Call of Cthulhu RPG #4 - the end

We get a flat tyre. It takes about half an hour to fix and Castle drives by without stopping to help. Finally we arrive at the law firm and there is Castle. A somewhat bleach looking man meets up with us and asks us if we want to cooperate with Castle and explore the house to find out if Cornthwraithe is dead or alive as they have a will to consider. We find out that a sheriff Whitford have been in the house and had a quick look around. We go to visit him. He looks angry when we mention Corthwraithe's name. Smith explains the situation But the sheriff refuses to go anywhere near "the damned house". When we ask he says that he couldn't get down into the basement. At the farm "next door" there's an expensive horse missing.

We have ourselves a meal before we set out for the house again. During dinner Castle shows us a note  he found in the house. Cornthwraithe have written that something had killed his staff during the expedition and that it had followed him back. Something green in a temple. The waitress tells us that it was a rich man who built the house about 60 years ago. Both of his sons were in the Civil War. One of them died. The other came home shell shocked and killed his entire family and himself. In the 1890's Arthur Curwen's family moves there. He goes crazy and kills his family with an axe and then disappeard. Three years later and older couple moves there and they died from old age. Three years after that Cornthwraithe moved in.

We drive to the neighbour to ask about the horse. The farmer is pissed at us for disturbing him in his dinner. The horse was in the pen closest to Cornthwraithe's house. We drive back to the house and start exploring the overgrown garden. Castle says that some of the plants are from the tropics. Castle tumbles on a tree root he swears wasn't there a minute ago. We continue and Carling gets whipped by branches. Carling clears up with the axe he found in the garden and then throws the axe into the largest tree there is. A lot of water rushes out on him. The road is blocked by a fallen tree. We climb over the trunk but as it starts to get dark we return to the cars. There is absolutely no sign of animal life. We enter the house and try out the electricity. There is in some rooms. We put some beds in the library. Then we explore the kitchen. There is no water and no gas. In the kitchen is the doors to the cellar. Can't open the dooes. Not even when we remove the hinges. We check the attic instead. There is a trunk that has blown up from the inside. It's glittering inside. Inside are jungle expedition stuff. Sophie graps the machete and Carling grabs the revolver. Keep looking around the attic and Castle falls through the floor. The light goes out. Sophie lights her lighter and Carling makes a torch. Castle is in a room with no doors or windows and he's staring at a rotting corpse and a bloody axe. We've found Arthur Curwen. Castle takes a picture after he has climbed back through the floor. We exit the attic and enter the library. Put salt in doors and windows.

We all sleep very badly. There are absolutely no sounds from the garden. Should be more sounds. We rise at dawn. There's a knock on the entrance door. Castle puts salt in the door and opens it. There is a hooded man with an axe. Castle closes the door. The man tries to enter. He says his name is Stan and that he's from the local newspaper. He says he found the axe in the garden. Smith grabs the axe and we bring him to the kitchen. The doors are still closed. Stan can't open the doors. Carling gives him the crowbar. Stan gives it to Castle. Castle pries but it doesn't open. Stan takes it from him and continues to pry. The door is torn off. Down there it's dark, moist and it's dripping. We light the lamp and go downstairs. Bones from small animals all over the floor. Water damages. Earth floor. Hatch to a  coal cellar. Pokes around the coal, but there's nothing there. We exit the basement and move on to the room with trophies from Cornthwraithe's expeditions on the second floor. Castle closes the hatch to the attic. In the room there are a lot of artefacts taken directly from temples. The statues seem to glare at us accusingly. Smith absorbes herself in the history and tells Sophie to not steal anything. Sophie and Carling goes to see how Stan is doing (He went to the toilet). Castle stays with Smith. We knock on the toilet door. No answer. The door is unlocked but unable to open.. Then it clicks and opens a little. The door opens and the room is filled with water. Stan is in the middle of it. Dead. A tentacle shoots out for us. We run towards the bedroom (where there were salt in doors and windows). Castle and Smith comes along with us. The salt is no longer intact and the water enters the room. Water all over the house. Castle and Sophie jumps out through the window (second floor). Carling and Smith har hold back by the water. Smith waves the axe. More tentacles and a face appears. She jumps out through the window as soon as she's free. Castle and Sophie runs for the cars. Smith runs around the house. Carling follows Smith. The creature screamed when Carling slipped away. Castle and Sophie drive away. Sophie puts salt in the windows of the cars. They hear a crash behind them. Smith has gone temporarily crazy and crashed her car. Carling runs for it but gets shot by Smith. Sophie and Castle drive off. Come back to the village and visit the closest doctor. Sophie gets the sheriff who whiten considerably when he hears of the dead body. Smith comes into the doctor's carried by a stranger (broken leg). Castle leaves pretty soon after that.

Two weeks later Smith and Sophie drive back to the house. Sophie puts the house on fire and everything burns down and the creature screams. They drive back to New York, there Sophie sells the machete, the tie-pin and the cigar box

Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes and returning home

In the end we went for Indian and not teppanyaki. Our friends' neighbours had this sign on their garage. Explain the exclamation mark, please.

For our last day we wanted to do the nerdy stuff. I wanted to go to King's Cross to see what they had done for platform 9 3/4 and Love wanted to go to 221b Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes is said to live in the stories.

First we wanted to go and have lunch at a Dutch pancake place we found our very first day. However we couldn't find it again. So we walked around for ages trying to find a place to eat that was cheap and sounded good and in the end we went inside a bar. Love had a burger and I had some pasta dish that was really good. After lunch we headed to King's Cross and although I thought what they had made for platform 9 3/4 was quite dreadful, I had to take a picture ;)

Then we went to Baker Street and the Sherlock Holmes museum. It was quite cool stepping off the train at Baker Street Station. Baker Street is one of the stations from the original Victorian underground called the Metropolitan line and the station was very 19th century. It was really cool! Stepping outside the first thing we see is a huge statue of Sherlock Holmes pointing us in the right direction. The museum tickets were £6 each so we decided not to go and only had a look around the souvenir shop, which was quite nice in itself. We bought a sign saying Baker Street with a small Sherlock Holmes icon in the topmost right corner :)

For dinner we went to that same pub we went to on our first night. After returning the time was about 9pm and we said goodnight and went to bed. The alarm went off at 4am. We got up, got dressed and walked to the tube station in Acton Town. Turned out we had misread the time by 30 minutes - to our advantage. We had to wait around for 25 minutes before we could go down to the platform and take the train to Victoria. At Victoria we had to run to catch the Gatwick Express and then we were on our way. We had breakfast at the airport after security and before going to our gate. Both of us slept the 1½ hours on the plane.

Got home. Got unpacked. Now everything's back to normal. It's nice going away but it feels good to be back home again :)

Camden Market, Chinatown and Buckingham Palace

We had a slow start today since the plan was to meet up with Tiffany at 2pm at Camden Town Station to have a look at the market. So we didn't go out until it was time to go meet up with her.

Camden Market was cool. Huge crowd and loads of interesting things on sale. Love got himself a pair of Batman Converse shoes :P I was too busy looking to take pictures and with all the people it would've been pretty hard stopping to take a picture and at the same time keep up with Love and Tiffany. We had lunch at one of the food stands there and continued our walk down Camden Market afterwards.

When we got tired of all the people there we took the tube to Covent Garden. Tiffany had said that she knew the best cupcake place there and ofc she had to take us ;) So she had a vanilla one, Love had a caramel one and I had a banoffee one. Banana Toffee.

After sitting down and eating cupcakes and talking about whatever she had to get going to get started on a school assignment and we walked down the street, headed for Chinatown. In Chinatown there were mostly restaurants, but we found one sweets shop where we went in and I immediately started looking for things I ate in Tokyo. Unfortunately I didn't find much except Pocky and the lovely Calpis Water. I also bought a Hello Kitty tin can with fruit drops in it. Because I liked the design and I like hard candy.

Chinatown ended up not being that big and at the end was Piccadilly Cricus. From there we picked a direction and started walking. We ended up in St. James's Park and then we found Buckingham Palace :)

Now we're going out to eat teppanyaki at a new Japanese restaurant in Ealing Broadway :)

London Aquarium, London Dungeons and a walk along the River Thames

For yesterday we had combined tickets to London Aquarium and London Dungeons. I looked up how to get there and then we took the tube to the aquarium. We had priority entrance tickets and got to skip most of the queue, but still we had to queue a lot inside. There was a really big fuss about the shark tank that in the end wasn't that fantastic. There was the standard underwater tunnel in the tank with sharks and rays and a pair of sea turtles. It was really really short but that was the best of the aquarium. I was kind of disappointed. Although it was nice and I had a good time it wasn't as great as the one in Seoul, which was ginormous and had pretty much every kind of sea animal there is.

The first thing we did after exiting the aquarium was to find Wagamama at the South Bank and once again have some Japanese food. The Japanese really know their food and everything is delicious. After lunch we started to look for the dungeons. On the map they had looked quite close, but it was actually really far. We got a nice walk along the South Bank, from Westminster Bridge to London Bridge. It was beautiful weather and we passed St. Paul's cathedral and the area we had walked around in the day before.

On our way to the dungeons we saw a ship. Like an old 16th century ship. It turned out to be a reconstruction of Sir Francis Drake's galleon. Francis Drake was a pirate and privateer under Elizabeth I and he gave her so much money that she knighted him. I wanted to go aboard and still I didn't. If it hadn't been a reconstruction but the real thing from the 16th century I wouldn't have hesitated.

But we were in a hurry. At 4pm we finally arrived at the dungeons and started queueing to get inside. We didn't have priority entrance to the dungeons. 45 minutes later we got in and had our picture taking; me holding an axe over Love's neck ^^

Then the tour started. The actors were great and it wasn't really scary. I felt a little uneasy, but not scared. So we passed through the Crypt, the Labyrinth of Lost Souls and the Plague, and then we got to the Great Fire of London. That was the first interesting moment. We were all standing in a room where they had a film going with some of the actors acting out the horrors of the night when all of medieval London burned down, caused by a spark from the local bakery. Over 300 houses. By the end of the film there was smoke coming from the door we were supposed to continue through.

After that came the Surgeon, telling us of how many surgeons gave in to grave robbery to learn anatomy. Here the actress picked one from the audience to assist her. After going through lobotomy and blood letting on him she came to amputation. The whole room went dark and we were sprayed with something wet (only water) while a recorded man's voice screamed :P That was a lot of fun. The Torture room had a very fun actress who left us laughing. We entered the Judgement which had us laugh even more as the presenter of the case was a very young and happy girl and the judge was a complete drunkard. Here they had three people from the audience being judged for different crimes.

We continued through the Madhouse in Bedlam and then got on our first ride; a boat ride to Hell. After which we ended up visiting Mrs Lovett and Sweeney Todd and then we arrived at the new show of 2011; Jack the Ripper. This was the scariest moment ever. The actors repeatedly told the women to cover their necks and throats and stay close to a man. We were invited into a bar by an actor who told us that it was the 10th anniversary of Jack the Ripper's murders. No one knew where he went and everyone was scared he'd come back. There was a fictional storm while we where there and the lights went out. When thunder lighted up the bar we saw a cloaked figure with a top hat slicing for the closest woman.

A little shaky we continued to the next room where a film, similar to the one of the Great Fire of London, told us of Jack the Ripper. It depicted his murders in detail and showed us old 19th century pictrues of the victims. Beneath the screen was a reconstruction of the final victim and everything he had done to her. That was horrid and gross.

Next room was Bloody Mary the Queen. The daughter of Henry VIII who convicted loads of people of heresy and hanged them. We were all judged as heretics and sent to the gallows. This was the second ride. We all sat down and had the protectors down. Then we were hoist up into the air were there were dolls who did the ceremonial judging and then the hangman moved and we were dropped to the floor. It was a very small free fall kind of ride but it was fun. That's where it all ended.

When we got out the time was 6.30pm and we decided to return home. It was raining and it was a really nice change from all the sun. No cameras were allowed in the dungeons.

[Edited] Kensington Park, Mary Poppins and shopping

Today we were going to make a park round. The guy we live with told us that if we start at Kensington Park we can go through Hyde Park, Green Park and St James's park too. So we took the tube and logically we got off at South Kensington. There we got lost for about half an hour in the scorching heat before we actually found the entrance to Kensington Park. When we found it we were so exhausted and worn out from the heat that we lay down in the grass in the shadow of a tree.

When we got up again after about 15 minutes we took the Flower Path, cause it looked nice. And smelled nice. And there were loads of squirrels, obviously used to being fed by humans and thus were very friendly and unafraid. They got up real close!

We continued to walk and found some monument. We are not really sure whom or what it's for. Then we walked further into the middle of the park where we found a huge pond filled with ducks and swans, but luckily no geese. Those birds were also very used to being fed by humans and got up real close, but without leaving the water. I kind of envied them. Water is so nice when it's so hot. I wanted to wet my feet but not even the children there were doing it so I resisted.

After getting some soft ice we took the tube to St. Paul's because I wanted to see the cathedral from Mary Poppins in person. While there we also took a detour to the Bank of London where the dad worked in Mary Poppins. Seeing the cathedral made me think a lot about this clip from the film.

Then we got back on the tube for Russell Square where we had found an okonomiyaki place on our first day. After lunch we took the tube to Oxford Circus to continue our walk along Oxford Street, where we had walked on our first day. That got me buying a new pair of shoes (Converse) and three new T-shirts from Uniqlo :) I also gave in to the sun and bought myself an after sun lotion. I got burned pretty badly...

For tomorrow we have combined tickets for Sea Life London Aquarium and London Dungeons!

The Tower of London

After sleeping for too long we went out around noon. Today was another well over 20 degrees day and sunny. We had decided yesterday to go to the Tower of London today and see the Crown Jewels. It was extremely hot and the air conditioning don't seem to work on any of the underground trains, thus not enough oxygen. We arrived and there was a huge crowd. Lots of people, but we decided to go anyway. The first queue seemed very long and tedious at first sight but passed through surprisingly quick. I thought it was interesting and I found myself knowing way more about the British royalties than I first thought. Love found himself with a free History lesson.

Except for the Crown Jewels we entered the Torture Chamber, which was a big disappointment. It was only one room with only three devices and then it was finished. We also entered the White Tower and saw the armoury.

After those three buildings we were quite hungry and decided to leave the Tower to find something to eat. We exited the fortress and the first thing we see is Tower Bridge and the River Thames. The blue ornaments on Tower Bridge are eyesores to me. They look hideous!

Just opposite the Tower of London we found a Japanese restaurant called Wagamama and there we had our lunch. After lunch we took the tube a few stations to Westminister. The exit to Houses of Parliament have you coming out of the underground right at the foot of Big Ben. It was pretty cool.

We crossed Westminister Bridge and arrived on the South Bank with the London Eye. From there we picked a direction and then we walked. At that direction we accidentally found Waterloo Station, the Imperial Court and a WWII Monument. We followed Kennington Lane all the way back to the Thames and then we took the tube back home from Vauxhall.

That's enough adventure for one day.

British Museum

First day in London ended up being great. It's pretty much summer here. Today it was well above 20 degrees and sunny. For our first day we decided that the British Museum would be nice so we took the tube to Russell Square and walked from there. I had never been there and after Love mentioned something about mummies I wanted to go.

Our first thought was to go through all of it, but after going through the 12th room full of decorated rocks we started to get tired of seeing all these rocks and statues and decided to fast forward to what we thought was the most interesting. Obviously the first stop fast forwarding was the mummies. That ended up being only an exhibition of the mummifying procedure and one single dried up mummy. I looked upon him and said: "I don't think this is how he pictured his afterlife." The Mummy room was also the most popular room. Extremely crowded. I ended up getting approval for my theory that all people are morbid, although maybe not everyone would agree to it. But if you go to a museum to see thousands of years old dried up dead people you have to be pretty morbid, right?

Next stop was Asia. China and Japan. To me China and Egypt are the two most original cultures in the world and then pretty much everyone copied parts of it and adopted it to be their own. I liked this part very much, especially the part with Chinese jade and those extremely intricate designs. In the Japanese section however it bothered me to pieces that they kept calling the shinto deities buddhist. I also liked the part where we walked into one room and before us is a huge stone statue originating from Easter Island (I think).

The most excited I was at the museum was to see the Rosetta stone. The stone where the same text is written in Egyptian, Ancient Greek and Babylonian. This stone helped translate the old languages thanks to the Ancient Greek and what's really great about this stone is that the text contains all of the letters from that language. It's really something. However it was hard to get a good picture since the stone was in a glass monter. Without flash you could hardly see the stone cause all the people around you was reflected in the glass and with flash you could hardly see the stone cause the flash was reflected in the glass. But I was happy to have seen it anyway.

After the museum we had fish n chips for lunch and then we just walked. I have no idea where we walked and how but around 4pm we had arrived at Oxford Circus and decided that it was time to head back. By then I know we had walked on both Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. When we got home we both showered and then took a nap for about 30 minutes. Both totally exhausted!

Tomorrow I think The Towern is up.

Dead Boy's Poem

"If you read this line, remember not the hand that wrote it

Remember only the verse, songmaker's cry, the one without tears

For I've given this its strength and it has become my only strength

Comforting home, mother's lap, chance for immortality

Where being wanted became a thrill I never knew

The sweet piano writing down my life

Teach me passion, for I fear it's gone

Show me love, hold the lorn

So much more I wanted to give to the ones who loved me

I'm sorry

Time will tell, this bitter farewell

I live no more to shame nor me nor you

And you... I wish I didn't feel for you anymore."

- Nightwish

So insanely beautiful. It gets me every time.

Coming up

My head is spinning from all the excitement. Three of my favourite things are now keeping me on the edge of my seat wishing for time to move faster so I can finally see it. One of them has already started to happen and I've been jumping up and down all day.

Okay, so the first thing is that my favourite Japanese pop group added four new members at the end of last year and for months I've been waiting in anticipation for what their new single would sound like. The addition of new members and removal of old ones has been a tradition since the group was formed in 1997, but now it hadn't happened since 2007 and the anticipation has been extremely high. Everyone I know in that fan world have been hoping for the younger, jumpier sound that made MoMusu famous to come back, but since all the members up until this point have been around or above their twenties the sound has gradually become more and more mature, until they were stuck in one sound, which really isn't something MoMusu used to be. Every single release used to bring a new sound, a new style and I really hope that's what will be coming back now that they've added four new members under the age of 15. Anyhow the PV for their new single which will be released in April sounds a lot more like this old song from 2002 than their latest single from before the 9th generation was added. Happy! ^_^ And even if you're not a big fan of the music, the videos always contain eye candy. Either in the form of extremely cute Japanese girls or in their awesome clothes.

The second thing is the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film. Having liked Jack Sparrow and having that page on my Facebook feed I get loads of updates and quotes and pictures and last week the second trailer for the film was revealed. The new trailer gives me the feeling the film will be far more epic than I originally thought - and that's saying quite a lot!!!

First trailer

Second trailer

At this end we've been watching the three first films all over again and everytime I see them I fall in love with Jack Sparrow all over again. Just like I did the first time I saw the first film when I was 13. See you at the premiere? ^_^

And finally the third thing is the last ever Harry Potter film coming up this summer. Having MuggleNet on my Facebook feed I get all the Harry Potter related news and last week the first deleted scene from Deathly Hallows pt.1 was revealed. Pictures from the upcoming film is slowly being released too (and removed again by WB) and just now the first poster was revealed:

It's with mixed joy and sorrow I read the line on the poster. An era of my childhood is coming to an end and what an era it's been! I was 8 when I recieved my first Potter-book and then I was hooked. A friend and I used to play pretend during school breaks and pretend that we were students at Hogwarts learning magic and dealing with weird happenstances. Both of us wrote and printed the first letter as described from our computers and posted it in eachother's post boxes in the summer when we both had turned 11. And all the time until I was 15/16 I used to play pretend this special story. It was what helped me escape from a world I (at that time) despised and run off to a world I adored. I was always special. I was always great and loved and well-liked and famous not just a depressed, ordinary, boring school girl in a far-off corner of the world. All that's left for me now (and I say that both with relief and sorrow) is to go to Wizarding World in Orlando, FL and probably to buy this friggin' thing ;) I'm the most hooked person I've ever known.

Call of Cthulhu RPG #4 - beginning

So we started the new adventure last week and since about half of the characters died last time we had to make new ones. Right now we are four but a fifth one will be added to the story this week. So this time we have Sophie Manson (the priest's daughter and a professional thief, flapper), California Smith (archeaologist and scholar), Frank Castle (private detective) and Alistair Carling (the psychiatrist who got his hand blown up last time).

So it all starts off with Carling moving from Boston to New York and there finding Sophie, whom we tells of her father's death. When he is at her flat telling her the sad news California Smith knocks on the door. Sophie has helped her steal old stuff before and knows she's a fast talker and Smith wants her along with her. Smith tells Sophie that one of her colleagues, Arthur Cornthwaithe, has gone missing and that she's going to go out to his house to check on him and convince him to come back because she doesn't want to take on his classes. Sophie who had almost no reaction to the news of her father's death agrees to come along and Carling who doesn't want to leave Sophie alone tags along as well.

Arthur is disgustingly rich and interested in the native people of southern Africa. It's a long ride to his house from New York and we stop by a small village on the way where we eat and fill up the car. We arrive at the estate, which is surrounded by a fence and Sophie picks the lock of the big gates and we drive through without closing them again. The garden is completely overgrown and not taken care of. Smith knocks on the door and a detective named Castle opens the door and tells us that Arthur has disappeard and has been gone for several weeks. Apparantly he disappeard after he took some time off to travel. Smith insists on entering and pick up his notes for his classes and the rest of us enters too. There's an open book on the table of the study. "The people the djungle swallowed". The book is in a bad shape and it seems to describe a tribe in Africa. Smith takes the book but finds no notes. We walk around the house and find a library. At that time we get a feeling that the house is watching us, the angles seem to be off and the house seems to squeak and creak more than what would be normal. Smith and Castle enter the library and Sophie sneaks away upstairs and enters the first room which is the master bedroom. Expensive furniture, expensive decoration. Messy. Shotgun bullets with the powder outside of them lined up on a table. Crystallic powder in windows and the door. A golden cigar box and a tie-pin imbedded with diamonds disappears into her bag while Castle is screaming for her to get back downstairs and pulls out his gun. Sophie comes back downstairs seemingly disappointed and as if nothing has happened. Castle drives us out of the house and when we drive off we close the gates behind us. We decide to go to the local attorneys' office to find out if Castle really was sent by them.

Call of Cthulhu RPG #3 - ending

This post is long overdue, but since the RPG meetings have stalled a little I haven't had any motivation to blog about it. But now it got going again and here's the ending of number 3.

Cover, our explosives expert, shows up at the library. He examines the powder but doesn't understand a thing. Eneri comes back downstairs and tells us that she has recieved a call from someone who said that father Washington will be sacrificing someone in three days. Father Edward, Cover and Kruger go to the Ving Store and find out that in three days all planets will be positioned in one line and that there's much evil around at that time. Cover shows the powder but the store owner doesn't recognise it. When asked the man takes out a candle and lights it and Cover puts a little powder on the flame. The flame turns green. Cover puts a small piece of metal in the green fire and shows the result to the man who still says he doesn't recognise it. Cover mentions the cult and we are driven out of the store by gunpoint.

We go to the church where the others went. We arrive and see blod and metal from something that has exploded. In the crypt you can see that someone has been looking for what we stole. We take everything on the table and then drive to the closest telephone booth. We make a few calls and get in touch with Eneri who drove (very, very badly) herself and Carling to the hospital. The gun had exploded in Carling's hand. The university chemist Eneri had given the powder to turns out to be one of the four men from Wells' flat. We pick her up at the hospital and on our way back to the university we drive past the warehouse. Cover puts stones next to doors and windows as to be able to see if anyone's been there the next time we get there. The ordinary fire is still burning and Eneri puts some powder on it as to see if it reacts the same. She puts out the fire after it stopped being green. Cover rigs a bomb with the powder and then we drive over to Fog. We arrive at the university and discover that the chemist is dead and another man is unconscious. Edward drives off to find Fog, which he does after a while and she sleeps over at his place.

The next day Edward and Fog drive to the warehouse and start moving boxes around as to find a trap door. Success! When everyone (Cover, Eneri, Fog, Edward) is assembled we enter through the trap door. Eneri has a torchlight. The tunnel ends in a huge hall where lots of human bones are spread about. We all feel sick and it smells real bad. Then we hear the trap door close and a voice saying that he thought we'd show up earlier and a huge green fire is lit with some kind of creature inside it. The creature looks at us. Cover panics and runs back through the tunnel. Fog lies down on the floor crying. Eneri handles her panic with her camera and takes multiple pictures. Edward hugs his Bible. People are coming from behind. Fog throws powder and a granade and kills them and Cover but destroys the tunnel. Edward falls to his knees and tries to dig his way out with his bare hands, completely out of it. Fog and Eneri fights Washington and Eneri manages to push all of Washington into the green fire but loses both her hands in the process. The loss of her hands triggers all the horrors that happened to her in the past year to come back and she loses her mind. When Washington is gone the fire and the creature disappears and the hall goes completely dark. Fog is the only one sane enough to try and find another way out.

-- The End --

I love Japanese CMs

Just what the title implies. While in Tokyo I saw loads of them, both as posters and as videos especially in the underground. Inside the trains they have small TV-monitors that only show news, weather forecast and CMs and lacking something else to look at I always had my eyes glued to the screen. One made me say "gorogoro" for days and I've seen the CMs for the Cats and Sound of Music performances in Tokyo too many times. But they are actually so much better than European CMs, simply because there's so much more to them.

This one is soooo cute and kind of creepy at the end

This one is just straight out mental.

This one is my favourite. 1) It's cute. 2) It gets stuck.

The CM that hade me most appalled I found at the end of my stay. A mobile phone company add and I'm still not too sure what they were trying to say with it.... But here it is:

This is gonna be great xD

If this is what her new album is gonna sound like then it's gonna be great. Her new single has me hooked anyway - both lyrics-wise and music-wise :P And the video reminds me of another video...

9 years earlier....

Missing Tokyo

I had a dream tonight. I dreamt I was walking down Shibuya in Tokyo, shopping, eating and making use of all the wonderful vending machines.

I miss Tokyo constantly. It's not something that comes and goes, it's constant. Everything I do reminds me of that thing's counterpart in Tokyo. What would I do in Tokyo? How would I do this in Tokyo? Being on the bus or train makes me think of the underground. I even miss the morning rush and the jam-packed trains. Eating pasta makes me think of udon, ramen and yakisoba. BBQ makes me think of yakiniku and sushi restaurants makes me think of kaitenzushi; sushi bars with the sushi pieces going round and round on an assembly line. I miss all the delicious food so much. I have yet to find some Japanese food that I don't like. I even liked nattou d^^;

I miss the drink vending machines and I miss some of the ridiculous drinks they used to have; lovely fermented water, Fanta milk, Fanta japanese grapes, chocolate milk, royal milk tea, cold café au lait, peach nectar, strawberry milk, lemon water... There was always something new to try, not one vending machine stocked the same drinks as another. And I miss the sweets and the buns. Because they are not like our sweets. Tokyo was fantastic in that way - I was constantly eating and/or drinking and still losing weight while I was there, however that worked out xD Their sweets are not as sweet as European ones and not as wet in its structure, Japanese sweets aren't gelatinous, they are like sweetened food stuffs... Probably the best way to describe it...

I miss walking around in Tokyo and always finding something new to look at, no matter how many times I had already walked up that street. I loved the greenery and parks inside the city and how all the urban noise disappeared as soon as you got into one of those parks... I miss how every house were built differently and could have whatever colour possible. The house I lived in was pink. I miss the konbini (Japanese for convenience stores) where you could buy anything from stationery to food and alcohol, pay your bills, buy tickets for concerts or games, or just have lunch. I miss having the shop staff yell Irasshaimase (welcome) to me when I enter a shop. I miss the surprised faces on the Japanese people every time I told them I know Japanese. I miss the karaoke bars, purikura, Sweets Paradise, melon soda, Starbucks, HMV, the temples, the people, the atmosphere, the cultural heritage...

I guess the logical reason for me to miss it this much is that I was living a dream, I had wanted to go there for 6 years when I finally was able to and it was everything I had ever hoped for - and more. I had wanted to stay there for a year, maybe find a job and wait forever to come home. But then I wouldn't have what I have now, I guess to gain something you have to lose something. But on the other hand Tokyo will always be there waiting for me to come back, while what I now have here wouldn't have waited forever.

I can't wait to go back. It might take some years until I can afford to, but I want it to be as soon as possible, even if it's just for a summer...

All pictures:

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