日本ノベル - Biblia Koshodou

Front/Back Cover of Vol. 1

A book I recently got into (but haven't finished yet... I've been getting lazy as of late) is called ビブリア古書堂の事件手帖 Biblia Koshodou no Jiken Techou, which translates to The Case Records of the Biblia Secondhand Bookstore. It's not quite what I was expecting, but it's a rather realistic mystery story with 3 volumes (so far).

I'll be honest, the feature that drew me into buying the book was the cover girl, 栞子, Shioriko, whose literary-girl introverted demeanor I find attractive. At least within the anime world lol. If you can read Japanese, or are stubborn enough to juggle a novel and 2 dictionaries at once, then I'd suggest this to just about anybody with a taste for mystery or crime investigation. It's a work-related story unlike those rather outlandish (cough:kamisamanomemochou:cough) novels out now.

東方曲集 Touhou Music Compilation

The playlist that really got me hooked on Touhou 東方 music arrangements (as well as the original songs) was this playlist right here:                                 my gurl ~>
                                                                                       
Epic Music For The Ultimate Touhou Fan
(clickable...)

Touhou has been around for a while, but I was introduced to it around the time the fighting game spinoff, UNL (Unthinkable Natural Law), came out. Many people prefer it to be called by its Japanese title, 非想天則 Hisoutensoku, but it doesn't hurt to be aware of its other title. While Touhou games are mainly vertical-scrolling shooting games, I preferred the fighting game the most (btw, it's the sequel to 緋想天 Scarlet Weather Rhapsody).

I almost feel that Touhou needs no introduction, but there's always that one guy that asks on youtube, "What anime is this from?" and everybody else groans.

Odd curriculum...

Where were you after dinner last night? It's so specific lol I don't think I've ever had to ask this phrase in my life. Just for kicks, really; please forgive the cell phone photo quality. (¬з¬)

さんかれあ Sankarea

Just amazing, this anime is. They just don't hold anything back. And it strikes a perfect balance between comedy and drama. What's not to love? Well, aside from that bastard of a father.

When I saw the cover of the manga a while back (before watching the anime) and I thought it was another mindless yonkoma. Never been more glad to be wrong! I'm eagerly looking forward to episode 4!
(｀∇´ゞ

Maggie-sensei's lessons

Today I remembered randomly the site run by Maggie Sensei, a great place to learn different cultural and social aspects of daily life in Japan. There's also quite a bit of useful slang there, too.

I happened upon a song by  植村花菜, Kana Uemura, called トイレの神様 Toire no Kamisama, Goddess in the Toilet (title is a clickable link to Maggie Sensei's entry). As usual, she goes in-depth and I love that. If you're stuck looking for slang translations, Maggie Sensei may be your ticket.

If your Japanese is good enough, you can also check out 日本語俗語辞書 at http://zokugo-dict.com/ for explanations (in Japanese) of various common slang words (aka, zokugo). I learned about "KY" from it lol.