Asian Food!!!

Ohhhhhh yassss

         Yummmmmmmmmmmm. I love Asian food! Anyways so for me and my best friend we have our "tradition" on Fridays and we go eat Boiling Point, which is Taiwanese hot pot. 

This is bomb food! Let me tell you. So basically it's soup.. bomb soup! Despite it looking small it actually has a lot of food in it. Underneath all the meat are the vegetables, which is kind of weird, and the noodles. Boiling Point is probably my favorite Asian restaurant that me and my friends go to. Just thinking and typing this makes me hungry. 

          Alright now to the boba spots. It's weird to talk about food and talk about boba at the same time, but there are some places that serve really good food. Sometimes people go just for the food and not the boba even though that place is known for the boba. One good example is a chain called "Lollicup" it's pretty popular around the Arcadia area and serves ok boba, but good food! 

          This top picture is from a Lollicup in San Gabriel. Yesterday was the first time I had food from there despite going there plenty of times. the food was soo good! I loved every bite of it. It's interesting because it's one of the hole in wall place even though it's a well known spot. What's also great about these Asian restaurant/boba spot is that they're open late! Boiling Point is open until 11pm and Lollicup is open until 9pm which is pretty late. 

          This top picture is also hot pot but Japanese style. It's very different from Boiling Point because they give you the all the ingredients and you have to cook it yourself, which I wasn't good at. The egg in that picture wasn't cooked right and the food on the top left was ok.. I guess I'm not used to "cook it yourself" kind of place. 

So as you can see there are a lot of restaurants around the 626 that are really good and are open late. Highly recommend Boiling Point.  

K-Pop!!

The Ever Growing Popularity of K-pop

          K-pop is Korean pop.. You're probably thinking about PSY's Gangam Style but he has another good and super funny song called Gentlemen 

Anyways so K-Pop is what makes up my IPod, well that and EDM. K-Pop ranges from rapping to electric music to solo songs from one member of a group. I love watching the MVs, in Asia they call music videos MVs, because of the different angles they use and the colors. Fun Fact: did you know that Girls Generation was the first Korean musical group to appear on Late Show with David Letterman and Live! With Kelly? Making them the first K-pop group to be aired in America on American TV.

It's just so different from American pop. K-Pop has to deal with break ups or boyfriends ignoring the girl or even just being yourself. 

J-pop

Forgotten J-Pop

          J-Pop? What's that? J-pop is Japanese pop. Sounds weird but I'm a huge fan of J-pop. J-pop was popular amongst my friends in middle school and high school. We would listen to J-pop on our MP3s during our walk home from school. There were some groups that I liked a lot and still like to this day. One of them is M-Flo, who is a famous rapper in Japan. I remember hearing his song with BoA and got hooked. His rapping and BoA's singing got me hooked and wanting more J-Pop. eventually I became a fan of M-Flo and listened to almost all of his songs and to this day I still listen to him. 

 

         After the whole M-Flo craze I moved onto listening to Perfume. Perfume is a three girl group, who's songs are produced by the famous Japanese DJ Yasutaka Nakata. After hearing Chocolate Disco I was hooked on how cute they are and how they dance. 

To this day I still listen to Perfume and always hope that they'll preform in America. There are other groups and soloists that I like but these two the most because of their unique style and also lyrics. The reason why I like J-Pop so much is because it's so different from American pop and also doesn't have to deal with drugs or sex and such. 

Video games :D

Why do I like video games?

         I'm pretty sure when you think of video games you automatically think of Call of Duty or some other popular American game. Well that's not me (just saying). When it comes to video games I play those ones that barley got considered to be released in America. When I was in middle school I wasn't into video games at all! I actually didn't like them that much as I do now. So once again, if you read the post about anime, my Japanese friends got me into video games. They only played Japanese RPGs, role playing games, and no American games. They first showed me Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht, which was a crazy sci-fi RPG. So as I was watching my friends brother play I was so amazed at the graphics and the gameplay. It was interesting to see huge Robots fight each other in a turn-based system. It has that anime feel to it and it works because it makes it more epic. 

Ever since then they tried to teach me Japanese and I kind of got it. I tried to play some games with them and it didn't go so well, but it was a fun experience regardless. After that the famous Final Fantasy X was released in America and I bought it and tried playing it but it was so hard so I returned it. After that I didn't play that many games by myself but with others like Super Smash Brother Melee, which I guess I was good. After that I started to be a hardcore player where I would spend 8 to around 10+ hours on playing one game. Yeah it was bad back then. Now a days I play at least like four hours at most. Once I turned older I tried some different games and played Resident Evil, or Biohazard in Japan. That game scared the shit out of me! I had nightmares when I first played it. It was so scary! I didn't know that there were games like that. After that I was hooked. After that I was hooked into the Resident Evil series and played 4 through 6. 

To this day I am playing games. 

Anime?

Why do I like Anime?

          Alright, for starters anime is basically short for Japanese animation. Some famous examples of anime is Pokemon, Pokemon isn't American, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Digimon. Basically anime is animation from Japan that is either translated or has English subtitles in America. Sooo the reason why I like anime is because it's so different from American cartoons. The reason why I say this is because Anime covers every single genre that there is. Yes there is horror anime and even romantic comedy. The other reason why I like anime is because of the story-line. My all time favorite is Neon Genesis Evangelion. 

This is a picture that was in a Newtype Japan and USA, which is a anime magazine. From left to right, Shinji Ikari, Rei Ayanami. Those three pilot those three robots that for some reason have human organs. This anime is the best anime that was aired in the late 90s and has shaped many anime to this day. The other reason why I like this anime so much is because of the story-line and character development. It sounds geeky but it's really interesting how the characters communicate with each other and how they deal with life crisis or even menstrual cycles. Yes Evangelion goes there.. Anyways this anime has been such a huge hit all over the world that it's still going! It may not be the longest running anime but it's still crazy that the fan base is so huge to this day. Project IG is the animation studio that did the anime and Gainax is the producing company. Those two companies are the best in the anime scene today. 

          Now lets start off with how I got into anime. I was probably like 13 when I started to get into anime. The reason why is because in middle school I had a Japanese friend and him and his family basically introduced me to anime. At first I thought it was weird because of the high-pitched voices and the weird character design.. Hearing Kero's voice in Japanese is a huge contrast from the English version of Cardcaptor Sakura, or in America Cardcaptors. But then I noticed that there was a serious story line to some of the anime that they showed me. Eventually I asked to borrow a anime that is appropriate to my age at the time and they let me borrow one. I don't remember it but it was really good. After that I was hooked! I wanted to see a new show right when I finished the one I was watching. It wasn't until the age of around 15 or so I bought the two Evangelion movies.. From there my mind was blown. The first movie was a recap of the 25 episodes of the TV show with new scenes, even since that movie was released many other anime copied that. Now for the second movie.. was crazy! So basically the second movie was about how Shinji has a choice on whether or not to save the world but in the end the end of the world happens and then Shinji creates a new one. 

That's the Japanese promotion poster for the second movie. After that I kept watching those two movies because I didn't get what was going on and then I finally watched the TV show and bam! Even more confusion. So as you can see anime has way more to it then it actually seems.