New pictures of Book Fair Leipzig

Book Fair Leipzig is over for one week now, some pictures will need some more editing.
But until then, here are the next pictures

 

 

 

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Bookfair Leipzig 2013 is over now

Bookfair is over, 4 days have passed, 2 of them were kinda exhausted, Saturday and Sunday, especially the 2 Cosplay competitions and the heat in the halls.

Less sleep and running around in combination with the heat (in the halls), the cold outside and so on felt a bit like this, but in my bones.

I had very many greats talks with many of you.

This year it was an awesome experience, when talking about Japan I was also able to create a huge enthusiasm for this country, I hope I was able to share my experiences with you and maybe to encourage you to make your own trip to Japan.

On Sunday evening, when driving home, I opened my JR-MAP (Japan Railway) of Tokyo and discovered a chance to get to Mt. Fuji easily. For 8.000 Yen (70-80 €) you can buy a JR Kanto Area Pass and drive around Tokyo for 3 days, also Shinkansen can be used. To get to Mt Fuji you start in Shinjuku and go to Ōtsuki and from there you get to Mt Fuji. That's for Japan right now.

Here are some further impressions of this 4 days at Bookfair Leipzig, many more will follow within the next days and weeks.

That's all for now, see you soon and have fun with the following pictures.

Bookfair Update Day 1 and 2

Today the second day has passed.

I already met many interesting people wearing costumes and had as many fantastic talks with them, e.g. the fact that the in-game picture of Link in The Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past has pink hair, believe me.
If you play it again you will see.

Especially those Cosplays of older series were awesome, only a short extract, costumes like Record of Lodoss War, a sweet Sailor Moon, a great group Beauty and the Beast, I hope they will participate at the competetion on Sunday, 2 awesome Links from The Legend of Zelda series one from Ocarina of Time with a legendary papercraft shield and another one from A Link to the Past, who had the shield from the introduction booklet.

That's only a small summary of these 2 days.

Tomorrow it's time for the ECG, the European Cosplay Gathering in the Congress Center (CCL)

Maybe we'll meet there, I'll be the one on the stage, presenting the Challengers,
See You there

Bookfair Leipzig Day 1

Hello everybody,

maybe we will meet today our have met each other this day because of different reasons.

Mostly it will be this one:

The pictures will be uploaded within the next days.
As I promised, if you wanna know anything about Tokyo, especially Akiba, Shibuya and so on, just ask me or read one of the former entries.

That's it, time to sleep and then time to meet tomorrow.

Newsflash, no Game Stuff - White Smoke

"Deutschland ist Papst" was yesterday. Benedikt XVI resigned on February 28th so the conclave was held.

Right now, White Smoke is coming out of the chimney, so the new pope is chosen.

Even if I'm not religious, it's the biggest event in catholicism.
The St. Peter's Square in Rom is full of believers waiting for their new leader. People from all over the world came there to participate.

Almost 1 hour has past since the White Smoke came out of the chimney.
Lights are on now.

And now there he is, the new pope:

Jorge Mario Bergoglio - Franziskus I. from Argentina.

Bookfair Leipzig is coming close

Like every year the Bookfair Leipzig is hold in March.

It's starting this week from March 14th until March 17th.

Many authors will present their new works.
My major interest is the comic area in hall 2, this area is almost 40% of the hall. There are comic booths, comic shops, Anime/Manga shops, Merchandising booths/shops and so on.

But the booths are not the most interesting thing in the comic zone, it's the Cosplay community which is meeting there. To explain this community I think I have to explain Cosplay first, this word is created out of the words costume and play. They're doing their costumes on their own or buy them, but the major part is creating their costume theirselves. Normally they share a great passion for their favorite Anime, Manga, Video Game, movie, japanese fashion and others.
They choose a character and try to impersonate this one in the most accurate way.

Hundreds of cosplayer can be found on this 4 days, I'm going to take many pictures to give you an impression of this community. There are also many competitions, e.g. at this fair there are two competitions, where the challengers not only present their costumes but also make a short show. On Saturday there will be the preliminaries for the ECG (European Cosplay Gathering), the final of this europeanwide competition will be in Paris at Japan Expo. On Sunday a normal regional competition will be hold.

And guess who will be the presenter of this two competitions..., you guessed right, Tony Montana will be the host of these two shows. And that's wrong, because I will present these competitions.

Maybe you will meet me there

So long everyone.

 

 

What is Monster Hunter? Part 1

Hello everybody and welcome to my small Monster Hunter dosier.

 

In my opinion this game series is one of the best for years, especially in Japan it's such a big deal, even bigger than Final Fantasy. The latest handheld episode of this series was such a big system seller, that more Nintendo 3DS were sold, when Monster Hunter 3G was released, than at the release of the Nintendo 3DS itself.

Every of this episodes has the same simple but awesome game mechanics, hunting, surviving and gathering ressources. The games don't really have a deep story, very often your village is endangered by a large dragon-like monster, the wyvern. There different kinds of wyvern, small, middle and even some, that size is as huge as a scyscraper. There are also dragons and beast, just like the ape-like Blangonga.

When you slay these monsters you cut scales, webbings, carapace, horns or something like this from their defeated bodies. You also gather other materials like ores, crystals, herbs, shrooms, bugs and so on, there are more than thousands of items.

All these materials can be used to make the smith of the village forge stronger weapons or armors.
I like this kind of gathering, in other games cold, coins armor parts or other stuff like this is dropped by wild animals - OH, THERE'S A BEAR, LET'S SLAY HIM, IT'S DONE, OH LOOK, THE LOOT FOR KILLING THIS BEAR IS GOLDEN CHEST PLATE, not really reallistic, I mean giant are wyvern aren't realistic either, but that's not the point, in MH you gain money by doing quests or selling materials. The only reason that would explain a bear, wolf or whatever dropping an armor is that this animal ate a warrior with his armor in one piece.

You don't have a level system, but that's one of the big plus points of this game, your strength is defined by your equipment and your skills. You start with easy quests, were you have to fight against some small raptor or just deliver 2 pieces of meat. To get access to harder quests and monster you have increase your rank, which can be handled by finishing some specific quests.


By having access to more difficult quests and monsters you can gather uncommon or even rare materials to either increase your weapons or create new ones, the same with the armor pieces. You can wear up to 5 diffenet armor parts, helmet, torso, gauntlets, hip and legs. Every part has skill, so you can unlock an attack boost or other effects by combining the rights armor parts, a hole Rathalos (flagship monster of the first episode, seen above) enables a middle attack boost in almost every part of the series, but also decreases your protection skill, so sometimes the wyvern can defeat you with just one blow. BTW for every quest you have 3 tries within this quest, so if are defeated twice, the quest is not yet failed. In every part of the series the fun is increased a lot when you go on a hunt with someone else - if you are unexperienced some wyvern can't be defeated on your own. To finish a quest almost unharmed you both have to have a good armor and weapon and also the knowledge of your enemies ecology, movements and general behavior, else you will need very many potions to recover.

I think that's enought for a short summary of all the similarities within this series, so lets start with the first episode.

Monster Hunter for PS2 (packshot at the top) - 2004

This game comes with only a few monsters compared to all the other games of this series (~30 monsters).

It all starts with creating a character, you choose the gender, one of 10 (?) face types, you can look like young girl or even like a very old woman. Then you choose your haircut and its color and in the end of your creation your voice, and the most imortant thing surely is a name for your avatar.

Then you start in your village with nothing but underwear and one of your weapons out of your inventory, you can choose between the following weapon types, after deciding if you wanna play as a melee character or if you want deal damage from distance, the 2 classes are blademaster and gunner. the blademaster armor has a higher defence than the same gunner counterpart. In my opinion a gunner is a great support character but it's hard to play in the single player. After that you choose your weapon, there are great sword, sword and shield, hammer,lance, light gun, heavy bowgun. After that just rush to the village elder to learn the basics like gathering meat and so on.

After some hours you will have learned a lot of more than just the basics, some movements of the Velociprey (blue raptors) or other wyvern will have burnt into your brain. Your armor and weapon should be already be increased, there's also one fact about the armor, in multiplayer sessions someone will almost instantly guess your rank just by seeing your armor and will decline a hunt with you.
After these hours you should also have faces your first Rathalos (left) and maybe been defeated if you didn't escape, but this one is only a hard one in the beginning of the game, later it's an easy one, but there are other even harder ones, e.g. the Diablos, it prefers the desert, it's really hard to defeat. Fighting some wyvern gives you the possibility to cut parts of them and carve those, like their tails, horns and so on.
I think that's all for now for Monster Hunter.

The update came 2005, it was Monster Hunter G and was released only in Japan (rerelease for Wii 2009).

Many new things were featured just like more monsters, especially subspecies of the already existing one, which causes also new armors and weapons. For example there not just a red Rathalos but also a azure one, which is also the flagship monster of Monster Hunter G. Almost every wyvern has a subspecies, a new difficulty has also been inserted, after some low rank quests the high rank followed and in this game the G-rank was added.

After that Monster Hunter Freedom (PAL/NA) 2006 / Monster Hunter Portable (JP) 2005 for PSP was released. It was a kind of portable version of MHG, multiplayer was not able by online infrastructure, but by adhoc wireless from PSP to PSP.
There are not so many differences, but with the first PSP-episode the MONSTER HUNTER CAMERA FINGER was developed, you don't have a second analog stick like on the PS2, so you control the character with your thumb on the PSP analog stick and turn the camera with your left pointer finger, if you play for houres this could hurt, believe me...XD.

One year later the next episode was released Monster Hunter DOS / Monster Hunter 2 for PS2.

It was released in Japan only and features many more monsters added to all the old ones, especially different elder dragons, which are very hard to defeat in the beginning, especially if you haven't played one of the former episodes. The flagship monster is the Kushala Daora, the wind elder dragon, in the intro of this game a new type of monsters is shown the Blangonga, an ape-like beast, looks a bit like a snow mandrill, the family of this kind of monster is called Pelagus, a nother one is the Congalala. Round about 20 monsters are added, so it's now about 60 different ones. They also added completely new areas, the only one kept was the forest and hill, the new ones are a new desert, swamp, djungle and vulcano.

 

After the great success of the first PSP episode a second one was released, Monster Hunter Freedom 2 / Portable 2 was released in 2007. Many things are the same as in the PS2 version, but they deleted the Yamatsukami and added the new flagship monster Tigrex which is pretty cool, but also very hard to defeat, just like the Rathalos in the first generation. A nother huge wyvern has been also added, the Akantor. Changes in the second generation are also some new weapon types, the dual swords, the katana/longsowrd, the hunting horn and the bow. Some of the former great swords were changed to longsword, e.g. the iron katana. There is also the possibility to import your save data from the first MHF game to start with a paper for a legendary SnS and every item like honey potion can be transfered, every other, as same as the weapons and the armor are changed to money. In this generation the first possibility to improve your armor with armor spheres was added, also the skill decorations to customize your armor parts, your equipment can have up to 3 slots which can be filled, so you can increase the "natural" skill of your armor parts even more or you can avoid negative skills.

I think that's all for now, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, Monster Hunter Tri, Monster Hunter Portable 3rd and Monster Hunter 3G / 3 Ultimate will follow soon.

It's been a while - BIG UPDATE

Hello everybody,

it's been a while since my last entry, so today I have to sum up many things in just one post, but as this might be quiet a lot, I think I'll be forced to split the stuff into different post, so I'll just begin and we will see, what it will end like.

Many things has happened, e.g. the 85th Academy Awards, I won't post a complete list only some examples:

The German actor Christoph Waltz has won his 2nd Oscar - Best Supporting Actor for the character Dr King Schultz in Django Unchained.

Quentin Tarantino - Best Original Screenplay for Django Unchained
Jennifer Lawrence - Best Actress
Anne Hathaway - Best Supporting Actress
Daniel Day-Lewis - Best Actor as Lincoln
Adele - Best Original Song - Skyfall
Michael Haneke - Best Foreign Language Film

Only a small example, because I was asked for it in a comment.

Now it's time to answer the 2nd part of that question / request:
Update about the upcoming trip to Tokyo

Flights and hotel are already booked and everything important seemes to be well prepared, e.g. changing money - lucky me the value of the Yen has been decreased some weeks ago so I used the great exchange rate to saved almost 20% compared to last year.

Some things about the trip are already defined, the means of transportation to get from the airport to the hotel, it will be the N'EX (Narita Express) again, it's so comfortable, a pretty good way to relax after the long flight. Like last year Lufthansa will get me to Japan this year, too, so I guess I won't have any overweight problems with my baggage - last year I had 2 suit cases with 46 kg and a hand with about 14 kg, so my luggage was almost my weight and no overweight needed to be paid.

Some scheduled places will be Yoyogi Park on an Sunday, because only on Sundays the Rockabillies can be seen and as I saw only one of their dances, maybe I'll see more this time, I also hope to see something of the Meiji Shrine Spring Festival, I think u can guess where this festival is held - right, in the basement of the Tokyo Tower, not really

Almost every spot is time-independant, so it will mostly be decided spontaneously.
Some wanted, that I missed or forgot last year are the following:

Tsukiji Fish Market

Senso-ji Temple in Asakusa - After visiting the Tokyo Sky Tree last year I only shot some pictures of the Kaminarimon Gate, where 2 Kami (Gods), Raijin and Fujin guard the entrance, it was late and also dark so I only saw the Nakamise-Dori but didn't "enter" it, this time I will and will also look for the pagode of this area.
Picture of the entrance:

Kappabashi-Dori - plastic food

Odaiba - Gundam Statue while "moving" and the mall behind it

Roppongi Hills

Many more BookOffs than last year, I've already prepared a list of more than 10, let's see how many I can visit within one day

Ginza - shopping district - e.g. the Abercrombie & Fitch Store

Square Enix Shop which has moved to Shinjuku

Imperial Palace - Bridge, garden and the view overall, because it may be visited only twice a year, on New Year and on the Emperor's Birthday (Dec 23rd), but taking a picture of the palace itself is worthwhile, too

Tokyo Stock Exchange - Observation Deck

Sword Museum

Jimbocho - Bookseller's District

Tanuki statue, whereever one can be found, it's also called raccoon dog, the tanuki is sometimes confused with the raccoon, especially in the game Super Mario Bros. 3, it was very often refered to as a raccoon, in the latest games of the Super Mario series the Mario Transformation was correctly called Tanuki Mario.

Yokohama - We'll leave Tokyo and go by JR for almost an hour to get there to see many different thing, just like the harbor, a museum about cup noodles, a giant light house and of course the Pokémon Center, maybe this one will be more amazing than the one in Tokyo, which was not bad, but when I saw it for the first time I somehow expected more of it, maybe my expectations were much to high. Compared with the Pokémon Center in Toyko the Nintendo World Store in New York, which once was opened as a Pokémon Center, was much bigger, so we'll see how Yokohama and its attractions will be.

Hopefully this will answer the question about the trip preparation for now.

Relating to games something has happened too within the last weeks.

Last week a demo for Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate has been released, this demo is available for both Wii U and 3DS, if my memories are correct the two offered quests are the same as in the japanese demo of this game, you can hunt a rabbit-like beast named Lagombi (jap. Urukusu, which I prefer) in the Tundra, a snowy area, this quest is for starters to learn the first mechanics of this series, for experienced players there a chance to hunt a giant fish, the Plesioth, which former hunters may know since the first installment of the series. You can play both quests with every of the 12 different weapons. As I'm playing the japanese version of this game for over 300 hours I already know almost the hole game except for the german names of the items, quests and skills - the names of the items or quests are not really needed, you only have to remember some signs and if you have played one of the former (all PSP games and also the japanese MH Portable 3rd and MH Tri) games this is also very easy, because the major machanics of the series didn't change, which is good. But if you can't understand the signs for the skills some quests can be pretty asskicking, e.g. the earplug skill is very helpful.
So download the demos for free to try out this great game.

It has also been revealed that a cross region play feature will be within the first update after the release so Europeans will be able to hunt together with players of NA. The update will also enable to play the hole quest on the screen of the Wii U controller.

It's getting late and I'm getting tired, so I'll write the rest of my updates tomorrow.

NEXT:
Example List for things to purchase in Tokyo
Monster Hunter 3G / 3 Ultimate
Bookfair Leipzig