talked about how to add your blood to the chocolat. Adding your blood to the chocolate made with love would make those who eat it fall for you almost certainly. Among all the types of blood one would be the most potent and that is the blood of a girl on her period… Now again I do know the reactions on the tweet were exaggerated but three people I know personally who lived in Japan have confirmed to me that it does in fact happen in rare cases. The one guy targeted himself. A gal pal who studied there a little while before the tweet.. but after it’s popularisation in 2011 asked around on her school and some told her they would consider it had they been in love. Could still be a joke but she believed it. The third told a very convincing story to.. so if your girlfriend is on the Yandere side…. ?!
(She still lookins kinda cute)
While probably mostly an urban legend it’s not that weird to think that in a country where they sell second hand panties from vending machines (or used to before they got outlawed) stuff like this could be real to. Regardless Valentines is pretty different in asia than it is here in the west. There is positivity about it that all forms of love matter not just that one true love. It’s also about loving your friends family and everyone in your live as well. Even those you normally would show no love at all.. get a little token of affection. Which really charms me. I tried to make chocolate for my friends one but in the end I ended up with a ruined bowl, some minor burns.. a very filthy kitchen counter and some broken chocolat unicorn parts that looked like they had been an accident ..prior to being broken. Still for those who are alone today.. think about the Japanese meaning of the day.. somewhere out there there must be someone you love.. in some way! Be it your friend, your senpai or your family! Hey your even reading my blog today.. so maybe you love me as a blogger too.. I am sure I love you as a blogger as well so in a way this is our day as well. If I could I would make you all Tomo Candy. Just to be safe though.. only eat pre packaged candies!
Greetings little monsters, welcome back to the ‘wonderful’ world of Pokémon. Today I will take a look at another pokémon and look at it’s abilities , skills and mostly it’s mythological inspiration. Today we discuss one of my least favorite pokémon of my favorite type. Mawile! The deceiver Pokémon.
Mixed emotions
The fact that this pokémon is one of my lesser loved ones among the fairy types doesnt mean it is not a good pokémon. In fact Mega-Mawile, introduced in the sixth generation, can be quite good. However here lays my problem with this little monster, it really does need it’s mega stone to be good. This means you kind of have to run it as a mega set, in order to make it live up to any potential or for it to have solid stats. While Mega-Venusaur and Mega-Garchomp for example feel much more .. optional, with a lot of potential ways to play the pokemon. Mawile in its regular form just has its physical traits going for it the rest of it’s stats really are quite bad. It is an interesting typing though. It’s fairy typing covers it’s steel typings weakness to fighting moves and the steel part gives the fairy part of it an immunity to it’s poison weakness. In fact Mawile resists ten out of eighteen typings and is immune to two besides that. That means two thirds of all typings can not hit it effectively. On paper this would make the little lady like pokémon a good defensive pokémon, unfortunately it’s weaknesses are ground types and fire types which are very common moves and a lot of pokémon can learn elemental punches, bites or even earthquake. You can not equip it with an air balloon to negate this because it does really need to hold its mega stone.
It is a nice pokémon to nuzlocke with but for a regular playthrough or competitive play it is quite lacking. It’s design is good, it has some creepy elements to it as well as some cute, which is meant to be part of it’s design , yet I can not help to feel like it should evolve somehow. It is just a bit too basic for a non evolving pokémon. The mega evolution fixed that but at the cost of giving it an item. While it does learn some decent moves, it only starts learning those past level 33 and up to level 49 and even then it’s just really has one viable way to build. So all in all , while a useful pokémon, I would not particularly call it charming. There is little room for playing around.
Design
While I already went over how it’s design looks just looks a bit to basic let’s talk about it some more , but this time we also take into account what the makers want it to be. It’s backstory and all those qualities which can explain why a pokémon looks the way it does. It’s design is based on depictions of the japanese entity called a Futakuchi-onna, whom we will talk about more in the next ‘chapter’ but basically it is woman with a mouth in the back of her head. When we look at Mawile we can clearly see the mouth is not in the back of her head but actually is in the back of her hair. However Mawile can be both genders, which is a bit odd given it’s inspiration can exclusively be feminine, it is explained that what we see as hair is actually a steel horn, to explain it’s steel typing. The fairy typing was only added after generation VI (Kalos) so before that it was just a pure steel type. Perhaps this is partially why I do not like Mawile as much, it just doesn’t feel like a steel type , with what it was based on a dark type would have made so much more sense. But I guess Hoenn , the region it originated must have needed some additional steel types or something.. because I can not see a relation to most of its lore.. the only thing is the steel horn thing which feels forced.
Nani?! That is ONE weird steel horn Gamefreak!
Mawile is being described as the deceiver, it lulls pokémon or people into a false sense of security with it’s cute face before turning around and beginning to chomp on them with it’s bigger mouth. The bigger mouth can not taste anything so it will eat anything just to get enough sustenance, the mouth can even chew through iron beams. Weirdly enough Mawile doesn’t get the Strong Jaw ability. It can learn intimidate.. which makes sense cause it is scary as hell to see such a mouth, or Hyper Cutter (an ability that prevents abilities from being lowered) which also makes sense.. because it deceives making people think the cute part is the actual monster while it kinda actually is the mouth that is in control. It’s hidden ability (you can get by transferring) make it a lot more impressive fighting wise and symbolise it’s sheer determination to eat and nothing else. This pokemon just wants to consume. Many dex-entries warn for how extremely dangerous a Mawile can be. The egg coloured body looks cute while the mouth does look quite ferocious so they do a good job at that at least but you get the sense there is more. We see that more when it Mega-Evolves.
Mawile says! ‘Eat your vegies kids!’
Mega-Mawile looks a bit more feminine than i it’s base form, her dress has now been given multiple colours and the hair mouth has now become two even more evil looking twin tales. It’s ability now becomes Huge Power, which doubles its physical attack stats that now has ridden to an already quite impressive 105. Compared to regular Mawiles 85, that is quite an increase. This makes Mega Mawile quite good in fact, at least in the ‘useful’ sense of the word. Alignment wise this pokémon seems to be quite evil. The pokédex says the mouths have become extremely vicious after transforming and now use one mouth to catch their prey in while the other mouth tries to rip them apart. The mouth seem to be able to fight over the food. Imagine that two T-Rex scene from Jurassic Park the lost world but on a cute girly pokémon with a pokemon in between two of her three mouths instead. Yikes! A single gash from them is said to be able to turn a boulder into dust. Not so cute after all, but hey if you ever want your Porygon2 to be two Porygon2 we know whom to mega-evolve.
Yokai
Now let’s see how much Mawile looks at its inspiration the Futakuchi-Onna. I was looking for a way to abbreviate this but somehow Futa seemed like a bad choice. There are to many other onna’s so I will refer to them as ‘ladies’ from now on. This lady is a yokai , not that weird anime with the orange cat that is sort of like pokémon but ancient japanese folk-tales. Like I said earlier they are women who have transformed , while sources differ on their origin all seem to have a theme of neglect of something. Depriving something of someone.
As far as we know the transformation to this demonlike state can happen for three particular reasons. First of all a woman can become a Futakuchi-Onna if she neglects taking care (step)children. In one of the oldest tales there is woman of moderate wealth who is very stingy despite being off well enough. She has a child of her own she keeps well fed. However she refuses to spend money on her stepchild allowing to to die of starvation. The kid’s spirit becomes a spirit of vengeance attaching to to the head of the lady’s actual daughter. You can probably guess where the story goes from there. As the stingy woman transforms from sinner to dinner. The trickster part of the mythologie seems to come from this part of the myth and possibly part of their design too. Mawile looks quite cute and young, hairstyles are either twintails or a single ponytail which I usually associate with something young and cute. Since mawile uses it’s cuteness it could very well be the spirit of a child that their mother let starve to death or something in a similar vein.
The second possibility to become a ‘lady’ is to neglect your own need for food. Woman starving themselves to look good can turn into the yokai over time. It is said that at one point during their hunger they can feel their skull splitting while new lips and a mouth begin to form. A mouth that needs twice as much food as the ‘main’ chomper. This new mouth is perfectly capable of feeding itself having control of the vessels hair. It oftenly whispers hateful or spiteful things to the vessel to make it more meek to its own wishes or simply manipulate it, usually not in a charming way though. The second mouth in nearly every source talks you down, never up. A lot of elements from this version can also be seen in Mawile, the way that the hair is being depicted as the dominant side, the pokédex entry that the second mouth doesn’t taste so Mawile uses that one to get enough food even if it doesnt like it. It hits the tones of the lady being forced to eat twice as much. The malicious character of the second mouth has also been shown in the Pokémon adventures Manga where a Mawile body got in conflict with her hair. The ability Hyper Cutter and intimidate seem to fit this form quite good as well.
The demon’s food must be Condoleezza Rice
The third and clearly less documented way to get your skull to split and form a mouth is by not speaking your mind. Women who hide their true feelings can form a mouth that will spout any idea you have going inside that big brain of yours. I do not think Mawile has any connection with this type of the lady. At best we could argue that as a deceiver she never shows her real mind but that feels a bit flimsy, especially when food and eating plays such a big part in her story. Then again.. maybe Mawile was once a girl that once starved because she wasn’t taken care off, starting out as a ghost pokémon trying to tell people what happened to her she failed and thusly grew her ‘metal horn’ now she is hungry for more.
This is why we women never shut up! We grow demons otherwise!
Whatever it is I am pretty safe from becoming a ‘lady’ myself. I love food and cooking way to much to go too malnourished, even when lacking money I try to be creative to produce at least some kind of meal. I always speak my mind, even when it might not be that appropriate my opinion is who I am and should I prematurely die I do not want you to know the woman I pretended to me but the Pinkie I truly am. I would however starve children cause I am really not into them. Luckily I will never want or get children myself so there is no one to starve. (Don’t worry I won’t let a random kid starve I would buy him a krentenbol, that’s a raisin bun. I guess from the Pokémon Mawile and the lady we learn to take care of yourself, those around you and to speak your mind when something is troubling you. Troubling like seeing a pokémon bisected by mega-mawiles gaping maws, or even myself. I’ll go catch a mawile now, nickname it Lisa, mega evolve it and let it eat me. Just so I can yell ‘You are tearing me apart Lisa’…. for the memes.
Question to my readers:
Have you seen: Tommy Wisseau’s the room?
Let me know your answer in the comments. Now it is time for this professor to take a nap. Though I might grab a little snack first. Takling about devouring has made me kind of peckish. Not really in my stomach.. just a feeling you know, a little gnaw in the back of my head.
The Pinkest Poké Blogger is blasting off again XO Pinkie
Hey there my little monsters, today Pokémon Go launched a special event. Rather than report to you that the “One Piece” Pikachu is catchable in go, I put on my own straw hat and went on a cruise through town to catch one. I interviewed it and now here WE ARE.
Pinkie: ‘Well hi there little one, could you introduce yourself to us?’ SH-Pikachu: ‘I am Straw Hat Pikachu, me and my Nakama ,that is like our word for friends and teammates, boarded Pokémon Go today. ‘
Staw Hat Pikachu: Available from 22-7 untill 29-7
Pinkie: ‘Mind if I call you SH..it’s a bit faster? So SH what makes you so special’ SH-Pikachu: ‘Well I am a Pikachu with a special hat on..so that already makes me kind of special right?’ Pinkie: ‘Not really, your kind kinda cosplays a lot, you guys have more hats than I have shoes, and that’s saying something.’ SH-Pikachu: ‘Uhm well , instead of being your Pokémon I will be your Nakama, and with my launch you can wear a matching cap, that’s in the Go style shop’ Pinkie: ‘Well I am a sucker for matching outfits, so you got me there, but tell me , would it not have been cuter if Niantic chose to use Aipom for this event? SH-Pikachu: I’m Pikachu I get all the hats, also why would they give it to Aipom, I am the mascot here.
Channel Luffy with this classy Styleshop Item..or protect yourself from the sun…whichever….
Pinkie: ‘Of course you are but I mean MONKEY D Luffy!? Kinda would have made sense.. it also has a somewhat stretchy tail hand thingies..so It would have made a lot of sense and diversified the game a bit. I have a LOT of versions of you. SH-Pikachu: ‘Wait i am based on that stretchy pirate bloke? I thought this hat was just to protect me from the hot summer sun. Pinkie: ‘No No, that’s Sun-Hat Pikachu that’s also a thing’ SH-Pikachu: ‘Well Arrrr then, time to plunder your booty’ Pinkie: ‘Thief is not in your moveset, so there will be no plunderin from you. Anyways, how long can we find you?’ SH-Pikachu: ‘Me and me mates will be here until 1PM on the 29th , then we shall hoist the anchor, keelhaul those who have not caught one and sail further down the Grand Line again. Pinkie: ‘That means my dear reader that you have seven days to catch yourself a stretchy pirate Pikachu, speaking of which will there be anything else special about this event. SH-Pikachu: ‘Nay Lass, except for the hat, and the hatted chu’s that may be as shiny and valuable as One Piece itself, there is nothing to shiver your timbers. Pinkie: ‘You realise Luffy doesn’t talk like that right..also.. maybe you should tell the people about the stuf in Japan.’ SH-Pikachu: ‘Awww… but I am already kind of boring if I dont talk like a pirate what else do I have?! Well should any of your three or so readers be in Japan, in the Kumamoto Prefecture , the statues of Luffy there, now will function as a Pokéstop. Doesnt that sound exciting.
Pinkie: ‘It does not’ SH-Pikachu: ‘Yeah you are right it really doesn’t’ Pinkie: ‘Anyway, I never asked, howcome you can talk? Did you eat the human human fruit or the Hito Hito no Mi, as the Japanese call it? SH-Pikachu: ‘No, you are just talking to imaginary creatures again!’ Pinkie: ‘Frizzlesticks, I thought I got rid of my insanity’ SH-Pikachu: It’s okay, I can offer electroshock therapy
Did you manage to catch your own little Straw Hat? Did you like this cross over event? Let me know in the comments and make my day by leaving a like, but most of all stay pink!
Pinkie's Paradise 