The Misadventures of José Faxner

Ah, the moment I’ve been waiting for. Well, one of them, anyway. It was with great anticipation that me and my brother (well, I’m sure the anticipation was mostly me) set out to go claim the two boxes of stuff that had finally arrived. Of course, it ended up not being quite without complications. For example, you may notice the singular use of the word “box” in the headline. Indeed, while not entirely fruitless, today’s quest for boxes had results roughly 50% below expectations.

Apparently not causing enough trouble by having stuff shipped to our old address, the powers that be made sure the two boxes would come to two different destinations. Quite obviously, these wouldn’t be misadventures if things ever went smoothly. In any event, being somewhat late, and knowing that our usual pickup spot for packages closes at 7pm, we made sure to go there first, planning to swing by the supermarket that had received my other package on the way back. We got the first box, no problem, and just outside the supermarket, signs proudly proclaimed they were open until 9pm. I barely had time to think “Oh, OK, no need to worry then”, before stepping inside only to realise that the counter for post and parcel service closes at 7pm here as well. Very annoying, considering we had taken our sweet time at the first place, naively assuming the second one would be open later. We had ended up getting there at around 7.05, and despite there being a guy pacing back and forth behind the counter, the only help we were able to get was “We’re closed”.

Most definitely annoying and disappointing, but on the bright side I was able to get the box I had been looking forward to the most of the two - the “video games” one that I didn’t quite know what it contained. In all honesty it doesn’t really concern me all that much if that box of books sit at that supermarket for another week or two; while I of course want the books and stuff, I’m not nearly as anxious to get that stuff as I am to finally play my games. The fact that my room here is still a mess and that I don’t particularly want to populate my bookshelves before figuring out how to decorate my room may play a role as well.

So what about the box I did get then? Well, thanks to the power of the internet, now YOU can relive my adventure and excitement as I opened the box. Except you get to look at a few photos and I actually got to open the box. But whatever. Just play along. (click thumbnails for fullsize photos)

Ah, the box. Not too banged up, but enough for me to kinda worry a little bit about the less sturdy boxes that I sent. Hopefully I packed them decently. Now what does it contain? I’m guessing mostly PS2 games, possibly some Mega Drive and/or Saturn games. Let’s see, shall we?

Well, looks like I was right, so far. I really have no memory whatsoever of packing this box in particular, but there’s a bunch of MD games, a controller, the HDMI cable for my PS3, as well as some Saturn and Super Famicom games…

I packed it up, and what do you know? My PlayStation 3! Now that I did not expect. From what I could remember the actual consoles were among the last things to be sent, but I guess not. Good thing too, cause the rest of the contents of the box serve little purpose other than taunting me, making the wait for my other consoles worse than it already is. Along the same lines, I have my PS3 and Virtua Fighter 5, but no arcade stick! Augh! But hey, a box of PS2 games would’ve been completely useless right now - with this I can at least play Ninja Gaiden Sigma, and check out what more pointless crap Sony has put on its PlayStation Network in the months since I packed my PS3 away. I know there’s a demo for Heavenly Sword, but that’s about the only thing of worth I’m expecting to find on there.

A second look at some of the stuff. That bubble wrap in the middle that I couldn’t be bothered to unpack contains some Saturn games as well as one of my all-time Mega Drive favourites, The Super Shinobi II. Never got to play it in Japan so I can’t wait to take that for a spin! Other highlights include Landstalker, Hokuto no Ken, Guardian Heroes and probably a bunch of other Saturn games. Of course HNK is an absolutely terrible game, but it’s HNK so it’s still awesome. It’s one of those laws of the universe that cannot quite be explained by man. Hokuto no Ken = awesome.

So, yeah, um, I’m sure that was nowhere near as exciting for you as it was for me. Sorry. Then again if you were as nerdy as I am that would probably be a good reason to feel sorry for you as well. In any event, this was a very nice box o’ crap, and even though I don’t really look forward to playing anything on my PS3 in the near future, it’s at least nice to know that it got here safely. Now let’s just hope Chinese pirates didn’t make it off with my Mega Drive and action figure collection.

Blog’s looking boring again.

From the ever awesome toothpaste for dinner.

As of last night, we’re officially done in the old apartment. All the cleaning, moving out boxes, and all kinds of other crap is finally over and done with. There were some damage to wallpapers and stuff that kinda needs taking care of, and we also need to do the final inspection on our cleaning and everything before it’s completely out of our hands, but there’s no more actual WORK to be done there. And I’m pretty thrilled about that.

In other news, going to the old apartment there was of course mail from the past few days (none of us have been bothered to get our address changes completed) - among it was not only a letter from my host family in Japan (unexpected, but naturally awesome), but a few slips informing me that two of my boxes of stuff from Japan have arrived! Seeing as I’ve been waiting for this stuff for about two months now, I really cannot wait to get my hands on it. Of course this is only the beginning - I recently went over the postage receipts for all my stuff, noting that all in all I’m waiting for 106 kilos worth of stuff, spread out over 8 packages. I didn’t send it all at once though, so it’ll probably take a few weeks for all of it to arrive, but that’s OK as I obviously would not be able to take it all with me at the same time anyway.

So anyway, after months of waiting, my first two boxes have finally arrived. One of them I have a decent grasp of what it contains - books, a few magazines, and possibly a PS2 game or two. The second box however, I’m not so sure about. The receipt tells me it contains “video games”, but seeing as that covers not only most of the boxes but about 80% of what is actually being sent, so it doesn’t really narrow it down. So not only am I eagerly anticipating stuff I know I’ve sent, I’m also waiting for what essentially will be 17 kilos worth of surprises!

I’ve been waiting for this since, well, landing in Sweden pretty much… and to make the already agonizing wait even worse, my brother (who needs to come with and help me carry, as well as get a package of his own) doesn’t have time to go to get the stuff for another couple of hours. ARGH!

Other than rolling my thumbs and looking over at the clock every ten seconds, not much is going on here… same as the past few weeks or so in other words. I have been in touch with the welfare office this morning though, so hopefully I will be able to get some kind of money before too long, even if it’s perhaps not under the most exciting circumstances.

So, um, yep. 22 years old today. Sadly the day hasn’t been very fun nor exciting as I’ve spent most of it cleaning out our old apartment. The fun stuff, no less - wiping the insides of kitchen cupboards, dusting electrical outlets, cleaning the oven, mopping floors, and the like. We’re finally getting somewhere with it though, and with any luck we’ll be completely done with it before too long.

The day isn’t quite over yet though - and before it is we’ll be making a (hopefully) awesome pasta dinner, eat a (presumably) delicious chocolate cake and cinnamon buns, and chill in front of some (most definitely) fun video games. And on another positive note, I was promised some money from my grandparents, so hopefully my bank account balance should go at least a little above zero within the next couple of days.

So, with all the stress of moving and whatnot, I managed to catch a cold. It’s not deadly serious, but it’s sure as hell annoying, and it’s been lingering for a few days without any sign of improvement. I suppose it’s somewhat of a blessing that I’m unemployed, cause now I’m at least not missing work or school because of my sickness. It’s a weak comfort though, as I still feel kinda crap. I need to get more sleep and not spend as much time playing video games and reading internet forums. :/

My birthday is coming up this Saturday. Let’s hope I’ll be back on my feet by then.

Jig in Japan has now become The Misadventures of José Faxner, and things look a little different. The look might not be final, but I thought a change of scenery would go with the new name. Hope you like it.

So yep, I’m still unemployed. As such, I had been asked to go to the unemployment office for some kind of information meeting this morning, robbing me of my precious sleep. The meeting, which was said to take about 2 hours, ended up being over in just under 30 minutes, and basically amounted to two guys saying “it’s up to you to search for jobs. Oh, and here’s our website”. I can’t say I would’ve preferred to sit there for two hours, but it ended up feeling kind of pointless. I am however very thankful that thanks to the location of our new apartment, the office was about 5 minutes away by foot, as opposed to the 25 minute tram ride I would’ve needed to get there from our old place.

I’ve been looking forward to today for about a week - not for the aforementioned meeting, and in fact not for anything taking place today - but rather for things NOT taking place today. The move has taken up all my concentration, time and energy for a week now, and this is essentially my first free day since the whole project started. It’s not done, but it’s reached a point where I can at least take a breather and recuperate. There is still stuff left to do; things are still in a mess here, and the old apartment needs cleaning out as well as a few repairs. I was there for a few hours yesterday cleaning - not very fun and I’m certainly not looking forward to doing the last part. I’m reluctant to say it, since I have already said it about 4 times only to realize it wasn’t true at all, but there really isn’t too much left now. It’ll be nice not having to worry about it.

It’s funny, I used to really like it in the old apartment. Sure, there were a few annoyances, but overall I was happy. But having already gotten kinda used to this place, it’s hard to imagine I was ever pleased with our old apartment. The layout is absolutely retarded with loads of unusable space, what few electrical outlets there were had not been placed very thoughtfully, and the kitchen was a complete pain to do anything in. I’m really happy I don’t live there anymore.

For the sake of my sanity though, I should try to take my mind off the whole moving situation for a while. So today will be a really lazy day, dedicated to Guitar Hero II, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Hitman: Blood Money and some much needed rest.

Sorry about the photos being late by the way. I was gonna upload them today, but my brother needed his camera so I wasn’t able to get the photos off of it yet. Will try to shortly though.

A few days ago Sega announced the third installment of the Ryuu ga Gotoku series (龍が如く, “Like a Dragon”), “Ryuu ga Gotoku: Kenzan!”, and it is looking pretty damn awesome!

I thought it looked mildly interesting at first (my enthusiasm kept in check by the fact that I haven’t even tried the first two games yet), but seeing the trailer at www.ryu-ga-gotoku.com really got me stoked. Curiously the modern-day Tokyo of the first two games has now been traded for 17th century Edo - at first I was a bit skeptical about the drastic change, but seeing the trailer relieved me of any doubts I may have had about this game. So go check it out already! (but do come back and read the rest of this post, by all means.)

As mentioned, I haven’t played the first two games yet, and that’s something I want to do something about, at some point anyway. Thing is though, that is an undertaking not without its fair share of problems. The reason for that is somewhat complex, but as you may know I’m no stranger to a good rant, so time for a brief history lesson:

The first RgG came out in Japan in late 2005. It was an ambitious action-adventure with shades of Shenmue, set in the underworld of organized crime. It was lauded for its unprecedented accuracy and depth of its representation of the Yakuza culture, and became a huge hit, critically as well as commercially. In a sense, it became the success that the Shenmue games never was. The game was a huge project for Sega, but despite that, as well as its great success, for the longest time there was no word at all on a potential release outside Japan.

However, after a few months had passed, Sega announced that the game was going to be released in the US. Though unfortunately - but hardly unexpectedly - the game was going through a few changes. First of all, the name of the game was changed; in the west the game would be plagued by the painfully generic title “Yakuza”. Worse than that though, Sega proudly announced that a new English voice tracked would be recorded, with talent such as Micheal Madsen and Mark Hamill. It was also announced that due to lack of disc space, the original Japanese audio would have to be omitted in the English-language releases.

“But I was going to the Toshi station to pick up some power converters!”

So 10 months after Ryuu ga Gotoku had made a splash in Japan, us round-eyes were going to be treated by an accurate depiction of the world of Yakuza, as interpreted by Mr. Blonde and Luke Skywalker. Needless to say, I was less than exstatic. Not long after, in the winter of ‘06, RgG 2 came out in Japan, and was as big as the first game, if not moreso. And as of today, there has been no word whatsoever on an English version of the second game being released, since reportedly, “Yakuza” didn’t sell well enough.

I know a lot of people think I’m a snob for it, but in a situation like this where I have to choose between a version I can barely understand, and one butchered by dubbing, I don’t even need to think about it for a second before deciding. I’m vehemently against dubbing in games and movies, not least when the language is an integral part of the story and presentation like it is in this Ryuu ga Gotoku. Playing it in English would be like watching a historically accurate Western movie, only dubbed to Finnish or something. I really want to play these games - not least after having the trailer for the upcoming game make my mouth water in anticipation - but because of YET ANOTHER case of Sega’s brilliant decision making, SCEA’s retarded language policies and the generally stupefying traditions surrounding localization of Japanese games, I can’t. I will definitely try to play these games in Japanese sooner or later, but the situation pisses me off all the same. I’m tired of being shit on by game companies just cause I happened tobe born in Europe, and I absolutely cannot wait to get fluent in Japanese to the point where I won’t have to care about any of this.

Man, I really need to put more pictures in my posts. The page right now is just a wall of text, and it looks boring as well as retarded. So here’s me as Snake from Metal Gear Solid 3.

Hooooly crap I’m exhausted right now. After about 3 hours of sleep, I was woken up at around 8 am this morning, and since then I’ve been packing, hoisting, moving, carrying and unpacking stuff for the better part of 14 hours. I’m extremely tired but at the same time it’s been alot of fun. I’m in my new room in my new apartment right now, and even though what furniture we’ve got here is in complete chaos, and we have fewer lights than we have rooms, it’s a really great feeling, and I’m already really stoked about living here. I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say this is the nicest apartment I’ve seen, let alone lived in.

We’ve been taking a few photos of the moving process as well as the new apartment, but right now I don’t even know where the camera is (and I sure as hell don’t have the energy to do any formatting and uploading at the moment)… I feel like this is the tenth time I’m saying this with no results, but HOPEFULLY there’ll be some pictures up before long. I’ll actually make an effort this time.

The only downside to this whole story is that everyone involved - not just me - are utterly and completely broke. We have little more than a few packages of instant noodles and a bag of wheat flour to last us… er, well, until someone manages to conjure some cash somehow. But who cares, right? Downtown Gothenburg is mere minutes away, and should I not feel like leaving the house (quite likely), I have a recently replaced (hopefully working) Xbox 360, a Wii, a slew of DVD movies and a kick-ass internet connection to keep me occupied.

Life is good.

Apart from that whole being broke and unemployed thing.