Gakuranman.com – illuminating Japan

Around this time last year I was blogging about the new Tales of Monkey Island and the remake of the original Secret of Monkey Island. This year comes a remake of the second in the series – Lechuck’s Revenge. Cue voodoo-doll fuelled hilarity!

Alrighty good people. You’ve been kept waiting enough! Here are the winners are the Gakuranman Giveaway contest that I posted a few weeks ago! There were two prizes up for grabs – an Edufire Superpass and a bundle of awesome Japanese sweets!

Alrighty loyal readers and Gakuranman followers! (You ARE all loyal, right??) I figured it was about time for a little contest of sorts, in celebration of my arriving in Japan and all. There are free prizes (plural!) and it’s incredibly easy to enter, so there’s no reason not to give it a try ^^.

The Secret of Monkey Island, that classic adventure game with Guythrush Geekhood Guybrush Threepwood is about to return in full, glorious High Definition! A complete overhaul of the 1990s masterpiece. And that’s just the beginning – a *new* Monkey Island game – The Tales of Monkey Island – is also set to land this summer!

I’m the proud owner of some wonderful fan art! Dave from The Ramen Blues (also the artist behind my Gakuranman image) has kindly drawn me this fantastic piece!

A bit of a re-post of the earlier January article on the Top 10 British Fish and Chip shops that I wrote for the benefit of my Japanese readers. It turns out that this month’s Japanese blog matsuri is on ‘Foreign Foods’, so what better a thing to introduce than a bit of the old [...]

Happy Belated New Year! My computer has been down (yet again), this time due to a graphics card failure. Having just got it back up, I found this great article linked by TameGoesWild: Procrastination. It talks about good and bad types of procrastination, so you can avoid feeling guilty on those days when Twitter or [...]

In a recent post about my attempts at some high-energy Spiderman Para Para, I mentioned one of the two artists, Hayoung Joo, was doing artwork based on the spider theme. We became better acquainted last week when I was summoned to her studio to once again lend my hand ‘in the name of art’. But [...]

Ever heard of Oingo Boingo? Those who knew me during secondary school probably will have, as I used to delight at quizzing them on the band few outside the U.S have heard of. Especially those music fanatics who knew all manner of niche bands and prided themselves on the plethora of musical titbits they had [...]

Hot Caramelised Red Onion Chutney (Hot CROC)! A Somerfield wonder! I mentioned this stuff a while ago during a particularly bad week I had (I didn’t get to eat it then as I dropped and smashed the jar!) But recently I managed to get my hands on it again and so the Welsh Rarebit with [...]

What causes that lump in your throat when you cry? Being ‘all choked up’? That tightening sensation that grips you when you are moved to feel strong emotions? This was the question that popped into my head this evening. It’s something I’ve come to expect as normal on those occasions when I feel lachrymose that [...]

Which side of your brain is the dominant side? I’m sure you’ve heard this question before or taken some sort of psychological test that is supposed to show it. I certainly have, but I’ve never seen one quite as amazing as this! Take a look at the picture below and tell me which way it’s [...]