The Old School Otaku Lounge

I was lucky enough to be in college when most of Streamline's releases came out, and the theater at GSU would generally get just about everything they released, so I got to see them for free; titles that I might not have paid real ticket prices for, in some cases. Occasionally UGA's student center w...

Totally understand what Dave means. OT: Dave, are you in touch w/ anyone in the Dallas area that used to throw cons? I hear from Meri Davis every now and again; she came to AWA this past September and we got to catch up for a bit. I'm still in touch with a few of the old EDC fans from that area/era.

So true about Streamline's audio issues. They never seemed to get it right for most of their releases. And you are right about the mechanical designs. The Britannia is like a cross between a Star Destroyer and the Vic Viper from the Gradius games. Very cool! I'd love to get my hands on a model of t...

I actually got into the Lensman books because of the anime; when I was in high school a friend of my parents came back from Japan with comics for me and my brother, and one of them was a volume of Murano's LENSMAN manga based on the film. I took it to school and a friend of mine did a double take, b...

Another useful tip for orienting yourself (assuming you're minimally familiar with Japan (ie. been there before) is to go to google maps, center on the station (in this case, Ikebukuro Station) and then use street view to go from there to where you want to go. It's not 100% perfect (some businesses...

I enjoy watching anime in a social setting, but these days the idea of running an anime club, or even attending an anime club meeting... there's just no way I'd do this nowadays. Things are very different now than they were in the 80s and 90s, when the only way you could watch anime was to have some...

I honestly don't know if the hotel TV at the Sakura has HDMI. Didn't think to check. We brought our laptop and the hotel wi-fi works fine. We had a pleasant experience at the Sakura. It's really accomodating to foreigners. The rooms are, you know, Japanese hotel rooms, so they're dinky, but comforta...

I have gotten the "How do you know what this is?" question from Japanese retailers before, when purchasing some dusty artifact. Though it's not limited to Japan, buying things at antique malls and shows will sometimes result in this. I was checking out a table full of RCA Selectavision CED...

I totally forgot to mention this on the board, mostly because the last half of 2012 has been a whirlwind of travel, conventions, writing, work, more travel, etc. But we went to Tokyo last summer and I wrote about it on my Livejournal and you can read all about it. part one: http://davemerrill.livejo...

We went by the 8-Bit when we were in Akiba in July, but it was jam-packed, so we wound up going to another bar on the other side of the neighborhood. The bar that impressed me the most was Sonic 44; Kimura who runs it is my kinda guy. I agree that Tokyo is super safe and that the former forum member...