Sunday, July 12, 2009

Maps!

Earlier today I sat down with the lady-friend and made some extensive Izakaya-related additions to Puma's Tokyo Guide. Among them is an izakaya chain called En, which incidentally has a brasserie in New York that I have fond memories of.

In addition, I started compiling Puma's NYC Sake Bar List, a map of izakayas and Sake bars that I've either frequented or have been meaning to frequent. The plan is for each of the entries to eventually have notes regarding my experiences at each location.

Memories

Shamelessly stolen from dannychoo.com:

Anyone who has been to Tokyo can just sit back, listen to this, and let the memories come flooding back.

Monday, July 06, 2009

Podcasts: The Giant Bombcast

Had been really stressed out at for for pretty much all of June, during which time I missed the deadline for a writing submission to get published at Gamers With Jobs and also started a writeup of Magic The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers, but that also never made it to the "Publish" button. Tonight I'm not going to try and pen some essay about Japanese gaming culture or the story about how i swore off collectable card games when i was 18 years old, this is because i've realized that recovery from being overstressed is a slow road and that I need to use some baby steps.

Tonight i'm going to keep it as irreverant and silly as I can, and thus i'm going to talk about the Giant Bombcast.

The Bombcast is Giant Bomb's weekly podcast, and about the closest thing to an humorous radio show like Opie and Anthony that you're going to find in gaming podcast circles.

Giant Bomb consists of Jeff Gerstmann, Ryan Davis, Brad Shoemaker, and Vinnie Caravella, all ex-Gamespot employees who (with the about-to-become-obvious exception of Jeff) left the site following the controversial firing of Gerstmann. The latter having been axed after giving a negative review to a game that had advertized heavily at the site (aka: Gerstmanngate).

It would seem that the group quickly realized when they started putting that site together, that a small company like theirs can't hope to compete with massive sites like Kotaku and IGN in terms of how much content they provide or how quickly they can provide it. So what they provide is pure personality. Just like every other gaming podcast out there, they talk about the games they play, the news, and new releases, but what sets them apart is that the group is genuinely funny and has chemestry that keeps the conversation flowing.

If that flavor of humor appeals to you, then you'll feel right at home listening to the Bombcast.