"Colonel Yangs House Of Skin"...

The 'Starbucks' in the Watford Borders seems to be full of women breast-feeding their kids, but I’ll try and type while all around chaos breaks out.

It was the usual Friday dilemma – what do while my house gets cleaned. Decided to go down to ‘Oriental City’ (an Asian shopping mall in North London) to grab some noodles and hook up with some of the Argonaut crowd.

‘Oriental City’ has the most amazing food court. Some of the best Asian cuisine is served here. I decided to go to ‘Colonel Yangs House of Skin’. It’s not actually called that – Joss (one of the 'Orchid' designers) named it that because of their 'interesting' food.

The place is actually called ‘Yong Tofu’ and they make all kinds of crazy tofu styled weirdness. For example, tofu chicken wings that are made out of super thin slices of tofu, wrapped around a stick of carrot. Super tasty as well. Great place. Grab five bits of tofu weirdness and they’ll cook them up into a noodle soup and it’s super yummy.

Hooked up with a few of the Argonaut crowd and discussed the latest movies – including just what was added and what was snipped from the Alien Directors Cut. How geeky is that!

While I was there I also picked up a load of Japanese magazines from ‘Asahiya Shoten’ (Japanese book shop). The magazines and books in this place are mightily expensive – but they have clearout bins full of old stock and I just love to have a bit of a rummage. Normally it’s lots of Golf and F1 magazines but I found a few gems today. Here’s what I picked up:

Shoxx: Fashion magazine that’s little bit like those excellent ‘Gothic and Lolita bibles’ I collect. Full of androgynous looking Japanese Goths. Japanese ‘Goth’ fashion is lot like a clash of English punk, 80’s US Glam Metal, Alice in Wonderland, and those creepy Victorian dolls. I love it. There’s a character in the new script is going to be a ‘Gothic and Lolita’ inspired hacker, who is also a DDR champ. Already cast ‘Imai Eriko’ in that role.

Heroines of the Fantastic World 2003: Lots of pictures of cute gals who either voice or star in weekly anime and live action stuff like Masked Rider and Ultraman. I love kitsch sci-fi, and this magazine is full of it. As a surprise bonus it even has a picture of the Godly ‘Tony Todd’ (Candyman). Love Tony Todd. ‘Cast’ him to play ‘Jones’ in the ‘Consolidate to Devastate’ script. This magazine must be ‘super lucky’.

Fruits: I have the hardback copy of the ‘Fruits’ book of Tokyo street fashion. This is a magazine in a similar style but fashion from the streets of London, New York, and Copenhagen. The Londoners are the best dressed of cause. Cool mag. More great character reference.

Ride: Japanese street fashion. Much like ‘Boon’ and ‘Smart’ if you’ve ever seen either of them. Very hip-hop. Bought a whole load of these types of magazines when working on Orchid. Useful for basic fashion reference.

Cool: Slightly more formal fashion mag than Ride but still very hip. Has a spread featuring Aya Hirayama. Swoooon. And lots and lots of trainers.

I picked up all that for under £10. Bargain. No doubt I’ll be cutting them all up tonight and scanning the best bits.

Always nice to see the Argonaut crowd, and I must congratulate the ‘SWAT: Global Strike Team’ on getting an 8.1 on Gamespot. Nice work guys. Now I’m looking forward to getting to play a final build of I-Ninja. It played great six months ago so I’m sure the release copy will be very cool.

Nic.

posted by Nic @ 5:00 PM 0 comments