mokudekiru

Some girls can dream up an ideal boyfriend: his looks, his personality, his hobbies, etc. But only one girl, Riko, gets her ideal boyfriend delivered to her in a box. And he comes with a user manual.

In this summer’s drama, based on the Yuu Watase manga of the same name, 絶対彼氏(Zettai Kareshi — Absolute Boyfriend), Riko (Aibu Saki) gets essentially tricked into a trial of the company Kronos Heaven’s robot, designed to be the perfect boyfriend of the customer. Riko selects physical and personality attributes for this boyfriend-to-be — apparently her ideal boyfriend looks exactly like Hayami Mokomichi — and a few days later a large box shows up in her apartment.

At first Riko is creeped out and annoyed at this robot following her around everywhere, and saying awkward things like, “Hi, nice to meet you. I’m Riko’s ideal boyfriend. I love Riko!” causing interesting conflicts at work and in Riko’s social life (especially when Riko’s “friend” Mika falls for robot-boy). Of course Riko attempts to keep the fact that he is a robot secret, and only those closest to her eventually discover the truth.

This picture is misleading, because Hayami Mokomichi never actually looks like a robot in the show, but here it is nonetheless:

The subplot is that Riko really wants to be a pastry chef, and eventually earns the chance to go to Paris to study, along with other (human) love interest Soshi (Mizushima Hiro), who has to fight for attention with a robot for 11 episodes:

This was by far the best role I’ve ever seen Mizushima Hiro in — his character was well-developed in his outward coolness, stemming from his dissatisfaction in the direction his family’s company was going, and his undying, but subtle, and not overly persistent devotion to Riko. He also took rejection rather well, given the odd circumstance of finding out that *your* dreamgirl has just turned you down for a robot.

Throughout the show, Riko struggles with her own feelings towards Naito (the name she gives to robot-boy) — she wants to feel unattached, but somehow can’t bring herself to give him up in any of the situations where he may be taken away from her.

Naito himself is also an interesting character. Being essentially a beta-version of a robot boyfriend, he is certainly not bug-free. He doesn’t have very good battery life (and has to recharge every night in the bathroom), he often overheats, and is programmed so well to love and protect Riko that he puts himself in a lot of danger, which can be seen as a positive or a negative attribute. His architect, Namikiri-san, often shows up to do maintenance or fix a bug, and is himself shocked at certain things — like when his hard drive is wiped, and yet he still remembers Riko, or does other things that were certainly not programmed into him — a lot of machine learning was going on anyway, with new words that aren’t in his internal dictionary, but emotional growth was certainly also going on.

However, interestingly, the show didn’t take the robotic emotion thing too far. The characters essentially treat him like a human (even though, as stated many times throughout the show, he was “just an appliance”). They don’t even really remark about the potential breakthrough in robotics that’s going on here (besides the architect, Namikiri-san, of course). Without being too silly or too serious, the robot character was important for what he was worth, but not the complete center of attention, or the real hero, which would be Soshi of course. Zettai Kareshi was cute and well-done, and totally avoided falling into its potential Pinocchio slump — definitely worth watching.

Sometimes, you go to Red Rock Canyon, just to hang out, play with Sim while David climbs…. and you end up climbing a rock. Oops. I didn’t mean to, I swear.

Belayer below!

Topped out on the climb, and this was my view.

Haven’t fallen to my death yet. Still alive and kicking, standing on a ridge well enough to take cell phone pictures of myself.

All climbing equipment, courtesy of Summer.

Victory!

After approximately:
(15 minutes / day) * (14 days) –> the parking lot.

Thanks to the instruction and support of a huge chunk of firmware!!

Tuesday. Went to lunch with interns and newhires, and then left work super early to depart for Red Rocks to see R.E.M., Modest Mouse, and The National.

Red Rocks is the most amazing concert venue — beautiful, and great acoustics. We experienced ~2 minutes of rain but otherwise the weather was amazing.

Looking back on the path up to the amphitheatre.

We got there super early and parking was easy. 3 rows away from the amphitheatre.

Line to get in.

Trading post where we bought Red Rocks tshirts before the concert.

Tour buses.

Inside, finding seats.

First up were The National. I was familiar with a few of their songs from the radio, and they were even better live. Good use of some trumpets in a few songs, and violins in others… excellent, but essentially no one was there and it seemed that very few people knew who The National were.

Red Rocks begins to fill up…

Waiting… as beer goes on around us.

Modest Mouse was up next. We wished they played a longer setlist and that the audience would pay more attention to them, but everyone was extremely busy getting alcohol. They did play Dashboard, which was nice, but that was the only major hit in the set.

Then R.E.M. showed up!! Yaaay!!!

Everyone who comes to Red Rocks complains about the altitude (no oxygen -> harder to sing), but Michael Stipe seemed to be doing alright.

After a few songs, Michael Stipe said, “Who here has twitter?” and Ford and I got extremely excited. Then he essentially retracted his statement, “No, I’ll talk about that after about 5 more songs.” So I was waiting for something about twitter, but instead he was asking about that to see if people had been twittering/received text messages about the Obama nomination. The audience’s reaction was more mixed than I expected, but at least the majority was certainly cheering with Michael Stipe. They played a set of politically themed songs. During one, the lyrics went up on the screens behind them:

WHY?

Megaphone!

The set list had a lot of songs from their most recent album, Accelerate. I think most people in the audience weren’t very familiar with this album since it’s so new, and not as good as their older stuff, but it definitely a few good songs. I had listened to that album in preparation, so seeing those songs live was pretty cool, and then the classic R.E.M. songs were of course awesome.

Also, R.E.M. did a good job of interacting with the audience. Michael Stipe spent a while talking to us at the end of the concert, pointing out various audience members he could see, and commenting on them. The best one was, “Hey, guy with your shirt off — put it back on — I like The Cure too!”

Here was the end of the concert, and this was how everyone felt:

But then they came back, and played Losing My Religion!!!

(And a few other songs)

But I know what you really want is not to read about R.E.M. — you want to hear them. So here is Hollow Man:

Waiting @RedRocks for R.E.ModesTheNationalMouse!!

Actually, several things out here reminds me of Japan… hiking through mountains, walking to work with my lunch in hand, generally nice weather… and now, CURRY RICE AND MOCHI. Yessss. We made a trip to Asiana Market, which sells mostly Korean stuff but some Japanese stuff. It’s probably a good thing they don’t have more Japanese food or I would have bought it all. But we came out of there with some good Japanese junk food, noodles, ice cream, nori, furikake, and most importantly, daifuku and mochi. I’m really glad that Ford seems to be such a big fan of Japanese food. David, also a fan of the mochi. We were so excited about our purchases that after we bought our food we just chilled in the parking lot, snacking, debating whether to go in for a second run…

Last night, I was watching an episode of Last Friends and two of the characters were eating curry rice. Ford noticed this too and the cravings begun. So, it was clear we would be doing culinary explorations in Japanese curry:

The carrots and sautéed onions were a necessity — celery, for added fun. And I have some nice bright yellow takuan to finish off the meal. Pocky and green tea/red bean ice cream are also in the freezer.

The curry was extremely easy to make (step 1, buy curry), and tasted exactly like the カレーライス in Japan — just the right flavor, and absolutely no spiciness. Maybe curry udon (or soba!) is next up on the list of things to make… or I’ll venture to do some om-rice… yummyyy.

Another great discovery — yesterday Ford and I went downtown (following Summer and Rhonda, who were going to shop there) — we bought some Wigwam and Smartwool socks, then essentially ran out of money and decided not to continue on to Manitou Springs. Instead, we were walking along this street when Ford says, “I’m thirsty…” and directly to our left I saw a sign that said, “Bubble Tea”!! Yessss… we had some nice green tea and taro bubble tea before heading home (and getting lost several times, due to vague instruction from the navigational assistant… its definition of “turn left” is really suspect).