Self Worth.

Since when did you decide that you could only transfer Pokemon from JAPANESE games to BW, Nintendo? When were you planning on letting me know, huh? Better be thankful I can still trade from Diamond to Gold first, but it's a real hassle. Cheers, guys...

Did manage to get a team of six across, though. Now's the time to shine for Venusaur, Togekiss, Froslass and Nidoking. Added to this batch was Celebi and Shiny Raikou, the former of which netted me a cute little Zoroa (now a Zoroark). Really is coming in handy, thanks to the computer playing easily into the hands of Illusion.

Seemed like everyone was out to get me today. Be it in Tesco, the Bargain Shop, or just on the street, people seemed very keen to get in my way and make trouble for me. Maybe it's just because I'm tired, this long weekend has been pretty sleep-centric, but getting what I wanted to do done has been a tricky business this afternoon.

And JET! How many dates am I supposed to cough up for your application form, huh? Like I can remember when Breakthrough Japanese finished... Can't even remember if they gave me a certificate or not! At least they give you all kinds of lee-way with choosing where you want to go. Hokkaido Outskirts (makes it sound more like a video game area) comes top of the list, the rest will be based on how the rest of us feel...

Connor and Natasha are back tonight. Though it wasn't exactly lonely (not with the Grudge in the cupboard to keep me company) I do think I'd have gone a bit nuts if I'd been left alone for a great deal longer. Starting to feel the circuits fray at the edges as it was. Here's the thing, though, both of them have Halloween costumes. *sigh* Another year of being a lone Shirt Ninja for me.

And, finally, Avatar the Last Airbender (the series, not the movie) is really good. See you soon, second season.

Thanks for reading.

Cross Thunder

That's it. It's all over. Elite Four went down, so did N, so did that horrible Dad of his.

It's all over.

That was

AWESOME!!!

That has to have been one of the best endings I've EVER seen!! The music!! The visuals!! The dialogue!!

Wow!!

I'm shaking!!

Credits have just finished, better take a look at what comes next...

Thanks for reading.

Churchward

Plan to set off in about 45 minutes for Ps and Gs, so thought I'd stop by here and talk for a bit.

Just finished my JET Personal Statement. You other applicants better beware, it's solid gold. For now that's all I can do, will need to wait until they release the form proper before I can continue, and for now I'm happy to sit back and relax a bit.

Well, I would, except this week's J-E Translation homework is a real nasty piece of work. All those place names, all those fancy metaphors and over-complicated descriptions... Not looking forward to that. Rest of the week is looking pretty sweet, though, so really can't complain all that much.

Last night saw collaborative fantasy story Two Swords rise from the cold mortuary table, just in time to prevent a terminal diagnosis being given, and the story continues. Laura, Steph and I really did ourselves proud, the climax grows ever closer and the conclusion is going to be one to seriously watch. Not that we're quite 100% sure what it's going to be yet, but we have a rough idea, and WOW is it going to rock. In the meantime a personal project under the name of Bonds of Urus has been keeping me a little busy, and is easily the longest I've gone writing something without losing interest. Three whole chapters, now, with the next two well planned. Maybe some day, if you ask really nicely, I'll let you read it.

But you're not here to hear about that, are you?

So it turns out Champion Road is divided in two, with the easy bit before the awesome ticket gate and the nasty bit following on. So that's where I am now. For the purposes of Strength I had to let Miruhog back on the team, the poor, weak little critter, and on seeing one, gushing and subsequently catching it I replaced Iko with a metal ant Pokemon I called Fang.

A metal. Flipping. Ant! So cool!

It's essentially just a slower Scizor, same weaknesses and everything, but I prefer my little guy over the red scissor Pokemon. I mean, it is an ant. Now if only she wasn't such a low level...

That's it for now. Thanks for reading.

Oh yeah, and Courage Wolf is really funny.

Fantastic Four.

Well, wasn't Iris a let-down. The poor girl; she has such high expectations to live up to on account of being not only an eighth Gym Leader, but a Dragon-user at that. Last Dragoon we encountered was the charming Lance, who took so long to beat I may have chewed my own arms off up to the pre-set maximum of twice.

My way of saying I'm ready to fight the Elite Four. Had to get past Cheren, who needed more proof that I was better than him than simply beating him in every single fight from the very start. Thinking about it it's a wonder he kept going on his Pokemon adventure and Belle gave up, considering how she is currently the ONLY person to EVER beat me in this game, and that was the very start.

Still no sign of Zekrom. Starting to look like I'll need to prove myself to his foxy twin brother at the Champion's Hall before he'll deign me with his thundery presence. But! There is another surprise that I was not expecting. Had my first glimpse of something called Volteros today, this Generation's chase-him-around-the-world-map Pokemon. Nicely done, Nintendo. Volteros' presence on a Route is signified by a typhoon, very cool, but unlike Entei and co. he's not going be scared away by some puny trainer with a few less-than-Legendaries. Here's the cool thing: Volteros turns up in Isshu once a week, starting at the south of the region and slowly making his way north, ending up on Champion's Road as the day ends. That means it's a lot easier to chase him around, not having to dart on and off the world map each time you change locations. Going to concentrate on the plot for now, though, and then we'll pay Volteros a visit.

Final team is the same as the last Gym team: Lazarro at 50, Patty at 47, Afro at 46 (when will he evolve?!), Iko at 46, Wanita at 44, Golgoth (new entry, a Dragon called Kibago) at 43. Wanted to get Metas in there, but with a perfectly good Cross Scissor on Lazarro I don't think I'll be in need to any more Bug.

JET stuff coming together, going to try my hand at a Personal Statement tomorrow. And then it's clear sailing for another weekend. Looks like things are starting to settle down a bit, which is good 'cos the stress was bubbling up without my knowing it. Making mountains out of molehills all the time last couple of weeks, hasn't been good for my heart. Though apparently my teeth are excellent.

Gradius time. That thing is going DOWN!

Thanks for reading.

Endless Eight.

I had a bone-chilling thought today.

To explain, let me go over my Gym victories to date. First was the Tri Badge, with its Fire/Water/Grass combination. Next was Normal, followed by Bug, Electric, Ground, Flying, Ice and finally the as-of-yet unattempted Dragon. Next up will be the Elite Four, and the final four types followed by the diversity-type Champion. What four types are left?

Rock won't be a problem, and Fighting only minimal. Steel may be a bit of a pain, but I'll tell you what really will be.

Psychic, Ghost, Dark.

Those stupid three sneaky types and I haven't beat any of them yet! I can just imagine waltzing through the Pokemon League, happy as can be, only to have to fight all three one after another! Dark-type, how I hate you!

The one good thing that comes out of this is that Bug is good against both Dark and Psychic, and Electric isn't bad against Rock or Steel, so Metas the Denchula will be getting some serious fight-time.

As it stands Lazarro is still way in the lead, a whopping level 48, 10 levels higher than any wilds I'm training against. Iko the... ice-cream isn't doing too bad, either, won't mind seeing his final form alongside Afro's when they finally evolve. Kibago has a long way to go, but he's not too shabby as he is now!

In other news, I have a mock JLPT tomorrow. Wish me luck, and thanks for reading.

Rediscover.

Sick again. Stupid Natasha. It's the flu this time, though not a very nasty strain by the feels of it. Well, not when compared to food poisoning. That stuff is pretty rubbish.

But that's not the real reason for this post. Today, at long, long last, I saw The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.

And it was incredible.

Though the character animation was still very much mired in the bog of K-ON, the rest of, well, everything looked truly immense. The buildings, the backgrounds. There's a stunning moment where we see Yuki silhouetted against different stellar backgrounds which really took my breath away. The music is top-notch, a lot of it seemingly taken from that Suzumiya Orchestra CD I heard about. So not a lot of variation, but wow is it used effectively. There are several moments around the climax that brought me close to tears, they were that moving. The whole thing cam together seamlessly into a stunning visual spectacle.

And the plot! Wow! Edge of my seat, let me tell you! The loneliness of the opening scenes plays masterfully against the joy of the climax, the overall uncertainty of the conclusion. It was just the right length, and the pacing was perfect.

And this is without even mentioning the fact that emotional Yuki is a-flipping-dorable. <3

So yeah, highly successful film, and I recommend, nay insist that anybody who has seen the show watch the film.

In other news, the final badge is ready for the taking. But first I need to catch myself this pesky steel antelope. For a benevolent guardian who protects the innocent, he's sure giving me a run for my money. Plenty of new Dragon Pokemon in the roster now, though, which is great.

Going to start on some mince now, wish me luck.

Thanks for reading.

Sickie.

There goes omerice off the top of the Japanese Food Charts.

Never mind, I'm all better now and that's all that really matters. I also have a place (or 5) in the JLPT in December, which was a bit touch and go for a second there.

Off through Neji Mountain at the mountain, which is a bit tricky. Glad to see there's another chance to pick up that mole Pokemon, though, I thought he'd gone for good. Metas the Bacchula evolved yesterday, to great squeals of joy, as Denchula looks absolutely staggering. Almost as staggering as Lazarro's final form, which is so cool I could have fainted on the spot. Iko's... well... the less said about his the better. Just nice to have an Ice type on the team, even if he does look like a flipping ICE CREAM!!

Tch...

So tired today. I think I'm just coming off food poisoning but everything is such a hassle. Only had two lessons today, an hour each, but it still felt like a real nuisance. Hoping that'll clear up by tomorrow, when team Shame Panthers (yes, that's our name) meets officially for the first time to discuss our J2 Presentation. I have honestly forgotten everything I was ever taught about Japanese shame society, so it's gonna be a long meeting...

Bought Dissidia the other day, which is really great. It's fast and exciting, like being in an anime. But also like being in an anime, the English voices are horrendous. Squall, my beloved Squall, will never be the same again. Though he was originally gonna be my main character of use, Zidane is ace, and Onion Knight is really cool as well. Cecil was pretty cool, though that twenty-loss-streak to Marionette Sephiroth really pushed my patience. I like Warrior of Light's style, but haven't played him yet. He's so cheesy, in a really cool way.

J3 Portfolio is done, ready for submission. I just hope Fumiko-tachi enjoy reading about why I think Kamille Bidan would beat Kira Yamato in a fight.

I want to play Pokemon, so I think I shall.

Thanks for reading.

Following on

That's five gym badges now. Making slow and steady progress, I like to think, though I feel I may be being overtaken by the entire eastern Asian subcontinent. Hoping I'll get plenty of time in the coming weeks to get some serious work done on it.

And not on a dissertation.

So now let's talk about classes. This semester I've got five classes... well, more like four and a half. Monday mornings in 'Japanese to English Translation', which is dead simple. Not that it's easy, it's just a very predictable format of get a Japanese text, turn it into English. We've been looking at the same sort of things that we have in our second class, 'English to Japanese Translation' which is on Tuesday mornings. This one's looking a lot more at the theories behind translation, a good example being today which looked at loan words that have different meanings to when they were in the language they were loaned from. 'Advanced Japanese Writing' follows on from that, though we only have two classes in that this semester. The rest of our time goes into writing a long-ish Japanese essay on whatever we like, due in start of next semester (interestingly AFTER the dissertation due date). Finally it's 'Advanced Japanese Speaking', which is preparation for a couple of tasks. Last couple of weeks we've been looking at half of our assessment which is a presentation in Japanese for the second-years on an aspect of Japanese culture. Natasha, Connor, Alison and myself have nabbed ourselves 'Shame culture', which we'll be starting work on in the weeks to come.

That was a long paragraph, let's start a new one.

Linguistics is assessed through a single course this semester: 'Syntactic Systems and English Grammar'. It's as thrilling as it sounds. In all fairness the lecturer's pretty cool, certainly very passionate about his work, but you just can't quite make grammar interesting that easily. There's a short essay due in next week which I'll need to start some time soon. Next semester will see the start of 'Second Language Acquisition' and 'Psycholinguistics', which look far more interesting. Syntax is on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons.

On top of that there's volunteer admin work at the church on Monday, the J2 class on Tuesday with anime in the evening, NOTHING (yes, nothing at all) on Wednesdays save roleplaying in the evening and the church student group on Thursday nights. And that's my week.

'Scotland Loves Anime' starts in a couple of weeks. Films on include Eva 2.0 (still my all-time favourite animated film), the Haruhi movie (at long, long last), Professor Layton and Trigun (the director of whom is hopefully going to be shown around Edinburgh by yours truly). I'm only gonna see Haruhi, don't really want to be spending massive amounts of money right now.

And I still stand that Summer Wars ripped off Digimon 2.

Might ply a bit of Pokemon now, actually. Connor's not back from work yet, he said he might be up for some gaming this evening, so I've got a little time to kill. Currently facing off against the Plasmas (who seem to have ninjas in their employ) at the bottom of a big, electric cavern with some adorable fluffy, yellow spider Pokemon. Wanita the Meguroko is doing superbly, as is Guru the Munna, with Lazarro, Patty, Afro and Iko completing the squad. The shape of the hole where my next badge goes is decidedly feather-shaped, so I'm thinking it'll be fliers. Gotta get Afro's rocky goodness on top-form for that.

Thanks for reading.