there are times when i truly feel bad for seniors and their rapidly diminishing ability to cope with the real world. when i was at K-mart today tracking down a couple more Citizen figures, an old man looking clearly lost asked me where the checkouts were... i turned and pointed, "right over there" about 20ft away. he thanked me and told me that he had been all over the store looking for them. ~sigh~

i broke down last night and ordered the Chinese release of Takashi Miike's Zebraman. what's wrong with that? nothing. well, that is unless you're up on the initial releases of these Japanese DVDs as they slowly spread from country to country throughout the pacific rim. cuz then you also know that these Japanese DVD releases do not contain English subtitling. Nor do the initial Chinese release of the same movie. And it's usually that initial Chinese release that the bootleggers rip for global pirating (besides other traits the most glaring are the nonsensical, poorly done English subtitles).

so i ordered the Chinese release as it's much cheaper than its Japanese counterpart (by ￥3000 or more). but there's no subtitling ('cept Chinese, natch). whatever, i'm just really wanting to see the flick and i'm pretty certain i won't have any problem following along w/my limited J-language comprehension. sure, i could've waited for the pirated versions or pricey ones w/English but i'm a tad obsessive-compulsive.

speaking of J-language, i had a heckuva delightful time placing orders at Asahiya yesterday. imagine trying to order a Japanese magazine ("Cure") with an English name. she ponders, "koo-ray?" there's no kooray in the system. thankfully i had print-outs from Japanese web sites featuring most of the books i wanted. but it was still a slow process and rather funny at the same time. i took home the latest Figure-Oh and Dengeki Hobby mags (the latter came w/2 mini-transformers!). i would speak some Japanese at Asahiya but for some reason i always feel as tho if i were to speak Japanese i would be offensive. i'm not sure why i think this.

from Mitsuwa i headed over to the brand new Meijer store i just learned about last weekend where i found a new assortment of Citizen figures. picked a few to take home along w/a Manga Spawn figure set i had never seen before. between Meijer & Mitsuwa it was a really easy way to blow a hundred bucks in a half hour.