Don’t worry. It’s not things like throwing a fit after a depressing ending of a series or screaming at my monitor if some idiotic characters did something stupid. The things I’m referring to are some of the things I only got to know after watching anime or some stuff that I think are pretty cool and exciting.

Now lets get going to the list.

1. Attend A Summer Festival

I live in a country with perpetual summer so nope, we don’t celebrate summer and therefore don’t have a summer festival. We do have a food festivals here but they offer a different vibe. For one, we won’t be wearing yukata, munching on shaved ice desserts and watching fireworks displays. So yes, I want to be at a Japan summer festival to munch on shaved ice desserts and watching fireworks display. Not so much on wearing yukata. I’d like to scoop a goldfish though.

2. Living In A Peaceful Countryside Town

You may tempted to say “for illustration purpose” only like those food menu photos in case the real thing is different but hey, I’m okay with that. Because the way anime puts it, the life at the countryside seems pretty damn enjoyable. While writing those sentences, I can hear cicada chirping on a hot summer day. Anime like Barakamon and Dagashi Kashi managed to make living in a secluded part of a country fun. The life is much simpler, neighbors are more likely to be friendlier and air definitely fresher. Even if it’s not countryside, living in a peaceful place like the one in Flying Witch would be cool too.

3. Buy A Fluffy White Christmas Cake

I’m not one that often pops into bakery store or drop by dessert cafes especially for the cakes. This is not to say I don’t like sweet food. I’m just too lazy make an effort to hunt down the perfect dessert. But after watching Christmas themed episodes after episodes, that fluffy white Christmas cake that the characters always have on Christmas Day looks pretty tempting. I want to have a slice of it, with a strawberry on top please.

4. Eat Those Popular Snacks

Of course I’m not talking about internationally known sushi or ramen. Although when I started watching Naruto moons ago, I wanted to eat ramen since I never had it before. But no, I’m not referring them. I’m talking about snacks like yakisoba pan, melon pan, korokke that are often featured in high school themed anime. And yes, I watched a lot of high school themed anime. I even went ahead I ordered umaibo a few months ago after watching the first episode of Dagashi Kashi.

5. Study In A Japanese High School

This will never happen unless I popped in a pill that Kaizaki had in ReLIFE. Similar to Japan, students wait for teachers to come into their classrooms for lessons in Malaysia. The difference is we don’t have activities like cultural festival and school trip. At least all the schools I attended don’t have those. Personally, I find those activities really educational and rewarding especially when students are forced to work together in some events. They cultivate relationships and help students actively making memories too.

6. Take Up Team Sports

Perhaps this is the most productive out of the bunch. After watching series like Baby Steps and Haikyuu!!, I feel like I want work hard in sports of some kind and make it my sports. I participated in sports events before like table tennis and half marathon, but they’re all solo events and also I wasn’t very dedicated and will immediately revert back to a couch potato once the events are over. Sports anime normally made me just wish to be part of team sports, but Baby Steps is different only because Maruo was overly dedicated to his tennis and I find that somewhat inspiring.

7. Play Musical Instruments

Watching Nodame Cantabile made me wanna suck less in piano. I never earned my diploma in piano and hasn’t play since I first saw Nodame Cantabile some five years ago.I actually played piano for a while after watching the series but stopped later on. But when I think of the series, there this strange urge for wanting to be good in classical music. Weird no? Also, watching K-ON sort of sparked an interest in electric guitar. As the matter fact, I attempted to play a few times too.

I think that’s it. Do you have something you want to do after watching anime?

When her sister died in a car accident so suddenly, Kasahara Sachiko was left trying to pick up the pieces and uncover secrets her sister had been hiding from her. This plot makes it very enticing, which is why I picked up this title to watch. I admit that familiar faces of Kitagawa Keiko and Mukai Osamu also gave me the nudge to actually watch this drama special.

The drama was largely captivating in the sense that it keeps throwing bits and pieces of mystery and murders along the way before the final unveiling of the truth. In that respect, I’d say I enjoyed Kuroi Jukai. However, the way the story goes, I can’t help but wondered why some of the things happened the way they did.

If you don’t like spoilers, I suggest you to stop reading right now. If you’re okay with it or has no intention of watching the drama special, I’ll be glad to invite you to keep reading.

First of all, I don’t understand the role of Yoshii Ryoichi (Mukai) in the drama special. He keeps pushing Sachiko (Kitagawa) to investigate the truth behind her sister Nobuko’s questionable actions that led to her death, but he has no reasons to be persistent about the investigation. He’s only just Nobuko’s colleague and from the looks of it, not even a close one. So why is he so interested in pursuing the reason behind Nobuko’s death? Her death is clearly accidental and it’s not even foul play. So why? It never really did answer well on this one.

As Sachiko started to poke her nose around her sister’s death, three more murders happened. Nobuko’s death is accidental. Anyone can try to paint it as murder but it’s not going to happen. And when I finally learn the truth that eventually led to her death, those other murders seem unwarranted. It could’ve been avoided but the murderer, whose identity I shall not reveal, just couldn’t get it over his head that losing societal status is a safer bet than committing multiple murders. Also, how he managed to contact the second victim, Saito Tsuneko, is also puzzling.

I was appalled to know why the murders took place. To think that someone would go through such a length just to cover up an affair, I’m at lost for words. The person who’s most affected by the events of things don’t even care in the first place! To know this truth left a really bitter taste after watching the drama special. The greed and ambition to be someone important in a small sector of a society would drive someone to such edge.

I think that the way this drama drops its pieces of puzzles is good. But the story that support the drama just doesn’t cut it. Not for me anyway.

Since Pokémon Go is released in Malaysia last Saturday, it’s been the thing we’ve all been talking about. “We” as in my colleagues, friends and families so that’s a lot of people there. It’s interesting because there’s hardly a game that I could remember off the top of my head that consumes everybody’s mind like Pokémon Go.

I’m writing this post mainly to share my observations based on just one week of experience with the wildly popular game released by Niantic and Nintendo. Just a casual kinda post, mind you and not some full fledged human behavior analysis.

1. Introducing Pokémon Other Than Pikachu To Non-Fans

Like my colleagues (the ones I hang out with only) and friends, we don’t grow up watching or playing Pokémon. To some of us Pokémon = Pikachu. Other pokémon doesn’t exist…until now. So each time we discovered a new pokémon to add to our pokédex, you can imagine the bunch of response that we have. Ranging from “awwww…it’s so cute” to “bloody hell, why is there a dead fish pokémon”.

As we spend more time with Pokémon Go, we started to learn names other than Pikachu like Rattata and Pidgey. I mean, at the rate of their sightings, who wouldn’t remember? When the game first came out, they’re referred to as “the rat” and “the bird”.  We’ve been become friends since…

2. Learning New Places In Our Own City

Okay, maybe not exactly new places unless you’re one of the hardcore gamers who would go out of the way to unfamiliar roads to discover pokéstops and catch some rare pokémon. But there are moments in which we were surprised that in our own backyard (so to speak), there are hidden religious establishments that we never knew of until Pokémon Go came.

3. Coping With Level Of Addiction

Now, each human being is wired differently so it’s really interesting to see how each of us behaved around Pokémon Go during lunch hour, working hours, etc. I have colleagues who will leave office building during working hours to catch pokémon nearby. All of us will be burying our heads in our phones trying to catch new pokémon at lunch table. It’s very addicting especially someone had just used a lure module in coffee house. I had spent one lunch slurping my noodle while catching pokémon and collecting pokéballs. I felt bad about it and stopped doing that since.

4. Learning Other People’s True Colors

It seems a bit of a stretch to say this but it applies to people whom you rarely communicate with. For example, the colleagues who you don’t socialize with. Precisely because Pokémon Go is hugely famous and everyone’s been playing the game, it’s a topic of conversation we can have with just about anyone. That’s when you start to notice hidden traits in other people you wouldn’t learn otherwise. I know one who is a huge fan of Pokémon and know each of their names and abilities. Ask him anything, he has the answer. Confession here, I have the slightest idea what Rattata or Pidgey does. And then, I know another one who brags about knowing how to battle with just about any pokémon he finds. Or another who would curse if she gets the error “GPS Signal Not Found” while others still get to go on with the game.

Good or bad, it’s not for anyone to judge.

So there you have it. A simple list of observations on people around me after just one week with Pokémon Go.

Hey guys! I know I haven’t been writing lately in this blog due to many reasons which I won’t bore you with. But I did manage to write a piece titled A Look at Strike and Robin over at Watch Game Read on Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike series. I might not be watching a lot of anime lately but instead, I read more books. So if you’re into reading books as well, do pop by the blog and have a read!

Watching New Game, or specifically, watching Suzukaze Aoba working at her first job reminded me a lot of the time when I first joined rank as part of the working class. Not unlike Aoba, I was intrigued with the way a company generally works: meetings, deadlines and demanding customers.

Perhaps I’m one of the lucky ones or maybe lazy ones, I have no prior working experience before landing my first job. Yes, I did a three months internship once after completing my studies because it’s one of the requirements to complete my degree. And that’s just about it. So you can imagine my trouble of trying to complete Twitter’s trend: #sevenfirstjobs.

Anyway, back to New Game and Aoba.

One of the quality Aoba has is her eagerness to perform. When assigned a task as mundane as following the exercises from a textbook, she did it with enthusiasm. I can’t speak for everyone, but I was like that as well when I first started out. No matter how boring is the task, I’ll do it with great enthusiasm only because I wanted to impress. Nowadays, to impress is the last thing on my mind.

In episode six, there’s a miscalculation on project schedule and Aoba was asked to choose between staying some nights or working on the weekends to make up for lost time. Inline with her great enthusiasm, she chose both options. In fact, she looks like she really enjoy working overtime. When I first had to clock in more hours, I accepted it as part of the job. It’s normal in my industry anyways. Although I never end up sleeping in the office, there was a period I often left work late at nights and worked seven days a week. These days, I’ll leave work on time whenever it’s possible and avoid coming in over the weekends.

So what has changed?

New Game paints a rosy picture of how a company runs. Either that, or Aoba is extremely lucky to be in the presence of such a fun and positive leader, Yamagi Kou and friendly seniors. Based on personal experience and stories from others, working experience is always tainted by office politics, backstabbing or irresponsible teammates and impossibly demanding management. Or it could simply be a different company culture because I simply can’t imagine anyone in my company who would use a bear sleeping bag at work…

These are just some random thoughts popping into my head after watching New Game. The anime itself is a fun, light series. Just the kinda anime I look forward to after a long day at work.