Conclusion of Variety

I sit here recovering from jet lag after Stephanie and I went to Japan last week. We left on Monday morning flying out of LAX and arrived in Japan around 3pm. I immediately fell asleep when arrived at our hotel, The Shinigawa Prince Hotel, due to travel, jet lag, and not sleeping at all the night before but instead playing video games and watching King of the Hill thinking I could sleep on the plane. This did not happen as every time my head fell forward I woke up.

On Wednesday (having lost a day due to space warps) we got up around 4am, got some breakfast (curry) and hiked up to Tokyo Tower. From there we walked around the Imperial Palace. We then arrived on the Edo Museum and got caught up on our Tokyo history.

On Thursday we took a tour of Mt Fuji. It was raining that day so I was kind of bummed but as we headed up the mountain we got over the clouds and rain to a spectacular view of Mt. Fuji. After the mountain we head to Hakone for lunch and then took a cable car up to the volcanic geysers and ate eggs that had been boiled and blacked in the geyser. We also took a misty boat ride on Lake Ashi which the boat had a silly pirate theme and would play what can only be described as pixie music when we arrived at a port (A lot of places in Tokyo had strange children’s music playing in the background.)  We finally took a bullet train back to our hotel.

Friday we continued our hiking of Tokyo first with the Sengakuji Buddhist temple where a bunch of samurai committed seppuku there. From there we went to the photography museum. Navigating Tokyo can be difficult as they don’t really have street names and we never figured out what they do use. When trying to get to the photography museum we were staying at a map a guy tried to help give us direction using his phone. He figured there was no one way to explain it to a couple of clueless foreigners so he walked us to the museum. I was amazed.

The museum was fun with original photographs of samurai during the meiji era. After we had a great Japanese lunch and then head over to Akihabara, the technology area of Tokyo. We walked up and down the street and peaked into a pachinko parlor and a grouping of Radioshack booths. I wasn’t satisfied when we finished so decided to check out the two multistory buildings of videogame/anime stuff. The first few stories were of the Sega store  had those game where you try and grab prizes with a clumsy crane. Prizes included all kinds of anime stuff including pillows shaped like anime girls where the poops were finely shaped. The next stories was an arcade with all kinds of video games.

I wanted to visit the other building because it had an anime cafe which I thought meant coffee and anime. We got pressed into visiting the third floor by a woman in a skimpy maid outfit. When we got to the third floor five women in skimpy maid outfoots all turned toward the door and said konichiwa. Stephanie firmly said, “no” and we continued our way up. The anime cafe turned out to be a place to check out the internet, grab a soda and read anime for an hourly fee.

All these places had a creepy vibe like an adult bookstore… I still kind of want to see what the anime maids were all about though.

On Saturday we went to the Shinto Shrine Asakusa and did some shopping, and watched a monkey dance. From there we went to the top of the Asahi building for some beer and city viewing. We then took a boat down the river to Odaiba, a popular location for the Japanese to shop.

Sunday it was raining but we took out the umbrellas and headed out to Shibuya (popular shopping area, think Time Square) and walked up to a park where there was a little festival. We tried some horrible fruit called durian that tasted like onion. We then went to the Meiji Temple where we alked around the gardens. We relaxed at the hotel for awhile and then went to Tokyo Dome to watch the Giants play the Buffaloes. Japanese baseball was a lot of fun as the crowds got excited and would chant and sing.

After all that we made it back now recovering and jet lagged.

Strawberry Shortcake Post Apoc

Last weekend was the sixth annual hyphen-con. Hyphen-con (aka rpg-san-diego-games-day) is a games day that me and a group of friends started when we were trying to create a gaming con. This years was great and I got to play Post Apoc Strawberry Shortcake (as in the children’s cartoon). I also got to play the Dresden Files rpg. Both games were a lot of fun but for the first time we decided to do boardgames on Sunday so I also got to play Pandemic and Robo-Rally. It was possibly the best Hyphen-con yet.

I also attended Kingdom-con the weekend before which is another groups attempt to start a gaming convention in San Diego. They seemed fairly successful having two room for miniature game and one room for board/card games. I talked to the guy who ran it and hope to help him included rpgs next year.

All last week I got to hang out with a bunch of friends from high school/college in Las Cruces. It started with my friend Scott coming down to San Diego for Coast Card training. During a couple evenings when we were finished with work Scott and I would hang out at the Tilted Kilt (a place like Hooters only with good food and beer) or catch a movie. We got to do a lot of catching up and had a good time.

On Friday I flew out to Las Cruces and got picked up by my mom. It is my dad’s birthday next weekend so I decided to surprise him. My mom and I walked into his office and he was shocked. I spend some time with talking with my parents and then checked into my hotel.

Adam, my friend since the second grade, picked me up and we got some classic New Mexican food and then got some drinks. Adam tried a scotch and ended showering our hotels patio in puke. He instantly felt better. After we picked up Joe and went to Adam’s place to play board games.

The next day we went out to the town of Hatch and got chili cheese burgers at Sparkies. This was my first chili cheese burger and I liked it but I still have no need for green chili. After that we we went to Choas Bookstore and then Adam’s brother-in-law’s who later joined for a round of Munchkin the Boardgame.

We then grabbed dinner at El Sombrero and picked up another old friend, Shane, who I hadn’t seen in five years. We then went to the bar and finally ended up back at Adam’s to play more games. This time I started off with Zombie Cinema, a narrativist rpg, and while it was fun at first everyone quickly lost interest and we switched over to Pandemic.

Sunday was a lot of the same with New Mexican food, wondering around and games. Finally, I headed back to my parents for a great dinner of paella and Caliches frozen custard. On Monday I flew home early and went straight to work.

It was a great week and something I’ll have to do again but maybe in a different location.

Last Friday night Stephanie and fought traffic up to Palm Springs to spend the weekend with my parents and watch the tennis tournament at Indian Wells. We had a lot of fun but got a little burnt out from being in the sun for a long time. We stayed at a cute little resort that had about 20 rooms and a 1960s flare about it.

While in Palm Spring we had some nice dinners but didn’t do much else as most of our time was spent at the tennis tournament. I did get to play some tennis with my dad and play Pandemic (boardgame) with my parents.

On Saturday we watched the mens’ semifinals where Ivan Ljubcic defeated Raphael Nadal in three sets and Andy Roddick defeated Robin Soderling in three sets. We then watched a little bit of the women’s doubles final before leaving. The matches were great and close and the area was interesting with lots of places to visit. The one problem was inbetween matches we went down for food at the same time as everyone else which resulted having to wait 45min in line. For some reason this did not occur the next day though we were ready for it.

On Sunday were the women’s and men’s finals. First Jelena Jankovic defeated Caroline Wozniacki in a quick two sets. After that Ivan Ljubcic defeated Andy Roddick in two sets but neither of them broke serve so it was 7-6, 7-6. By the end of that match we were all tired, sun burnt  and ready to leave.

Last weekend was Condor, a small local scifi and fantasy convention that I went to last year with the specific purpose of pushing roleplaying and other games at the convention. For the past four months I’ve been hyping the gaming at this convention at meetups, on forums and other events. I got game masters together and had 17 games over three days prepared. Unfortunately, only two of those games got played and most of the players were bored GMs.

I showed at noon on Friday. The gaming room was packed with 6 to 8 tables each with five players playing RPGA (Dungeons and Dragons organized play) D&D games which continued throughout the weekend. I had one table for play and one for putting out events. My partner, Kevin, showed up about 30 minutes later and helped out. His first event was at 2pm and my Doctor Who game was at 6pm. No one showed up to either but I was expecting Friday to be slow and I had fun playing pick-up games of Three Dragon Ante, Pandemic, and Settlers of Catan.

Saturday I got there right at 9am when the first games were supposed to go off but still no sign-ups. Kevin and I did some demos for D&D to pass the time. 2pm was the core time and I had five games planned including a Battletech demo by a group who drove down from Orange County and Joseph Goodman of Goodman Games playtesting his new D&D spinoff game. I got the Battletech guys settled and got one sign up for Goodman’s D&D game. We managed to get all the GMs and one player into that game. In the evening we did the same with a Star Trek rpg while another GM and I played in pick-up games of Pandemic and Munchkin.

Sunday was much the same with us grabbing people for Goodman’s follow up game from Saturday. After that I was so frustrated and tired I left. I’m not sure what I did wrong if anything and am currently trying to decide if I should try again or give up because this certainly wasn’t fun for me nor do I think it helped gaming in San Diego in anyway. There is also some other people planning a full gaming con for April so I might help them.

Last weekend I went up to LA for Orccon with some friends. This was my third Orccon and is now a tradition. Saturday featured some great games starting off with Leftover, a game written by Mike Olsen, a friend of mine. Leftover is a Post Apocalyptic setting caused by the rise of Cthulhu like creatures who rise up and destroy the world killing 90% of the planet. You play one of people who survived, a left over and one of the few ways to survive to combine with the smaller, minion like alien creatures who are still around. It is an awesome game with some great ideas and we had a ton of fun playing it.

Next game was Dirty Secrets, a noir game that is describe as having on player and everyone else is a GM. Essentially, one person plays the investigator (which I got to play) while everyone else takes turn setting up scenes for the investigator. It was a lot of fun and amazing how a great story resolved from the strange mechanics and ideas of everyone involved.

In the evening I ran Conspiracy X 2.0, and alien government conspiracy game similar to X-files. This went over really well and I did something a little different. Instead of having everyone play investigators (the traditional way to play ConX) I made two of the characters play the people be investigated. This went over really well causing a lot of non-lethal conflict between the players.
I didn’t get much sleep (I have terrible insomnia during these cons) and had to run the new Doctor Who rpg that morning. I ended up with seven players and it was difficult to keep everyone involved. Everyone seemed to have fun but I think it could have gone better.

Finally, I played in an 80’s style Vampire the Requiem game with a bunch of teenagers. The GM wanted a serious and dark game while the kids just wanted to have fun a goof around being a cool vampire. Not a great mix. I ended up being a mediator trying to encourage the kids’ creativity while maintaining the GMs feel.
On Monday was my birthday. I didn’t do anything except catch a cold which I am just now getting over. I did beat Final Fantasy VII, the first time I actually beat one of these games even though I’ve played them all.

A few weekends ago Stephanie took me out on a date night. We went whale watching. This was my third time whale watching and probably the best as we saw lots of whales. At one point they even came up about 20ft from the boat on the side we were standing. It was a lot of fun as I enjoy being out on the water.

After whale watching we went to a restaurant called Solare that was nice. The best thing about it was they had little tomatoes in the bread.

This last weekend I did another Dungeons and Dragons round table meetup that was just as successful as the first one. This time we charged $5 so it didn’t cost us anything and we were able to have a raffle for some nice dice. Everyone had a blast and it was good advertising for Condor con in late February in which I’m in charge of games.

Last Thursday I want to see Sonic Youth at the San Diego House of Blues. I had seen them once before when they opened for Pearl Jam a few years ago but I wasn’t able to get very close. When I saw them previously we had assigned seating and security would not allow me to pass a certain area even though maybe 10% of the crowd had shown up.

This time around the venue was much more intimate and we got right up to the stage. We stood through the opening band and then Sonic Youth came out. I must have been about ten feet from Thurston Moore (SY front man) and it was amazing. It is always cool to be close at any concert but for Sonic Youth it is a big deal as they do all kinds of crazy things to guitars including using a screwdriver, file, and violin bow.

They are also a fairly old band with most of the members pushing 50. However, I was surprised to find that most of the audience was around 20 making feel a little better about the following generation.

On another note I had a nice Christmas vacation. Stephanie and I didn’t do anything special. We stayed home or went to the movies during Christmas and New Years.

This Thanksgiving I went back to Las Cruces. I had a lot of fun spending the day with my parents and the evening with my estranged friend Adam. By estranged I mean that we were friends from the second grade (as well as being his best man at his first wedding) but when I moved to San Diego (in 2003) I didn’t tell him. The reasons are complicated but involve feeling guilty and the longer I waited the more guilty I became until finally I moved away. I later heard he was angry which made things worse.

We did not communicate for almost five years until I reached out to him through myspace. Things were smoothed over and we were friends on myspace/facebook and this Thanksgiving weekend we finally got to see each other again after six years. At first things were a little uncomfortable as we felt each other out but soon we were reminiscing about the past a lot I had forgotten. I had a lot of fun as we also played some video games and later Vampire the Eternal Struggle with Adam’s brother-in-law.

I also spent the day with my parents and ate a lot of great food from both old and new (to me) restaurants as well as catching a movie, playing some tennis and visiting a new national park on the Rio Grande.

Stephanie came down for two days and on Thanksgiving we hiked Aguirre Springs and then had a nice dinner with my parents and some of their friends. She then flew back on Friday (I stayed until Sunday).

Overall, a great Thanksgiving and I look forward to more great times with Adam. Hopefully I won’t have to wait another six years.

Over the past few days Stephanie and I went up to San Francisco to explore the city and hang out. We flew in Thursday afternoon and after and Bart trip and quick walk we were at the Hotel Mark Twain. The Hotel was really nice but was on the edge of the Tenderloin. We quickly discovered that if we walked down we went into the bad part of town but if we walked up we were in the shopping distract.

After getting checked in and relaxing for a bit we took a long walk to Haight/Ashbury area for dinner and to listen to a reading by Sarah Vowel who is a regular on the radio program “This American Life.”

On Friday we head out early to meet our friends Jonathan and Michelle for Alcatraz. The four of us headed over on the boat, hooked up to the portable listening device and got to explore and by explore I mean go where the man told us to.

Later Stephanie and I hopped on the Bart to Berkeley where we had lunch at Chez Panisse, a famous restaurant for foodies.

After the restaurant we met up with my parents and their old friends, Anne and Bill who I had known since I was six and can remember playing with their kids. We had a great time catching up, drinking beer and having all six of us squeeze into a medium sized sedan/taxi with Stephanie sitting on my lap and Anne on my dad’s. Anne couldn’t stop laughing and most of us were cracking up by the absurdity of the situation. Somehow we made it back to my parent hotel which was a short walk back to ours.

On Saturday we had breakfast with my parents. We then went to the farmers market at the Ferry Building. After we met up with Jonathan and Michelle to tour China Town and grab some Dim Sum for lunch. To completely wear us out we went to the SFMOMA, the modern art museum. After that we were exhausted and decided to stay in and watch baseball.

Sunday was geek day. Stephanie and I grabbed some breakfast and then we went our separate ways. I went down to Oakland where I met Jonathan and my other friend Erik (San Diegan who was working in San Francisco at the same, this trip was full of weird coincidences). We went to the big game store “End Game” and much gaming goodness was bought.

But that wasn’t enough for us so we headed down to Games of Berkeley and a third game store that I can’t remember the name. We then proceeded to beer and sandwiches and finished the geekiness off with a riveting game of Talisman.

After we had to bring the women back in so the three of us met up with Michelle and Stephanie at a pizzeria.

Overall a great trip. I recommend San Francisco to anyone, just walk up, not down.