Mind Games (Or what it's like to be an anxiety-striken guy with ADHD)

Hi there, many of you don’t know me, or only know me by the anime/nerdy images I enjoy sharing and reposting. But here’s a quick gist of who I am: I’m a guy from Seattle who works in the military. I keep my identity private as I want to make a clear distinction between my public life and my personal life. Today I want to touch on something personal, something many people go through, or might have experienced in their lives. Hopefully you will get something out of this as much as I did when I wrote this up.

As I sit here this duty weekend, I am compelled to write this blog update. Important events have gone on in my life that warrant an in-depth comprehensive look at what I was, what I wanted to be, and what I want to become; and I look at what steps I am taking to get myself there. In other words, this is the story of a guy whose been in ups and downs his whole life and couldn’t find the answers to a simple question: What is it that makes me, me?

For many people, the common response to mental health problems is to “grow a backbone” or “turn to religion”. I may have suggested the same myself, and I sensed things within myself that were not quite right and I dismissed them as simple personality flaws that could be fixed over time.

So what exactly is “not right?”. Well, imagine you need to talk to your boss and ask for a day off, you would think it would be as simple as “Hey boss, I need some time off in November”, yet for me it was never that simple. I had to plan how the conversation would go before I would speak it. I would go through of all the potential answers and scenarios in my mind before speaking to him, and when I felt confident enough to speak to my boss, I would mumble my words quietly from some weird instinctual fear, if he says “Hey man speak up”, I would get nervous, stutter and stammer my words up, which always made my conversations quite awkward. Unless I knew the person (in which my confidence eventually overrode that fear) I often kept quiet and to myself, and I’d avoid tasks where I’d have to speak out to someone I didn’t know or to someone in a position superior to me.

It’s not just the tasks where I need to speak to people, but tasks that involve commitment and patience. I’d often procrastinate (more than the average person) about completing tasks. Yet I don’t simply “forget” about the task, I put it in the back burner and finish tasks I know how to work with until I actually start on that task. For example:

Boss: “Hey, I need you to fix this equipment by the end of the week, can you do it?”

Me: “Umm, [stammering/mumbling] yeah I think I can do it. It’ll be tough since I have a lot of stuff on my plate.” [a complete lie]

Boss: What was that? You’re mumbling, I could barely hear what you just said.

Me: “Yes I’ll get it done!!”

I’d do everything but that task to get my mind off it, yet when I had spare or free time I would contemplate and constantly think about the task without actually doing it. I’d eventually go so exhausted from overthinking the task that I would either A) Wait until the absolute minute or B) Not do it at all. It’s not a recent experience either, this goes all the way back to high school when I would procrastinate on homework or major assignments. My school reports would usually go something like “Your son is so smart, he just needs to apply himself more, finish his assignments, and open up to the class.”

Last year, before my third deployment, a few weeks after I returned from San Diego for school, I was taken away from my position as technician, and tasked to do menial FSA duties for a week (basically preparing food service for the crew and cleaning the galley/mess decks). It’s usually served as a punishment or as a task for brand-new people, not someone who’s been in the Navy for over 4 years. It was the fourth day of these duties I simply stared at the galley sink when I was supposed to be serving food. Many of the questions rushed into my mind all at once and began to turn into doubt of myself: “Why am I here?” was the predominant question. I asked my LPO (my boss) what put me into that situation of FSA duties, and his response was simply “The upper chain of command felt you don’t have much to contribute.” That hurt me, deep inside I knew I wasn’t the go-getter nor was I a major contributor in my job. But in the Navy where doing bare-minimum will get you in trouble, it was adding so much stress. That was when I had panic attack that prompted me to seek help.

For those who have never experienced a panic attack, here is the best way I can describe it: You start with a little bit of frustration, an negative idea or thought pops into your head, you think about then after a few minutes it becomes a central focus, and that simple negative thought manifests itself into more and more compounded emotions, you get something of an “information overload” with many different voices overlapping each other:

Sad Voice: Why am I here?

Negative Voice: Because you don’t contribute much at work

Internal Narrator: You need to clean these dishes.

Upset Voice: It wasn’t my fault I was in San Diego for 3 months, I didn’t chose it! What about my hard work during MCI Inspections?

Negative Voice: Remember? You couldn’t even figure out how to work your own system that YOU went to school for!

Internal Narrator: You really should be cleaning these dishes…

Negative Voice: Don’t forget you almost got in HUGE trouble because you also couldn’t remember out how to test your system!

Negative Voice: And don’t forget you were so shy in training the ITs that they have couldn’t to do a simple load on x system for the inspections, and you were THIS close to getting sent to Captains Mast, maybe even getting kicked out of the Navy.

Internal Narrator: Dishes?

Upset Voice: This is too much…I need to get back on track to what I was originally thinking about.

Internal Narrator: Back on track…to cleaning the dishes.

Sad Voice: Getting kicked out wouldn’t be bad.

Devious Voice: It would be a “shame” if I somehow fell down the stairs and broke my leg…get some time off from this hellhole. Maybe even go full-shitbag and get kicked out!

Reasonable Voice: Yeah but you have bills to pay! You’ll be viewed as a failure for the rest of your LIFE!

Devious Voice: Yeah but ET3 _____ got kicked out and now has a job that pays THREE TIMES as much

Internal Narrator: You need to do these dishes!!

Sad Voice, Negative Voice, Upset Voice, Devious Voice, Reasonable Voice: FUCK THE DISHES!!!!!!

The internal voices go through these back and forth exchanges within mere minutes. You don’t know what emotion to feel. Your confused, people start looking at you strangely, you begin to panic. Then your body begins to go into a biological self-defense mode, adrenaline starts kicking in, breathing turns into hyperventilation, your mind goes into a weird trance when every single voice goes away all at once, your body goes through a complete shutdown that lasts for 15-20 minutes (or even longer…) and it’s just you staring at that the pile of dishes, and tears streaming down your eyes because you lost control and there is nobody out there at the moment who can help you. And that even if there was someone who is out there to help you, how do you explain to them what you went through: 

Me: I had a panic attack while doing the dishes!!!

Other Person: Okay…yeah ermm, how is that stressful?

Me: Because there were voices in my head!!!

Other Person: Yeah, you’re crazy!

I have had panic attacks before this event that (at the time) were detached and seemingly unrelated but were extremely similar in nature. Low self-esteem compounded with doing unwanted tasks and getting called out for doing bare-minimum. I knew what the trigger was, but I didn’t know the source behind it, and again I couldn’t explain it in a way that would make sense to the average Joe. I walked out of the galley, went up my department office, and I talked to my boss about my problems (very difficult, involved a bunch of tears and stuttering). and he suggested I go to an outside councillor to seek help. I did so, and she was sincerely surprised at some of the long, stressful, and arduous work conditions we go through here at home port, but other than nodding her head and saying “Yeah your job really sucks”, it was too little too soon as I was thrown on Deployment #3 with no solutions to my problems.

Around the time we hit Guam, I had another panic attack after getting called out for not participating in fresh water wash down (basically we spray the salt water off the ship with fresh water before we pull into the port to help prevent corrosion). I went to the ships medical staff and they told me they couldn’t do a darned thing to help me and had me sit down and relax for a few minutes. I went back to my office and pulled out the work-list. I had to repair a valve that I had no idea how to fix…and I was on duty that day so I was stuck on the ship with a watch at midnight. I was frustrated, felt self-defeated, trapped on the ship, and couldn’t focus on fixing that valve. Another panic attack was starting to brew as the negative voices crept back up. This time my wrist started trembling and writhing uncontrollably, my legs started buckling under my own weight. “Holy crap this is bad”, I ran back to medical in dazed stupor. The doc asked “What is it now?” and breathless I showed him my squirming hand movements. One nod of his head and he said “I’ll send you now for an emergency session”.

I kept trembling all the way to the hospital, while filling out the medical questionnaire I had to hold my hand in a way to keep it from trembling. I’d look at the “Stress Management” charts posted around the medical lobby and noted I was nearing the danger zone. I talked to another guy from my ship, also going in for a medical evaluation, yet his concerns seemed so petty. He wanted to get out because he hated the Navy, and wants to return back home…all I wanted was to simply stop shaking, to stop the panic attacks, and to be somewhat “normal”.

I was confronted by two mean looking “pre-screeners” who asked me tough questions. “Are you trying to get out of the Navy? What is it that you want us to do?” looking at me with suspicion. “I just need help…I don’t know is there medication or something that can help me?” They referred to me to a councilor who suggested I had anxiety issues and I was prescribed Venlafaxine (Effexor XL) to combat the problems. The first few weeks of the medication were brutal. I had tremors in the middle of the night, dry mouth, dehydration, “brain zaps”, and felt drugged out and exhausted. After two months I felt something, but it wasn’t the “cure” to anxiety that I was expecting. It was depression.

You see, a week after I was prescribed the medication (and a day after my birthday), my grandfather passed away. I asked if there was a way to fly out from Guam to North Carolina to attend his funeral, but I was turned down by my chain of command “No, he has to be an immediate family member”. I was to be there and to remain on the ship, even though supposedly my command didn’t feel I was much of a contribution. I was going on a deployment that wasn’t even a real military deployment, but rather a 4 month “booze cruise”: hitting exotic ports, getting wasted, and doing some random training exercises. Serving my country? I think not…

Two weeks later, I was thrown into an even scarier predicament. The previous year’s test results were out, and I was advanced to a higher rank. What would have made most people elated and excited was dread for me. I now have more responsibilities. I now have to deal with people even higher up in the chain command. I have to train new people. I can no longer hide in the background and stay under the radar.

Here I am, still having problems simply completing tasks or communicating with people being in a leadership role. I was immediately given a list of qualifications I needed to complete within the next few months, and I did everything to avoid them to the point of hiding in my rack, unused compartments, and low-traffic areas. I hated what I was doing to myself, I hated having nobody to talk to, I hated that the people who I worked with every day suddenly became my enemies…that thought I was some weird pill-pusher trying to find his way out of the Navy…using medication as an excuse to get out of duties. My medication prevented me from standing armed watches, that alone felt like a slap to the face and gave immediate disapproval from people above me. People who think the military is all about weapons and force, and that if you’re unable to handle a weapon your unfit to be in service.

I was ostracized, I just wanted to hit the fast-forward button and get the deployment over with. Sometimes I’d look out at the sea and think how empty it was. That was how I felt, and when I tried to use prayer to help, I instead would get called out half an hour later for “Skating off and getting out of duties”.

Every time I got caught I went into “Panic Mode” and I had several panic attacks throughout the rest of the deployment. The worst one I tried documenting in my notebook, hoping maybe I could use it to prove to someone that I’m not right in the brain. My mind began to play strange tricks, I felt like I was in some sort of psychotic schizoid frenzy. I remember doing some strange sketches and equations of a torus and a rhombus, and trying to equate the two in my head. I wrote things that made no sense at all, entries that filled entire pages of jumbled letters. The medication was not working…

Around this time we hit Japan as an unexpected port. I needed time away from the ship. Time to myself. I immediately booked a hotel room with a buddy and we hit Tokyo for the weekend. As a teen, I often dreamed about visiting Japan. I studied some of the language, drew manga-inspired sketches, listened to J-Pop and watched anime profusely. Anime inspired me to draw, and I was drawn to the stories in no way any other medium has. We hit Akihabara several times during that weekend, as well as many of the other famous locales of Tokyo. We stayed in Japan for about a month and I often wandered on my own to the nearby city of Yokosuka and immersed myself in the culture. I felt free in ways I hadn’t felt since I was a teen. Before we left I picked up a few books on learning the language and some anime-inspired figures and memorabilia. Maybe focusing on something other than work would help me feel better.

Even though I was sad when we left, I was ready to move on and go home. Some of our next stops we hit Sydney, Australia which was an amazing city and felt like home (Seattle), but it only made me more homesick. We also hit a little island called Saipan where I met some attractive girls from Thailand. Despite that the medication didn’t really help combat anxiety as I had hoped and left me in a depressive state for those few weeks after we hit Japan, it certainly made me more social and lively. I was less apt to mumble and more confident in who I was.

Yet the question was still out there. Who am I? After we returned from deployment, I spent time exploring my interests. I downloaded games on my gaming PC, only to find them sitting in my library and never being played. I picked up games for my Playstation, only to play them for 30 minutes before putting it back on the shelf. I would crack open my sketchbook and try to figure out something to draw…but nothing would ever come to mind.

Something was missing, something generated that anxiety and that depression. Taking medication for anxiety without finding the cause of it was like treating a deep laceration with a band-aid. While recently things have settled at work and I’m working a less stressful position, that threat of panic attacks still lingered. I still had fleeting moments of anxiety where I would lock myself in a bathroom stall, shut my eyes, and breath out whatever bothered me.

I started looking up the symptoms. My doctor felt that I was fine, but that I was letting stress consume me. Yet the problem I had was the stress was non-existent. It was self-inflicted upon myself. I was the reason, and the reason alone for the stress because of how I let other’s drive their opinions and their judgements of me consume me. I left my own personality flaws become a hindrance.

So I mapped out my personality flaws, and I came up with something similar to this (selfishly stolen from Wikipedia):

• Be easily distracted, miss details, forget things, and frequently switch from one activity to another

• Have difficulty maintaining focus on one task

• Become bored with a task after only a few minutes, unless doing something enjoyable

• Have difficulty focusing attention on organizing and completing a task or learning something new

• Have trouble completing or turning in homework assignments, often losing things (e.g., pencils, toys, assignments) needed to complete tasks or activities

• Not seem to listen when spoken to

• Daydream, become easily confused, and move slowly

• Have difficulty processing information as quickly and accurately as others

• Struggle to follow instructions

Along with those symptoms, there’s also the distinct phenomena of Hyper-Focus. When I get so involved in something I would spend hours immersed in it and pump out amazing art and writings while ignoring the world around me. It often left me conflicted “I am so smart, I can do amazing things…but I simply can’t crack open a book to study or complete my tasks on time”.

What I discovered I had was ADHD - Primarily Inattentive type. All those symptoms I have had since childhood and it’s become so ingrained and routine my life, I just accepted it as-is. Now as I look back I can start filling the blanks. “Oh, that’s why I couldn’t focus in first grade!”, “Haha, no wonder I kept staring at the grass while I was in a softball team”, “Oh that’s why I never could complete my math assignments!”. As an adult especially, I noticed that the more responsibilities I had, the more pronounced it became since I no longer could hide in the background. I purposely kept sabotaging myself since I was so self-consciously afraid of my own “personality flaws” (ADHD Symptoms), that my own fears of mediocrity often became a self-fulfilling reality.

I need something to help fill that missing gap, I want to be somehow normal and confident in myself. I discussed with my doctor my findings and he agreed that I have many of the signs of ADHD which contribute to the anxiety/depression, and I am currently on a trial run with Adderall. I’ve been on 20mg right now, and this duty weekend (which is normally when I would be restless and fidgety), I am remarkably calm and the negative symptoms haven’t kicked in at all. Perhaps it’s because I’m already taking Effexor that my body is accustomed to the weird brain chemical stimulation or something…hell perhaps it’s just some sort of weird placebo effect and I simply think I am fine.

But if there’s one thing for sure, ever since I left Japan and gone through the turbulent emotions of depression, I began growing more confident in myself. I don’t have to hide the fact that I enjoy anime or JRPGs (Japanese Role Playing Games), or be ashamed that I like certain art styles, fashions, and designs. I don’t have to hide the fact I enjoy collecting anime figures or listen to Vocaloid music. I enjoy sharing content via Twitter, Tumblr, and other social media…and seeing other like-minded people actually like the things I post, whether it be a cool image of Hatsune Miku I found on pixiv or animated GIFs from an anime I like. 

I enjoy this aspect of my life, an aspect I’ve cherished since childhood and swept under the rug when I enlisted in the Navy. While many simply see cartoons or weird big-eyed anime girls in weird sailor school girl outfits. I see epic stories, fantastic art designs, catchy music, and awesome characters. I see these talented artists on the web share their own visions of their own particular favorite animes and manga, and I draw inspiration from them as an artist myself.

As silly as it seems, otaku and geek culture is a huge part of my life no matter how much external pressure there is to hiding it. I’m slowly phasing out that negative pressure (Facebook is a start) and shrugging off the negative people, but it’s easier said than done.

So in a nutshell:

Years of undiagnosed ADHD caused Anxiety which led to Depression which evolved into an Identity Crisis in figuring out how to shred the mask of expectations from others and to be myself.

Being able to treat the ADHD and the Anxiety at the same time has given me a greater appreciation for the things in life. I can safely say, I am finally happy.

PC Gaming

The last week has been rather busy work-wise and the next couple of weeks are going to be more or less the same, which means my backlog will probably be at a standstill with the exception of a few handheld titles.

In the meantime I've begun the process of consolidation for some of my PC games. I'm setting up my PC for specifically MMO's, Online games, strategy games, a few indie games, and Japanese visual novels. It's a nice machine for some higher-spec games...but the frustrations of dealing with DRM and being away from the comfort of the couch and a big screen is what draws me away from more mainstream games. Fortunately most of my "Must-Have" PC titles have been released for free on Playstation Plus in the last few months, such as Borderlands 2, Bioshock Infinite, and Payday 2...which practically has turned my laptop into an expensive web browser.

With that said, I've been shopping around for some good free MMOs. I have Age of Conan, Star Trek Online, DC Universe Online, APB Reloaded, and Lord of the Rings Online queued up on Steam so I'll see if those are any good. I also tried Tera Online and Phantasy Star Online 2, which both seem pretty decent, although I need to get an English patch for PSO2 and risk getting permabanned.. There's also Elsword and Aura Kingdom which I've barely touched.

Still, my MMO of choice is Final Fantasy XIV. I have a buddy on the ship who has a character on the same server as me, but I generally don't like pairing up with friends for MMORPGs. Often they are so far ahead that when I pair up with them, they will either help me power-level (which forces me to skip a lot of the content in the game without understanding much of the mechanics)...or they will be doing high-end dungeons while I'm running around looking at trees and stuff...yeah I'm not quite a devoted hard-core online gamer as my buddies, which is why I don't play multiplayer games with them often.

I also have been playing around with some PC Customizable Card Games. I picked up the open beta for Hearthstone which is fantastic so far, like a simplified version of Magic the Gathering. It's a great game and I can't wait for the Android release for my Nexus 7. I've been playing Magic 2014 on my Tablet and it's A LOT of fun :), it's like having $500 worth of Magic cards in a $10 digital format...can't go wrong with that!

February is a big month for gaming. I finally received my confirmation e-mail on my Bravely Default Collectors Edition which should arrive next week. There is also Toukiden, Final Fantasy XIII-3, Professor Layton, Ragnarok Odyssey ACE, Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2, EDF 2025, and Danganronpa coming in this month.  Along with my hectic work schedule, it's going to be a very busy month.

The iPhone

I finally picked up an iPhone 5s this week along with a new phone provider. It's amazing how simple to use this device is, heck even my mom is having fun learning the ins and outs of it, which shows something about the Android. The biggest differences I can tell is that the Android, while having extremely good flexibility and power for a low cost, can be a little overwhelming to people who want simple first-party integration and functionality, and quite often 3rd party software developers, the cell phone providers, the operating system developers, and the hardware manufacturers butt heads (similar to a PC) creating so much unnecessary bloatware that it's mind-boggling for a new user to understand the basics of the device.

A good example is the Samsung Galaxy S-series of phones. Let's say you want to check your text-messages. You can use the default Samsung app, Google Voice, Google Hangouts, or Chat-On. If you want to purchase software, you can use the Amazon App-Store, the Samsung Marketplace, or Google Play. Internet browsing you have the option of the default Samsung browser, Chrome, or Firefox. If you want to check your e-mail you have Samsung's application or Google's alternative. Even looking at images there's at least 4 different gallery apps, and taking photos is a pain on it's own when you have Dropbox, Google +, Facebook, and Google Drive all asking to upload your images.

To make matters worse, Samsung and Sprint not only wants to bundle their own software, but they make it unremovable unless you decide to root your phone. Why do I need a Sprint Zone app if I never use it? Why do I need two e-mail apps, two different browsers, three text messaging apps, etc? On top of that, OS upgrades are decided by both Samsung and Sprint. You'll have a piece of hardware that's capable of running the latest platform, but you're waiting for Samsung to give the go-ahead 4-5 months down the line so you don't have the scenarios such as the S3 competing against the S4 with the same up-to-date operating system...and then when they finally give the go-ahead you wait another month for Sprint to roll out their updates (unless you reset your phone profile to make it look like a "Brand new phone").

So when I am trying to teach my mom how to use her Android device and she asks me questions like "How do I send pictures to my computer?" And I have to show her how to install Samsung Kies, plug the phone in directly and browse the File Directory to the images folder on her External SD Card, or how to transfer images via Blutooth or WiFi Direct, then you've failed at making a device understandable and accessable.

I believe Google's line of Nexus products are a huge step in the right direction. Having the OS designers work with a well-known hardware developer (Asus), and giving you the option of ordering directly from them to avoid the bundled proprietary software from cell-phone providers is huge...but brand recognition is still a ways to go. People know what Android is, people know what Samsung Galaxy S is, people know what the Nexus 7 is...but what about the Nexus 5? I think Google should really try to improve it's marketing and advertising campaigns, but it's hard when you have so many devices already running on your own platform, then you have people asking "Why do I want to spend $300 on a new phone with KitKat 4.4 when I already have a Galaxy S3 with KitKat 4.4 installed in it? Just to run Angry Birds faster? So I can get rid of some of these excess Samsung apps?"

Then there is the iPhone. I've had previous experience with Apple products, most notably the iPod Touch line of products a few years ago. Eventually my 2nd gen device fell into the "No Longer Supported" graveyard and I just stopped using it completely in favor of Android products. Going back to the iPhone is like a breath of fresh air. As a gamer going to the App store and finding all these iOS gems I've been waiting to be ported for Android for months/years is reason enough to justify the switch. But the fact that Apple's proprietary software is good on its own without the unnecessary bloatware (or almost-mandatory installs of better software to replace the Samsung junk) of an Android device creates a great easy-to-use device.

Already I've noticed my battery life is almost triple what I had on my Android, my mother was actually able to figure out most of the features of her phone without constantly asking me for help, and my sister is sitting back playing LEGO Harry Potter for hours on end. The call quality is extremely superior as well, and I can't tell whether it's the 4G LTE (Which T-Mobile now provides, that Sprint spent years making excuses on) or the hardware itself, but the first time I picked up the phone and heard what sounded like my sister being right next to me was extremely surprising and unexpected.

Heck, even my car sees the iPhone and displays the information as such instead of me fiddling around with my Android file-folder structure whenever I start my car...that alone is good enough for me :).

Changing Tastes

It's strange to see how tastes in gaming and entertainment can change over a while. As a kid, I used to be hugely into JRPGs, Anime, Manga, J-Pop, etc. This was back around 99-2000 when Anime was just starting to kick off from being child-like cartoons (with Pokemon/Digimon primarily) to a respectable art form through avenues such as Toonami, Fox, etc. I grew up falling in love with Gundam Wing, Big O, Cowboy Bebop...heck I even caught the occasional episode of Sailor Moon.

Going into a Barnes and Noble in the 90's, you would find maybe one copy of Volume 2 on a Manga that was released 10 years prior...now the shelves have more Manga than Domestic Graphic Novels. Also video stores have changed, if you wanted to watch Evangelion Episodes 1-3, you had to pocket out $59.99 for the DVD...now that's the price for an entire series on Blu-Ray (Episodes 1-26). Also, back then if you wanted to watch anime on the computer, you had to go through various backdoors (this is the pre-torrent era) just to watch it. Now you have various legitimate online websites such as Hulu or Crunchroll that simulcast the same day the show airs.

Even gaming has changed, with Sony making their devices region-free, I'm able to play games months...even years before they come out to the States (if they even come out at all). This has definitely upped the pressure for me to learn a new language, much more so than it had back when I was in High School as a weird Otaku/Nerd dude.

So things have changed very fast, which probably explains why I lost interest for a while. There was admittedly some outside influence and negative comments regarding Japanese entertainment, so I stopped caring for a while, binned my figures, DVDs, etc. The anime genre at the same time started taking a weird change and I just couldn't care that much about Naruto or Bleach; mangas were too many to keep up with; I started cringing at the JRPGs, with weird non-sensical stories and horrible dubbing. I ended up going along in favor of the mass favor of the XBox 360 with its US-based games, and didn't even bother picking up a PS3 until only a couple of years ago just to have a separate console for my place in Everett while I was away from home. Little did I know back then that it would remain my console of choice...

Gamer's reaction to the consoles throughout the years:2006: Sony don't "get" gamers. XBox 360 FTW!
2013: Sony really understands gamers! BOO Microsoft!!!

Much has been written about the difference between Eastern and Western games. I think the PS3/360 split of last generation was a direct result of that (in fact, I would argue there's a third split with console and PC gamers, with the latter focused more on strategy and indie games...but that's a separate topic). You had one group of gamers who preferred more action-packed, pick-up and play multiplayer games (Madden, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Medal of Honor, Gears of War, etc...) and a set of gamers who preferred more cartoony elements, story-building, and simplified gameplay (Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Phoenix Wright, 999, etc...). Coincidentally, with drastically different sales figures between both East and West and growing differences between Japanese Developers and Western Developers brought about the split between the PS3 vs XBox 360. Where the Sony represented the older generation quirky Japanese titles that Western gamers were getting sick of, and Microsoft represented the next gen, graphics-focused action-packed and Indie games that Western developers were already extremely good at on the previous XBox and PC (which also started a new recent trend of focusing less on PC development and more on console development). Ironically this is exactly why Microsoft received so much initial backlash with the XBox One as they began to cater more towards the big Western publishers (EA, Ubisoft, etc...), implementing restrictive DRM schemes similar to the headaches PC gamers already endure, and Sony chose to stay with the less restrictive path of the previous generation.

Oh and Nintendo...well they did their own thing, ignored gamers altogether, sold an underwhelming console, still enact region-locking, poorly implemented multiplayer functionality and failed to grasp the attention of 3rd party developers for the Wii and now the WiiU, which is now biting them in the ass. But at least the 3DS is still getting great localized games, wish I could say the same for the Vita (at least Toukiden is coming out next month!)

Bravely Default comes out on the 3DS in a few weeks! Thank you Square Enix!

As for God Eater 2 for the VITA...still nothing from Namco-Bandai.

 As a gamer, I've played games from practically every genre. Despite the poor reviews from respectable Western outlets, I took Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk.2 for a try last year as the first JRPG that I've played in over four years. My first impressions were "Wow...this is bad!" I cringed at the English dub, couldn't quite understand the story, the references, or the humor. My first thought was "With games like the Last of Us or the Walking Dead collecting dust, why on earth was I playing something like this?" I would have shelved the game if I had not turned on the original Japanese dubbing, looked up some of the references, and continued on with the game.

Hyperdimension Neptunia

I had a similar story with Dynasty Warriors, an import gamer friend of mine highly recommended the series, but my first impression was the poor dubbing and not understanding what the motivations behind these weird Chinese soldiers. I would ask: "Why is Cao Cao so focused on ambition...", "Why is Liu Bei such a pansy...", but the gameplay was interesting enough, and when the Japanese audio DLC came out my impressions changed drastically. I could finally feel the emotion at some of the character's deaths, instead of listening to someone read a poorly translated script. I also really enjoyed the character design of most of the characters...instead of having over 60 identical Chinese warriors, I have a selection of male and female warriors with different manners of dress, expressions, etc. And reading the original story and seeing a face to these real-life warriors makes the game much more personal, and even more impressed knowing how accurate the game is to the real story (minus a few details added for effect).

Cai Wenji, historically kidnapped by a group of Nomads and rescued by Cao Cao. Proceeds to kill a bunch of generic warriors with her harp. That's historical accuracy right there!

This, coinciding with my Japanese studies, has overwhelmingly put the preference on leaving it on the original Japanese dubbing. Some things simply do not cross well, especially with bad dubbing. Now that I'm importing more games and learning more vocab, I'm opting to skip waiting for Western localization altogether. I just imported Sengoku Basara 4, for example since Capcom has no intentions of releasing another Sengoku Basara title here in the States due to poor sales of the last game.

Western Gamers simply don't like Samurai Games

My interest in anime is also starting to blossom again. I just recently finished the entire series of Steins;Gate and finished first season of Oreimo. I have Kill la Kill, Attack on Titan, amongst many other series on my queue. I also picked up a few Mangas on my tablet to read and enjoying them a lot, almost as much as I enjoy Western comics (because unlike most Western comics, there's a beginning, and an end to each series, and no need to jump into a specific story arc).

Check out Kill la Kill!

What I find most impressive of all, is that for the first time in years, I'm not bored. I used to spend a majority of my time on my laptop looking for Steam sales and trying to get into stuff like League of Legends, DotA, Team Fortress 2, and a bunch of indie games that earned much acclaim from reviewers. Yet after spending a few hours downloading, I'd sit there, play the game for an hour or so, get bored...and then the game would start collecting "virtual" dust. I was always baffled "This was rated Game of the Year by "Random" Gaming Magazine..., so I should enjoy this...but I'm not?"

I would enjoy this a lot more if it wasn't so depressing.

Perhaps the easiest explanation for this is that my tastes are changing, or rather they are returning back to my original tastes...what got me into Eastern gaming in the first place back when it was big in the PS1/PS2 era. That's not to say I dislike Western games though, I really enjoy GTA V, Bioshock Infinite, Assassin's Creed, and Saints Row IV for instance. I also still use my laptop to play FFXIV, World of Tanks/Warplanes, Farming/Rail Simulator, and Paradox's grand strategy games. But my tastes are much more different than what most other people enjoy...so perhaps that's why it's hard to explain sometimes that while I am a gamer, I am not...well...typical from most gamers?

Observations and tips for learning Japanese.

Weekend is coming up soon...after a long week of work I gotta say I'm looking forward to it.

Hopefully I can put some hours into my gaming backlog this weekend. I'm considering skipping FFXIII and XIII-2 and just going straight to XIII-3 when that comes out, since the fan-service and gameplay intrigues me much more than the prior games. Not to say the last two games are bad...it's just they aren't that good...(which more or less equates to the same thing)

I'll be playing FFXIII-3 Lightning Returns for different reasons...

I also want to start playing some Atelier Totori Plus for the Vita and dabble a bit with Ar Tonelico on the PS2

Not sure why I stopped playing this game! :P

I think my last post showed some of the difficulties it is in learning a new language. In a nutshell, the traditional route I'm taking in learning a new language is much too slow.

That's not to say that I shouldn't read from Genki I or stop practicing from my Learning Kanji book. Those are essential in writing and speaking properly grammatically as well as learning the correct conjugations. But the vocab isn't enough. Two-three weeks to learn 50 words is way too slow, especially when I know my memory retention is much higher based off previous studies of other learned languages. So I'm now using a combination of two apps.

The first app, Obenkyo taught me Kana when I first started learning a few months ago and gives vocab based off the JLPT; it has Kanji testing too, which is useful should not be used in place of vocab...because you'll either forget it shortly after, or remember the English meaning but have no idea how to say it in combination with other Kanji. "Oneself(自) + Revolve(転) + Car(車) = Bicycle(自転車)?" I just started it up again a few days ago, added about 20-30 new words a day (not including those I already know, but added just for retention purposes), and I now memorized the entirety of the JLPT 5 Vocab (484 words) and JLPT 5 and 4 Kanji (about 250 characters)

That seems impressive, but it's not really. Basically I can understand a word by sounding it out with its kana pronounciation and from the overall "look" of the Kanji. For the basics it's passable, but if your looking at a Kanji reading that looks like an 話 (talk) or an 語 (language), it gets quite difficult...and this happens a lot in Kanji, where the shape looks nearly identical but with the replacement of one or two small radicals. In this sort of example, memorization of the word shape does not work that well to your favor and that's where writing out and memorizing the Kanji in context with sentences (which is why I go over Genki I Workbook exercises) over repetition comes in extremely handy.

I use another program called Anki in conjunction with AnkiDroid Flashcards, which I can sync from my laptop to all my other devices. The problem is that it's only as useful as you make it. I'm using it to enter in some Vocab from my Learning Kanji book, which is really time consuming. I'm also using shared libraries for my Genki I and Genki II books. The biggest problem I have is that it's just not fun...and just as your starting to get into it "You have completed your 20 words for today". Then next thing you know, the next day you have 20 new words plus 10-15 words to review, then more the following day, 20 new words plus 20 words to review, and so forth...It starts becoming a chore to keep up with the program. Add to the fact there's no multiple choice options (which Obenkyo has), and your basically guessing with three options: "Bad, Good, Easy", in where I can "cheat" and just put "Easy" for every card, which eliminates the purpose of the program.

The plus-side is I found a decent Anki Deck that incorporates the Core 2000/6000 most frequent Japanese words, including example sentances and audio...which breaks the monotony of looking at a white card with a word. I'm going to play around with this a bit this weekend to see how well it works.

The Legend of Heroes

End of a busy gaming week, start of a new week.

I ran into some frustration yesterday while trying to play The Legend of the Heroes: Trails in the Skies in Japanese. It's really text-heavy and just shows how little I know when it comes to translating games, especially without pointers or directions for the quest objectives, the closest I can figure out is "Ok I need to go 西口 to マクドナルド病院 and look for a モンスター?" If you don't understand what I just wrote, then you can get the idea how I feel when I encounter 95% of everything in this game.

It's not to say it's a bad game, in fact it's one of the best JRPGs to come out in the past decade. I'm more frustrated in the fact that this is a game that came out in 2006, was just translated to English a little over a year ago, and there has been 5 sequels for the game already. So when you're playing something that looks like this:

Fast forward 5 games later, we have something that looks like this:

And the only announcement from the publisher, Xseed is that they will release the second game in the series sometime in Mid-2014 and there's no guarantee that they will even localize the third game. With the time it will take to play the latter game in English, it'll be already 2024 (which by then they will already be on the 10th sequel...get where I am going?). It really makes you wish there was some sort of magical ability to learn Japanese faster. In the meantime I'll stick with the English translation for now while I continue to build up my Japanese skills...since that's pretty much the only thing I can do until I'm confident enough to be able to read a bit more than "Go North and Kill Monster".

But what can I say, I'm spoiled. Even so I still have a bunch of quality translated JRPGs in my backlog, such as Tales of Graces f and Xillia (and Xillia 2 coming soon), Neptunia, Final Fantasy XIII, Persona 4, and now Bravely Default which is coming very soon. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I suppose what I am trying to say is I need to stick with the basics with language learning before tackling a sprawling, epic JRPG this early on. It's like trying to tackle Tolstoy's War and Peace after you have just learned to read Curious George.

Can...ok there's a paint can...I think this means "George is HOLDING a CAN of Paint!" Yes I am a genius! Where's my copy of War and Peace?

Back to work...

Finished up my Christmas vacation and back to work this week. I can't really say I miss it, but who can honestly say "Wow, I love my job!" unless you work for Mythbusters or for the Porn industry.

Most of us only watch Mythbusters for Kari Byron anyway...

I recently (re)discovered Backloggery and sorted most of my library into their database. It's basically a gaming tracker similar to Goodreads, where you add games to your library and track how far your into each game. With such a large collection to keep track of, I sometimes find myself more demotivated to play games. It's like going from 3 channels on the TV to over 500. From "This is the only thing on...looks like I have no choice to enjoy it!" to "Ughh 500 channels and there's nothing on...". I guess there's some sort of science/psychology behind this phenomena, something to look up later.

Of course, when you have so much quality educational programming choices to chose from on, especially on The Learning Channel...why would you need any more channels?

What I especially enjoy is finding people with similar game interests on that site. I'm into some weird games, so when I encounter someone talking about Call of Duty or Madden, it's hard to relate "Oh yeah, I can't wait to play some Persona 4 Golden and 英雄伝説 閃の軌跡 later...you didn't catch that? It's the new Legend of Heroes title...you never heard of Legend of Heroes either? Yeah...well so far only one game of the 7 game series has been published in the US...but you should definitely import it anyway!" Yeah...essentially my gaming conversations come out pretty dry...

Yeah...shoot that badguy with that gun!

So yeah, slow week so far. I got a few new figures from December that I'll need to post online sometime later. Other than that...just gotta keep gaming :).