Enhanced Reality (Niconico Chokaigi)

Image gratuitously stolen from this site

A few years ago I was having dinner with some Tokyoites who were here braving the inaka. One young woman commented that there wasn't much enhanced reality around here. I had no idea what she was talking about, so she showed me her phone. As she held it up a moved the camera around, little text bubbles popped up. People who had previously inhabited the same space had left messages~ "order the chicken, it's great!" and "my boyfriend of five years just dumped me then left me with the bill for our meal." They were like messages from ghosts almost, echoes of moments past. In Tokyo, she explained, there would be so many notes the screen would be completely filled with them, and photographs too.

Niconico, a video sharing community, allows a similar "virtual shared experience" by showing users' comments scrolling across the screen. According to Know Your Meme:

Nico Nico Douga was the first website introduce a way to embed tags and comments directly into the videos, allowing comments on 2channel and the YouTube clip to be displayed simultaneously. The feature enabled video posts on Nico Nico Douga with a sense of a shared watching experience.

In the more popular videos, so many comments have been posted that the original video is entirely obscured, and one has to turn off the comments in order to see it. I recently had a look at the English language option, incidentally, and predictably but disappointingly the first English comment that popped up on the  video I watched was "gaaaaaaay". Way to go, Anglophones :/

Anyway, the reason I am writing about this today is that there was a Niconico convention last weekend, attended by over 100,000 people and viewed via live stream by seventy-five times than number. As one would expect of Niconico, the convention was all about blending the real and the virtual. Attendees carried long strips of paper with phrases such as lol (笑）to hold up in a 3D version of scrolling comments, and stood in front of green-screens to see themselves on a screen interacting with virtual characters like Hatsune Miku (who owes much of her original development and ongoing popularity to the creative community of Niconico).

The sumo match pictured above was a highlight of the conference. As the match was fought, a large screen behind the ring projected an enhanced version with special effects added live, including a display of HP and the Street Fighter/ Dragon Ball Z style light effects you can see in the image. The event was called, interestingly, "real sumo". Realer than real.

Many thanks to Helen of Inn by the Sea for giving me a kick back into blogging with the "five days challenge". The idea is to post five photos, one per day for five days, and to write a story or poem to go with each photo. For each day that we post we are supposed to invite one person to participate.

I'm inviting Mrs Epic of Epic Domestic to join in. Mrs Epic, if you would like to participate, post a photo every day for five days and write a story to go along with each photo. Your story can be fiction or non-fiction. It can be a short paragraph, a page, or a poem. Each post, please select one person to carry on the challenge. It's just for fun, there's no pressure to join in ;)

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"Back Then."

One of my undergraduate students, during a class discussion in which I had talked about the fringe nature of anime fandom when I was a student, opened his statement with "I don't know what things were like back then, but..."

Back then.

Back in your day.

Days of yore.

I'm 30 years old guys. 30. I know it seems old when you're 20, but does it really deserve a "back then"? f(^_^;

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Loving Libraries (Flashback Friday)

Some time last year I was at the university discussing my upcoming employment. Since I wasn't actually employed at the time, I didn't have a library access card, but a friend snuck me in with a sneaky swipe of his. Unreasonably afraid of being discovered, I climbed the tiny back stairs instead of going through the main entrance. The staircase was so small I doubt my man's shoulders could have squeezed into the narrow space. The staircase opened into an area I'm used to calling the stacks... books so rarely requested that they are stored out of the way in a less accessible part of the library. The room was dark, with motion sensor lights flicking on slowly row by row as I tip-toed, enjoying the silence after an intense few months of stay-at-home parenting a child who needs constant noise to feel safe. The still air was filled with that special musty smell of old books. I may have cried, a little. There are a few places guaranteed to make me feel at ease: mountains, rivers and libraries. Nowhere really compares to a proper university library, though.

When I was ten, my father started his PhD and he, my younger sister and I lived on and off in an ex-ambulance parked near the university library. Dad fitted out the ambulance with bunk beds, and we showered at the university swimming pool. We had movie nights in the AV section of the library, where the selection of films was geared towards screen studies, meaning that although we weren't allowed to watch Sesame Street, we saw Thelma & Louise and Thelma & Louise. In the day time we lived in the library while dad was studying. We took dolls and built multi-story doll-houses on empty book shelves. We found the children's literature section and read all of it. The library was massive and one day we explored too far and got lost. After walking for what felt like hours Verity started crying and refused to go any further. I piggy-backed her, desperately trying to remember the Dewey Decimal codes near our starting point. Eventually we found a water fountain in a study hall and ran to it like desert explorers finding an oasis. I finally remembered the title of a book I'd seem near dad's desk, entered it into the catalog and despite no experience using a computer, we figured out the location. When we got back, triumphant at the trials and tribulations we had over come, dad hadn't even noticed we'd been gone. Universities in general, and libraries in particular, have been under my skin ever since.

These literate little birds have built a nest in the kanji for "tree". Picture thanks to Furiida.

Of all the emails I've had as a result of this blog, my favorite is from Vincent the librarian, who emailed me with a book recommendation. Because that is the magical power of librarians, guardians of the promised land. They reach out and tell you what you were looking for even before you know it yourself. Or, as he said: "I'm a librarian.  It's what I do.  Then walk off into the sunset." Thank you Vincent! One day I'll get around to writing about the book, Yokohama Yankee: My Family's Five Generations as Outsiders in Japan by Leslie Helm. It's a great read.

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. That means if you click and then buy the item I get a small commission. It does not mean that I am being paid to promote a particular product or opinion. I will only include affiliate links that are directly related to the subject of a post. If you want to know why I have begun including affiliate links you can read about it here.

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Thin Doesn't Equal Happy, But Puppy Does

This meme has been so all over the place I couldn't figure out who to credit it to... if you know, please share!

I've lost 13% of my body weight in the past four months. I've been wanting to look after my health better for a while, and I decided to stop putting it off. The weight-loss was a consequence of a healthier lifestyle, not the goal. Yesterday Tiger forgot something important, so I brought it to school for him and on the way bumped into Ms Smiles (who sadly isn't his teacher this year). "You've lost so much weight" she commented, "are you OK? Is it stress?"

This makes me happier than a number on a scale

Even though I sat down to write about this conversation I am struggling to find words to express how happy her comment made me. She didn't give a casual "looking good" or congratulate me on the "achievement". She knows how hard things have been, and she wanted to check I was fine. There is nothing inherently better about being thinner, and skinny does not equal happy.

Lovely man + puppy is, however, a reliable formula for happiness

The lightest I have ever weighed as an adult was the unhappiest year of my life. I was too stressed to feel hungry. I survived on coffee and lived almost entirely online. My life away from the computer was unbearably painful, and eating meant shopping and cooking and disconnecting my dial-up. When the man and I first moved in together we both put on huge amounts of weight. We had both been unhappy for a long time, and together created a happy domesticated existence that involved a lot of nights in with cheesy pasta-bakes and Stargate SG1. It wasn't great for our health, but man did that weight gain signify a change for the better in my overall quality of life! So although this time, losing weight has been a positive thing, I was so happy to hear someone make a comment that did not assume thinner = better.

Here is a random video of Hayate as a puppy trying to get his reflection to play with him. I was going to try and make it sound profound, but really, it's just another puppy video.

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Ninja Village [Roll of 28 (20, 21, 22, 23)]

Nice view while looking for fleas

Reason #2 for the long time between photos is that my older sister came to visit so we have been busy hanging out with monkeys, ninja and playing in the snow.

Love Japan's sunny winters

We were chased by this ninja, but Tiger defeated him

Ninja horse rides

Ninja star range

Family fun

Ninja Turkey!

Take that!

It all got too much for Papa

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