International Creative Network

I was very impressed with the voting public last year at the upper house elections, when the DPJ won by an absolute landslide. The look on Abe's face as he went round to each TV station explaining how it could have come to pass was priceless, because however he could look at it, his government had failed and the voters voiced their displeasure very loudly. That was a good day for Japanese politics, and renewed my faith in the system. Come the lower house elections in two years time I think we might actually see a change in power.

Status

The end is nigh.

Lovely wardrobe flaw while they're talking to the Mouth of Sauron (probably Extended edition only). As we're all aware, Jackson used a number of techniques to give the effect that the hobbits were considerably smaller than humans, and one of them was the use of life-size body doubles, i.e. midgets dressed up in the same clothes as the character actor. Now this technique is fine from far away or from behind when you can't clearly make out their faces, but if the face is likely to come clearly into view they used CGI face replacement for an animated face, or made them wear a rubber mask digitally scanned from the character actor's face. Except when Pippin was sat on a horse with Gandalf outside Mordor and it cut to a wider shot where you could see both of them together, wardrobe clearly forgot to put the rubber mask on, so instead of the face we're expecting to see, we see a bored Indian midget.

It's not my hand, but I did take the picture... :-)

http://ebten.jp/sega/pi/4974365910488/0/

Used to have a couple of these in my home room at high school (my home room was in the biology labs, so I was surrounded by caged animals and weird smells every morning). Odd looking creatures, but kind of cute! :-)

Status

I think she's leaving.

I can often tell the difference between different European countries and different Asian countries, but it's probably less than 50% accurate. That's still quite a lot though.

That's the one. The Hyoketsu range are particularly potent because the "active ingredient" is vodka. One of the newer zero calory (come in a white can) chu-his are about 7%.

Personally, I'm still waiting for Kirin's Akiaji to go on sale. It's an autumn beer, so it normally goes on sale around July and is finished by late August, but I haven't seen it this year. (Just checked - it goes on sale next Tuesday. Lovely 6% beer!!!)

I bet I look less like my nationality than you do!! :-)

I've met Japanese that get mistaken for Filipinos before. Japan isn't nearly as "homogeneous" as a lot of people (esp. Japanese) think.

Normally on a weeknight, I have about 3 chu-his of varying strengths (the last is invariably the hyoketsu 8% STRONG one) then a sip of scotch. Weekends I'll normally double that quantity in beer, or more. I'm normally fine with any amount as long as my mind is occupied.