わふー! はろー・わーるど！なのです。(A Kudo PC unboxing affair)

(tags hardware, PC, Windows 7, Kudo)

Today was the 6th Nipponbashi Street Fair, but I was only interested in one thing: The Noumi Kudryavka PC netbook. It's a VisualArt's / Key Official Original Goods「わふーでハイすぺっくなnetbookなのです。」 To make a long story short, I purchased one way overpriced Atom Pineview netbook.

I woke up at 6:00 AM, arrived in Nipponbashi at around 7:40. I thought I was late, and I was, since there was about 500 people already. They lined us up in groups of 60. I was standing in the middle but for some reason, they decided to let our group (5th!) enter first. I finished buying everything at 9:15 AM, and I headed back home, missing the rest of the Festa.

One unremarkable cardboard box gives way to a kawaii assault. The box set is basically the netbook and the themes backup CD-ROM.

Everything seems to be in order. Glossy finish with no imperfections. Hard disk looks alright at 320GB. No discernible way to upgrade the 2GB RAM. Only two USB 2.0 ports and both of them on the left side.

There are important things to do before booting into Windows 7 Home Premium Japanese. I first checked the boot up sequence, then did a quick MemoryTest+. After that I backed up the hard drive using Clonezilla Live USB. Finally I ran Windows, played around with the themes and backgrounds, and checked out my Miku score.

This is pretty much my first time to listen to Naomi Kudryavka in depth. It's the original voice actress Miyako Suzuta (鈴田美夜子). The PC comes with 6 voice themes: maid, wife, sister, love, wahoo and russian. The wife one is good for a laugh but the sounds are longer than 3 seconds so I know I will tire of them quickly. First I need to make some noise by making errors.

Now to actually play this Little Busters!. It's been 2 years already and I still haven't finished any scenarios. I just like the way she's illustrated. Now that there's enough space I will install that game, Kudo-Wafter (クドわすたー) when it comes out, and Starcraft 1 right now!

Uh oh, a Kudo-tan encountered (PlayStation 2)

(tags Little Busters, PlayStation 2, Kudo-tan)

Uh oh, a Kudo-tan encountered:

Finding a common game:

Batted a single:

See you next time, on the PlayStation 2:

Hm, I also need to learn using my own vocabulary notes.

Big Kudo fan(s)

(tags game, goods, Little Busters, Windows, Kudo-tan)

Today was my first day of 2009 to visit Nipponbashi Den Den Town. It was pretty crowded with the people walking around holding tree branches with gold coins hanging from them. According to my fruitful web searches, the local Imamiya Ebisu Jinjya holds the "Tokaebisu" (festival?) from January 9 through 11.

But anyway, I checked up on lots of Comic Market goods, just like I did last year. Except this time I'm not so enthusiastic (crazy) with opening the wallet. Yeah, right, this blog post is proof of the weak will. I will save CM related stuff for another post.

So, yeah, Noumi Kudryavka from Little Busters (リテルバスタース！). I enthusiastically grabbed the Sofmap exclusive telephone card months back. Since then I've been slowly accumulating goods. Just recently I found the Gee Store in Nipponbashi/Den Den Town. Funny that a branch of this store used to be at Gamers Sannomiya (Kobe) but it closed probably because Kobe isn't so profitable. They have a lot of nice goods. Nice:

These are regular Japanese style fans with (our?) my favorite mascot, Kudo-tan. It no longer seems to be available at Amazon, so it must be selling well. Except at the Gee-Store, where there are tons. As shown, I have already pinned to my kitchen wall. 

Kudo-tan saying "Wahoo" just gives me enough pep to keep on practicing cooking. Actually these two fans take the place of my years-old De Ji Charat fan.

But that's not all. Gee-Store has a bunch of other stuff not available at my regular proving grounds such as Gamers and Tora no Ana. That's probably because they make the goods themselves, and don't bother to send it to other stores.

Okay, I wasn't planning on buying the sports towel (shown on the right). But after spending more than 5000 yen on a bunch of (Little Busters) stuff, I received this free A4 sized clear holder (shown in the middle). I did want to get the cheaper shirt design but all they have left was XL size. I'm an M, really.

Truly though, this is a losing battle. The same couple of illustrations are posted onto mug cups, sports towels, shirts, hug pillows, trading cards, mouse pads, hankerchiefs, bath posters, frisbees (!), etc etc. I am sure to be bored. Then again, I haven't swapped out my 2003 Salvador Dali calendar. Perhaps newness is not important to me?

So yes, I actually bought the Little Busters! game (the EX version) but I am not making much progress in this voice-over fighter. I fear that hearing Kudo-tan's seiyuu voice will destroy the infatuation. And there is some infatuation left, see my other Kudo-tan posts (one more coming up).

Kudo-tan Get: Little Busters! Ecstasy Sofmap point poster and telephone card

(tags telephone card, stick poster, figure, Little Busters, Kudo-tan, Miku Hatsune, zettai ryouiki, loli)

Sofmap recently implemented a Pre-Order Ticket award system, where if you pre-order 1 video, game, or hobby (figure, toy model) related item, you get a "Ichi Map" (1 "map") ticket. (新品TVゲーム、PCゲーム、DVDソフト、ホビーの予約購入チケット、「壱マップ」). You can normally redeem them for a discount, but I don't think anybody would be foolish enough to do that. If you have 10 "Ichi Map" tickets, you can redeem it for a exclusive telephone card. Sometimes there's a diamond in the rough. Yes, look what I did here:

Posable Figma Miku Hatsune figure says "Wow!" to the Kudo-tan

Alright, I've never played the gal-ge visual novel game Little Busters! (リテルバスタース！) by VisualArt's / Key, but it sure does have a lot of commercial backing and support. You can't swing a dead neko-mimi in a character goods shop without hitting one of the many games, magazines and figures that pimp this work. Without checking the Wikipedia, I bet you this game will have a mainstream game release, followed by animes, movies, and stuff. I've already seen the hug-pillows and the itashas.

This telephone card is an illustration of Noumi Kudayavka (能美 クドリャフカ). I though she had an affectionate nickname call "Kudo-tan", because it was mentioned at Senaka Ota-Road blog, but I was told I was wrong to use that name. Anyways I like this character and this particular illustration because of the zettai ryouiki, and also the cute hat with the big button. It reminds me of the button on Saga (in the background). Furthermore, I like to collect telephone cards that have "Sofmap" written in them. I don't intend to actually play this game, though.

To tell the truth, I bought the card and an accompanying stick poster (shown above) from Sofmap Saurus 1 Treasure Box floor (委託販売階) for 8000 yen. This is actually a steal, in comparison to buying 10 video games, or dueling with auction snipers (the average open auction is about 10000+ yen right now). So the story on the stick poster was that it was the tokuten for buying 3000 yen worth of goods at Sofmap, probably at the same time this telephone card was released. Both items appear to be already out of stock, and both were only released 3 days ago. Frantic hordes, I think.

The September rush of Miku Hatsune (VOCALOID 初音ミク) figures also cannot be ignored as well. I only lucked out on that figure through a buy-it-now auction. Sweet, because its sold out everywhere. The non-posable but killer Good Smile Company version was released a week ago, and it's probably fetching beaucoup (?) bucks (?). I actually pre-ordered this one, but mine will be coming in the October shipment. Uki uki!