Geneve Trip

Recently I decided to spent a day in Geneve to relax a bit and look for cool things around. We arrived in the city just to discover that they were in progress of replacing the current railway with the playmobil one, they say that it has lower maintenance costs!

First of we had lunch, Vietnamese vegetables noodles and Thai green curry noodles. Green curry with coconut milk is really good it's a shame that it is hard to find it here in Italy.

Swiss Burger King produced the Fondue Burger, if you ever tried fondue it is something like having an overdose of cheese, mixing melt cheese with the steakhouse burgers seems murderously good!

The next morning we decided to move forward for some shopping, and I have discovered that cause of the night freeze my car glass broke. Good time to test my glass insurance :/

Anyway we reached my favorite shopping center in the city, if you are in swiss you cannot avoid buying some chocolate, we have really good chocolate in Turin too, but you know... swiss chocolate is a myth.

My son decided that it was time for a snack and we took a pause at Starbucks to have an hot mocha. He took a frappuccino too, but he said that he prefers his own milk.

I have been also shocked by the fact that they have fresh Shitake mushrooms! I thought that it would have been impossible to find them in europe but it seems that I was wrong. I promised myself to buy some of them next time that I go back.

Virtual Boy

A few posts ago I talked about the Virtual Boy. I used to have one of them, but many people never seen one and so I decided to show what it was about!

VirtualBoy was a 3D console released from Nintendo that used stereoscopic vision to provide 3D images, like what you get now at the cinema with those funny glasses. I probably never sold a lot due to the fact that you had to put a huge "War of the worlds tripod" on you face but the games where indeed cool

WarioLand was my favourite game for VirtualBoy, but I used to like also Mario Tennis (which came with the console itself) and Teleroboxer.



For the 1995 it was pretty damn cool, but the world never loved it, probably due to the fact that while each computer geek was excited by the fact of seeing the world in 3D black and red polygons each and every other child on the earth ended being sick after a few minutes of gameplay. Also, I would not call it a "portable console" as Nintendo tried to do.

SuperPotato

If you have ever been in Akihabara you cannot forget that unique 8bit music playing around when you pass near this big black block. When you can hear it, you know that SuperPotato is nearby!

If you ever installed an emulator like ZSNES or MAME on your computer you will probably think that this place is very similar to how it should look heaven. They have a huge collection of pratically any console and game available even from the beginning of the home gaming environment.

Venus Wars

Venus Wars has just been broadcasted on the italian channel Man-Ga so I have been able to see it for the first time.

 As a cyberpunk world lover I was quite curious to see it, at first impression it remembered me a bit Akira, probably due to the motorcycle, but in the end I have to say that my expectations didn't meet.

Anyway I'm glad to have spent my evening watching it because, probably due to the fact that it was long time since I saw a cyberpunk manga, it remembered me a lot when I was playing Snatcher which was a really cool game. Indeed Snatcher has a totally different environment and color scheme, but human mind is strange...
If you never played snatcher take an emulator and give it a try, it was a really cool game and it even cited Metal Gear as a "20th centuries threat".

To be honest I always preferred the SD Snatcher game as I always loved J-RPG and hey! It even has Super Deformed graphic, what else can you ask? It was really cool to play on my MSX2.

In the end, all this made me want to immerse in the cyberpunk universe again, so it even made me more eager to get a copy of the upcoming Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I really hope that it will be as good as it is expected to be, it's long time since I really got caught from the story of a game.

Cool Hokkaido

Tokyoing Around groups the best videos I find on the web about Tokyo and Japan.

NHK World has recently broadcasted a nice episode of the "Cool Hokkaido" series. The episode subject is "nostalgia" and it focuses on Otaru. The environment and subject is really relaxing so it is valuable to take a look at the episode.

People with Satellite can view NHK World on satellite, in Italy it is available to Sky users by performing an "other channels" search. Otherwise you can see this specific episode on YouTube

Itadakimasu!

Preparing for a big party here! After three days my order from shopthai.eu arrived on time providing my forniture of japanese curry for the year to come!

When I was in Tokyo I couldn't stop eating curry with tonkatsu, it was indeed my favourite food around, so when I came back in Italy I started to look for japanese curry resellers and started ordering a good amount every year.

This time I also took teriyaki dressing, shitake mushroom and a good amount of miso paste. I'm looking forward to having my first curry based dinner, so... what else to say? いただきます!

Mirai Mechanism

I have come across this great video, which not only shows wonderful views of Tokyo, but has also a really cool music theme. The video has been created by a talented and gifted japanese artist and is supported by the great music of the japanese music group Vividblaze.

I really enjoyed their music and I'm thinking about buying the album, in the mean time I would suggest to take a look at the other videos created by mockmoon2000 as some of them are really impressive!

Your Japanese Shop at Home

Looking for a POBox in Tokyo?

While hanging around on the web I have found this cool site, Japan to Door is a web site that helps you shop for goods available in Japan. It even provides you with a Japanese P.O. box so that you can buy anything pretending that you are in Japan and they will forward it to you!

Searching for Sega Saturn on Rakuten

After you got your own japanese address be sure to take a look at Rakuten! It is the "must to see" online shop from Japan. It has even a good amount of retrogames like the ones for the epic Sega Saturn or PC Engine

Games section on play-asia

Also playasia has a huge amount of cool Japanese games and retrogames for pratically any console. It also has games for the Virtual Boy!

Mario Tennis on VirtualBoy

I used to have one of those at they were really cool at that time. WarioLand was a must to have!

Japanese Beverages on Shopthai

For italian and european people looking for japanese food I can suggest the shopthai online shop. Still waiting for a complete food shop where to buy a good Daikon here in Italy, but in the mean time this is a good shop

Around Akihabara

Tokyoing Around groups the best videos I find on the web about Tokyo and Japan.


This time while I was waiting for my son to get sleepy I decided to look for Akihabara videos. Being the mecca of every otaku Akihabara has a lot of cool things to see and I was very disappointed about the fact that most videos show someone speaking in front of a camera instead of letting us see what Akihabara has to offer, until I found this cool video!

Building my own Tachikoma

Having some spare time I decided to take one of the construction kits that I bought in Shinjuku a few years ago and try to assemble it. Being a very incapable person at doing any manual work I thought that it probably endend in an amorph mass of plastic pieces, but in the end I'm quite proud of having a personal defense robot!

I lost some time translating the content of the guidelines, I'm still really bad at reading japanese but with my big surprise I have been able to figure out the few importants phrases quite quickly. I'll have to seriously train in reading japanese some day

Anyway after being assembled my Tachikoma decided to conquer the highest standards for an Artificial Intelligence! As the highest object available on the table was a KrispyKreme tumbler he just settled there and blocked any access to the beverage, he is still there after an entire night... I couldn't expect a lot by an homemade AI provided robot, I'll just have to hope to be able to have a breakfast again sooner or later.

New Year Present

Just bought my new year lucky bag from jlist! I can't wait for delivery, why europe is so far from Japan?!
I'll post the content as soon as it arrives, in the mean time as I were unable to avoid buying a lot of other things here is the list of everything else I bought apart from the lucky bag

Bull-Dog Sauce, really good sauce for tonkatsu!

Green Apple Mochi

Beef Bowl  Flavour Potato Chips

Strawberry cake KitKat, we really miss this in Italy

Two cups of noodles, one Tenpura Soba and one Tofu Udon

Sukiyaki flavour rice condiment

Japanese Rice Bowl Italian Style

Today lunch involves rice bowls. It was my first attempt to cooking rice bowls and I was actually inventing the recipe, but in the end they were reaaaally yummi!

I have to thank my great Hitachi Rice Cooking machine bought in Tokyo three years ago for the exceptional rice ;)

I cooked rice with chicken flavour and chili sauce and then pressed it inside a bowl with some vegetables and eggs. The vegetables were fried in Truffle oil and the eggs were cooked with Old Bay seasoning. 

I have to say that Truffle oil really did the job and contributed to create a delicious lunch. Have to remember this recipe!

Old Bay for the eggs

Flavours for the rice

Truffle oil for the vegetables

Tron Legacy Cool Soundtrack

Having recently seen Tron Legacy I have to admit that one of the best part of the movie is the soundtrack itself.



Daft Punk made a really good job at making you feel like being in a '80s videogame.

It made me nostalgic about when I played Metal Gear on my MSX in the late '80s!

 Yes, Metal Gear is indeed older than your Playstation ;)

A Journey near Livorno bus stop

I was just arrived at the bus stop, preparing to take a look around for cool places.
It was a chilly night here!
That's bad that I found only one interesting place nearby, but it is a valuable one for anyone hanging around in Torino night.

I have been attracted by this little room full of vending machines, with memories of how cool it was get my cold green tea from vending machines around Tokyo I decided to take a step in and buy something to drink

Inside you can find sandwiches, cold and hot beverages and even some dishes to have a complete lunch

It is indeed quite cool to see places like these appearing in Italy, something really missin here is Street food, but after this discovery I decided to take more trips in the future looking for food places open in the night.