AFN Spots

I love AFN. And I think everyone else who has lived overseas secretly does too. It's the best guilty pleasure. You try so hard not to laugh or be entertained. But eventually, after months of repeats, you find yourself singing along.  (I wrote about AFN when we first got here if you don't remember.)

This is my favorite commercial right now. I find myself screaming "Taskute! Kyu kyu Sha!" at random times throughout the day.

This one was made in Iwakuni. I loved Speed Racer as a kid. Plus it cracks me up that he shifts an automatic car.

Often they will take popular concepts and use them. Dustin and I often comment on copyright and trademark infringement.

If that wasn't enough just Search AFN Commericals on YouTube to find loads of homemade fun.

Tokyo Anime Fair

YAY! Nerd-girl half jumps! Dustin and I like anime, but living in Japan has made our fondness of fun storylines and beautiful artwork grow to marveling at the technology and animation styles. This exhibit was open to the public for two days and we didn't want to miss it.



Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba

Even the exhibit hall was fantastic. Amazing architecture both inside and out. And HUGE. Once inside we stowed our backpacks in lockers and entered the event hall. So many booths! So many nerd girl screams!

Ocarina of Time

Collector's Figurines

Animation drop-in classes

Toei Animation - a favorite

One Piece - HUGE in Japan

Pokemon

My favorite section was animation from Toyota. It was all interactive, but user input created different story lines. For example, light pressure might cause the character to something different than if you gave it a hard poke.

Open the door fast or slow. Rattle the handle. Soft knocks, hard knocks. All different animation responses.



The Original



After a few hours we started getting hungry. Dustin had a hot dog wrapped in naan. The picture didn't come out too well though. After a quick lunch we grabbed coffee from the Gundham Cafe. Nerd girl scream #178.

An excellent morning filled with visiting all the booths, seeing all the shows, playing all the games, and eating tasty food.

Armed Forces Network

Thank you for the questions! I will try to answer as many as possible over the next few weeks.

We do have television in the hotel room and can purchase cable once we are in base quarters. The television has 8 channels that are produced by the Armed Forces Network. Each channel has a purpose, for example there is one for kids, news, sports, movies, etc.

The programming selected is geared to military families. They never play unappropriate content. Also, there is no sense of channel-specific shows. For example, on the news channel from 6PM to 7:30PM they will play all three major network's news shows back to back. I'm a fan of NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams so I watch at 6:30.

During the day they may show one HGTV show and then one FoodNetwork show. The rest of the content will be one show from a variety of channels such as Discovery, History, etc.

The movie channel is weird. So far all the movies have been from 1995 or earlier. Nothing recent at all. Also, the ratings are never higher than PG13.

The best part is the commericals. There are no commericals on AFN so the military puts in public service announcements and homemade commercials. They are terribly bad, but always make me laugh. Sometimes they give information on upcoming events, but most of the time it is two Marines with a video camera and some really bad animations.