It's official - I'm going to Japan in October! A once in a lifetime opportunity to sleep on the floor of a friend's Tokyo apartment came up, so Philip and I are taking it. Just imagine, a whole room's floorspace to ourselves! I know it sounds like a strangely pathetic thing to be excited about, but that sort of space is priceless in Tokyo. Combined with getting a really good deal on our flight tickets, it means the two weeks we'll be staying there will be in the realm of affordable.

Affordable right up until I find the anime shops, the Gothic Lolita shops, and the kimono markets...

Aside from Tokyo, I hope I also get the opportunity to go to Kyoto as well. Kyoto remains a sort of center for traditional culture. I also know someone there whom I hope I get the chance to meet. She promised me free kimono dressing lessons. I'm really looking forward to that. I've taught myself a lot about wearing kimono, but there's nothing like having someone show you properly.

Oh, and let us not forget that the FFVII movie, Advent Children, will probably be out in the theatres around then. So ha! Ha-ha! I may not be able to understand even half of what they're saying, but I'll still get to see it on the big screen. And that will be a lot of fun.

Overall, my advice to myself (which I may or may not ignore) is: Baka yamete-yo! (Don't act like an idiot!)

I know on and off I've mentioned this really awesome original RPG character that Philip came up with and that I fell in love with. (And we named the cat after him.) But never actually got around to saying much about his personality or anything. Well, I'm still not going to! (Just kidding.) However, I did do an anime-style portrait of him recently (as opposed to a photographic approach which he also has). I think it may mark the beginning of a different period of photoshop treatment for my drawings, sort of this loose grungy moodiness. At the very least, it fit this particular sketch...

Believe it or not from the way he looks in the portrait, in the part of the storyline where Olo originated, he was actually known as a great humanitarian and philanthropist. Highly respected, sophisticated, owner of several extremely successful corporations. There's not much he didn't do (he taught one of those exclusive college courses that everyone fights to get onto for example) and the entire world population absolutely adored him. My character, however, was exposed to Olo's true nature, which included extreme drug abuse (most of which his medical R&D company developed!), a raging God complex with an absolute disregard of everything but himself, and his own brand of corrupt magick which involved using bodies (living or dead) as a raw material. For your mental imagery pleasure:

And then you see the reason for those screams, such terrible screams. There is a structure up against one of the walls, a structure made from twisted bodies, bodies that have contorted themselves, their muscles straining just as hard as they can to bond and forge a protective shell - protective for whatever is within it at least.
Even as you look at the monstrous creation, a large piece of masonry falls from the collapsing ceiling. It hits a young boy and a woman who could well be his mother on the front of their bodies making a ghastly dull thud. The masonry rolls down the bodies smearing blood and insides down them as it goes, but still those bodies hold their rigid form, the muscles determined to maintain the integrity of the space they are protecting. And the people injured by that masonry? Well they get the privilage of still being alive, to endure the fact that their bodies are ripped and broken but still strong.