Konbanwa~~ ^_^

Today's BBI post comes to you from a dodgy little internet/manga cafe in Kyoto called TopsCafe. When I say dodgy, I mean I'm sitting in a fully enclosed little booth - one of hundreds in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike - with a desktop filled with links to porn sites, a chair that reclines further than any reclining chair should and a complementary packet of tissues. This keyboard feels sticky too... >_>

Anyway, enough of the ordeal I'm going through to bring you this greeting from afar. How is everyone back home? We're having a great time here. Shopping today was cheap - I bought about 20 tankoubon in Book Off for about £18. Unfortunately, the shipping at the post office to get it all back to the UK came to about £50, so the savings I made were somewhat diminished. Several people (including myself) filled their bags and suitcases long ago, so we have to post back everything we buy now. I'd guess around 100kg of 'stuff' has been shipped back so far. ^^;;

Notable purchases over the last few days include Majokko A-La-Mode and a nice Wacom tablet. Majokko A-La-Mode took a long time to locate. Apparently, F&C left pressing the discs a little too late. This, combined with the fact that they severely underestimated demand meant that the game sold out almost as soon as it went on sale and became virtually impossible to obtain. I eventually managed to find a copy in a used game store in Tokyo (although the game itself was a new, unopened copy that someone had, for whatever reason, been sitting on for a few weeks). The tablet is an A5 Favo model - about £80 so quite cheap although I was quite happy with it when I tried it in store. Look out for a torrent of horrible SoZ scrawls when I get back.

Anyhoo, I'm hungry - I think it's beef bowl time. I'll be back in a little over a week so I may not post another log entry here before then. Take care!

Hi! I'm alive! And more or less broke after a week in Akihabara. ^^;

Sorry again for the rapid departure - I meant to post a lengthy log entry before heading off to the airport the other week, but I ran out of time. Still, I'm sure you're all relieved to have been spared from rambling SoZ.

Things have been going well so far. We've been staying in a small hotel in Minowa - cheap and simple but quite pleasant. We have been combining shopping with sightseeing to take some of the load off our wallets. Toranoana's main store in Akihabara seems to be our most visited store at the moment, although we did manage a whole day in Mandarake Nakano yesterday. ^^;

Right, must go. I think my time with the 'net terminal is up. See you soon.

Apologies for the lack of updates. I'm going away for a while, during which time updates will be few and far between. Normal service will resume in about a month.

International Ragnarok Online servers Chaos and Loki will finally be migrated to RO Version 3.0 during the next maintenance period. Upgrades include Comodo, skill balancing (I'm particularly looking forward to trying out the changes to the Arrow Shower skill - at last, it might do something useful ^^;) and implementation of status effects. For full details of exactly what will change in the new version, see the RO V3.0 update page. I suppose the PvP arenas will be next. ^_^;