K-ON! has been one of those series that one gets obsessed about. For me I heard about the series in passing but never checked it out. It wasn't until i won the PV Yui figure from a UFO catcher, posted my winnings on twitter and then had people chime in how awesome the show…
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We recently had a chance to play a new demo of Mafia II–an open-world action game set against the backdrop of organized crime families vying for power in the 1950s. At the beginning of the demo, we saw Vito Scaletta–the game’s lead character–inside of his home just as he receives…
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The gameplay mechanics for Rising were made known initially at E3 2010, and are based around a concept known as “zan-datsu”, literally “cut and take.” Matsumaya and Kimura explained in Konami’s press conference that the “take” part revolves around Raiden literally taking power from enemies, a concept shown in the…
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Recently I had the amazing pleasure of meeting a talented artist, Shizuko Kuwabara all by chance. I was heading to my ward office to update my address information when after i stopped by to look at the art. She came up to me and started speaking Japanese but then quickly used a mix of English and random Spanish words. I thought she was the cutest thing ever! We proceeded to chat about art for over the next hour. She said she started doing this art when she was introduced to it by her then children's teacher about 35 years ago and has been taking classes with him till this day.
I find her lines have so much energy and precisions, all just using a piece of cane wood and black ink. She uses a mix of Japanese rice paper (washi) and foreign water color paper. She says most of her pieces take about 2 days on the average and she works on them on the floor, not an easel.
She wants me to keep in touch, but she doesn't use a cell phone, nor does she know how to write an e-mail (even though her son is a computer programmer). A few days after our meeting i received a post card from her which made my heart melt. I haven't received a hand written anything in i dont know how long!
As I'm writing this I'm recovering from the past few days of food poisoning! YAY! I hope to call her this coming weekend to possibly meet again to chat.
