12 - Arduous

Golden Week has barely been gone a couple of weeks, and already I’m in need of another one. It’s the same with all of us, I reckon; we’ve all felt the new term grinding down on us as if it was heavier that it truly is. Not that that thought has given us a lick of comfort.


Life goes on as normal, I suppose is the summarised content of today’s entry. If you are of the habit of only reading the bare minimal of these things, you may now stop reading and go do something more important.


Thanks for reading.


But to those of you who like detail, personal little touches of factoid against this, let’s be honest, self-serving rant of nothingness, I have more to talk about. Firstly, I’d like to talk about how growing up really sucks. It’s rubbish, growing up. You think you know someone, and then boom, they’ve grown up just enough that you don’t recognise them. Yeah, that’s right, I’m not talking about myself. I used to love my classes with the first years. They were noisy, disruptive even, and sometimes even a little rude, but they tried hard at everything with that raging, uncut enthusiasm that kids that age find themselves with too much of when placed in large groups. They liked English, I think, and they didn’t mind me all that much. But now those days are gone, blown away on some spring breeze. Now they are second years, and suddenly it has become oh-so cool to be oh-so


FLIPPING


POINTLESSLY


DENSE!!


They can speak great English! It’s so true! But they don’t even bother!! I give some instructions, and suddenly its like I’m speaking a language I HAVEN’T been teaching them these past 9 months!! Not EVEN like I’m saying something too complicated for them, ‘cos they seem to think it’s so FLIPPING funny! So FLIPPING hilarious that they’re so cutely quirky and STUUUUUPID!!


You should’ve SEEN what I was capable of writing in the Nan-Puu guestbooks after THAT lesson.


And yet it’s not them, it CAN’T be them. Because the new first years have moved up from the drudgery of sixth-year-elementary English and are like brightly shining gemstones, unmarred by the rock and rust of peer


FLIPPING


pressure. They’re simply brilliant, everything the old first years were without their excess of energy. Controlled chaos, I guess is one way to describe it, but maybe it’s more like a well-channelled stream of water. Today I was sitting down near the desk, waiting for them to return from their ear and nose examinations (I didn’t ask), and was, quite by their own accord, asked to identify the anime characters the kids could draw. I didn’t get the last name of Rin Kagamine right, but the first name was apparently good enough for an impressed murmur. Did I ever get anything like that last year? You bet I didn’t.


It’s the same with the new third years. I used to dislike those guys, and dislike teaching them, more than anything else in my week. God tells me I’m supposed to love everyone greater than myself, but those little rapscallions made me want to be quite un-Biblical. Now they’re third years, though, and it’s like they’ve suddenly realised that school actually means something. Suddenly they’re trying, even with most-hated English. Suddenly they’re stopping me in the corridor to ask me questions. Albeit, they’re still not very GOOD at English, and the questions in question were various combinations of the words ‘Where is your perfect body?’, but they’re making an effort now. Not that I enjoy cleaning duty with them, though, the lazy little miscreants.


And on that note, it’s my great shame to inform you all that I’m getting a bit fat. I’ll say ‘a bit’, though to me it feels like a lot more, on Stephanie’s insistence. I’m still roughly the same shape, I think, only I’ve realised there’s a bit more of me than I remember having earlier. Well, be this destiny, the curse of my own growing up, or be this mere laziness, it shall be stopped. I’ve cut down meal sizes by upwards of 50%, and am trying to get a decent-sized walk in every night. I’ve been enjoying the walking so far, as there’s enough places around Tanigami where you can sing really loud without anyone hearing, but I don’t like going through a t-shirt a day due to sweat. Give it a couple more weeks, I’ll be back to my old, weedy self. Who knows, maybe I’ll even have a semblance of muscle.


It was that, but not only that, that spurred me up Mt Rokko on Saturday. Yeah, that’s right. Mt Rokko. Nearly a whole kilometre high, I was. How may folks in Kobe can say they’ve done that. Less than half, I reckon, and that’s all older folk judging by who we passed on the way down. About three hours up and three hours down again, all in all, followed by a trip to Arima’s “world famous” hot springs afterwards. Superb day, it really was.


Other than that stuff’s not really been happening lately. Tomorrow night is a birthday party, which I’m looking forward to, and after that is the sweet, sweet weekend. Maybe, no CERTAINLY, I will get around to kicking and screaming my way through the last of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I was reluctant to start that game, perhaps put it off in favour of something like Batman or Just Cause 2, but I’m glad I’ve stuck with it. I’ll certainly say this about it: it’s hellishly scary. The majority is just tension, the mounting fear that some monster I can’t outrun to the nearest exit will be just around the corner, and the game does play on this. It doesn’t matter that after a while you begin to not worry so much, and just have an escape planned for when you hear the first distant gurgles and roars of the enemy. Even when you know exactly where to run, sometimes you just can’t, and these are the really scary scenes. Scenes like approaching a door and grabbing the handle, only to have a growling something suddenly try to smash its way in on me, and force me to duck into a mortuary where Daniel very swiftly goes mental. I’ve never properly seen what it is I’m running from, another massive point in the game’s favour, ‘cos when there’s one close by I always have my back to it and my mind concentrating on making like a tree, and the only time, the one time, I got a good look at one when I was ducked behind a pillar and was SURE it would see me, Daniel’s sanity had taken such a blow by the proximity that his vision was swimming about like the fish of the day and I couldn’t get a good look. I have NO idea how I got out of that one; I’d’ve died like a dog if it had decided to turn around clockwise and not counter-clockwise. Right now I’ve just had a bloody-flashback-fuelled tour through the castle torture chambers, and now I have very little sympathy for my nutty avatar in the Amnesia-world. I won’t spoil anything for those of you who haven’t played it, but let’s just say what I thought was going to be a big ol’ endgame twist turned out to be a slowly growing realisation. It was well good, in a sort of ‘now I want to push this game in front of a bus’ sort of way.


Let’s take a break of games for me to tell you about this year’s biggest new challenge. It comes in the form of a very sweet first year boy called Luka. Luka is great, charming and funny and energetic, and cute as a button, but my word does he not know a single word of English. This probably has something to do with his placement in the special needs class even in elementary, which makes this year my first time meeting him, and it also means that he’s even further behind everyone else than the other first years are. He’s not even started. In case you’ve forgotten (or I haven’t told you yet) all special needs kids have classes together, regardless of age, which means we need English classes that are good for all of them at once. And now Luka’s joined the valiant crew of the good ship Nakayoshi, there’s not a single thing I can teach any of them. Everything, and I mean everything, is too hard for the poor boy. He doesn’t know any words, so I can’t ask him to write me words beginning with each letter of his name. And he can’t even get that far, because he also doesn’t know letters. Meanwhile he’s getting harangued and pestered (not quite bullied, thank God) by the third year kids; it’s a miracle he can still smile in class at all. Actually, that’s a lot more than can be said for the new third year kids, who have all transformed in miserable old men.


Okay, I’m getting myself down, let’s talk about games again.


The other big games on the card at the moment are on the 3DS. I did mention that, didn’t I? That papa’s got a brand new 3DS? Sounds like something I’d forget to mention. Well, Harvest Moon failed to really wow me, but that’s all been made up for now I have Fire Emblem. For those of you out of the know, Fire Emblem is a series of medieval fantasy military strategy games with a very idealistic, ‘war ain’t so bad’ kind of anime plot feel to it. Actually, it’s more like ‘war is a good place to get hitched’. Character development in the twisty-turny plot is paramount, with characters who fight alongside one another often taking each other aside for often very touching conversations about life and love and whatnot. And then they go and stick a knife in your heart by making each character death permanent and irreversible. It’s actually pretty annoying, having one of those critical hits that have a 3% chance of happening wipe out that wimpy character you don’t normally use but feel obliged to for the purposes of them breeding and getting their child to help you win the war. Hm, I feel I’ve said too much. But aside from that one thing, that one thing that occasionally has me close the 3DS for a couple of days to cool my head, Fire Emblem is truly awesome. The action is fast, but not so fast you feel out of control or feel like you have to bull-rush every mission. There are enough side-quests and chances for training that your stronger guys can be strong enough to steamroll most opposition by the time you use them, but not so strong as to make the game dull. And the characters, the characters! I adore pretty much all of them, and those I don’t I leave on the sidelines. They’re funny, charming, inventive even. There are a few tried-and-tested stereotypes, but far more that I’ve never even seen before. Gold medals go to Krom, who’s just human enough to keep his cool, protagonist heroism in check, and Wood, who wouldn’t look out of place in a children’s cartoon with his unflinching bravado and his need to name all of his weapons and attacks. Wood is exactly what I want to be, really.


Which is a funny thing to say, seeing as you have to actually make yourself at the start of a new came. The ‘My Unit’ feature places you, with a certain restriction on body size, hair style, colour and voice, in the thick of the fight as a battlefield strategist (or whatever that compound translates as) who’s forgotten who he is. They do a really good job, I think, of making him neutral enough that everyone who plays the game will think they’re behaving like they would in that situation, and added depth can be selectively found by putting him next to your favourite characters so they make friends. He can specialise in anything you want, save the gender-locked classes like Valkyrie and the Pegasus Knights, become blood brothers with any guy and marry any girl, or the reverse if you ARE a girl. Swan, if you’re curious, married the childish princess character, and has two children, a boy and girl, with really awful names I had no control over.


The story is well good; not too cheesy – not too serious. Again, I don’t want to spoil anything, but time travel features heavily, and you know how much I flipping LOVE time travel.


Oh, that reminds me, Steph and I watched Primer the other day. Boy, do I feel stupid now.


Anyway, the real icing on the cake with Fire Emblem is actually, of all things, the 3D. Cutscenes look spectacular, with that cell-shaded anime thing going on, and have obviously had a lot of effort put into each one. The fights in-game look equally good, and even allow you to zoom in on various characters and change the position of the camera, if you want. You can even make it first-person, if you really like. But even the maps, the funny little grid with the pixelly sprites on it, even that looks absolutely outstanding. Smoke from a burning building, flocks of birds flying past the camera, it’s all there. And when it’s not needed, it’s understated and out of the way, just as it should be. Superb.


I think I’m about 60% through now, and I barely feel like I’ve scratched the surface. What if I’d married Swan off to someone else, I often wonder. What if I’d made his daughter a different class? That’s another thing that I love about this game; since the beginning you can advance your character to a better class any time after level 10. Since Sacred Stones, my true love on the old GBA, you can even choose one of two classes to become. But on the 3DS, there are now two ways to advance. Certain classes can be evolved – archers become bow knights or snipers, for example. But if you hit the upper limit of your NEW class as well, you can use a second item to change them to a parallel branch of the career tree. That sniper, then, can become a dragon knight or a spellcaster. Of course, it’s not quite that anybody can be anything, you’re My Unit is the only one who can do that. But it’s a really imaginative way of developing an army that’s exactly the way you want it to be, and quite unlike any other army you may come across when walking the streets of Sannomiya, for example.


I think I just doubled the length of this blog talking about one game. Shame on me.


Let’s see, final words… Well, I just today finished the second Wheel of Time book by Robert Jordan. Pretty ace, I must say, and I’m sad I didn’t start the series earlier. Now I need to maybe fork out for book 3, get it downloaded to the old Kindle. I really like the style of writing; it sounds a lot like how I try to write, only significantly better. Indeed, I often switch to writing something of my own after reading a bit, and first need to overcome that horrible feeling of inadequacy every time. Jordan’s world, in fact, is quite similar to Lyresana. Maybe it is Lyresana without my anime-inspired shenanigans.


Okay, tired now. Let’s get Daniel into the lab and out of this nightmare.


Thanks for reading.