sayajay.net

"Stuck and in a rut". I'm not sure if I feel quite the same as I did 15 years ago (mostly because I don't remember my day-to-day ups and downs). Some things have changed - and some haven't.

Each time I write these blog posts, change is usually top of mind. But occasionally it has the opposite effect of highlighting all the stuff that has not changed. Case in point: this week. Or so my cynicism tells me.

But going over my Five Minute Journal entries has merely confirmed what little has gone on. Ah well.

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I took an errant photo of one of my meals:

I don't believe this is a real thing, but it is fried rice made with dark / sweet soy sauce and fish sauce. I remember mom used to make this and decided to recreate it. It's sweet and savory, but one thing I remember is adding garlic oil to it, with crispy bits of garlic in it.

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I've been listening to the latest song from girl-group Niziu:

I'm not knowledgable about the individual singers, the group, or how they came to be. There is just this awful side of myself that enjoys cheezy Asian pop music, on occasion.

It made me think about an SKE48 song called, Oki Doki (オキドキ), so much so that I dug out the CD that I had of it:

One thing I noticed about 48-group songs is that, for the most part, the quality of their audio recordings is pretty awful -- never really sounds good on hi-fi audio system. Ah well.

But, returning to Niziu, they are unique in that, although they are all Japanese, they were produced by super famous Korean music producer J.Y.P. When I watch their "pre-debut" song, it's kind of a great hybrid of k-pop and j-pop.

One side effect that I didn't expect is the support from both Korean and Japanese pop songs - which is in some ways precarious because of the historically bad-blood between Korea and Japan. However, I did find this amongst the comments:

The Japanese here is a little off, but the meaning comes across well. Here's the translation:

"To everyone, I'm Korean. No matter what anyone says, Niziu, Twice, and Itzy are legitimately successful girl groups and artists of JYP. I hope that Niziu is greatly successful in Korea and Japan, and I also wish for their success throughout the world. There's a lot of political and historical problems between Korea and Japan, but, at the very least, we should not pass these troubles and wounds onto our children - let's work together to show them a better future. Please forgive my strange Japanese."

That was my "feel good" moment of the week.

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So I finally beat Okami. Generally, I'd say it was a great experience. Some things were kind of annoying, but maybe I'm being nitpicky.

I was able to see some of the concept and fan art, which is expectedly exceptional.

So basically, my week ended with the worst of first-world problems: what game should I play next?

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I'm never quite sure how to end these things.

Bleh.