murderwinks

I'm selling a whole bunch of stuff from miscellaneous fandom including anime/Johnny's Entertainment/games. Please make me an offer. I won't refuse anything reasonable.

• Shipping from Sydney, Australia


• Prices listed in Australian dollars


• I can do pick-up from Sydney CBD


• I am willing to ship domestically or international (contact me for a quote)


• I accept payment through Paypal or Direct Bank Deposit

Updated as I can be bothered...

( To the sales.Collapse )

I passed my driving test today, first go!

I got 97/100 but with "bonus points" it ended up being 105/100. I am officially a super driver.

I'm kind of a late bloomer... most people got their Learner's drivers license when they turned 16, red Ps at 17, green Ps at 19?

Not me. I'm 26, nearly 27. Guy at the RTA: "So you've never held a license. Not even in a foreign country?"

Judgey McJudgem! I went overseas for 3 years. I didn't need to drive in a Japanese city with the awesome public transport system. But I got the last laugh... because being over 25 meant that I didn't need to fill out the logbook or pretend that I drove 120 hours.

I couldn't sleep at all last night, with the anxiety about taking the test. Even tortured myself by reading forum posts about why people failed on the first go. It was easy. I don't know what I was freaking out about.

I can taste freedom...

... but the license photo makes me look like a crim.

They've remade Hanazakari no Kimitachi e ~ Ikemen Paradise ~ starring Maeda Atsuko from AKB48, Miura Shohei (pretty cute, would make a good Nakatsu) and Nakamura Aoi (who?). It's on every Sunday at 9pm on FujiTV.

I don't know why they would remake a perfectly good drama! The original cast was awesome too.

Anyway I dl'ed it and watched the first minute or so of the opening and it's all right so far. The music is the same and the overall atmosphere (that vivid, colourful filming style), but it seems they have changed the story line slightly. Hibari from Hibari Four is a bit ugly.

More on this once I've watched the whole thing.

Recently I've become addicted to the Glee Karaoke App for iPhone produced by Smule. They had a competition running last week for 'Defying Gravity' (a song from Wicked the Musical) and I entered a few times. Here's a recording of me singing it. The competitions are actually really competitive and it makes you realise how many good (amateur) singers there are out there. The highest I could get was #25 for one day. My username on the app is 'Murderwinks' - look me up if you have it!

The app has this built-in auto pitch-correct but it comes out sounding more like autotune, lol. If you have an iPhone and like singing, I recommend getting it. The only problem is that you have to purchase additional songs. But once you've purchased them you can sing as much as you like! I've purchased a few songs so far; 'Bust Your Windows', 'Take a Bow', 'Defying Gravity' and 'Bills Bills Bills'.

Ah. Better get back to work now. I'm sick with a cold again and am soooo nasal. Last night my throat was all itchy and my nose was running like a tap. I hate winter and wish summer could come soon...

Hello neglected LJ.

I am doing a spring clean and discovered 3 Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban movie Posters.

I used to work at a DVD store and they were the promotional posters that were hanging during the DVD release in Australia. As such they are in pretty good condition, just with staples in the corners.

I'm not selling them - just want to give them away. So if you or anyone you know wants them and will pay the postage (cost of a poster tube and postage cost from Sydney Australia), leave a comment and let me know.

They are too nice to recycle.

( Photos belowCollapse )

I also acquired one Jack Sparrow Posters (slightly smaller than the HP posters) for a game release or something? Not sure why I have it. But it's also up for grabs.

( Pirates poster hereCollapse )

The mood at work is sombre today. The girl next to me ran to the kitchen and started crying because her husband is in Tokyo and she's worried about him. Apparently he tried to get a flight out of Japan but couldn't get one I told her not to worry because as far as we know, apart from power outages and transportation disruptions, Tokyo is ok.

My boss has given us weird instructions about what we can and cannot tell the general public. "We don't want to cause any unnecessary panic." but really we're concerned about how Japanese tourism will suffer as a result, despite our best efforts to promote it. Just a couple of months ago we had some travel agents out in Tohoku (one of the worst-hit areas) for a familiarisation trip to the ski fields. Even now there are some journalists who are out on a media trip to the ski fields. The aftershocks may even cause avalanches in the Nagano/Niigata areas, which would be full of tourists in the peak of the ski season.

I can't stop thinking about the thousands without electricity and water in the Tohoku regions of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima in sub-zero temperatures. Probably the worst part is not being able to make contact with family members in those areas, not knowing if they are still alive. It's a saddening thought because it could have been me there, a JET living in a small coastal town of Iwate. And now there's talk of a nuclear meltdown, though an evacuation has only been issued for people living within a 20km radius of Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.

Apparently the area of Kansai and west of Kansai including Kyushu have been largely unaffected by the quake and tsunami, although mild tremors were reported in Kyoto. Also, Hokkaido in the north is apparently safe apart from the pacific coastal areas.

... from playing on my DS too much! Yesterday, I played for at least 8 hours after rediscovering my love of Harvest Moon: Kimi to Sodatsu Shima (The Island grows with you).  I'm trying to marry the character Waltz (or Vaughan in the English version) but he only comes to the island twice a week so it's a slow process. I sometimes worry about my adult self.

Then I went onto the Bokumono website and discovered that a new game for the DS, 牧場物語ふたごの村 - Harvest Moon: Village of Twins is due to be released next month. And the graphics look gorgeous. <3

I think I'm going to buy myself a DS XL when I go back to Sydney.

Well, I'm off to work at a children's English day and it's Sunday. ;_; I need Nobuta Power right about now...

I've decided to sell some stuff because there's no way I can take all of it home with me. I'll be updating it regularly up until I leave Japan (about 2 months).

All prices are listed in USD and do not include postage (items will be shipped from Japan worldwide). I accept payments from Paypal (buyer pays fees) or direct-bank deposit (Australians only).

If you want a postage quote you can send a comment with your email address and country. All comments will be screened.

Item list: Oguri Shun photobook & DVD, FLIX (cinema) magazine, BLACK KINEJUN (cinema) magazine, Crows Zero II Official photo book, Kurosagi DVD, HSJ 'Mayonaka no Shadow Boy' CD + DVD, UVERworld 'AwakEVE' LE, ROOKIES 'Perfect Book'.

( Read more...Collapse )

Yokoyama Yu is coming to Nagasaki as part of the Yokoyama YOU zenkoku tour on May 3rd. It's just so funny because nobody comes to Nagasaki. Nobody worth seeing that is. Most major bands will go as far as Fukuoka, but not Nagasaki. I'm almost tempted to ballot for tickets because Brick Hall (the concert venue) is small and FC seats will probably be awesome. I don't know how much I really want to see Yoko though, let alone from close up. I mean I like kanjani 8 but he is hardly my favourite member. When he took off his shirt during the kanjani 8 Kyocera dome concert last year, all the girls screamed but I was like: "Put your shirt back on!" Haha...

Meanwhile I paid a visit to the Fukuoka JE store today and spent 5,000 yen on shop photos, mostly of YamaP's Loveless shoot (see my icon), some from the Johnny's Undokai and a handful from the Love Yourself/D-Motion PVs. Jin didn't look so good in the most recent PVs because he's wearing those aviators the whole time and I can't see his face. : / I saw about three nice photos of Kame so I bought those too... and a nice one of Junno with blonde hair from Love Yourself. When I got to the counter to pay for the photos and the salesgirl brought the photos and counted them in front of me so I could confirm they were the ones I wanted, she goes: "There was one of Taguchi-kun in there... is that what you wanted?" I chuckled and said "Yes, that's correct." but I found it so amusing. She thought I chose Taguchi by mistake because the others were of YamaP, Jin and like 3 of Kame. XD

Is it just me or does YamaP look way more haggard in Code Blue 2 than he did in Buzzer Beat? I also noticed that his face looks almost gaunt in episode 4 and he has... acne on his cheek. OMG. I wonder if he is stressed out or something.

It’s the best concert I've been to since I got to Japan.

I got to the theatre early because I was worried I wouldn't be able to find it, at 10.30am and there were already people hanging about waiting outside. I went to Starbucks for a while, then flailinginlove came and we had a quick lunch of First Kitchen (fast food) before going back to the theatre just before the doors opened at 12.30pm. Surprisingly there weren't too many people lining up (less than 100) so we got into the venue pretty quickly. There we were subjected to stringent bag-checks and being a tourist from Nagasaki I had two cameras in my bag. Rather than try to conceal them like at previous concerts I just handed them over to the bag checkers to be picked up later. As we went up the stairs there were two goods stalls on either side so we went to the one on the right and bought goods really smoothly. I was excited to see 5 sets of stage photos available, because I was already disappointed about the regular photo sets featuring that ghastly perm. I bought everything except the poster, so all 7 photosets, the album, the scarf, shopping bag and pamphlet.

We got to our seats in the first row (A) of the 2nd floor at 1pm. I was so excited because they were actually really great seats despite being on the 2nd floor, with a clear unobstructed view of the stage. Being on the second floor we were told not to stand up, which was kind of sad and great at the same time because I wanted to dance along and yet sitting down was more comfortable for a 3 hour show. I wanted to sneak a photo of the stage but Christina warned me that if I got kicked out she would have nothing to do with me, so I figured it wasn't worth it. =p

At around 1.15pm, the dancers came out wearing shiny gold suits and a couple of black American dancers came up to the 2nd floor and started chatting with the audience and giving high-fives, getting the audience pumped. Then some jugglers appeared on stage and a white American MC walked out and gave the usual warning of no recording during the show, pointing out emergency exits and what not. He pretended to have trouble reading some kanji on his script so he asked a woman in the front row to help him read it and the audience were like: "Kawaii!!" to which Christina remarked that he was probably fluent in Japanese but putting on the dumb foreigner act. Always a crowd-pleaser. Soon the dancers returned back to the stage and one of them started saying "AKA-NEESHI, AKA-NEESHI, AKA-NEESHI!" to get us to start chanting but it took me a while to figure out what he was actually saying before I joined in.... and then he appeared! In a white hoodie, and ripped-up jeans, hair pulled back into a ponytail. So hot.


( Setlist, thoughts and MC translationCollapse )

Anyway, I am so tired after writing this... it seriously took me ages to write and I had to scribble notes at school during my break and check Japanese blogs for counter-reference 'cos I kept forgetting stuff. In short, BEST. CONCERT. EVER.