Yuen Shan restaurant, Sheffield

I ate in a little Chinese restaurant called Yuen Shan on Saturday. When I had finished my meal, I was all *_* [sparkly sparkly]

My boyfriend and I walked up London Road looking for a good place to eat, undecided where to go, looking for somewhere inexpensive that would sell good, tasty food, suitable for one person who wanted something interesting that they can't easily cook themselves, and one vegetarian who wanted something less adventurous. This place fitted the bill really well.

It's fairly new, and I hadn't seen it there before. There were menus and advertisements posted on the windows - a recession-busting 20% off everything, special offer. All you can eat buffet. Special Hot Pot. Then the menus had the general individual things you could order, including some really speciality exotic dishes that you don't normally see on offer, like dishes using chicken feet, cow lungs, pig ears, etc. Menus were in both English and Chinese.

As we were waiting outside, I could see that the staff were anticipating us, which scared me off a little bit. We tried to see what was on offer at the restaurant next door but the windows were steamed up, so we came back to the Yuen Shan. No regrets!

The interior is not flashy at all, it's like a little café or canteen. It seems clean - they clear down and spray clean tables immediately after customers leave. There is one big room, with a counter to the right, and toilets to the back. As we sat down, they gave us a huge pile of menus, along with free Chinese tea and prawn crackers. There are... maybe hundreds of dishes to choose from, hehe.

"Yay! Free tea! This is the best place ever! And free crackers! Oh! And they supply chilli oil as well as soy sauce!! Wow! I like this place!!" ^__^ was my reaction.

The "Eat As Much As You Can" buffet costs more than at most places in the area, and is not actually a buffet - it's table service. You choose whatever you would like on that menu and they bring it to you. That seems quite nice and far more hygenic than how it is done in most restaurants, but it seems... I dunno, embarassing to individually order so much food rather than take it. It's got a far larger vegetarian menu than most all-you-can-eat buffets.

I decided to order a "Big Plate" of boiled rice, mixed seafood and tofu. My boyfriend opted for a tofu dish and boiled rice separately. The food arrived quickly, far quickly than in most restaurants I have been to. The "Big plate" really is big! I was very impressed. The selection of seafood was good as well - great big king prawns, squid, scallops, and fried tofu. There were large slices of ginger on top which made the dish hot, and I added some of the chilli oil (which seemed to contain crushed shrimp) as well. Oh, it was gorgeous. Really well prepared. ^_^ My boyfriend's meal was a large plate of tofu and (I forget what) sauce which contained water chestnuts and peanuts and celery, together with a small bowl of rice. He seemed to enjoy it. ^_^

Around us, there were lots of Chinese patrons - who had all opted for the restaurant's speciality hot pot. From 2 people to 6 people parties, that seemed to be what everyone was eating. For this, they brought out a huge pot of boiling water over a little hot plate to keep it boiling, and put it in the centre of the table. Then they brought out plates of raw vegetables and meat and seafood and noodles, and placed those plates around the table. Each person chooses what they would like and they put the food into the pot, put the lid on and wait for it to cook. It's also all-you-can-eat, I think. Looks great, a very social way to eat, but I guess some people wouldn't like to eat with raw meat in front of them, and you risk giving yourself food poisoning if you don't cook it all properly!

So, we had a good meal, and everyone around us seemed to have a good meal as well. My dinner - a large, filling, plate of rice and seafood, and a pot of chinese tea, came to £4.80. My boyfriend's meal came to a little more due to ordering rice separately and his soft drink, but it still came to a total of under £12 for both our meals together. Really good value for money!

Are there any downsides to the Yuen Shan? well, my boyfriend tried to order a drink and it was quite troublesome - first of all the man who appeared to be the boss of the place didn't seem to understand what my boyfriend wanted at all, then he called over a waitress who also had trouble understanding what a "soft drink" is. The staff are attentive, but their poor English communication skills let it down. Also, I think you might be stuck if you can't use chopsticks, it's hard to tell whether meals will be spicy or contain nuts from the menu, a dish with oyster sauce is in the vegetarian section (unless their Oyster sauce doesn't contain oysters?), and there are no desserts on the menu. None of that really affected me, though, and I had a great time. ^_^

There are several good Chinese restaurants in Sheffield; the Wong Ting, and Mei's Restaurant are both favourites of mine which sell really excellent food, but the price is twice what you would pay in the Yuen Shan - perhaps more. This is more downmarket but is a very authentic small-scale Chinese restaurant experience with a huge range of meals to choose from, and is very good value for money. And they give you free tea! *_*

Vote in the seiyuu awards

There's a new "Overseas fan's choice" category in this year's seiyuu awards (3rd annual). So that specifically people outside of Japan can vote for their favourites!

See:

http://www.seiyuawards.jp/eng/

It says:

"Enter voice actors and actress name and the name of the characters that voice actors and actress has played."

So don't forget to mention some characters as well as the name of your favourite seiyuu!

You can only vote for one person. Oh it's so hard to decide!! >_<

LocoRoco 2 Demo flash game

I owned a demo of the first LocoRoco game even before I owned a PSP to play it on! Eventually I bought a PSP, then played the demo, and didn't understand why people liked the game.

So it was a long while before I bought a full copy of LocoRoco to play - only when it had come down in price to about £6 or something.

And... I really like the full game! It's basically a really cute 2D platform game, which you mainly play with the shoulder buttons (it's a bit strange at first but becomes comfortable and tactile). And it sings to you. In some mysterious made-up language. ^_^

I even bought the soundtrack (and it cost more than the game!)

So yeah. LocoRoco 2 comes out on the 21st of November, and I can see it's available as a pre-order for £17.99 on play.com which is a reasonable enough price for me to preorder a copy.

The demo of the first game really put me off it! And the graphical style made me think "this looks like a Flash game!" :/

So what do we have for the 2nd game? A playable demo in flash!

LocoRoco 2 demo

It's quite fun! And it sings cutely at you (songs reused from the 1st game). And is.... oh it's frustrating sometimes! But too cute for you to stay mad at it. Haha!

I wonder how representative of the full game this is...

Quick comparison of the 2nd game demo with the 1st game:
* Rather than rolling around looking for budding flowers, you have to run over the wilted flowers with the right colour LocoRocos.
* The demo levels are very short and the music is annoyingly repetitive.
* There are also purple LocoRocos.
* There's no "split into loads of little LocoRocos" button.
* Black spiky things don't harm you.
* There is a clock counting *down* instead of up.

Momoi Halko - more and more quality albums!

Momoi Halko is releasing 2 albums in December:

more&more Quality White -Self song cover- and more&more Quality Red -Anime song cover-.

I thought I'd have a look for the expected track listing for the Anime Song cover album on the internet, to see what she'll be covering. I really like her anime songs, video game songs and anime song covers (I listen to the Famison albums and Wonder Momo-i and Tenbatsu Angel Rabbie and the Akahori Gedou Hour LoveGe songs most). I found this page, so here's what's listed:

more&more quality RED ～Anime song cover～



Release Date: 3rd December 2009
Catalogue Number: AVCA-26991
Price: 3,000 yen (including tax)

1. Give A Reason
Originally the opening theme to "Slayers Next", performed by Hayashibara Megumi

2. Ai Oboeteimasuka
Originally from the SDF Macross film Do You Remember Love?, perfomed by Iijima Mari

3. STEP
Originally the opening theme to Mashin Eiyuden Wataru, performed by a・chi-a・chi

4. Happy☆Material
Originally an opening to Mahou Sensei Negima, performed by the series cast (Mahoragakuen Chutobu 2-A)

5. Butter-Fly
Originally the opening song to Digimon Adventure, performed by Wada Kouji

6. Gamble Rumble
Originally the opening song to Initial D: Third Stage, performed by m.o.v.e

7. Soldier Dream
Originally the 2nd Opening theme to Saint Seiya, performed by Hironobu Kageyama

8. INVOKE
Originally the opening theme to Gundam Seed, performed by T.M. Revolution

9. Romance no Kamisama
Performed by Hirose Kohmi. Here's the video, was this in an anime?

10. [unconfirmed song; an original song?]



Well, that's my take on the tracklisting. I might be incorrect, I don't recognise some of the songs. At the moment, I am especially interested in hearing her sing Butter-Fly. ^_^ It could be fantastic, but it could go horribly wrong! XD

(I would have done the self cover album as well but this one took ages!)

MGS4 Case-modded PS3 sells for over $17k USD

I saw this the other day... it's a really really amazingly nice looking Metal Gear Solid 4 themed case-mod for a PS3. They even got autographs to put on it!

I don't really care much for MGS games and I don't own a PS3 myself, but this really caught my eye as a work of great craftsmanship.

It was up for sale on ebay, along with a modified third-party controller and with a bunch of rare MGS4 merchandise, and has now sold for $17100 US dollars! (A portion goes to charity too)

Take a look at the auction before the photos disappear:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130263869818





It's nice but no way would I pay anything near that much for it!

TMNT - 2007 video game

TMNT is a lot more fun than I though it would be from the box. I thought it would be (another) endless hordes melee battle game, but it's more of a free-running style 3D platform game (with fight scenes). Normally I hate 3D platform games because I'm terrible at them and can't judge distance or direction when jumping, but I like this game because a lot of the time if you can't make the jump you can just run along the walls instead or something. It gives you a lot of freedom to get from A to B using the skills you know, rather than just playing the game in the rigid fashion the game designer thought you should play it, and I have a lot of respect for that. It's also often spectacular just to watch yourself play, zooming about the place. There's a lot more emphasis on the "Ninja" part of the title in this game than you often see in TMNT games, especially in the way they move around the city - it's quite fun. Raphael (who is mostly an agressive moody loner in this game) also spends a few levels in the guise of a vigilante, calling himself "The Nightwatcher", but in that armour I can only think "he's a sentai character pretending to be a metal hero!". This game is based on a recent (2007) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, and... it's kinda dark-feeling and there is more about the internal feud between the turtles than there is with the storyline against the bad guys - maybe it's more like the old comic books. I kind of like the way they narrate the story all the way through as if reminiscing it to each other "ooh ooh the best bit comes next!", but unfortunately... to me that also works as a barrier that prevents me from feeling really involved or excited about what's happening in the story. Even though there isn't much of one. Still, it's quite fun to just jump around and enjoy the sights of leaping from rooftop to rooftop in the big city, and marvel as they scramble along walls over toxic waste in sewers...

Thoughts on various games

I've been xboxing a lot this weekend. ^__^ I decided to keep away from my family and my boyfriend and do the really terribly unhealthy thing of doing nothing but playing videogames. (No really... it's good for me once in a while... I think... hehe)

Here are some thoughts on games I have played recently:

Surf's Up is a pretty good game, even though it's a game tied in with a kids' film. It's just really short! It's a surfing game, all about scoring points for doing tricks... kind of like.... a skating game on rails? SSX without the downhill sloping terrain? And just a hint of "Nights into Dreams if you could only go forwards"...

Mega Man 9 is awesome in its 8-bit glory. It's as though it's the world's last NES game, with authentic-sounding music (that is deliberately limited in channels so that it cuts out one when sound effects are heard), deliberate little graphical glitches when sprites are just on the edge of the screen or too many on screen or whatever (you can switch the glitch off in the options!), deliberate slowdown in places... it really feels like a game from the 1908s! And it's really difficult! Or at least, it seems that way until you replay it a few times and then you know exactly what to expect and it's not so hard... and you feel proud of yourself as you progress. In a lot of cases when I first started playing it felt like the Jinsei Owata no Daibouken ("Your Life Is End") flash game because when I would finally succeed and get to the next screen I was rewarded with unexpected spikes and death, or unexpected enemy and death, etc. You just progress slowly one screen at a time, die and work your way back to that screen... I've only killed 3 bosses so far! But I still feel enough enjoyment and fighting spirit to go on! :D

Fusion Frenzy 2 is a terrible game, and was a chore to play. I mean, even low budget party games like "Party Girls" for PS2 are way better than this.

Calendar preorder time!

It's the time of year to order next year's calendars! ^__^

I like anime calendars; they work as posters or giant artbooks... (well, artbooks with 6-7 pages...).

If you want to buy anime/manga/tokusatsu/other-Japanese calendars, I recommend buying them from CD Japan! They always deliver, and everything arrives on time in nice green paper. :D

I'm thinking of getting these ones:

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni calendar... except if there are any nasty pictures I'm stuck with them for a month!

All That's Ultraman calendar. :) I've had an Ultraman calendar every year for the past 2 years! They're great! :D

Code Geass - Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 calendar. My brother had one of these calendars last year (for season one) and now he wants the season two calendar!

Kurogane no Line Barrel calendar. Hirashi Hirai's newest character designs feature in this one, and that's a very s.CRY.ed type of pose on the front, IMHO, hehe.

Clannad calendar.

Kuroro Gunso calendar, since my boyfriend seems to be a big fan. I got him a "Yotsuba to" calendar last year! So cute!

Yes! Precure 5 calendar! :D

Chi's Sweet Home - Desktop calendar or Chi's Sweet Home - Wall calendar, I'm not sure which. It's soooooo cute! >^_^<

I NEED MORE WALL SPACE! Hahahaha... XD

Preorder early because everything is in limited supply! Oh and there's a special offer where if you spend over 5000 yen you get a voucher for 500 yen (so I'm splitting up my orders into 500 yen each...)

Awesome Super Mario cake!

Just take a look at this Super Mario themed wedding cake! It's astounding! :D


Sources:
Cakewrecks blog

Flickr album

I'm not even sure how it manages to keep from falling over!

Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2: UK version June next year

Yay! My thumbs can wear out all over again. :P

Preorder page on play.com

"£39.99 Free Delivery
RRP: £49.99 | You save: £10.00 (20%)
Pre-order.  | Due for release on 26/06/2009"

...hmmm, no preorder from me at that price!