finished watching this drama almost 3 weeks ago but I didn’t have time to do a review. I have to do it today since it’s such a good drama I felt bad not doing something for it. Akihabara@Deep / ??????DEEP is a 11-spisode drama that was shown in Japan starting June 19, 06. It wasn’t that popular I believe as I haven’t really heard about it anywhere on the internet. I came across it I believe on some forums where I often visit to see if there are any new movies coming out…etc and I got caught by the interesting name of the drama “Akihabara@Deep” (which didn’t really make any sense) so I Googled it and figured that it’s a really good one to watch.

The story talks about a group of “Otaku” people (refer to people with obsessive interests, particularly anime and manga) in Akihabara (Most popular district in Japan for electronics and anime) that initially are frequent visitors to an online site called “Yui’s Life Guard”. It’s a website / discussion group that helps people out with their difficulties in their lives. These Otakus are all “weirdo” kind of person with weird interests and weird problems with their personalities. Yui, the owner of the website, wanted to help this group of people so she asked them to meet up to form a group. She wants people in the group to help each other out on each of their difficulties they face in their lives. But as soon as they group formed, Yui died due to a drug overdose. Interestingly, one of the members of the group (Izumi, who is really good at computer) had secretly worked with Yui before her death, to create a computer software with artificial intelligence, that would act like Yui, and able to think and speak like Yui. After her death, Izumi presented this system to the group, and the group is able to “communicate” with Yui once again.

The group decided to find an office space and establish their own company, named “Akihabara@Deep”, to help anyone that are troubled in Akihabara on anything. The main focal point of the drama is about how the group helped out different people and it’s really interesting to watch - it’s really creative and the content and storyline were very very interesting and sometimes hilarious. It’s fun enough to watch how these Otakus acted weirdly due to their weird personalities - one of the guys “Page” can’t really talk properly and often needs to use a laptop as a medium to communicate with people; guy “Daruma” is a costume maniac who was once a hikikomori (people that always shut themselves in their rooms) but he’s really good at sewing and creating anime costumes; girl “Akira” works at a maid cafe and is really good at combating; guy “Box” had a tendency to clean his hands every 10 minutes but I think he’s the most “normal” person in the group; “Taiko” is a guy that is really good at computer music, but he has a weird sickness that is whenever he sees flashy lights or objects he would “freeze up” (stops moving)…weird enough, but extremely entertaining.

Here’s a synopsis from Wiki:

It all begins when a mysterious online personality named Yui decides to assemble these outcasts to try and form a group dedicated to solving the problems that plague Akiba by forming the “troubleshooting” company, Akihabara@DEEP, often shortened to just @DEEP. One example of this troubleshooting would be that the otaku of Akiba have come under a surge of bullying. @DEEP’s first task was to eliminate this bullying. After getting rid of this problem, @DEEP began taking up other tasks as well. Some of these include clearing the name of a cosplayer in a case that involved the distribution of underground videos depicting other cosplayers getting undressed in dressing rooms, protecting a news anchor from attacks by otaku who were enraged at a story that she had previously worked on that bashed the youth of Akiba, and helping out a maid cafe that the people of Akiba frequent from an opposing maid cafe that was acting extremely hostile to this maid cafe and even provided various prostitution services to the visitors of the opposing maid cafe.

While @DEEP solves these cases, the group unintentionally attracts the attention of a seedy character named Nakagomi Takeshi. The reason behind this is because of a secret past relationship between Nakagomi and Yui. What adds to this is a fully self-reliant AI program that Nakagomi would greatly benefit from if he got his hands on it. This is because he is the president of a very influential electronics company called Digital Capital, often shortened to DigiCap. He will eventually raid @DEEP’s headquarters, steal Yui’s AI, and kidnap Akira.

This drama is VERY HIGHLY recommended. It’s extremely entertaining and each episode has its own theme and guaranteed wouldn’t make anyone bored. I don’t really mind watching it again if I have the time. WATCH IT!

Boxing Day today. Last night I was planning to goto Futureshop today but when I got up this morning, crazy snow again… but despite the snow I forced myself to go out as I really needed this Microsoft Wireless Laptop Mouse 3000 ($14.99)…so I went out without even shoveling the pathway at my garage. I stepped on the pedal pretty hard to back out from the garage onto the common driveway (did that couple times last week so I’m pretty used to that). It snowed harder and harder and when I got to Futureshop it was like some kind of snowstorm and I had to bring my umbrella as the walk from the spot I parked at was really far from the entrance to the mall (there were a LOT of people out there despite the snow). I finally got into Futureshop and thank God the lineup at the cashier wasn’t bad at all, so I hurried and ran to the keyboards/mice section to search for the mouse. I found 3 of them left after around 5 minutes of searching (as it was really messy there, flyers and products all over the floor) so I grabbed it and ran to the cashier before the lineup gets longer. It was pretty sweet that I’m able to get what I want and looked like everyone else did too as there were lots of people carrying flat screen TVs and digital cameras walking out of the store.

I then drove to Parker Place to get my favorite set lunch - garlic pork chop rice with cold coffee~ I was starving and that was the #1 food I wanted to eat at the moment….somehow I never gotten tired of eating it. Snow went on pretty crazily, I was actually a bit worried that my car won’t make it all the way back home so I drove really super slow and be ultra careful on the way back.

Oh, I got a Wii Fit controller board and a Wii Fit Mat from Wendy for my Xmas gift. It was quite fun setting up the thing and I did a little test with it and did some pretty hilarious games like hoola hop where you have to swivel your butt while standing on the board…and this other running game in while you place the Wiimote in your pocket and the you “run” at the same spot…lol.

It’s Xmas Day…feels like it’s the end of the year. I can’t even remember what I did on the same day last year…. I spent half of the day today trying to sell off my two extra X Japan concert tickets off Ebay, craigslist, and a couple other Hong Kong forums, hopefully can get rid of them soon. Last night (24th) I went to Alice’s place for some Xmas food: lamb chop, Greek salad, cream puff dessert, chips, wine….etc. and played a lot with Brandy (dog) and got both of my hands super wet from his saliva. I didn’t take any pictures but I do have some that I took on the 20th - same place but a different party with her friends:

Going to go for another Xmas dinner tonight with Benny and his friends in Downtown Vancouver. Tomorrow I might goto Futureshop to get this $14.99 Microsoft wireless laptop mouse for my Boxing Day gift…hopefully I won’t have to line up or anything.

Went up to Cypress Mountain again yesterday from 3pm to 7pm, with Angela. It was a perfect day, lots of snow and not too cold and I didn’t even wear face mask and goggle. The view up there was amazing, I got to see some really neat lighting effect that I’ve never seen. The shadow casted by the sun were bright blue…I’ve never seen shadows that were in blue. The snow were in this bright orange color, really neat.

Anyway I bought a Skicard that costed $70…. I wasn’t planning on getting one but…the day ticket itself already costs $59 so …might as well. With the Skicard I save about 20% each time getting a lift ticket, so I just have to come once more to make up the price difference, not bad. We basically just kept on doing runs like non-stop, went for mostly the green runs since I still sucked (well I improved a lot actually). After a few runs we headed down for some fries/pop and then resumed. I think we did about 14 runs in total, it was really bright during the first 7-8 runs and then for the last couple runs the sky was entirely dark. I did a few blue (more advance) runs towards the end, and actually it was really fun as it wasn’t as steep as I thought it would be.

I was super exhausted after all that, in fact I’m still feeling a bit tired and sore after a day. Nevertheless I just want to go again ASAP…. oh by the way, my car got stuck in the snow near Angela’s place and I had to shovel it for a while before I could get it back onto the street…the snow was really bad I saw lots of cars gotten stuck… I just wish everything melts down ASAP…

It’s really cold lately….below zero for the entire week, -8C at night yesterday…I didn’t really feel like doing anything other than watch TV / eat snack / sleep…. It’s too cold, I don’t like it.

Anyway, due to boredom I decided to go up to Cypress Mountain for snowboarding tonight… I’ve gotten full gears last year anyway so I thought I should really go up to make their worth. Friend Davinder picked me up with his Porche Cayanne Turbo…that car is really something. Anyway, we opted for the 7pm-10pm “Night Owl” timeframe which costed $36 or so, and got there around 7:15pm. It was surprisingly empty and I was really stoked that I was able to “own” the entire mountain.

But soon I realized it was just too cold - so cold that I knew it would cause damage to the exposed part of my face for sure without a face mask…so I went in a bought a $20 overpriced mask but anyway it was really comfy and it did help a LOT.

My first run was really bad, fell a couple times and twisted my left arm… but after warming up, I started to get into shape in the second run, and was totally fine (as in able to go down really quickly without having to stop) in the third run. I ended up doing 7 runs in total, which Davinder did 5 since his bindings broke apart after the first run and he had to pay $5 to get it fixed so he lost some time. Frankly speaking I was feeling only slightly tired by that time and I thought I could do at least 5-10 more runs. Davinder was stressed and hungry though so we decided to leave for some food.

It was a really good first run for the season for me, I was able to pick up my skills that I gathered last winter. Too bad my friend Boom was back to Korea otherwise I’m sure I can go up with him for at least 5-6 times this year..

Today I went to a Smart Car owner gathering hosted by Smart Canada. Despite the freezing cold (first snow came last night), there were about 15 cars showed up and we had a lot of fun. Almost everyone came with their car “dressed up”, I dressed my car up as well, lol, with snowflakes made from styrofoam and also placed a Santa hat on top of the car - it looked really cute IMO.

The fleet of 1X Smart Cars started taking off at the Kerrisdale Park, then all the way to UBC, down to Marine Drive, and back to the park. It was a good one-hour drive. The drive went pretty smooth except that we had to stop for a couple times to wait for some cars that were left behind by the super busy traffic and lights. The roads were Ok, part of the route was covered in ice still (in the UBC area) but most were okay.

After the parade/drive finished we were treated hot drinks and snacks (donuts/cookies), also a free skate. I wasn’t decided to skate since I felt super cold but some of them just made me do it. We actually owned the entire ring, which was really cool. During the skate they annouced the winner of the “Best Dressed” car and surprisingly, impossibly, I won! I got this navy color winter jacket with a Smart logo on it So happy~ I’m looking forward to the same event next year, when I will try to be even more creative…

Some pics of my dressed up car: