Alright so I promised you my ‘hilarious Japanese kid comments’ but I’m still in the process of collecting them (I had a great one today!) so that post won’t come for a little while.

However I do have a great collection of hilarious example sentences taken from the iPod/iPhone app Japanese (by codefromtokyo) so I made a Youtube video listing my top 10 favourite strange sentences. So click the image below to watch! I won’t even charge you!

Well I hope you enjoyed it. As mentioned, more updates on the way! Until then, happy March, everyone!

Hey guys! I was on TV today! So I made a video about it! This is also my first video on Youtube for two months! So now you can reset your ‘Mike is being lazy’ rage counters!

The video is pretty self-explanatory so I will just post it! If you don’t like when I post short updates with just a video link, I bet you’re pretty annoyed right now!

Update: Thanks Angela for taking this photo. Yet more proof this whole thing didn’t just happen in my head.

If you don’t follow me on Youtube, you may not find this post very interesting!

Hikosaemon, one of the better know video bloggers on Youtube recently had a celebration as he just hit 100 videos, and more importantly he became a dad! (Sorry, I just spoiled the video!) To celebrate he had a bunch of us say ‘cheers!’ or ‘kampai!’ on video, then mixed it all together. Keep your eyes peeled, I’m in there somewhere!

Hikosaemon’s ‘Kampai!’ video

I have posted my own video in response and posed the question of a Youtuber meet up in Tokyo. If you’re a video maker and you’re interested, why not hit the ‘video’ link up there and send me a private message on Youtube? You could comment on the following video or on this blog, too.

Congratulations Hikosaemon & Japan Youtubers Meet? KAMPAI!

It’s great to be part of this community, this blog is just paying off in better ways all the time! That’s about it for now. Next weekend I have FIVE days in a row off! (Thanks Japan’s love of national holidays!) so I am hoping to go traveling, which means a multitude of photos, blog posts and videos in the near future. Or I may just get drunk and challenge a police officer to sumo. But that would make a pretty good video too.

I’m back with another video! It’s been a while and I am sorry for that, but I had no lectures today so I took some time to made a video. WHY am I spending my free days making stupid videos instead of getting out and about? Well, you’ll just have to watch to find out!

Yep, that was a weird video! But then I’ve been cooped up inside most of the day so what do you expect!

Hopefully normal and interesting programming to resume in the near future. So until then!

Every year, a huge show hall in Tokyo gets rented for a few days, and the big names of video game production go wild, making the most elaborate stands and cramming as many wide screen TVs as they can into one space. Then an obscene number of people come to the hall, try the games out and have a great, if claustrophobic, time. Today I went along with the volunteers and ex-volunteer Mike to the show, to see how little of it I would understand. Turns out: very little.

I made a video which is on Youtube, which shows what the event is like, but to avoid legal issues and boring people who aren’t interested in particular games, I cut a lot of footage out. So I’m going to post the video here, then do some reviews below on the blog. So if you’re interested in particular titles, I advise you read on!

Ok, reviews then. I’m not up to date on gaming, nor am I a console warrior or brand addict, so I’m just going to bust out one or two line reviews for each game / product I saw. If you want more info, leave a comment!

Assassin’s Creed 2 looks, stylistically, as cool as a cucumber. The gameplay again was hidden so it was just promo videos, but the game looked wonderful. The PSP game didn’t look quite as shiny (obviously) but overall it hit home nicely. The PS3 version was getting colossal lines to try it out (like over 3 hours!) whereas the 360 version wasn’t quite as popular. I don’t know why.

Dirt 2 is not really my cup of tea but we played it as the queue was short and it was suprisingly fun. If you like cars. Or crashing into things.

End Of Eternity / Resonance Of Fate was the most awesome looking game I saw. It looks, stylistically, like Final Fantasy meets Devil May Cry, and that’s kind of how it plays. A lot of dashing around, but with numbers. Very fast paced too. Plus the soundtrack was unbelievable. I hate myself for saying it but with Playstation 3s being so cheap nowadays I could see this sealing the deal for me…

Final Fantasy 13 was, of course, looking amazing but sadly they only showed us promo videos, no game play, but what I saw was great. Again, the soundtrack made me a happy happy orchestral bunny.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker was *really* hard to play. I’m not a huge MGS fan but I really didn’t get to grips with this in the fifteen mins I had to play it at all. But I don’t really know much about the series so I don’t think I’m really the one to talk about it.

Quantum Theory was the biggest letdown. It’s a mix of Gears Of War-esque 3rd person shooting, but with a more alien feel to it, and a girl who runs around helping you like the girl from Prince Of Persia. It was clunky and not much fun. I guess if you like Gears you might enjoy it.

Tekken Six is more of the same but the change is big enough to justify a whole new game – the return of the side-scroller ‘Tekken Force’ is back (in 3D!), and it has co-op now! I played it for about 5 minutes and the new characters were all nice and unique, and visually it’s an amazing upgrade.

So that’s my erratic and nonsensical coverage of Tokyo Game Show 2009. Hopefully next time my blog will be so famous I’ll get into the earlier, quieter, press and business only day and be able to shoot a video that doesn’t shake all over the place. So someone ring Sony and tell them to hurry up and make Final Mike: A Doomed Fantasy.